Friday
Mar112011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill EPA stripped of power to regulate GhGs
Mar 11, 2011 Climate: Parliament The Energy and Commerce Subcomittee of the US House of Representatives has voted to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of the power to regulate greenhouse gases.
The sharply partisan vote was preordained by the Republican takeover of the House. Republicans and their industry allies accuse the administration of levying taxes on traditional energy sources through costly environmental regulations, threatening the economic recovery and driving jobs overseas.
Update on Mar 12, 2011 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
The headline here is wrong, as several people have pointed out, as the bill has a long legislative path to tread before it becomes law (if indeed it does).
Reader Comments (29)
One correction - The United States has a bi-cameral legislature and bills (new legislation) require the signature of the President.
This is only 1/3 of the way to actually stripping the EPA of the power that they presumptively assumed.
David Jay, thanks for the clarification. It is the first step in the right directiom
That sounds rather like an oxymoron. Regulations stifle innovation. Do these bureaucrats have any experience of innovation, except for inventing innovative regulations?
I'm surprised you have not commented on BBC environment correspondent Richard Black's article of 9 March on the BBC website on the research which shows ice loss from Antartica and Greenland has accelerated over the last 20 years and will increase sea levels by 1.3mm per year. I would love to read your view on this article although you may be waiting for the research paper to be published first.
Phillip Bratby, of course it is necessary to invent innovative regulations to control an imaginary problem!
Richard Roney
Off topic. Post in Discussion (top right of page in Navigation section).
BH - the comment lock-outs have started up again. Doesn't seem to matter if I'm logged in or not.
Richard Roney. Nobody seriously puts any store by what Richard Black writes. He is a fully paid up member of the BBC's alarmist correspondents, who appears not to have any qualifications relevant to anything he wrotes about. Far better to see the published paper than any of Black's spin.
"I'm surprised you have not commented on BBC environment correspondent Richard Black's article of 9 March on the BBC website on the research which shows ice loss from Antartica and Greenland has accelerated over the last 20 years and will increase sea levels by 1.3mm per year. I would love to read your view on this article although you may be waiting for the research paper to be published first."
"http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/03/02/science.1200109"
Very confusing, it seems they really don't understand how the ice masses work, but a paper like this won't make it into the BBC blogs.
Are you really concerned that there will be sea levels will be 5 inches higher than expected in 100 years time? Do you seriously believe there are people around who can do that, predict the future climate a 100 years out? Get a grip man.
This was pretty much pre-ordained by the election results last year.
In order for this to become law, a compatible bill has to be passed by the Senate (possible, not yet probable) and the reconciled law has to be signed by Obama (can you say 'when hell freezes over'?)
It'd never get 2/3 backing in the Senate right now, so an override of an Obama veto is not likely.
That's okay, the House drafts budgets and can zero out lots of things like EPA carbon-regulation funding, and GISS...and I think they can pretty much force Obama to sign that one.
From Article:
From: http://www.house.gov/house/Tying_it_all.shtml
A bill doesn't always require the signature of the Prez, but he can step in and veto. But political games can be played to allow passage without the Prez.
Obama is worried about his re-election, and high oil prices represent a major obstacle to his ambition. So look for the EPA to stay below radar and not do anything controversial that would shine a light on Obama's anti-energy policies. The EPA will follow an indirect route by mandating higher gasoline mileage rather than continuing to directly attack the oil-natural gas-coal energy sources. Obama just made an announcement that drilling wasn't the solution; rather better efficiency was needed to reduce oil consumption. So look for Obama to protect the EPA with the threat of a veto, but any frank open restrictions on CO2 imposed by the EPA will take a back seat for the time being. There are some Democrat senators who would vote for prohibiting the EPA from enacting CO2 restrictions, so there will be plenty of political maneuvering going on in the back smoke-filled rooms.
Gotta love the insinuation of "Republicans and their industry allies..." As opposed to, say, "Democrats and their subsidized-energy allies..."
Not to mention quoting and linking to Dr. Romm (even Steven Chu doesn't get a "Dr." title, he's a "Mr."), and mentioning that Chu has a Nobel Prize in physics -- well-earned but not relevant to an article on policy.
HaroldW - Chu's appointment was a pretty clear illustration of how much emphasis this administration puts on academic credentials as opposed to real-world ability.
The skill set involved in banging particles together is so utterly disjoint from that required for the Energy Secretary's job that it beggars belief that anyone thought he was a fit there.
Just for Info
We have global warming in Cumbria tonight. It's quarter inch thick so far
Bishop,
You need to change your lede to this story - it is factually wrong, and that's the last thing we sceptics/lukewarmers want to be accused of!
