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Texas challenges science
behind EPA climate finding

By Bill Dawson | February 17, 2010
In a strongly foreshadowed action, Texas officials announced Tuesday that they are formally challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health and the environment.

The two Texas petitions – one asking the EPA to reconsider its finding and the other asking a federal appeals court to review it – are aimed at preventing the agency from regulating emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants blamed for global warming.

The EPA’s “endangerment finding” about carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming – the direct target of the Texas challenge – does not in itself impose mandatory limits on their release, but is a legal prerequisite for such regulation under the Clean Air Act.

The finding was proposed last April, drawing strong criticism from Gov. Rick Perry and other Texas officials, and was adopted and issued by the EPA in December.

The EPA said at that time that the finding was legally necessary before that agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Safety Administration could finalize their jointly proposed emission standards for greenhouse-gas emissions from light-duty vehicles.

The EPA’s endangerment finding – and its prospect of administratively-issued regulations – also are seen as a political tool for the Obama administration to help persuade Congress to pass a legislative plan for more broadly limiting greenhouse gases from various sources. Such a bill narrowly passed the House last summer, but the Senate has not acted and the chances for a climate measure to be enacted are now highly uncertain.

The announcement of Texas’ effort to stop EPA action on greenhouse emissions was made jointly by Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples, all Republicans. Echoing earlier charges by Perry and various top state officials, they said EPA regulation would be harmful to the Texas economy – especially to traditional energy industries and to agriculture. They also strongly criticized the validity of scientific research documenting and projecting global warming.

(These are not the first legal arguments put forward by the state with regard to federal regulation of greenhouse gases. In a court case that cleared the way for the EPA to regulate heat-trapping gases under the Clean Air Act, Texas sided with the Bush administration’s argument that the EPA had no such authority, but the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision in 2007 that it did.)

Perry said Tuesday that Texas was challenging the EPA on the issue now “to protect the Texas economy and the jobs that go with it, and defend Texas’ environmental successes against this federal overreach.”

The state’s petition for EPA reconsideration of its finding takes particular aim at the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading scientific body on the subject, over several recently reported errors in the IPCC’s major 2007 reports and controversial disclosures of several IPCC-affiliated researchers’ previously private emails. More►

TCN Interview
James Hansen:
NASA climatologist
December 11, 2009

James Hansen is perhaps the world's best-known climate scientist, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, and the man who dramatically propelled the subject of global warming to public prominence with his congressional testimony in the late 1980s.

He was going to speak to Houston's Progressive Forum on Oct. 29, but had to postpone the engagement until this week because of health matters. As things turned out, Hansen's rescheduled talk could hardly have come at a more appropriate time.

On Monday, the day of his Houston appearance, the 12-day United Nations Conference on Climate Change had just gotten started in Copenhagen. Negotiators there are trying to forge a binding interntional agreement on reducing greenhouse gases to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in 1997 and expires in 2012.

On the same day, the Environmental Protection Agency announced its formal conclusion that greenhouse pollutants threaten public health and the environment – a necessary step for regulation of those gases under the federal Clean Air Act. Members of Congress, meanwhile, continue to work on a separate law that would address manmade climate change.

The day after Hansen's Houston speech, his first book was published – Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. The title reflects his growing concern about global warming.

In a June 29 profile of Hansen in The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote: "Hansen has now concluded, partly on the basis of his latest modelling efforts and partly on the basis of observations made by other scientists, that the threat of global warming is far greater than he expected."

The 68-year-old climatologist's outspoken political activism makes him "an outlier" among climate scientists, Kolbert wrote, and also has "increasingly isolated" him from climate activists who endorse a cap-and-trade policy to reduce emissions. Hansen opposes such an approach, which is central to bills pending in Congress. It would set a cap on carbon dioxide emissions and establish a market for trading emission permits.

In a conversation with Texas Climate News editor Bill Dawson on Monday, prior to his Progressive Forum talk, Hansen explained why he supports a direct carbon tax to reduce greenhouse emissions; described the "climate catastrophe" he expects to unfold without major emission cuts; commented on the disclosure of controversial emails of climate researchers at a British university, and offered a forecast of next year's global temperature.

