Invoking a Nazi reference today, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) argued that establishing national energy efficiency standards for buildings would create a “global warming Gestapo.” Scalise attacked the provision in the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (HR 2454) to create a federal building efficiency code (Section 201), calling it “ludicrous”:

Let’s go to the bill and look at the penalties. Because there are actually civil penalties in this bill. We’re actually creating a global warming police. . . And then further to page 236: “Each day of unlawful occupancy shall be considered a separate violation.” We’re setting up a global warming Gestapo that can literally come in and now this new term, “unlawful occupancy.” Now living in your home is considered unlawful under this bill.

This is ludicrous.

Watch it:

Putting aside Scalise’s inflammatory rhetoric, his understanding of the provision — which would save working families and businesses millions of dollars, create hundreds of thousands of green jobs, and tackle the nation’s biggest source of global warming pollution — is flawed. Scalise ignored the difference between energy efficiency building codes and safety codes. Scalise was also seemly ignorant that the legislation explicitly preserves local building codes that meet or exceed the national standard, while providing federal support for states to implement new standards. Federal enforcement would only take place if states failed to act.

Without irony, Scalise argued that fighting global warming would threaten the health and safety of Lousianans in danger of “hurricanes and flooding” and tornadoes:

Safety and health have always been the main driving factors behind a building code. What this bill does in Section 201, it’s literally taking global warming, and using global warming to trump safety and health. Because now, if I’m in South Louisiana, and I want to rebuild after hurricane damage — which by the way we had 120,000 homes in Louisiana that had more than 50 percent damage due to Hurricane Katrina — under this bill in section 201, when people are rebuilding those 120,000 homes, they would have to follow the federal building code, and in many cases that would mean they can’t use the same types of strength that they might want to use in their windows. They might want to use stronger windows because they don’t want the storm to blow out their windows. But under this bill, a federal standard could say their windows are out of the federal code.

Global warming likely significantly intensified the devastating power of Hurricane Katrina. As the state of Louisana itself has explained, “Coastal Lousiana is more vulnerable to the effects of global climate change than any other region in the United States. Its low elevation, high rate of subsidence and rapid loss of wetlands expose this area to the worst consequences of climatic change — a rising Gulf, possibly stronger storms, unpredictable rainfall and warmer weather.”

Full transcript: Read more

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has the votes to get his landmark energy and climate legislation approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Reuters reports today:

Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have enough votes to approve historic legislation to cap and reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to a Reuters survey of specific lawmakers on the panel.

The legislation, which Democratic leaders plan to have the committee vote on this week, would  e heart of the legislation is a “cap and trade” system that would gradually reduce the amount of greenhouse gases from utilities, steelmakers, oil refineries and other companies by requiring them to have permits to spew their emissions.

Of the 59 members on the House committee, Reuters found that 30 lawmakers, all of them Democrats, would definitely vote “yes” or were likely to support the bill. The survey results were based on comments from the lawmakers themselves or from congressional staff on where their bosses stand on the bill.

That would be a very big deal since the Energy and Commerce Committee is considered more conservative than the House as a whole on energy and climate issues — stuffed as it is with members representing traditional (i.e. polluting) energy industries.  It would mean that Waxman need not make any more compromises to get the bill passed out of committee.  It would also be a tremendous political accomplishment given that six days ago, the ranking Republican, Joe Barton (R-TX), said “I don’t think they can get it out of committee.”

And here’s a surprise — it’s possible the bill might even get one Republican vote:

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Climate change is real, it’s caused by humans, and it will create serious risks for our nation’s security, economy and quality of life “” and sooner than we think. That’s the unmistakable message from scientists who have devoted their professional lives to understanding how human activities affect climate. One of them is Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, a climate research scientist at Texas Tech and a devout evangelical Christian.

She is co-author of a forthcoming report that will document the stunning effects climate change will have throughout the United States “” such as the climate of my own state of Michigan becoming like what North Texas experiences today. I’m not kidding

Yes, there is a group called Republicans for Environmental Protection, but there’s no truth to the rumor that their annual meeting was held in the bathroom of the Republican National Committee.  Sorry, couldn’t resist.  They are a “nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to restoring the GOP’s conservation tradition.”  And they say I’m an optimist!  But I digress.