Does this mean that CO2 is no longer harmful..?
Anoneumouse - we've had that global warming stuff on and off for the last 3 days and nights, and more due tomorrow. Midday temperatures not expected to get much above freezing tomorrow or Sunday. The Scottish ski resorts will be busy, but there could well be some avalanche deaths over the weekend, lots of new and unstable snow on the hills.
...Costly environmental regulations threatening economic recovery...'..?
Surely EVENTUALLY the politicians in the UK will stagger around to the same conclusions - or am I living in cloud-cuckoo-land..??
Bishop you are possibly following some philososphy I have not seen explicitly defined...
Philo - love
Strip is a long, thin piece of a bigger item.
Logos - stuff (OK look it up)
EPA stripped of power to regulate GhGs
Meaning nothing...
Obama can veto it but the House can turn off the money tap.
No money, no regulating.
I could be wrong, it was my understanding the EPA didn't have the ability by law to do anything with CO2, but that a regulation had been created that allowed them to do their duty. The action by the representatives was to disallow that regulation.
"Obama is worried about his re-election..."
He really needn't worry.
Anoneumouse
Since we are now less than 2 weeks from the end of winter, that global warming stuff that you are presently experiencing is no doubt due to the increased risk of a mild end to winter as predicted by our beloved Met Office. Seems they got that right.
Mar 11, 2011 at 7:27 PM | HaroldW
Just read this objective NYT article and second your comment. Yes Bad Big Oil versus Good Green was the underlying theme.
And almost fell of my chair when I saw this 'journalist' quoting "Joseph J. Romm, a former Department of Energy official who is one of the country’s most influential writers on climate change." Where's a good Dr. Hansen quote when you need one?
In any case, the substance of the story is what matters, and the downward trend in this AGW project is one decline they cannot hide.
So, how will some brilliant AGW cheerleader at the NYT link the Japanese earthquake to AGW?
OT but following on my last post... it is already begun:
"In addition, climate change may cause tsunamis directly, so it's possible we'll someday see more images like this as a result."
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-03-11-todays-tsunami-this-is-what-climate-change-looks-like/
It is getting totally absurd. Like a dying fish flopping around in a boat.
I guess it is possible that "climate change" could be a factor in such things, albeit tenuous, not sure anyone considers the climate doesn't change. They've been very clever to create a mental image that global warming is climate change and global warming is CO2 based thus we have man made global warming as a cause (it is now "our" perception, ultimately that is all someone actually requires"). They can say that they were perhaps being factually correct. We just misunderstood the headline should someone "bring them to book".
All,
The provision to end the regulation can easily become part of law, when it is attached to the annual funding bill. Nw that we are 5+ months into the fiscal year 2011, and still no final budget, there are many things like this attached that Obama (and Senate) will not like, but will have little choice to accept. His only other option is to shut the government down. That is a high risk game. Clinton came out looking good on his shutdown, but then there was no Fox news around then to proivide a counter point to the US Mass media. And no internet. And despite that shut down, the US had balanced budgets the next few years because the Republican controlled House and Senate kept budgets down, and times were good, low unemployment, so tax base was high.
The reason why EPA thinks they can regulate CO2, is becasue of an earlier ruling the Supreme Court made about this issue. IMHO, there was a poor case made to the court, who after all, are lawyers, and probably don't know much about science or statistics.
Even if this law goes into effect, the Obama administration will file suite and it will go back through the court system again. Hopefully, there will be more informed judges and a better presentation made on the whole earth carbon cycle.
Re geronimo at Mar 11, 2011 at 6:00 PM - having a little bleat about sea level rises.
Here is the latest paper known to me, to come from a source that I can respect from past quality.
"We show that for the 1993–2007 time
span, the sum of climate-related contributions (2.85 ± 0.35 mm year−1) is
only slightly less than altimetry-based sea level rise (3.3 ± 0.4 mm year−1):
about 30% of the observed rate of rise is due to ocean thermal expansion and
about 55% results from land ice melt. Recent acceleration in glacier melting and
ice mass loss from the ice sheets increases the latter contribution up to 80%
for the past five years.We also review the main causes of regional variability
in sea level trends: The dominant contribution results from nonuniform
changes in ocean thermal expansion."
Contemporary Sea Level Rise
Anny Cazenave andWilliam Llovel
Annu. Rev. Mar. Sci. 2010. 2:145–73
They never had the power.
They claimed it. The Circuit court called 'em on it.
So now it takes a new law? Whyfor?