This is a follow up to the Climate Progress exclusive from last month, “The Great Ice Age of 2008 is finally over — next stop Venus!” NOAA’s National Climactic Data Center reported (here):

Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the thirteenth warmest on record for April and the January-April year-to-date period ranked twelfth warmest.

So global coolers will have to find some other fish to fry freeze. [Yes, I know, deniers/delayers, the mere fact that this wasn't the warmest April or warmest January-April on record proves conclusively we must be cooling.] Interestingly the warmest April and January-April on record according to NOAA/NCDC occurred in … wait for it … 2007.

The rest of us know that we are on the cool side of all-time warming because we’re still in a (weakened) La Ni±a and a local mininum of the solar irradiance cycle (see figure) but the deniers/delayers insist that if CO2 doesn’t explain every single short-term and medium-term temperature fluctuation, then the whole damn theory of human-caused warming is as debunked as, say, the notion that men ever landed on the moon.

By the way, I don’t like to brag or anything, but as I correctly predicted last month:

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House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has today released documents and testimony that show White House involvement in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision to deny California’s request for a waiver to enforce its greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks.

According to testimony by former EPA Associate Deputy Administrator Jason Burnett, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson’s “preference for a full or partial grant of the waiver did not change until after he communicated with the White House“:

When asked by Committee staff “whether the Administrator communicated with the White House in between his preference to do a partial grant and the ultimate decision” to deny the waiver, Mr. Burnett responded: “I believe the answer is yes.” When asked “after his communications with the White House, did he still support granting the waiver in part,” Mr. Burnett answered: “He ultimately decided to deny the waiver.” Mr. Burnett also affirmed that there was “White House input into the rationale in the December 19th letter” announcing the denial of the waiver and in the formal decision document issued in March 2008.

Burnett refused to testify on any further specifics, telling the investigators “that he had been directed not to answer any questions about the involvement of the White House in the decision to reject California’s petition.” Burnett, who was involved in a series of questionable EPA decisions during his tenure, resigned from the EPA on May 6. He was deposed on May 15.

On December 19, 2007, the date President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson announced that his agency would deny California’s waiver request. This request, made in 2005, set off a series of legal battles that culminated in the 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts vs. EPA that ordered the EPA to take action on greenhouse gases. Since then, the EPA has failed to obey the Supreme Court mandate, despite the efforts of career staff.

Waxman’s memo concludes:

It would be a serious breach if the President or other White House officials directed Administrator Johnson to ignore the record before the agency and deny California’s petition for political or other inappropriate reasons. Further investigation will be required to assess the legality of the White House role in the rejection of the California motor vehicle standards.

Johnson is expected to testify before Waxman’s committee tomorrow at 1 PM.

UPDATE: Frank O’Donnell of Clean Air Watch writes in: “This is an incredibly sordid story. Steve Johnson should come out and finally tell the truth about this situation. And he should resign for agreeing not only to be a White House pawn but for trying to deceive the public about what happened.” Frank has more at Gristmill.

UPDATE II: National Journal’s CongressDaily reports that Johnson may refuse to turn over documents subpoenaed for tomorrow’s oversight hearing. In a letter to Johnson last Friday, Waxman indicated his expectations about the documents on the “revised national ambient air quality standards for ozone”:

Unless the President asserts a valid claim of executive privilege with respect to the documents being withheld by EPA, you will be expected to personally bring the documents to the hearing. The Committee’s subpoena was directed to you and you will be in defiance of the subpoena if you appear at the hearing without the documents.

UPDATE III: Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) responds: “The EPA’s top leadership has decimated the integrity of the agency, and allowed it to become a total tool of the White House. This report asserts that the White House was directly involved in the decision to deny California’s waiver — over the objections of the Agency’s career scientists and attorneys. This demonstrates incredible arrogance by the White House — to wholly pervert an Agency that is supposed to be independent.”

Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI) responds: “When I asked Administrator Johnson about this matter several months ago, the stilted, repetitive legalese of his answers made him seem like a man who had been coached on his answers and had something to hide. I hope he will be much more forthcoming tomorrow, and give the American people the straight answers they deserve.”

When President Bush delivered his much-hyped climate policy speech from the Rose Garden last April (see here), he voiced an interesting concern. He’s worried that the courts will do what the other two branches of government have failed to do: take meaningful action to curb the country’s carbon emissions.

