Attention in Madison now turns to controversial issue of “Global Warming.” This interactive graphic shows some of the ways Wisconsin’s Global Warming Bill, dubbed the ‘Clean Energy Jobs Act’ by its proponents, would impact you.
Attention in Madison now turns to controversial issue of “Global Warming.” This interactive graphic shows some of the ways Wisconsin’s Global Warming Bill, dubbed the ‘Clean Energy Jobs Act’ by its proponents, would impact you.
The Governor’s Global warming bill has stalled and is currently undergoing revisions, behind closed doors. Whenever it is again unveiled these serious questions deserve honest answers. Below is a flash graphic of our ten questions regarding the latest public version of the plan. To see each question, click a different number.
See all ten questions, here.
MacIver News Service -
As reported earlier, the Wisconsin Global Warming Bill, dubbed the Clean Energy Jobs Act by its supporters, assumes that the price of carbon-based energy will increase due to the establishment of a ‘cap and trade’ system for carbon emissions. Our February 5th report included warnings, however, that a federal ‘cap and trade’ system was not certain to come about.
The Washington Post reports this morning:
Three key senators are engaged in a radical behind-the-scenes overhaul of climate legislation, preparing to jettison the broad “cap-and-trade” approach that has defined the legislative debate for close to a decade.
The sharp change of direction demonstrates the extent to which the cap-and-trade strategy — allowing facilities to buy and sell pollution credits in order to meet a national limit on greenhouse gas emissions — has become political poison. In a private meeting with several environmental leaders on Wednesday, according to participants, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), declared, “Cap-and-trade is dead.”
Even if Cap and Trade were to die, however, the cost of carbon-based fuels could still increase due to other federal regulatory action. While the Wisconsin bill assumes a future cost at $20/ton and rises slowly with inflation, there are no firm numbers yet as Washington has not passed new federal regulations and the prospects for such action are unknown.
MacIver News Service will report on the impact Washington’s actions may have on the pending Wisconsin legislation in the days ahead.
Within the next five years, Wisconsin must double its use of energy from renewable sources to reach a level of 10 percent of all eelctrity sold in Wisconsin.
Right now, Wisconsin lawmakers are considering increasing that mandate to 25 percent by the year 2025. Supporters of the proposal say the required increase would create 15,000 jobs over the next 15 years. But where?
MacIver’s Bill Osmulski reports:
MacIver News Service -
[Madison, Wisconsin] Senator Jeff Plale (D-South Milwaukee) co-Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Clean Energy made a stunning comment about the threat of Global Warming, just as his meeting concluded, Thursday.
Plale informed his fellow Senators that the final bill, SB 450-dubbed by supporters as “The Clean Energy Jobs Act,” will undergo revisions as the legislative process continues. Plale told his colleagues and others in attendance “Now is the time to take the information we’ve gathered, start to put something together that is work that’s workable.”
Plale then stunned the audience with this admission about his position on the global warming debate: “I don’t know if the science is real or not.”
Yet, he argued, something needed to be done.
How sweeping that ‘something’ will be, is yet to be determined.
Right now, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau, SB 450 relates to:
“goals for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, for construction of zero net energy buildings and for energy conservation; information, analyses, reports, education, and training concerning greenhouse gas emissions and climate change; energy efficiency and renewable resource programs; renewable energy requirements of electric utilities and retail cooperatives; requiring electric utilities to purchase renewable energy from certain renewable facilities in their service territories; authority of the Public Service Commission over nuclear power plants; motor vehicle emission limitations; a low carbon standard for transportation fuels; the brownfield site assessment grant program, the main street program, the brownfields grant program, the forward innovation fund, grants to local governments for planning activities, the transportation facilities economic assistance and development program, a model parking ordinance; surface transportation planning by the Department of Transportation and metropolitan planning organizations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; environmental evaluations for transportation projects; idling limits for certain vehicles; energy conservation codes for public buildings, places of employment, one- and two-family dwellings, and agricultural facilities; design standards for state buildings; energy efficiency standards for certain consumer audio and video devices, boiler inspection requirements; greenhouse gas emissions and energy use by certain state agencies and state assistance to school districts in achieving energy efficiencies; creating an exception to local levy limits for amounts spent on energy efficiency measures; creating an energy crop reserve program; identification of private forest land, promoting sequestration of carbon in forests, qualifying practices and cost-share requirements under the forest grant program established by the Department of Natural Resources; air pollution permits for certain stationary sources reducing greenhouse gas emissions; allocating a portion of existing tax-exempt industrial development revenue bonding to clean energy manufacturing facilities and renewable power generating facilities; requiring a report on certain programs to limit greenhouse gas emissions; granting rule-making authority; requiring the exercise of rule-making authority; and providing a penalty.”