Q: You're perhaps the world's best-known climate scientist and you've been spotlighting the dangers posed by climate change and calling for action to address it for a couple of decades or more now. Recently, you were in the news yet again when you told The Guardian that you hope the Copenhagen conference fails to produce a major, definitive agreement. Could you explain why you feel that way?

A: Of course if they produced an effective one that would be great, but they're not talking about an effective one, they're talking about the same old story. They're talking about the Kyoto Protocol approach, where the core idea is cap and trade with offsets, which practically eliminates the value of any agreements. What they do is set targets, targets that they know in many cases will not be met, and when they are, it will be in terms of offsets, which mean they don't really reduce their emissions, at least not much, and they buy their way out of it by paying some developing countries to do something that is supposedly useful like preserving a forest or reducing some of their pollution.

But these actually are counter. First of all, it doesn't reduce the demand. For example, in the case of forests, it does not reduce the demand for wood or for land where you can grow cattle or other foods, or grow foods. Therefore, if you preserve one area of forest, the deforestation and wood harvesting just moves somewhere else. So these things are not really effective. More►

CO2 emissions dropped in Texas
before recession, groups report
By Bill Dawson | November 13, 2009

Emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, fell in Texas from 2004 to 2007, even before the recession of 2008-09 suppressed economic activity and CO2 emissions.

That was one of the conclusions in an environmental group's analysis of what it called the latest data from the U.S. Department of Energy.

In terms of volume, Texas had the second-largest CO2 reduction among the states from 2004-07, while New York had the largest, according to the report, released Thursday by Environment America and its state affiliates.

Texas remained the state with the greatest CO2 emissions at the end of the study period, but had recorded a per capita decline in those emissions of 8 percent and an absolute decline of 2 percent since 2004.

The report authors considered emissions from the use of three fossil fuels – oil, coal and natural gas – in their calculations. They attributed Texas' falling emissions to a couple of factors – mainly, reduced industrial use of natural gas, but also the rapid growth of the state's wind-power industry:

In Texas, the emission decline since 2004 has largely been the result of declining emissions from the industrial sector – more specifically, a reduction in industrial natural gas consumption. However, the state has also succeeded in holding the line on growth of emissions from its electricity sector. On a per capita basis, emissions from electric generators in Texas fell by 4 percent between 2004 and 2007 – the result of reduced reliance on coal and an increase in the share of power produced by natural gas and wind. Since 2005, the amount of power produced by renewables (other than hydroelectric power) in Texas has more than doubled. By 2007, Texas was getting 2.5 percent of its power from these clean sources of energy compared with just 0.5 percent in 1997. Texas – which is now America’s number one producer of wind power – has been able to use its growing wind power portfolio to reduce the need for additional fossil fuel generation, keeping emission growth from the electricity sector at bay.

Texas was one of 17 states that reduced their CO2 emissions from 2004-07, according to the Environment America report.

Texas' top ranking for total emissions in 2007 meant it had held that position since 1990, the authors said. The state ranked considerably lower – in 14th place – for per capita emissions, however.

Texas was one of 20 states to record per capita declines in CO2 since 1990. The state had a 17 percent reduction from 1990-2007, compared to a national drop of 2 percent.

Along with that per capita decline, however, Texas' population grew significantly since 1990. In absolute terms, the state's emissions of CO2 grew by 16 percent from 1990-2007. In that last year, they totaled 675 million metric tons (MMT) – 11 percent of the national total, according to the report. More►

More Feature Stories

TCN Interview /
Alyssa Burgin: Texas Drought Project

Rallying the oil-industry troops
against the House climate bill

Texans' views on climate
aren't so different, polls show

Updated look at regional impacts

"Science of climate change is strong,"
experts at four Texas universities say
March 8, 2010

Scientists at Texas A&M University immediately took issue when top state officials cast doubt on scientific findings about climate change last month in their formal effort to block regulation of atmosphere-warming pollutants.

Now, climate experts from A&M, Texas Tech University, the University of Texas and Rice University have teamed up to write a newspaper column for the Houston Chronicle, declaring that "the science of climate change is strong," even if the state of Texas is challenging that science in administrative and court petitions. The column was published Sunday.