The President, one Rob Sisson, has a column in today’s Politico, “Time for the GOP to become green,” in which he rebuked congressional Republicans who are shamelessly abusing an MIT study of generic climate bills (as discussed here Exclusive: MIT Professor says GOP, Weekly Standard “misrepresentation” of his April 2007 study to project costs for Waxman-Markey is “inappropriate,” “silly” and “just wrong”).

The whole piece is worth reading, to see how far the shrinking national Republican party is from many of its state-based members:

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The Energy Information Administration has released its flash estimate for 2008 energy-related CO2 emissions here.  Factors that contributed to the 2.8% decline in CO2 (and a 2.2% drop in total energy use) include:

Energy prices

• In 2008, gasoline and diesel prices were at their all-time peak level
• Near the end of the year, despite lower energy prices, gasoline and diesel demand was dampened by a drop in consumer income

Lower economic growth

• In 2008, GDP growth was a modest 1.1 percent
• In the 4th quarter, GDP fell at an annual rate of 6.3 percent

I suppose this is one of the few “benefits” of the failed energy policies of conservatives, which led to soaring energy prices, and of the failed economic policies of conservatives, which led to the biggest recession since the Great Depression, and of the general lack of any strategy to restore American competitiveness, which led to a tremendous outsourcing of US jobs and manufacturing and emissions to China — see “U.S. carbon dioxide emissions growth during Bush years 300% higher than official estimates.”

And all of this conservative stagnation has set the stage for progressive action that will ensure peak U.S. CO2 are behind us forever (see “I predict U.S. carbon dioxide emissions peaked in 2007!“).

Our guest bloggers are Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and Sean Pool.

As the House Energy and Commerce Committee deliberations continue on the American Clean Energy and Security Act, H.R. 2454, opponents have made a number of wild charges about the cost of the bill. These claims are false. A new EPA analysis found that “compared to the draft bill, H.R. 2454 would likely result in lower allowance prices, a smaller impact on energy bills, and a smaller impact on household consumption.”

Committee opponents made a range of histrionic claims about cost, often citing partisan studies such as Heritage Foundation analyses, or a discredited study by a right-wing think tank in Spain, neither of which actually model the specific provisions of the bill. The Heritage Foundation, for example claimed that the bill would destroy over a million net jobs, impose over $1,500 in energy costs on families, and slash GDP by $9.6 trillion by 2030.

But the EPA’s nonpartisan analysis of the original bill’s more stringent environmental targets found that these outlandish predictions were wrong by a factor of eight or more. Indeed, according to the EPA, GDP would increase by more than $5.1 trillion by 2030, and costs to families would be no more than $140 per year, without even counting the reduced energy costs from efficiency and greater use of renewable energy from the sun and wind.

The EPA’s new analysis of the revised version of the bill, released on Sunday, found that recent changes to the bill would reduce its cost even further.

H.R. 2454 would bring clean energy to American families at even lower cost, while simultaneously achieving greater utilization of carbon capture and sequestration technology.

New cost-saving provisions of H.R. 2454: Read more

Climate Bill Could Be a $750 Billion Boon for Consumers, Study Finds

Opponents of climate legislation paint efforts to reduce carbon emissions as “cap and tax” policy, but a new analysis of the current House proposal to curb greenhouse gas emissions finds that consumers would receive around $750 billion in direct and indirect handouts and subsidies through 2030 to offset the higher energy costs.

I am a big fan of the work of the group behind this analysis, Point Carbon, a source of timely information on the international carbon market — and the best place to find the current price of a CO2 in the European market.

Point Carbon, a market analysis firm, has estimated that the total value of the allowances given out by the government would amount to $1.5 trillion between 2012 and 2030, assuming carbon prices would rise from $13 per ton in 2013 to $22 per ton.

Point Carbon estimates about half the allowances would go toward consumer protection.

The House bill seeks to avoid the pitfall faced by Europe, where regulators essentially gave the carbon allowances free to power producers who pocketed the windfall, but did not ease costs on consumers.

In Point Carbon’s projections, investments to clean energy would total $188 billion, forest protection and adaptation would get $124 billion.