MacIver News Service
Is Wisconsin’s Global Warming Bill built on a house of cards?
Critics of the so-called “Clean Energy Jobs Act” (CEJA) bill are pointing to a major assumption it makes about future national regulation of carbon emissions that would make or break the bill.
Right now it is cheaper to produce electricity from fossil fuels than from renewable sources. Supporters of CEJA are counting on that to change.
In calculating the cost-benefits of CEJA, The Wisconsin Public Service Commission “assumed a future cost for emitting carbon dioxide from power plants that starts at $20/ton and rises slowly with inflation,” according to the Office of Energy Independence. If that happens, the PSC says it will then be cheaper to produce electricity from renewable sources than from fossil fuels.
To capitalize on that possibility, CEJA would enforce Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) that set requirements on how much renewable energy utilities would have to sell. By 2025, a full 25 percent of all electricity sold in Wisconsin would have to come from renewable sources, under the bill.
If the PSC’s assumption is correct, the Office of Energy Independence predicts “electric utility bills would go down under this legislation.” However, to date, the federal government has had little luck in passing that type of carbon regulation, the PSC is counting on.
The federal bill that would establish carbon regulation, often called Cap and Trade, has stalled in the U.S. Senate. Deborah Sliz, President and CEO of the Washington, D.C. lobbying firm Morgan Meguire, believes with upcoming election cycle, Cap and Trade probably won’t pass anytime within the next couple of years.
Sliz was the keynote speaker at the Customers First! Coalition Power Breakfast in Madison on Wednesday.
At that same breakfast, Representative Mike Huebsch (R-West Salem) argued it’s dangerous to base state legislation on what might or might not happen in Washington at some unkown date in the future.
“Those are tremendous assumptions and take remarkable leaps of faith, because if Cap and Trade in Washington isn’t dead, it’s certainly on life support,” stated Heubsch during a panel discussion.
Representatives Spencer Black (D-Madison) and Jim Soletski (D-Green Bay), who wrote the Assembly version of the Clean Energy Jobs Act, sat on the panel with Heubsch and defended reying on the assumption.
Representative Soletski argued it is not a great leap of faith to believe Washington will eventually pass some form of carbon regulation, and Wisconsin needs to be ready for it.
“If not now, when? It’s going to happen,” said Soletski. “We are going to put an emphasis on renewables. We are going to put an emphasis on efficiency. Are we going to do this in 2010, or are we going to do this in 2020 or 2030?”
Representative Black argued other states used the same methods as Wisconsin in analyzing potential climate legislation, but Wisconsin has been much more responsible in its assumptions.
“Other states have actually gotten much more robust numbers,” said Black. “Very intentionally, the Public Service Commission put in the most conservative assumptions, so it is completely defensible.”
The panel discussion was not the first instance that the controversy over assuming federal regulation of carbon emissions has been discussed. Eric Callisto, chairman of the Public Service Committee, addressed it at an assembly public hearing on Tuesday.
“We get about two-thirds of our power from coal,” said Callisto. “That coal is a tremendously reliable source of energy, but its regulatory costs are sure to rise. And as a state, we’re sitting on a lot of potentially very expensive regulatory liability right now.”
During the panel discussion Wednesday, Representative Huebsch said “I don’t think you can simply state this legislation is going to be economically advantageous unless you can keep with all the assumptions that Chairman Calisto made.”
The Assembly and the Senate are holding public hearings this month on the bill which was developed from the findings of Governor Jim Doyle’s Global Warming Task Force.
During the panel discussion, Representative Black stated “We will pass a clean energy bill. (But) it will not look like the bill we have now.”
While changes are clearly on the horizon, based on the comments of the past week it appears likely the final bill will still be based on the assumption that Congress will impose expensive regulations on carbon emissions.
