OPINION/COMMENTARY

Cooling Down The Climate Scare

The country is drowning in wild alarums warning of impending doom due to global warming. Yet there has risen -- from the U.S. Senate, of all places -- a lone voice of rational dissent. While Al Gore drifts into deeper darkness on the other side of the moon, propelled by such revelations as cigarette smoking is a "significant contributor to global warming," Sen. James Inhofe is becoming a one-man myth-wrecking crew. Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, took to the Senate floor two days last week to expose the media's role in the global warming hype. This is a man who more than three years ago called the global warming scare "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" and has made a habit of tweaking the left-leaning environmental lobby. One member of the media, Miles O'Brien of CNN, responded last week to Inhofe's criticism of the media with a piece criticizing Inhofe and challenging his arguments. If anything, it seems that O'Brien's reply simply motivated Inhofe to continue his effort to undress the media's complicity and bring light to the issue. We hope so. The "science" on global warming and the media's propaganda campaign need to be picked apart. The assumptions made by gloomy theorists should be revealed for what they are: mere conjecture. The lies and carefully crafted implications, many of them discharged like toxic pollutants by a former vice president, deserve a thorough and lasting deconstruction. What the public needs -- and deserves -- is a credible voice to counter the sermons from Gore, on whose behalf cigarettes were distributed in 2000 to Milwaukee homeless people who were recruited by campaign volunteers to cast absentee ballots. Inhofe could be that voice. He's no John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness. What he is, in fact, is a thrice-elected senator, a former member of the House and, before that, a state senator and representative. For those not impressed by a political background -- after all, Gore, far out of proportion to his qualifications, rose to the second most powerful position on Earth -- consider that Inhofe is an Army veteran and longtime pilot, and has actually worked in the private sector. Unlike most in the Senate, Inhofe is willing to stand on a soapbox and expose his head to his opponents' rhetorical stones. Name another in that august body who would dare label as a hoax the premise that undergirds the day's most trendy pop cult. Is there anyone there who would want to try to stand up to the likes of O'Brien?....


BIG BROTHER IS WEIGHT WATCHING

"Big Brother," "Orwellian," "Nanny state" -- all those words were on the lips of New Yorkers this week after the local Board of Health proposed banning most so-called trans fats from the city's more than 20,000 eateries, says the Wall Street Journal.

The targeted fatty acids are produced when vegetable oil is solidified with hydrogen -- for frying foods or making baked goods, among other things. They can raise levels of "bad" cholesterol. Even health officials can't honestly claim that trans fats are a major cause of heart and artery problems, says the Journal.

* If the current proposal actually becomes law, every outlet from the fanciest restaurant to the smallest pizza parlor will have 18 months to find substitutes for trans fat-producing hydrogenated oils.
* These oils figure in thousands of recipes, in part because they produce familiar good tastes and textures but also because the oils don't get rancid quickly.

Few foods are healthy if you eat too much of them. The label "no cholesterol" or "low fat" is not the ticket to dietary success that many of us want to believe. The best way to eat healthy is to count calories. But reducing one's intake of trans fats is so much easier -- especially if no one is allowed to serve them -- that it's tempting for everyone, including consumer health groups, to focus on this sort of fad and not on the boring old adage about doing everything in moderation, says the Journal.

Yet calorie counting has stood the test of time. A sad sidebar to the New York story is that when health activists targeted saturated fats in the 1980s, food purveyors replaced things like beef tallow with vegetable oils and everybody cheered. Who knew that today, hydrogenated oils and their trans fats would be labeled toxic killers?

Source: Editorial, "Big Brother Is Weight Watching," Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2006.

