The Volokh Conspiracy

The New York Times reports on the hack and disclosure of e-mails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit.

The e-mails, attributed to prominent American and British climate researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments — in some cases derisive — about specific people known for their skeptical views. Drafts of scientific papers and a photo collage that portrays climate skeptics on an ice floe were also among the hacked data, some of which dates back 13 years. . . .

In several e-mail exchanges, Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and other scientists discussed whether a string of recent years of relatively stable temperatures undermined scientific models that predict long-term warming.

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t,” Dr. Trenberth wrote.

Other scientists went on to rebut him, saying that the fluctuations were not inconsistent with a continuing warming trend.

Dr. Trenberth said Friday that he was appalled at the release of the e-mails, which he said were private discussions. . . . .

At first, said Dr. Michaels, the climatologist who has faulted some of the science undergirding the global warming consensus, his instinct was to ignore the correspondence as “just the way scientists talk.”

But on Friday, he said, after reading more deeply, he felt that some exchanges reflected a concerted effort to block the release of data for independent review.

Bishop Hill summarizes lots of the e-mail contents here.

Someone hacked into the computers at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, downloaded various files and e-mails posted on the web.  Now the climate blogosphere is all atwitter over whether the resulting disclosures are a scandal or much ado about nothing.  Excerpts and reactions from Roger Pielke Jr., Real Climate, Climate Audit, Watts Up With That, James Delingpole, and Island of Doubt.

There are plenty of reasons to oppose the cap-and-trade legislation working its way through Congress, but the claim that  a “nasty bureaucratic provision” will require “President Obama to act like Venezuelan strong man Hugo Chavez” is not one of them.

The provision at issue — Section 707 in the bill approved by the Senate Environment Committee — reads as follows:

SEC. 707. PRESIDENTIAL RESPONSE AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Not later than July 1, 2015, and every 4 years thereafter—

(1) the President shall direct relevant Federal agencies to use existing statutory authority to take appropriate actions identified in the reports submitted under sections 705 and 706 and to address any shortfalls identified in such reports; and

(2) in the event that the National Academy of Sciences has concluded, in the most recent report submitted under section 706, that the United States will not achieve the necessary domestic greenhouse gas emission reductions, or that global actions will not maintain safe global average surface temperature and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration thresholds, the President shall submit to Congress a plan identifying domestic and international actions that will achieve necessary additional greenhouse gas reductions, including any recommendations for legislative action.

This provision would clearly require the federal government to step up its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and could well be triggered rather quickly if the bill is passed.  It’s also possible, as Senator David Vitter warns, that it could limit the award of carbon reduction offsets and permits under this and other regulatory programs.  (See also here.) But “strong man powers”?  Please.

The above provision grants no new powers to the federal government, let alone the President.  None.  Zero.  Zilch.  Rather, it directs the President to have agencies use “existing statutory authority” to ensure greater greenhouse gas emission reductions.  In other words, it requires the President to ensure that agencies are using all the tools Congress has already delegated to them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — tools that such agencies could use even if the section is not triggered — and demands the President “submit to Congress” a request for additional authorities the President believes are necessary to ensure greater emission reductions.  Moreover, insofar as this provision constrains the Executive Branch’s discretion over what emission-reduction measures it wants to take, it actually reduces executive authority.

That said, Section 707 could be worrisome to interest groups bullish about their ability to influence EPA implementation of a cap-and-trade regime, particularly those anticipating they will be able to take advantage of a flexible administrative approach to emission reduction offsets.  The farm lobby, for instance, pushed hard to shift responsibility for monitoring agricultural offsets from the EPA to the Agriculture Department, as they expect the Ag Department to be more favorable to their interests when evaluating offsets.  The EPA has been too ambivalent about the environmental benefits of ethanol and other biofuels for the farm lobby’s tastes.  Once triggered, Section 707 might tie Ag’s hands, insofar as it would require the Department to adopt a more restrictive approach to evaluating offsets.  This could leave the farm lobby quite disappointed.  So, while Section 707 may provide reasons for offset-seeking interests and other rent-seekers to take a second-look at bill, it’s hardly a stalking horse for climate Chavistas.