Andrew Dessler, a professor in A&M's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, told Texas Climate News that he and the other scientists were motivated to write the column by the state's legal challenge of a federal finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are dangerous to human health and the environment.

The finding by the Environmental Protection Agency is a necessary prerequisite for proposed federal regulation of the gases, which Texas is trying to stop. The state's challenge, filed by Attorney General Greg Abbott with the support of Gov. Rick Perry and other top officials, was largely based on claims that the leading international science body on climate change is not "objective or trustworthy." More►

Transitional turmoil: Gas vs. wind
March 4, 2010

No one ever said a transition to lower-carbon forms of energy would be without turmoil. And sometimes it comes in novel forms, several of which have been in the news lately.

For years, producers of natural gas (with the lowest carbon dioxide emissions of the main fossil fuels) have been promoting it as an environmentally superior alternative to coal (with the highest CO2 emissions) for generating electricity.

Now, the Wall Street Journal relates in an article datelined from the Texas town of Taft near Corpus Christi, natural gas is squaring off against the wind industry, which promotes itself as an essentially zero-CO2 form of electricity production.

Noting that the wind industry has grown from "bit player" status just four years ago to generating "a significant share" of Texas' electricity today, the Journal's Russell Gold reported this week that "the growth of wind power has attracted powerful critics: the owners of natural-gas power plants." More►

A&M scientists back EPA finding
on dangers of greenhouse gases
February 24, 2010

After Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott formally challenged the federal conclusion that greenhouse gases are harmful pollutants, the Houston Chronicle’s Eric Berger asked if he had consulted with any of Texas’ own “eminent climate scientists” before filing petitions that dismiss scientific conclusions about global warming as the product of “colluding and scheming.”

Abbott replied that he had not done so: “Not yet and here’s why. At this stage we’re not focused on, nor need we be focused on, needing to prove anything from a scientific basis ourselves.”

Actually, it seems highly doubtful that the attorney general will want to consult members of Texas A&M University’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences – a respected academic body in the field of climate science – if he’s looking for Texans with the appropriate scientific expertise to help him make his legal case.

After Abbott filed Texas’ petitions against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding” regarding carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, key members of the A&M department’s faculty told the Washington-based Wonk Room blog that the department as a whole stands by the EPA’s conclusion about greenhouse gases and by the principal conclusions of the international scientific body on climate change that Gov. Rick Perry’s office, announcing Abbott’s petitions, said had been “discredited.”

Kenneth P. Bowman, who heads the A&M department, sent Wonk Room this statement:

“I believe that (the) EPA finding is based on good science, as do all of my colleagues in the Atmospheric Science Department here at Texas A&M.”

John Nielsen-Gammon, a professor in the department and the Texas state climatologist, wrote to the blog:

“[It is] apparent that if atmospheric concentrations of the six greenhouse gases continue to rise due to human influence, the earth would eventually reach a point where there would be massive disruptions of ecosystems, changes in sea level, decreases in air quality, and so forth that would, in particular, substantially harm the public welfare of those generations forced to experience them. So anthropogenic increases of greenhouse gas concentrations clearly present a danger to the public welfare, and I agree with the EPA’s findings in that sense.” More►

Broadening battleground over EPA finding
February 19, 2010

By the time that an official deadline passed this week, only two other states – Alabama and Virginia – had followed Texas in filing petitions challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's finding that climate-changing greenhouse gases threaten human health and the environment.

In terms of state petitioners, that meant there were three states against the EPA finding and 16 states (joined by New York City) siding with the EPA over the finding, which laid the legal groundwork for the agency to impose the first-ever federal regulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse pollutants.

Even so, other states still have a chance to weigh in on the issue. Houston attorney Richard Faulk, who backs the Texas position, told The Texas Tribune that others have 30 days to intervene on Texas' side in its challenge, and speculated that states with heavily resource-extractive economies may do so.

(Louisiana, for example, is already on the record asking the EPA to reconsider its greenhouse-gas finding, though so far in the form of letters from state department heads, who work for Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, and not a formal legal petition from Democratic Attorney General James D. "Buddy" Caldwell.)

