ENVIRONMENTAL LEGAL BLOGS

COURT RULING HELPS TO CREATE ENOUGH JOBS AND ENERGY BY 2012 TO SUPPORT A 1970'S ECONOMY

     In an article by Margot Roosevelt entitled "CA: Ruling may sharply reduce California refinery pollution", the LA Times (read it while it's still in business) reports:

Toxic air pollution spikes from California's 21 refineries may be sharply curtailed in the wake of a U.S. Court of Appeals decision Friday in Washington.

In a suit brought by the Sierra Club and other groups, the court struck down a 14-year-old federal regulation that allowed refineries, chemical plants and other industrial plants to exceed pollution limits during start-ups, shutdowns and equipment outages.

Public health advocates in Southern California's oil refinery hub hailed the decision, saying that facilities routinely operate in malfunction mode to evade pollution caps.

...

The Environmental Protection Agency regulation amounted to a "gaping loophole," according to the plaintiffs, represented by Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm. The court agreed, saying the agency had exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Act.

"Under this notorious exemption, industrial facilities have been allowed to operate like a fleet of junk cars parked in neighborhoods, spewing smoke, misfiring, stalling and chugging," said Marti Sinclair, a Sierra Club official.

...

William Tanner, a spokesman for ConocoPhillips, which owns refineries in Wilmington, Santa Maria and San Francisco, said he could not comment on the lawsuit.

"Our preference is never to flare," he said. "However, flares are federally approved safety devices that allow refining operations to shut down in an environmentally sound manner."

Local air pollution rules require industries to reduce flares by 2012. The South Coast Air Quality Management District has set up so that residents can be notified when flares occur.

     The Ninth Circuit's ruling, of course, will only further encourage industry to get out of California (and perhaps Ninth Circuit jurisdiction) entirely, thereby reducing industrial jobs and our access to energy.  Isn't it beautiful?  Between the Courts and the California Air Resources Board (which just enacted potentially industry-crippling regulations to attempt to roll greenhouse gas levels back to 1990), these regulators' global-warming concerns have put California on its way to producing enough jobs and energy by 2012 to support a 1970's economy.  All this in the midst of a Nation-wide cold spell of historic proportions. 

     Thank goodness the geniuses in Sacramento and Washington D.C., in enacting regulations, are so much smarter than are we.  Perhaps these regulators can do the same masterful job on energy that they have done for the economy in general.  Certainly their record justifies us putting even more power in their hands, doesn't it?

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS REACHES NEW HEIGHT OF BIAS

     In an article labeled "Obama left with little time to curb global warming", theAssociated Press once again reveals that it is not the press service of record, but rather the Left's press service of record.  AP accomplishes this task by trying to convince us of the equivalent of up is down and down is up-- i.e, it's been getting colder, that's why it's been getting warmer.

      When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid.

    ***

    Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it's thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.

The average global temperature in 2008 is likely to wind up slightly under 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit, about a tenth of a degree cooler than last year. When Clinton was inaugurated, 57.9 easily would have been the warmest year on record. Now, that temperature would qualify as the ninth warmest year.

(emphases added)

     The AP's article, of course, leaves out the abundant contradictory evidence that was available to--but ignored by--the author.  For example, see my Post of November 30, 2008, wherein it was pointed out:

It's not even science any more; it's anti-science." [David] Bellamy [an Australian botanist] notes that official data show that "in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been getting colder, and in 2002, Arctic ice actually increased." Exhibit B: MIT Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Richard S. Lindzen recently wrote, "There has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995.

     As another example, see this from my Post of July 12, 2008:

Late last month, some leading climatologists and meteorologists met in New York at the Energy Business Watch Climate and Hurricane Forum. The theme of the forum strongly suggested that a period of global cooling is about [done], though possible concerns for a political backlash kept it from being spelled out  However, the message was loud and clear, a cyclical global warming trend may be coming to an end for a variety of reasons, and a new cooling cycle could impact the energy markets in a big way. 

     Need more?  OK-see my Post of November 10, 2007:

Fact:  Per ABC News, August 25, 2007: "Was 1998 the hottest year in United States history, as most reporting on climate change has presumed? Or was that record set back in 1934 before ‘global warming’ became a scary household phrase?..A corrective tweak to National Aeronautics and Space Administration's formulation shows that the hottest year on record in the United States indeed was back during the Dust Bowl days."

     Why did none of this evidence and respectable scientific opinion made its way into this AP analysis?   Can you say "agenda"?  The AP's credibility is declining to zero.  Now, maybe that's a temperature reading AP can undesrtand.

 

 

CALIFORNIA TAKES ANOTHER STEP TOWARD ECONOMIC SUICIDE (?)

     Per the Associated Press, today:

California on Thursday adopted the nation's most sweeping plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions, issuing rules that could transform everything from the way factories operate to the appliances people buy and the fuel they put in their cars.

The eight-member [California] Air Resources Board ["CARB"]unanimously approved the plan despite warnings it will put costly new burdens on businesses at a time when the economy is in extreme crisis, with California forecasting a staggering budget gap of $41.8 billion through mid-2010.

***

The strategy relies on 31 new rules affecting all facets of life, including where people may build their homes and what materials they use to do it.

     Not everyone is buying into the CARB "solution", however.  Witness the editorial in today's  San Diego Tribune:

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office and six economists hired to do a peer review of the CARB's plan have chronicled its cherry-picking of data, its weak methodology and the absurdity of many of its premises.

For one example, the CARB says that any action by a business that reduces greenhouse gas emissions is automatically “cost-effective” – meaning going out of business is therefore cost-effective.

No wonder one independent economist worried about AB 32's threat to 1.5 million California manufacturing jobs. No wonder two others said the air board's report looked more like an attempt to justify AB 32 than to evaluate its economic effects. No wonder another said the air board's work was so weak it could undermine efforts to combat global warming in a responsible way – and called it “useless for identifying a cost-effective portfolio of policies to achieve the ambitious objectives of AB 32.”

     Having spent a good part of my career helping businesses to close down in California and move to more business-friendly States, I don't look forward to what's coming next.