6 March 2015

In the News
Harry Reid Secured Subsidies for Aides Donors
Lachlan Markay, Washington Free Beacon, 5 March 2015
Stifling Climate Research & Opinion: Another Desparado Mistake
James Rust, Master Resource, 5 March 2015
Economic, Environmental Experts Debate Carbon Tax
Tom Rezac, Daily Nebraskan, 4 March 2015
Override Vote on Keystone XL Veto Looks Doomed
Zack Colman, Washington Examiner, 4 March 2015
With the Clean Power Plan, EPA Has Given Up on Cooperative Federalism
Stephen Heins, Forbes, 4 March 2015
Washington Post: President Obama Is Lying about Keystone
Robert Rapier, R Squared, 4 March 2015
Top Five EPA Transparency Scandals during the Obama Administration
William Yeatman, GlobalWarming.org, 3 March 2015
Antarctic Sea Ice Did the Opposite of What Models Predicted
Michael Bastasch, Dally Caller, 2 March 2015
News You Can Use
Regarding the Futility of Climate Change Mitigation, EPAs #1 Priority
According to the Institute for Energy Research, if the U.S. eliminated all CO2 emissions now, models say
it would only slow warming by 0.10C by the end of the century

Inside the Beltway

William Yeatman

EPW Hearing Rattles EPA Administrator McCarthy

Last week, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy testified twice before House subcommittees in defense of
her agencys FY2016 budget. As I explained here, she deftly negotiated those two hearings, using a
skillful combination of obfuscation and mendacity.
This week, Administrator McCarthy appeared before the Senate Environment & Public Works
Committee to again defend her agencys budget. This time around, however, things didnt go so
smoothly.
For starters, I suspect she was caught off guard by the strategy adopted by EPW Chairman James
Mountain Inhofe. In previous budget hearings, Members of Congress questioned specific policies
adopted by EPA; Sen. Inhofe, by contrast, attacked the agencys priorities. In particular, he questioned
why EPAs FY2016 makes climate change mitigation the agencys #1 priority, when administrator
McCarthy herself concedes that EPAs policies wont affect the climate. She didnt have an answer for
this line of reasoning, and I think it threw her off.
However, she became most flustered during an intense exchange with Sen. Jeff Sessions. He started out
by decrying the agencys request for a 6% increase in funding, when inflation is 2.5%. He said that he
couldnt justify such an increase to his constituents, for whom EPA was routinely cited as the #1
problem. He told her, you are apparently unaware of the pushback that's occurring in the real world.
Then he moved to the science. Sessions asked whether McCarthy disputed research
demonstrating that droughts and hurricanes had not increased; she refused to answer, and
grew visibly agitated with the questioning. Then came the highlight of their dialoguea backand-forth on temperature, during which Administrator McCarthy refused to concede the wellestablished fact that climate models have overstated temperature increases. Ive reposted the
transcript below.
SEN. SESSIONS: And would you acknowledge that the -- and over the last 18 years that the
increase in temperature has been very little and that it is well below -- as a matter of fact, 90
percent below -- most of the environmental models that showed how fast temperature would
increase?
ADMINISTRATOR MCCARTHY: No, I would not agree with that, Sir. A one degree temperature is
significant. I don't know what you're looking at.
SEN. SESSIONS: No, no, no. I'm asking you is [the actual temperature record] below the models
or above the models?
ADMINISTRATOR MCCARTHY: I do not know what the models actually are predicting that you
are referring to. There are many models and sometimes it's actually going faster, and sometimes
slightly slower than the model protect predicts. But on the whole, it makes no difference to the
validity and the robustness of climate science that is telling us that we are facing an absolute
challenge that we must address both environmentally, economically, from a national security
perspective. And for EPA, from a public health perspective.