Meanwhile, the nation's governors are now being asked to support a congressaional effort, led by Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, to prevent the EPA from issuing regulations based on the greenhouse-gas finding. This development was revealed today by Frank O'Donnell, director of the Washington-based environmental group Clean Air Watch.

O'Donnell released a draft letter to Congress, arguing that such regulations would be economically harmful and asking lawmakers to block them, which he said is being circulated among the governors' offices by Republican Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi in advance of a meeting this weekend of the National Governor's Association.

O'Donnell told Texas Climate News that he obtained the letter from "the office of a state that I expect will fight against this." He said that he anticipates "some real push-back from states concerned about climate – and the ability of the EPA to enforce the Clean Air Act."More►

Warmer climate, heavier snow?
February 14, 2010

No matter how often scientists repeat that individual weather events and long-range climate trends are not the same thing, global warming skeptics like to cite extreme episodes of winter weather to argue that there isn't really much cause for concern.

Huge snowstorms that blanketed the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast this month have proved no exception, and Texas scientists have joined the ensuing public dialogue.

Republican politicians and conservative commentators have been using recent snow-dumps to bolster their attack on the science behind human-caused warming and proposals to mitigate its climate-changing impacts.

For instance, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, who has claimed that manmade warming is a "hoax," seized the moment to publicize an igloo bearing the sign "Al Gore's New Home," which members of Inhofe's family had built in Washington.

Fox News, not surprisingly, had some fun with that one – a correspondent introduced an interview with Inhofe on Thursday by declaring that the heavy snow in Washington and other locations had made it "a rough week for Al Gore and global warming alarmists everywhere."

An editorial in the conservative Washington Times on Thursday echoed Inhofe's "hoax" accusation: "Record snowfall illustrates the obvious: The global warming fraud is without equal in modern science."

Scientists have taken the opportunity provided by such rhetoric to explain that mammoth snowstorms are actually consistent with the effects that experts anticipate warming-instigated climate change will include. More►

Proud to be first with greenhouse-gas limits
February 5, 2010

Texas has no shortage of high-level complaints about possible regulations to fight manmade climate change, but you won’t hear them in the executive offices at Houston-based Calpine Corp.

The electricity producer proudly announced Thursday that it had just gotten approval from air quality regulators in California “to build the nation’s first power plant with a federal limit on greenhouse gas emissions – putting both the plant and the company at the forefront of the fight against global warming.”

The limit is in a federal permit, issued by a regional agency in the San Francisco Bay area, for a new, 600-megawatt plant that will burn natural gas. The plant, to be located on the southeast side of the bay at Hayward, Calif., will supply electricity to area, the company said.

Calpine said the permit places limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It is “the most stringent” ever issued by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, that agency said [pdf] in a separate release.

Environmentalists were quick to praise the action as a possible precedent for the broader regulation of pollutants that scientists blame for causing global warming and climate change.

Whether the Calpine plant’s permit will be such a model is a question, however, that is clouded by gathering uncertainties about whether such regulations are coming – and if they are, what form they could take. More►

National poll confirms opinion shift
January 27, 2010

Yet another national poll shows recent slippage in public agreement that global warming is happening and manmade, as a huge majority of scientists believe.

This survey, conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, was released Wednesday.

A few key findings, reflecting changes in public opinion in the U.S. from 2008 to 2010:

The percentage who "think that global warming is happening" has dropped from 71 to 57 percent.
Of respondents who do think it is happening, the percentage who were "extremely" or "very" sure declined from a combined 72 to 61 percent, while the percentage saying "somewhat sure" increased from 24 to 37 percent.
The percentage saying global warming, if happening, is "caused mostly by human activities" fell from 57 to 47 percent.  
There were also major changes in public perception of scientists' views. The percentage thinking that "most scientists think global warming is happening" went from 47 percent to 34 percent, while the percentage thinking there is "a lot of disagreement" among scientists on the subject rose from 33 to 40 percent. (A separate poll of scientists, released last summer by the Pew Research Center and American Academy for the Advancement of Science, found that 84 percent said "the earth is getting warmer because of human activity.")

The poll was released as action on climate-energy legislation is pending in the Senate, with increasingly uncertain prospects for passage. A controversial bill to cap carbon dioxide emissions and create a system for trading emission permits narrowly passed the House last year. More►

More TCN Journal

Whole Foods chief: Climate change skeptic

Copenhagen Accord: Now what?

