On the second full day of the Barack Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency has placed the brakes on two coal-fired power plant projects. The EPA “placed a hold on approval of Otter Tail Power’s proposed 500 MW Big Stone II coal-fired power plant in South Dakota.” The plant is sited at the Minnesota border to take advantage of South Dakota’s weaker environmental regulations. However, in a letter sent to the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources yesterday — the final day for review — the EPA said the state “didn’t meet requirements under the Clean Air Act in part of its proposed permit for the plant.”

In a joint statement, Clean Water Action and the Sierra Club said the decision “likely spells the end of Otter Tail Power’s Big Stone II coal plant”:

At a minimum, Otter Tail Power will have to go back to the drawing board and redesign the project to incorporate the best and maximum available control technology for pollution like soot and smog. Sierra Club and Clean Water Action will be pushing for EPA to set limits also for carbon dioxide, the main contributor to global warming.

The EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board yesterday stayed another coal plant, the 1,500-megawatt Desert Rock Energy Station in Navajo Nation land in New Mexico. In its decision, the board agreed to “review an air permit the EPA approved in July” for the plant.

However, because of a last minute order by outgoing EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, the EPA is currently enjoined from considering carbon dioxide pollution in coal plant permits. Johnson’s memorandum reversed to a November decision by the Appeals Board to block a coal plant for not considering global warming pollution.

The fate of these plants — and our climate — now rests in the hands of President Obama and his just-confirmed EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson. If they choose to do so, they can make the official finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger our health and welfare — a finding blocked for years by George W. Bush.

The single most important policy change needed to promote broad-based, California-style energy efficiency is to “decouple” utility profits from sales, to allow utilities to profit from energy efficiency (see “How does California do it?” and “Why we never need to build another polluting power plant“).

Utilities are the most effective delivery channels for making homes, commercial buildings, and industry more energy-efficient, but the vast majority operate under a regulatory regime that penalizes utilities for promoting efficiency. Indeed, those regulations actually motivate utilities to encourage their customers to overuse electricity, because not only do they make more profits then, but if demand rises enough, they can get the Public Utility Commission (PUC) to approve a new power plant and higher rates — and thus more profits.

I have been assuming that Democrats would wait until the mother of all energy bills later this year to make their big push toward decoupling. But it turns out that Dems have decided to make it one of the conditions for the multi-billion-dollar energy efficiency block grants in the stimulus (see “Details of Obama’s green stimulus plan released“).

That is an outstanding idea. E&E Daily (subs. req’d) has the details:

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Contrary to the popular notion that increases in carbon dioxide emissions increase vegetation, a “stunningly important paper,” in Science finds the reverse has been true.

Led by scientists from the US Geological Survey and USDA, “Widespread Increase of Tree Mortality Rates in the Western United States,” finds:

Our analyses of longitudinal data from unmanaged old forests in the western United States showed that background (noncatastrophic) mortality rates have increased rapidly in recent decades, with doubling periods ranging from 17 to 29 years among regions.

After examining a variety of potential causes, the study concludes:

Regional warming and consequent increases in water deficits are likely contributors to the increases in tree mortality rates.

And this is only the tip of the (disintegrating) iceberg — the planet is on an emissions path to warm 10 times as much in the coming century as we warmed during the period examined in this study.

As a co-author warned the BBC, this is another potential major amplifying feedback that could itself accelerate global warming in the coming years and decades:

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Once again, three climate activists who are not terribly good at debating agreed to participate in a decidedly unscientific format against people who mostly make stuff up. And what a shock, it had a bad outcome — although this one seems to be partly a result of gaming the vote as much as anything else.

In 2007, it was the now-infamous climate science debate, broadcast by NPR on the proposition “Global warming is not a crisis” (see Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 2: Why deniers out-debate “smart talkers”). The pro-science side lost to the anti-science make-stuff-up side (Michael Crichton, Richard Lindzen, Philip Stott) on that one.

So you can imagine what happened when the debate proposition moved over to economics, “Major Reductions in Carbon Emissions Are Not Worth the Money” — especially with the ‘pro’ (i.e. delayer) side handled by three world-class economist-loving liars make-stuff-uppers: Bjorn Lomborg, Peter Huber, and Stott (details here, transcript here and, for true masochists, NPR audio here).

NOTE #1 TO ALL PRO-CLIMATE-ACTION DEBATERS: It is very hard to win a staged debate with people who make stuff up. It is next to impossible to do so if they are skilled debaters. And you are guaranteed to lose if it isn’t a one-on-one debate. Why? The only way to out-debate somebody who makes stuff up is to call them out on it. And if they keep doing it, you have to keep calling them out. Even the most skilled debater has difficulty publicly questioning the honesty and integrity of opponent again and again (which is why you rarely see anyone attempt it). But you’ll never convince an audience that multiple ‘experts’ are making stuff up.

The final result of this absurdly unscientific and meaningless activity was preordained. It was also so bogus that even the organization that put on the pointless debate actually acknowledged in its own press release (here) that part of the audience (the conservatives, of course) gamed the system:

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