For text (subscription required):http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115950203367077799.html


LIGHTING CANDLES OR CURSING THE DARKNESS

“When whale oil is gone,” Paul Harvey reports an apocryphal American pessimist once proclaimed, “the world will be plunged into darkness.” Fortunately, America’s energy picture has turned, not on the pronouncements of such cranks, but on the wisdom of men like the late Warren T. Brookes and Julian Simon. It was Brookes, a reporter for the Detroit News, who declared, “the nature of all technological and innovative advance is to teach us how to produce more value for less waste and less cost,” and, thus improve the human environment. It was Simon, victor in a famous bet over future mineral prices with an environmental crank and Cassandra, who proclaimed human ingenuity and technological innovation to be the twin and intertwined solutions to scarcity and shortages. These thoughts come to mind with the remarkable news of a mammoth oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico. Early last month, Chevron and its partners, including Devon Energy, released news that Chris Isidore of CNN reported “could be the biggest breakthrough in domestic oil supplies since the opening of the Alaska pipeline.” Located 270 miles southwest of New Orleans and 175 miles offshore in 7,000 feet of water and drilled through 20,000 feet of rock, the Jack 2 well had a test flow rate of more than 6,000 barrels of crude oil a day. Although Chevron had announced the Jack 2 discovery in September 2004, last month’s test confirmed suspicions as to its potential and caused Chevron to conclude that the Gulf of Mexico’s “lower tertiary region” may hold “3 billion to 15 billion barrels of oil.” U.S. reserves are estimated at less than 30 billion barrels of oil. No wonder the news made headlines! The tract is located on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), an area of 1 billion federally owned acres that extends from the U.S. coastline, beyond waters owned by coastal states, and was leased by the Minerals Management Service (MMS) in July 1996. The true origins of that lease, however, go back another fifteen years to when Reagan Administration officials abandoned the old system of offering only those tracts thought by government bureaucrats to have energy potential and began “area-wide leasing.”...


ECONOMIC AND PUBLIC HEALTH BENEFITS OF COAL-BASED ENERGY

Two recent studies supported by the Center for Energy and Economic Development (CEED) show the significant benefits delivered by coal-fired power plants and the substantial harm that could result if environmental policies force a reduction in the use of coal, says attorney Eugene M. Trisko.

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University estimated the economic benefits of coal and the potential impact of replacing coal with more expensive energy sources such as natural gas and a 10 percent mix of renewables. They netted out the positive offsetting impacts of investments in replacement fuels and electric generating capacity. By 2015:

* The annual benefit of coal use at currently projected levels is estimated at more than $1 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP), $360 billion in additional household income and nearly 7 million jobs.
* In contrast, a 33 percent reduction in coal-fired electric power generation would reduce GDP by $166 billion, household income by $64 billion and employment by 1.2 million below what it otherwise would be.
* A 66 percent reduction in coal-fired electric power generation would reduce GDP by $371 billion, household income by $142 billion and employment by 2.7 million.

The negative impact of displacing coal would be felt nationally, regionally and in nearly every state, even after considering the positive impacts of replacement energy sources, says Trisko.

Shifting from coal-fired electric power generation to other forms of energy would have a small effect on CO2 emissions and an even smaller impact on climate change, but it would impose costs on the economy and thereby the health of Americans. The benefits of coal, and the cost of eliminating it, should be weighed against benefits from the incremental reduction in air pollution and CO2 emissions. Adding up the benefits and subtracting the costs, the ledger for coal remains in the black, says Trisko.

Source: Eugene M. Trisko, "Economic and Public Health Benefits of Coal-Based Energy," National Center for Policy Analysis, Brief Analysis No. 573, September 27, 2006.