Texas Comment: EPA, coal, Copenhagen

Houston, DFW top EPA's Energy Star list

Texans say no to cap-and-trade bill,
yes to state efficiency rules in new poll

Satellite image of the Texas coast:
Courtesy of MODIS Rapid Response Project at NASA/GSFC

Region

Climate's a hot issue in Arkansas. Politico

Public voices concern on gas storage. Lafayette Advertiser

New policy would encourage Louisiana utilities to produce more electricity using renewable sources. New Orleans Times-Picayune

NM agency ponders emission petition. Cibola Beacon

White House lays out plan to restore Gulf Coast. Thibodaux Daily Comet

Katrina victims seek to sue greenhouse gas emitters. Agence France-Presse

Sierra Club attacks Lincoln. Washington Post

Experts: NM Emission cap to have little fiscal impact. Associated Press

Inhofe accused of turning climate row into 'McCarthyite witch-hunt.' Guardian

Ag chairwoman Lincoln rates near top for utility campaign contributions. Greenwire

NM panel hears testimony on greenhouse gas cap. Alamogordo Daily News

Nuclear power plants get little state support. Oklahoman

Missouri River dams affect Louisiana wetlands. New Orleans Times-Picayune

Coastal restoration and hurricane protection projects to be discussed at meeting. New Orleans Times-Picayune

Sierra Club will sue over San Juan coal ash disposal. New Mexico Independent

Chevron to build solar plant at tailings site. Associated Press

Bingaman opposes Graham’s push to alter renewables mandate. The Hill

New levees will be tested by encroaching Gulf. Thibodaux Daily Comet

Critics oppose Sen. Landrieu's stance on EPA regulations. KPLC

New Mexico Tech gets into hot water. El Defensor Chieftain

Former Albuquerque Mayor Chavez takes job with sustainability organization. New Mexico Independent

Senate rejects governor's environmental board pick. Associated Press

Delaware Nation awarded $250,000 solar energy panel grant. Chickasha Express-Star

Haynesville shale creating road woes in Desoto Parish. KTAL

Corps critic sues LSU over dismissal. Baton Rouge Advocate

NM Senate Rules panel gives thumbs down to ‘nuclear power as green’. New Mexico Independent

Climate stance criticized. Baton Rouge Advocate

Campaign climate. Arkansas Times

Bill takes aim at NM oil, gas regulations. Associated Press

NM Senate approves carbon capture, storage bill. Carlsbad Current-Argus

Obama budget brings worries to Oklahoma, oil industry. Oklahoman

Water issues part of two yearlong studies. Shreveport Times

More ►

Beyond

How fundraising helped shape Obama's green agenda. Times

Obama pushes climate change in White House meeting. Reuters

California to regulate 'most potent' greenhouse gas. New York Times

Outside science academies to review warming panel. Associated Press

Climate goal is supported by China and India. New York Times

Democrats revolt over energy. Wall Street Journal

Methane bubbles in Arctic seas stir warming fears. Reuters

European Commission eyes carbon tax. Associated Press

Darwin foes add warming to targets. New York Times

Utility group to Waxman: We don't doubt climate science. The Hill

Can the climate-bill trio appease big oil? New Republic

The Chamber of Commerce vs. climate science. Mother Jones

Clean tech: A new way to hasten energy solutions. Time

Obama pushes rebates for energy improvements. NPR

Scientists taking steps to defend work on climate. New York Times

Cyber bullying rises as climate data are questioned. Daily Climate

Climate change may extend allergy season - study. Reuters

Senators to propose abandoning cap-and-trade. Washington Post

Al Gore takes aim at climate change skeptics. Reuters

Climate scientists quizzed by British lawmakers. Associated Press

Independent board to review work of top climate panel. New York Times

Two key House Dems move to block EPA regulatory authority. Greenwire

China says no emissions cap for now. Agence France-Presse

Obama speech to business group leaves greenhouse gas issues up in the air. New York Times

Official: Climate change treaty unlikely this year. Associated Press

World warming unhindered by cold spells: scientists. Reuters

More ►

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