The floor period ends on April 22.
[Milwaukee, Wisc...] A University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor is making headlines for his work suggesting the world is entering a period of global cooling.
“Now we’re getting a break,” Anastasios Tsonis, Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at UWM, said in an interview with the MacIver Institute.
Tsonis published a paper last March that found the world goes through periods of warming and cooling that tend to last thirty years. He says we are now in a period of cooling that could last up to fifty years.
With record breaking cold temperatures around the world this winter, his research is starting to get a lot of attention. Over the past couple of weeks, Tsonis has been featured in the British newspapers The Guardian and the Daily Mail.
Current figures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirm that temperatures have trended downward over the last ten years. In Wisconsin, temperatures dropped 1.68 degrees Fahrenheit from 2000 to 2009, according to NOAA.
“Around 2001 the climate began shifting. It’s cooling now. That doesn’t mean that the warming was a fluke,” said Tsonis.
He believes man could have played a role in the warming the world recently experienced. However, Tsonis says natural forces, particularly ocean currents, are playing a greater role in the world’s climate than man. Tsonis says it’s dangerous to place all the blame for climate change on one or the other.
“I think both views are extreme, and the truth lies somewhere in between,” Tsonis said.
Regardless, Tsonis believes mankind should take steps to minimize its impact on climate further. Now that we’re in a period of cooling, we have time to do it right.
“This could be a blessing,” Tsonis told the MacIver Institute. “I think we need to understand this shift better, instead of taking it out of proportion.”
Meanwhile Governor Jim Doyle is pushing for major climate legislation recommended by his Task Force on Climate Change. Tsonis was never invited to participate in that discussion, however, he does agree the state should start to move away from dependency on fossil fuels.
“We should be looking at alternate sources of energy like wind power; nuclear power also,” he offered.
Tsonis is hopeful this period of cooling is exactly what the world needed, but warns people should not get complacent. His overall conclusion is “We need to take advantage of this reprieve to get our act together.”
“Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him.” -Ben Santer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Some prominent Climatologists who subscribe to the theory of man-made global warming want the University of Wisconsin to consider revoking Patrick Michaels’ Doctorate, according to leaked emails uncovered as part of the brewing ‘climategate’ scandal.
Who is Patrick Michaels?
Michaels received his PhD in ecological climatology from UW-Madison in 1979 after he earned his A.B. and S.M. degrees in biological sciences and plant ecology from the University of Chicago. Since then he’s served as a climatologist for the state of Virginia, a professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and was a contributing author and reviewer of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He’s currently a senior fellow at the CATO Institute and is a Distinguished Senior Fellow in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University.
According to his official biography, Michaels’ writing has been published in the major scientific journals, including Climate Research, Climatic Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, Nature, and Science, as well as in newspapers such as The Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, and Journal of Commerce. He was an author of the climate “paper of the year” awarded by the Association of American Geographers in 2004.
With all these bona fides, why would his peers contemplate waging a campaign to undermine his credibility?
Michaels is also a global warming skeptic.
Questioning Man Made Global Warming
In September, he wrote an article for National Review accusing Phil Jones, a climatologist at the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia, and his colleagues of losing or destroying surface temperature data they used to develop their theories. You can read the whole article by clicking here.
The Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia explained on their website “Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data.”
That data was incorporated into a report by the IPCC in the 1990s, which in turn was used by the EPA in drafting its “Endangerment Findings.” The endangerment findings determined that greenhouse gases are at unprecedented levels and are endangering the health and welfare of the public.
Now, Michaels and the Competitive Enterprise Institute are petitioning the EPA to reopen the public comment period, because the data supporting the findings are unreliable.
That allegation did not sit well with Phil Jones and his colleagues.
Ben Santer, a climatologist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told Jones in an email on October 9, 2009 “I’m really sorry that you have to go through all this stuff, Phil. Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.”
Long-running feud
In an interview with the MacIver Institute on Tuesday, Michaels said that was not the first time Santer had threatened him with bodily harm. Michaels explained he and Santer have been critical of each other since the mid-1990s.