For text:http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba573/


Lawsuit Targets Santa Monica’s "Inclusionary Zoning" Law

The City of Santa Monica’s "inclusionary zoning" ordinance violates the Takings Clauses of the state and federal constitutions, according to a lawsuit filed this week by Pacific Legal Foundation, representing an organization of local apartment building owners. As recently amended, Santa Monica’s "inclusionary zoning" ordinance requires that builders of projects with four or more residential units must also build a specified number of "affordable" housing units that must be sold at below-market prices. "The money that builders lose constructing below-market residences will be passed along in higher prices for the new housing that isn’t price-controlled," said Pacific Legal Foundation Principal Attorney James S. Burling. "This will discourage home construction and raise costs for most home buyers." "It is unconscionable that the City of Santa Monica is further exacerbating the shortage of workforce housing by driving up prices for new and replacement housing," said Burling. "The costs of home ownership in Santa Monica should not be increased by forcing families that buy market-rate housing to subsidize the homes of their neighbors." Under the ordinance, "affordable" housing means housing that is sold at a substantially reduced price to individuals or families earning a limited income (defined as a percentage of the mean income). The cost of the subsidy is borne by the developer and therefore, likely, passed on to other home buyers. This requirement is unconstitutional under the Takings Clauses of the federal and state constitutions, according to the lawsuit, because it is not demonstrated that new market housing creates an impact that requires new sub-market housing. "By singling out builders of residential units to shoulder the cost of sub-market housing, as the price of getting a building permit, Santa Monica is using the permitting process as an opportunity for extortion," said Burling....


CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS BREAK 'HOCKEY STICK'

Experts testifying before a Congressional subcommittee said a graph used by some environmentalists to illustrate "unprecedented global warming in the twentieth century" is fraudulent.

The "hockey stick" depicts relatively stable temperatures from A.D. 1000 (and in later versions from 200 A.D.) to 1900, and a dramatic temperature increase from 1900 to 2000. The conclusion drawn by the authors of the image is that human energy use over the past 100 years has caused a dramatic and unprecedented rise in temperatures across the globe.

Because the hockey stick image has been regularly used to promote and justify proposed climate change legislation, Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences to examine the controversy. The NAS report confirmed criticisms leveled against the hockey stick:

* Whereas the authors of the research that produced the hockey stick concluded "the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium," the NAS found little confidence could be placed in those claims.
* In addition, the NAS found the original researchers used proxy data for past temperature reconstructions that were unreliable; that the historic climate reconstruction failed important tests for verifiability; and that the methods used underestimated the amount of uncertainty in the conclusions it reached.

The main conclusion of the hockey stick study:

* Based on the evidence cited and methodology used by the hockey stick researchers, the idea that the planet is experiencing unprecedented global warming "cannot be supported."
* The close ties between scientists in the small paleoclimatology community prevented true peer review of the hockey stick and related analyses.

"The 'hockey stick' picture of dramatic temperature rise in the past 100 years following 1,700 years of relatively constant temperature has now been proven false," says David Legates, Delaware state climatologist.

Source: H. Sterling Burnett, "Congressional Hearings Break 'Hockey Stick,'" Heartland Institute, October 1, 2006.

For text:http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=19734


Feds Can’t Regulate Permafrost in Alaska, Lawsuit Contends

Representing an Alaskan Borough attempting to build public playgrounds and athletic fields on a two-acre parcel, Pacific Legal Foundation today sued the Army Corps of Engineers over its arbitrary enforcement of the Clean Water Act on land that is covered with permafrost 20 inches thick. "This case is a classic example of the Corps operating without boundaries, limits, or common sense in its application of the Clean Water Act," said Russ Brooks, Managing Attorney of PLF’s Northwest Center. "In no way does permafrost constitute ‘waters of the United States’ or establish a connection to navigable waters of the United States, as required for regulation under the Act." The case filed today in United States District Court in Alaska – Fairbanks North Star Borough v. United States Army Corps of Engineers – is among the first to test the Corps’ interpretation of the Clean Water Act following the closely watched United States Supreme Court decision in Rapanos v. United States. In Rapanos (brought by PLF), the court held that the federal government cannot regulate remote wetlands with inconsequential connections to truly navigable waters under the Clean Water Act. Mr. Rapanos was charged with violating the Act because he moved sand on his property which is located 20 miles away from a navigable waterway. The Rapanos decision places the burden on the Corps to demonstrate a more substantial connection between the regulated property and navigable-in-fact waters....