SEN. SESSIONS: All right. Well, let me -- of course, carbon pollution is CO2, and that's really not a
pollutant. It's a plant food, and it doesn't harm anybody except that it might include
temperature increases. So let me ask you one more time, are you asserting -- just give me this
answer. If you take the average of the models predicting how fast the temperature would
increase, is the temperature, in fact, increasing less than that or more than that?
ADMINISTRATOR MCCARTHY: I cannot answer that question specifically.
SEN. SESSIONS: Well, Mr. Chairman, I just would say this is a stunning development that the
head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who should know more than anybody else in the
world, who's imposing hundreds of billions of dollars in cost to prevent this climate temperature
increases doesn't whether their projections have been right or wrong.
Investors Business Daily has a nice write-up on the heated Sessions-McCarthy exchange.

CEI Goes on Offensive on Transparency

It was a busy week for transparency advocates critical of EPAs opacity. On Monday, a federal district
court judge refused Landmark Legal Foundations request to impose sanctions on EPA for the agencys
egregious non-cooperation with a FOIA request. This was to be expected, as the legal threshold for
sanctions is very high. However, what was unexpected was Judge Royce C. Lamberths scathing opinion,
in which he excoriated EPA for its evident refusal to comply with federal transparency laws.
And on Tuesday, my colleague Chris Horner dropped the other shoe on Rep. Grijalva, Sen. Markey, and
other McCarthy-mimics in the U.S. Congress who have launched an investigation into the funding of
certain climate skeptics in academia. Of course, FOIA is limited to the Executive Branch of
government. However, EPA keeps an in-house congressional lobby shop.
So Horner FOIAd the EPA lobbyists, to see what correspondence with these Senate offices they may
have had about Tom Steyer, the campaign he is helping underwrite against deniers, the Greenpeace
smear, and trying to chase opponents out of their chosen field, etc.

Across the States

Unprecedented Sue and Settle Agreement Finalized in Northern
California Court
Northern California federal district court Judge Susan Illston on Monday approved an outrageous sue
and settle consent decree between EPA, Sierra Club, and NRDC.
Unlike most sue and settle agreements, which dictate EPAs priorities, this consent decree actually set
forth substantive policy. Under the Clean Air Act, EPA must determine which areas are meeting nation-

wide standards for sulfur dioxide (SO2). Mondays consent decree binds EPA to adopting new
procedures for this processpursuant to a separate, proposed rule!
Multiple StatesNorth Dakota, Arizona, Kentucky, Nevada, Louisiana, Texas, and North Carolinatried
to intervene in the case, but EPA and the green special interests refused to allow the states a seat at the
negotiating table. The states opposed the consent decree before Judge Illstons court, and they opposed
it administratively when EPA proposed the consent decree in the Federal Register. The agency dismissed
the states claims, and the agency was backed by Judge Illston. Thus, a mockery was made of the Clean
Air Acts system of cooperative federalism. Read more about it here.

More State Stories

Offshore East Coast Wind: Federal Effort, Market Resistance

Allen Brooks, Master Resource, 4 March 2015
Test on Tonopah Solar Project (Nevada) Ignites Hundreds of Birds in Mid-Air
Anthony Watts, WattsUpWithThat, 2 March 2015
Oregons Signature Solar Project Built on Foundation of False Hopes and Lies
Ted Sinckinger & Jeff Manning, The Oregonian, 27 February 2015
Time for the Truth on EPAs Clean Power Plan
Vincent Carroll, Denver Post, 27 February 2015

Around the World

Tough Week for Green Energy Globally
President Obama has cited Germanys green energy policies as a model for the U.S. to emulate. With
that in mind, Germanys 25,000 wind turbines operated at 14.8 percent capacity in 2014, according to a
report released this week by wind energy critical site www.vernunftkraft.de.
The New York Times headline says it all: Japans Growth in Solar Power Falters as Utilities Balk. And
theyre not balking because of theres too little labor to fill all the green jobs they need. Rather,
Japanese utilities are balking for the very simple reason that solar power is expensive and intermittent.