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus continue their pushback against “Climate McCarthyism,” with a particular focus on efforts to equate unorthodox climate views with Holocaust denial, guilt-by-association, and lead Climate McCarthyite Joseph Romm.  Roger Pielke Jr. chimes in here.

I posted earlier on Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ first fusillade.

UPDATE: Ron Bailey chimes in.

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus have had enough of efforts to stifle debate over climate change policy, particularly by those who solicit quotes to “trash” those who don’t toe the party line.  Roger Pielke, Jr. would add those who selectively edit their comment threads.

UPDATE: The primary point of the post is to highlight Shellenberger & Nordhaus’ commentary on “the state of the liberal debate about climate change”: “Those who question apocalyptic predictions are treated as global warming deniers or traitors or worse. Those who advocate solutions other than cap-and-trade have their characters assassinated.”  Exhibit A in their post is the treatment of those who believe climate change is a serious problem, as they do, yet nonetheless question the desirability of cap-and-trade, targets and timetables, etc.  The furor over SuperFreakonomics is a recent example.  Their post notes some others.

SECOND UPDATE: Those who think my post is a defense of climate change skepticism may wish to re-read my February 2008 post on  “Climate Change, Cumulative Evidence, and Ideology.” Like Shellenberger, Nordhaus, and Pielke, I believe climate change is a serious policy concern.

THIRD UPDATE: Brad DeLong responds in the comments below, as well as in this post.  My response can be found here.

While Congress considers legislation to impose a cap-and-trade regime on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, Warrne Buffet makes “a huge bet on coal.” Either Buffet’s made a blunder, or he realizes any cap-and-trade legislation that can pass Congress will do little to reduce coal consumption. (HT: Roger Pielke Jr.)

This week’s National Journal poll of political bloggers asked “What will be the top two issues in the midterm elections?” Enormous majorities on both the Left and the Right picked “Economy/jobs” as the expected top issue. On the Left, “health care reform” came in second, far ahead of the third-place “deficit/big government.” The issues of Afghanistan and Cap & Trade were very far behind. The picks on the Right were similar, expect that “deficit/government” was the choice for 2d place, with health care in third.

I wrote: “All these will be big, but the ballooning deficit and the unemployment rate will probably be of interest to the largest number of voters. Afghanistan/cap-and-trade/health care will probably motivate lots of base activists from both sides.”

The second question was “On balance, does the White House’s decision to take on Fox News help or hurt President Obama?” Eighty-seven percent of the Left, but only 18% of the Right thought it helped. I was among them: “It turns out that all those folks with ‘dissent is patriotic’ bumper stickers who worried about the president trying to shut down criticism were just a little ahead of their time. Obama’s stature is diminished in the short run, but Fox’s reporting is so harmful to the WH (Van Jones, Anita Dunn, etc.) that they may have figured some short-term cost is worth it if they can convince the more pliant folks in the MSM not to follow up those stories.”

I’ll be in Chicago tomorrow to debate the merits of a cap-and-trade carbon emissions control regime at the Northwestern University School of Law.  It’s a noontime event sponsored by the student Federalist Society chapter.  For a preview see some of my prior VC posts (1, 2) and articles from NRO (1, 2).  I may also discuss some of my recent work on prizes.  (I should have a paper on the subject up on SSRN later this year.)

Last week’s National Journal poll of political bloggers asked Left/Right bloggers “Are [Democratic/Republican] leaders doing enough to police congressional ethics enforcement in their ranks?”  On the Left, 56% said the Democrats were not doing enough, and 60% of the Right said Republicans were not doing enough. I was among the “no” votes for Republicans, writing that “They have fewer opportunities for corruption now that they’re the minority, but I don’t see any evidence of a fundamental change in self-policing.”