Revised House bill carries smaller price tag — EPA

Read more

Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The second day of markup on the Waxman/Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) saw a series of amendments from opponents designed to weaken the green economy bill fail in a series of votes. The debate on amendments will continue today and the sessions appear on track to get the bill voted out of committee before this weekend. As the committee discusses the landmark legislation, the Center for American Progress released an analysis of new numbers from the Union of Concerned Scientists showing that households and businesses will save money on their electricity and natural gas bills if Congress passes a Renewable Energy Standard, currently included in ACES.

The renewable energy standard (RES), a key part of the Waxman/Markey bill, requires that 15% of electricity comes from wind, sun, or other renewable sources. In yesterday’s session, bill opponents continued to cite a variety of debunked numbers on increased costs to consumers, but this analysis shows that Americans will save money with the RES included in the bill. States across the country have already seen similar savings as they have implemented RES at the state level. A review by CAP found that half the states have amended their RES after implementation to make it stronger, suggesting its been a successful policy in the states.

Back in the committee, Republican opponents read from a script described by Politico as making “counterintuitive” arguments. Their new approach was based on a strategy memo urging opponents to attack the responsible business leaders who support clean energy legislation. The memo accuses businesses of being “guilty of manipulating national climate policy to increase profits on the backs of consumers.” The tone-deaf message of the memo won’t change the fact that businesses see ACES as a chance to create jobs and begin to chart a course out of the current recession. And the script urged:

The bottom line message is this: Democrats are protecting big business; Republicans are protecting consumers.

This ignores the fact that Republicans opposed every effort in 2008 to lower gasoline prices and rein in oil companies.

Amendments that passed yesterday included a provision introduced by Reps. Dingell and Inslee for a Clean Energy Deployment Administration within the Energy Department. This “green bank” would serve to promote clean energy projects in the U.S. through affordable financing for clean energy technologies. A similar amendment from Rep. Eshoo for a Clean Technology grant program also passed. Another major amendment passed was Rep. Betty Sutton’s (D-MI) “cash for clunkers” automotive upgrade program.

Today we can expect to see more weakening amendments introduced, and if yesterday is any guide, they are likely to be defeated as champions of the bill hold the line on producing a strong bill that creates jobs and makes a real difference in ending our addiction to foreign oil.

I have a fair number of readers in Seattle, so I’m happy to pass on this rally notice from Climate Solutions (reprinted below).  The 20-person nonprofit with a great name is organizing a rally in Seattle Thursday, noon, outside of the EPA hearing on the endangerment finding.  They have more than 1,500 people attending so far, but hope to double that number.  Spread the word!

I’d also recommend this Monday Seattle Times op-ed, “Time to scale up the new energy economy,” by K.C. Golden, policy director for Climate Solutions, and Steve Reynolds, CEO of Puget Sound Energy, which begins:

THE Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that climate pollution endangers public health and welfare is a welcome step. The Obama administration deserves credit for moving quickly to respond to the climate challenge. But we have to do much more than just enforce existing laws like the Clean Air Act to deliver real climate solutions. We must build a new, stronger energy economy “” one that increases our use of clean, renewable energy, improves energy productivity, and provides good jobs and prosperity for the long haul.

Here’s the full info on the rally:

Read more

Today’s question:  How the heck does the Greenland ice sheet survive accelerated disintegration from projected 20°F warming by the 2090s?

I previously blogged on how the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change has joined the climate realists — the growing group of scientists who understand that the business as usual emissions path leads to unmitigated catastrophe (see “Hadley Center: “Catastrophic” 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path” and below).

Back in January, the Program issued a remarkable report in January, by over a dozen leading experts, doubling their 2095 warming projection to 5.2°C. The media mostly ignored it, which is no surprise, since the media generally ignores the realists in general (see U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: “Recent observations confirm “¦ the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised” “” 1000 ppm).

Now, the MIT study has been published in a peer-reviewed journal — The American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate (subs. req’d) — which obviously it makes it much more credible and high-profile.  Reuters has a good story on it, “Global warming could be twice as bad as forecast.”  The study concludes:

The MIT Integrated Global System Model is used to make probabilistic projections of climate change from 1861 to 2100. Since the model’s first projections were published in 2003 substantial improvements have been made to the model and improved estimates of the probability distributions of uncertain input parameters have become available. The new projections are considerably warmer than the 2003 projections, e.g., the median surface warming in 2091 to 2100 is 5.2°C compared to 2.4°C in the earlier study. Many changes contribute to the stronger warming; among the more important ones are taking into account the cooling in the second half of the 20^th century due to volcanic eruptions for input parameter estimation and a more sophisticated method for projecting GDP growth which eliminated many low emission scenarios.