The feud dates back to at least 1996 when Santer, Jones and others published a paper in the academic journal Nature entitled “A Search For Human Influences On The Thermal Structure Of The Atmosphere.” The authors believed it was supposed to settle the global warming debate once and for all.
Michaels said “It was a blatant attempt to manipulate public opinion.” He went on to write an article for Nature about the questionable scientific practices behind Santer and Jones’ work.
It is clear Jones, Santer and others continue to hold a grudge against Michaels. Examples of that grudge can be found in emails leaked from the University of East Anglia. On October 8, 2009, Santer emailed Rick Piltz, director of Climate Science Watch, questioning Michaels’ own research methods.
Santer wrote “I’m sure that Pat Michaels does not have the primary source data used in his Ph.D. thesis. Perhaps one of us should request the datasets used in Michaels’ Ph.D. work, and then ask the University of Wisconsin to withdraw Michaels’ Ph.D. if he fails to produce every dataset and computer program used in the course of his thesis research.”
Michaels told the MacIver Institute “The funny thing is I could reproduce every data set. It’s not that complicated.”
As the recently-revealed email conversations continued, Santer defended the reliability of the IPCC study.
“The integrity and reliability of this story does NOT rest on a single observational dataset, as Michaels and the CEI incorrectly claim,” Santer emailed. “Michaels should and does know better. I can only conclude from his behavior – and from his participation in this legal action – that he is being intentionally dishonest.”
Defending Jones, Santer wrote “The sad thing here is that Phil Jones is one of the true gentlemen of our field. I have known Phil for most of my scientific career. He is the antithesis of the secretive, ‘data destroying’ character the CEI and Michaels are trying to portray to the outside world.”
The UW Connection
But the issue of Michaels’ PhD from the University of Wisconsin continued to come up in subsequent emails. The next week, emails from other climatologists continued to speculate about the possibility of revoking Michaels’ Doctorate.
One email asked “Perhaps the University of Wisconsin ought to open up a public comment period to decide whether Pat Michaels’ PhD needs re-assessing?”
This week the MacIver Institute filed an open records request with the University of Wisconsin to see if any formal effort against Michaels was undertaken.
In response, John C. Dowling UW’s Senior University Legal Counsel, wrote, “According to the current Chair of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, there has been no correspondence concerning the Ph.D. granted to Patrick Michael in 1979.”
The intrigue continues, however. Just today it was reported that Phil Jones has stepped down from his position at the University of East Anglia, pending the results of an investigation of allegations, stemming from the leaked emails, that he overstated case for man-made global warming.
The MacIver Institute will continue to report on developments of this story, including other Wisconsin connections to the controversy.
A brewing controversy surrounding efforts within the environmental science community to manipulate data and intimidate skeptics includes ties to the University of Wisconsin, the MacIver Institute has learned.
MacIver has discovered that several UW researchers were included in group email conversations that discussed masking data, incorporating false trends into climate research, and blocking efforts to correct that. Equally alarming, we found that UW grad Pat Michaels, a prominent skeptic of the theory of man-made global warming in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University who is also senior fellow at the Cato Institute, was the target of a campaign of intimidation because of his views.
“At best UW employees appear to have been privy to efforts to mask or manipulate data,” said MacIver Institute President Brett Healy. “Our investigative reporter is in the process of filing open records requests to determine the extent of Wisconsin taxpayer-paid individuals’ participation in such efforts. Furthermore, we’re looking into whether efforts to undermine Dr. Michaels’ University Doctorate escalated into anything more than petty sniping and speculation.”
Communications between Ben Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Rick Piltz, founder of Climate Science Watch and from Tom Wigley of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research include speculation of ways in which the University of Wisconsin could reexamine Dr. Michaels’ thesis, for which he received his Doctorate from the UW in 1979.
MacIver’s investigative reporter, Bill Osmulski, has been analyzing emails from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, which were recently made public and have been the subject of international scrutiny. Osmulski is in the process of officially requesting additional documents from the University of Wisconsin, specifically correspondence from individuals who were included in those emails as well as any communications regarding Dr. Michaels’ thesis and Doctorate.
The MacIver Institute will continue to follow this story in the days ahead.
The Badger State earned a failing grade when it came to the science standards that students are supposed to held to, posting a 0/10 score and a “F” grade. This was the lowest recorded score in the entire study.