Question 2 asked “Could you see yourself supporting a cap-and-trade bill if it included significant incentives for nuclear energy?” On the Left, 61% said yes. On the Right, I was the only one who said yes. I reasoned, “The last 10 years of real-world climate data have shown that the professional hysterics and their predictions are wrong. However, the last 10 years have also demonstrated the growing dangers of U.S. energy dependence on dictatorships like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. So it’s possible (but unlikely) that a C&T bill with a strong nuclear energy component might significantly reduce U.S. dependence on dictators’ oil, and therefore be worth supporting for national security reasons.” I do realize the nukes in themselves are not the answer to foreign oil dependence, since only a small percentage of our electricity comes from imported oil. But it’s still possible (albeit very unlikely) that a C&T bill could do a great deal to reduce American dependence on dictator oil.

The October 9 poll (which I didn’t post about at the time) asked, “If major health care legislation clears Congress this year, will it include a public option?” Seventy-two percent of the Left and 57% of the right said it would. I was in the majority: ““If one presumes that the bill will pass, near-unanimous support will be needed from the Dems’ left wing. They will figure out some new euphemism for the government-run program, to attempt to provide plausible deniability for moderate Dems.”

The other question “If unemployment continues to rise, should Congress pass another stimulus package?” Eighty-nine percent of the Left thought so, while 93% of the Right disagreed, including me: “The ‘stimulus’ is like a guy who is nearly broke from credit card debt deciding to cheer himself up by getting a new credit card and running up even more debt.”

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a new rule requiring large emitters of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) to monitor and report their annual GHG emissions. Yesterday, the EPA released a proposed rule to regulate GHG emissions from major sources of GHG emissions under the Clean Air Act. If finalized, this would be the first fedral regulation limiting GHG emissions from stationary sources.  (More from the WashPost and NYT.)

The threat of federal regulation of GHGs under the Clean Air Act (CAA) is supposed to be a major inducement for industry to support cap-and-trade regulation. The CAA was not drafted with GHG controls in mind, and is not well suited to cost-effective GHG control.  Some business types want climate change legislation to replace CAA rules with a more efficient and workable regulatory regime. For this reason, quite a few companies have supported climate change legislation. (Still others see such a bill as an effective means to gain competitive advantage within their industry.) Interestingly enough, the draft legislation circulated in the Senate this week does not preclude EPA regulation of regulation of GHGs under the CAA. In other words, industry could face both a cap-and-trade regime and CAA regulation (the latter of which could severely compromise any efficiency benefits provided by the former).

An interesting aspect of the EPA’s proposed rule to limit stationary source emissions is the agency’s creative effort to limit the regulation’s applicability in the face of fairly explicit statutory text.  The relevant provisions of the Clean Air Act define major stationary sources as those that emit (or have the potential to emit) 100 or 250 tons per year of regulated pollutants (depending on the type of facility).  Yet the EPA’s rule would only apply to facilities that emit 100 times this  amount of carbon dioxide or carbon-dioxide equivalent.  (Anything less would be de minimis, I suppose.)

The reason for limiting the rule’s application in this way, EPA explicitly acknowledges, is that it would be virtually impossible for the agency impose the permitting and regulatory requirements to all facilities  that meet the statutory threshold.  Rather than try to regulate tens of thousands of residential and commercial buildings and small businesses, the EPA wants to focus its efforts on several thousand large industrial facilities.  There’s no statutory text to support this decision, so the EPA relies on the doctrine of “administrative necessity” and the need to avoid “absurd results.”    (I also suspect the EPA is aware that a more expansive rule covering small businesses, apartment buildings, etc. would make it almost certain that a cap-and-trade bill would preclude GHG regulation under the Act.)

Funny, though, that such administrative concerns — indeed the sheer unworkability of trying to impose GHG controls on such a scale — did not convince a majority of the Supreme Court that the CAA did not apply to GHGs in Massachusetts v. EPA (nor did it convince those who sued the EPA to force GHG regulation, including some who now work for the EPA).  Nor was it that long ago that the Bush EPA was excoriated for its, shall we say, “creative” reading of the CAA’s stationary source provisions to constrain the scope of the Act’s stationary source regulations.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was not particularly receptive to the Bush Adminstration’s efforts to evade the text of the Act.  Will its response to the Obama Administration’s equally atextual climate rules be any different?