[Note:  That rise is compared to 1981-2000 temperature levels.  So you can add at least 0.5 °C and 1.0 °F for comparison with pre-industrial temperatures, which I did in the headline -- see "A (Hopefully) Clarifying Note on Temperature."]

The MIT press release calls for “rapid and massive” action to avoid this.  Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, says, it is important “to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science….  There’s no way the world can or should take these risks.”   Duh!

Their median projection for the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide in 2095 is a jaw-dropping 866 ppm.

Projected decadal mean concentrations of CO2. Red solid lines are median, 5% and 95% percentiles for present study: dashed blue line the same from their 2003 projection.

As grim as this prediction is, it is still almost certainly an underestimate of what will happen on our current path of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions, as Prinn explains:

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Our guest blogger is Alexandra Kougentakis, a Center for American Progress Action Fund Fellows Assistant.

The Department of Defense (DOD) is the single largest consumer of energy in the United States. A new report by the Military Advisory Board (MAB) of the Center for Naval Analysis, “Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security,” describes the significant security threats the energy status quo poses to US military missions and the country:

Energy, security, economics, climate change — these things are connected.

General Charles F. “Chuck” Wald, the chairman of the MAB, laid bare the conclusions of the report in his opening remarks at the panel discussion to launch the report, held at the Newseum on Monday. Describing the oil crisis as a serious and urgent threat to national security, General Wald noted that not only does the military’s inefficient use of oil “reduce combat effectiveness,” but that American dependence on oil has a major impact on foreign policy. Significantly, he noted that the problem was “dependence on oil, and not just foreign oil.” The US has less than two percent of global oil reserves, making it dependent on foreign sources for current consumption levels.

The panel explained that US’s exposure to volatile international oil markets also poses a significant financial threat:

– The US military consumes over 300,000 barrels of oil per day, leading to a bill of $20 billion in FY 2008.

– Skyrocketing oil prices in 2008 led to a more than 50 percent increase from the $13 billion paid for oil in FY 2007.

General Wald warned that the current status quo on oil was part of the reason for the current global financial crisis. Even worse, unless urgent action is taken to overhaul energy use in the US, a future financial crisis “could dwarf this one.”

Calling efficiency the “hat trick” of energy, the panel experts described efficient energy use as essential to protecting American troops and saving lives. As General Ronald F. Keys, a retired US Air Force commander pointed out:

When you’re being shot at, of course that’s important for folks who are out there in harm’s way.

In Afghanistan, 70 percent of the convoys are used for carrying fuel and water. In Iraq, where the majority of fuel delivery is for generators that provide for tent air-conditioning, the military tried insulating tents with foam, reducing energy consumption by a remarkable 45 percent. Cutting the energy use not only saves money but also cuts the number of dangerous convoy runs. Read more

“Business is not always going to be a good friend of the Republicans, and that needs to be reflected in our strategy,” said MWR Strategies President Michael McKenna, a Republican energy lobbyist.

The GOP members of the House Energy and Commerce committee, led by Joe Barton of Texas, are, ironically, bereft of any ideas on energy and commerce — and climate.  That is clear if you are watching the (painful) mark up of the Waxman-Markey bill on C-SPAN3 — which resumes today at 10 am EST and will again go deep into the evening.

And when a party has no ideas, their message implodes and they start a circular firing squad — in this case, attacking Barton.  That has already begun, as two remarkable articles in the Politico make clear.

In the first, “Climate change: GOP turns on business to fight measure,” the Politico reporters can hardly contain their amazement that the GOP acknowledges their position on clean energy and climate is essentially anti-business:

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Go to WhiteHouse.gov for livestreaming of first quarterly meeting of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board in the Roosevelt Room.

The focus of the meeting will be on energy and green jobs and the board will provide recommendations on how to enhance the strength and   competitiveness of the nation’s economy through the creation of a   comprehensive energy plan that will generate millions of clean energy   jobs.