“We face a growing problem here at home,” the president said. “Some courts are taking laws written more than 30 years ago — to primarily address local and regional environmental effects — and applying them to global climate change.”

“Decisions with such far-reaching impact should not be left to unelected regulators and judges,” he continued. “Such decisions should be opened — debated openly; such decisions should be made by the elected representatives of the people they affect. The American people deserve an honest assessment of the costs, benefits and feasibility of any proposed solution.”

The White House promised that Bush’s Rose Garden remarks would be important and it was correct: The president’s call for open debate and an honest assessment of climate action was a major policy shift. His complaint about unelected judges making decisions was specious, however. The elected members of past Congresses and Bush’s predecessors signed the 30-year-old laws on which some of the current court decisions are based. Old laws are being applied to global warming because the current Congress and White House have failed to pass new ones.

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On Friday afternoon, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) quietly released its Final Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl, first listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1990 after widespread logging destroyed its old-growth forest habitat in the Pacific Northwest. The FWS estimates the plan will allow the owl to recover within 30 years, at a total cost of $489.2 million, “if all actions are implemented and effective.”

Unfortunately, that’s as big “if,” because the plan doesn’t have any global-warming response, even though its authors recognize:

Many of the current future climate projections for the Pacific Northwest suggest the spotted owl and its habitat probably will be affected by climate change through several pathways, including but not limited to changes in fire regime; patterns of rain and snowfall; wildlife diseases; and abundance and distribution of native and nonnative species of fish, wildlife, and plants. We have begun compiling and reviewing the best-available information on this subject, and we anticipate modifications to our recovery strategy will likely be needed in the next decade.

In other words, the Final Recovery Plan is not “final” at all. The FWS admits that global warming threatens the spotted owl and its habitat. But because the Bush administration refuses to take action on global warming, it produces completely illogical documents like this one. The authors also assert that no new regulatory mechanisms — like regulation of greenhouse gas emissions — are needed:

The Service believes existing regulatory mechanisms do not preclude, and may support, the Recovery Actions identified in this Plan. The actions identified in this Plan are believed needed to achieve recovery. The current existing regulatory framework will not hinder recovery.

Instead of dealing with global warming, the FWS focuses on the threat to the spotted owl by a competitive species, the barred owl. In 2006 a draft plan under the oversight of Bush appointees “called for luring barred owls to 18 sites across the region with decoys, then shooting them with shotguns.” This strategy has been dropped, but the 34-point final plan includes twelve action items about the barred owl. The only one involving climate change calls for continued assessment.

The Northern Spotted Owl is now the fourth species of animal this administration has recognized is threatened by global warming, joining the elkhorn and staghorn corals listed in 2006 because of “persistent elevated sea surface temperature” and the polar bear listed last week because of Arctic sea ice decline. This is a sadly small list, considering that about one million species are under threat of extinction by 2050.

The best thing about the Prius is that it achieves its high fuel economy without sacrificing size or performance and, most importantly for global warming, without being a diesel. There seems to be a lot of confusion on this point in the comments section of Part One, so let me elaborate.

Bottom Line: If you care about global warming, don’t buy a diesel car (certainly not in this country), and if you must buy a diesel, only get a new one with a very good particle trap. [Does this mean that Europe's massive switch to diesel was not good for the climate? In a word,"probably."]

First, diesel fuel has a considerably higher carbon content than gasoline, so burning a gallon of diesel emits 22.2 pounds of CO2 vs. 19.4 for gasoline (see here). A diesel car with the same mpg as a gasoline car would have considerably higher carbon dioxide emissions per mile. [This is offset one third by the fact that diesel has fewer upstream emissions, which, if I did the math right, takes total life-cycle CO2 emissions from a gallon of diesel to 25.8 pounds vs. 24.2 for gasoline (see here).]

Second, and more importantly, we have known for a number of years that black carbon (BC) or small soot particles are a major greenhouse gas — and that diesel engines are a major source of BC. A March 2008 review article published in Nature Geoscience, (subs. req’d, abstract below), “Global and regional climate changes due to black carbon,” found that BC may be as much as 55% as potent in total greenhouse warming as CO2.

In October, the House held “a hearing to examine the climate change and other impacts of black carbon emissions” (testimony and transcript here). Dr. Mark Jacobson, Co-founder and Director of the Atmospheric Energy Program at Stanford University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, testified directly on how BC emissions significantly reduce the climate benefits from diesel cars (here):

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