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Texas officials say they won't
implement EPA's climate rules
By Bill Dawson | August 5, 2010

In a combative, defiant letter, Texas officials have told the Environmental Protection Agency they will not include climate-altering greenhouse gases in the state’s emission-limiting permits for industrial plants, as federal regulations will start requiring in January.

In the letter [PDF], dated Monday, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) Chairman Bryan W. Shaw and Attorney General Greg Abbott said, “Texas has neither the authority nor the intention of interpreting, ignoring, or amending its laws in order to compel the permitting of greenhouse gas emissions.”

The EPA is "threaten[ing] to usurp state enforcement authority and to federalize the permitting program of any state that fails to pledge their fealty" to the federal agency, the two officials wrote.

They added: “The United States and Texas Constitutions, United States and Texas statutes, and EPA and TCEQ rules all preclude TCEQ from declaring itself ready to require permits for greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources as you request.”

In a statement issued Wednesday, EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz, who is based in Dallas, responded to the letter by saying, “EPA's measured steps are in response to a Supreme Court decision issued more than three years ago.” He was referring to a ruling in which the court said the agency has authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases and required EPA officials to show why they should not do so.

“We are not at liberty to ignore the law,” Armendariz said, “and the [Texas] letter's unsubstantiated claims are the same sort that have been made – and ultimately proven wrong – every time EPA has, over the past forty years, moved to implement the Clean Air Act's protections of public health and welfare.”

The state officials’ refusal to help implement the EPA’s new greenhouse-gas rules, coupled with Armenadariz’s reaction, amps up an already heated dispute between Texas and federal officials over the regulation of air pollution.

Besides opposing the EPA’s decision to start regulating greenhouse gases, Texas is simultaneously fighting the EPA over the federal agency’s disapproval of key elements of the state’s longstanding program for issuing permits for other air pollutants, such as smog-forming chemicals.

On the climate issue, Texas earlier this year formally challenged the scientific basis for the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases pose hazards to human beings and the environment that warrant regulation.

That challenge took two forms. One was an administrative petition asking the EPA to reconsider its “endangerment finding,” which the federal agency rejected last week. The other was a legal petition, which was filed in federal court in February and is still pending. More►

EPA rejects Texas' challenge
of finding on greenhouse gases
By Bill Dawson | July 30, 2010

EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson

"The endangerment finding is based
on years of science from the U.S.
and around the world.”

As expected, the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday firmly rejected petitions by Texas, Virginia, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others that asked the EPA to reconsider its formal conclusion that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the environment and therefore warrant regulation.

The EPA is planning to phase in rules early next year based on this “endangerment finding.” The regulations, drafted under the federal agency’s Clean Air Act authority, will impose limits on emissions of climate-changing gases from major industrial sources including power plants and oil refineries.

When they announced Texas’ administrative challenge of the endangerment finding (the petition rejected Thursday by the EPA) and an accompanying legal challenge (still pending in the federal courts), top Texas officials alleged in February that the EPA’s finding was based on “discredited” science and that federal regulation of those gases would hurt the state’s economy.

Texas A&M University's entire Department of Atmospheric Sciences backed the EPA finding, however, and A&M scientists joined climate experts on the faculties of Rice University, Texas Tech University and the University of Texas to declare in response to the state's contentions that "the science of climate change is strong."

In rejecting the challenges by Texas and allied petitioners, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, echoing the Texas scientists, said “the endangerment finding is based on years of science from the U.S. and around the world.”

Texas and others had alleged in their petitions for EPA reconsideration that the finding was based on serious flaws in scientists’ conclusions about climate change that were revealed in emails leaked from a British university and in subsequent media reports about a few errors in the voluminous reports of the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

For instance, Attorney General Greg Abbott said the IPCC is “a scandal-plagued international organization that cannot be considered objective or trustworthy.”

Jackson said, however, that the allegations by Texas and others were based “on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy” and had “provide[d] no evidence to undermine our determination. Excess greenhouse gases are a threat to our health and welfare.”

Several independent investigations have found no evidence that the leaked emails, including messages from several prominent American climate scientists, revealed manipulation of scientific findings, as climate-change skeptics have charged. For example, the former chairman of the House of Lords’ science and technology committee who headed one British inquiry said it found “absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever.”

Reporters for the Associated Press conducted what they called “an exhaustive review” into the email messages and concluded that they did not “support claims that the science of global warming was faked.”

In line with such findings, the EPA said in announcing its rejection of Texas’ challenge and the other petitions that the agency’s review of their charges “shows that climate science is credible, compelling, and growing stronger.”

Gov. Rick Perry’s office released a statement in which the governor said he was “disappointed, but hardly surprised” by the agency’s decision because of the Obama administration’s “ongoing disregard for Texas air quality successes and Texas jobs.” More►

Warmest June on record worldwide
– and unusually hot across Texas
By Bill Dawson | July 16, 2010

When he was in Houston to give a talk last December, the prominent climate scientist James Hansen of NASA told Texas Climate News that he thought 2010 could well turn out to be the warmest year ever.

“Next year is going to be very warm,” he said. “It could be the warmest year in the instrumental record.”

So far, temperature readings since Jan. 1 are proving Hansen correct.

On Thursday, the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration announced that global measurements for the first six months of 2010 indicate that last month was the warmest June on record and that the April-June and January-June periods this year were the warmest ever recorded.

All of Texas had above-normal temperatures in June, the state climatologist reported separately.

The NOAA report was issued just a week after a heat wave gripped a large area of the East Coast from New England south to Virginia, grabbing media attention and, along with recently released studies, rekindling discussion about the connection between such events and scientists’ projections of a warming world.

Some of the details in the new NOAA report:

Last month was the warmest June on record for both the average combined surface temperature of land and ocean areas around the world (1.22 degrees F above the 20th century average) and the land- only average temperature (1.93 degrees higher).
The worldwide ocean surface temperature was the fourth warmest on record (0.97 degrees above the 20th century average), with this warmth most notable in the Atlantic Ocean.
Warmer-than-normal temperatures in June were recorded around the world, with the most prominent warmth in Peru, the central and eastern U.S. states, and eastern and western Asia.
The combined land-ocean average temperature for the last three months was the warmest ever recorded – 1.26 degrees warmer than the 20th century worldwide average for the April-June period.
The worldwide land-ocean average for the first six months of 2010 was also the warmest ever recorded – 1.22 degrees above the average in the last century for January-June.

In a separate report, the Office of the Texas State Climatologist at Texas A&M University said June temperatures in Texas were above normal “across the entire state.”

Some highlights:

The Dallas-Fort Worth area “was particularly hot, tying 2008 as the third warmest June on record and was just half a degree cooler than June 1980, which was the beginning of most severe heat wave in the history of the Metroplex.”
Minimum temperatures in the DFW area, averaged over the entire month, were the warmest ever recorded for June.
San Angelo was also especially hot, with average temperatures almost six degrees above normal and a maximum temperature nearly seven degrees above normal.
“A historically hot stretch of weather brought extreme summer heat to West Texas” in early June, with record highs recorded in Midland and El Paso. More►

More Feature Stories

Experts back combined approach
to limit hurricanes' surge flooding

TCN Interview /
Larry Soward: Former TCEQ commissioner

Texas challenges science
behind EPA climate finding

TCN Interview /
James Hansen: NASA climatologist

Audit, newspaper retraction undermine
AG's argument in Texas' EPA petition
Aug. 26, 2010

Rajendra K. Pachauri

An independent investigation by a prominent international audit firm has undercut one of Texas' arguments in a petition against federal regulation of climate-changing greenhouse gases.

And a related British newspaper article, which Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott cited as evidence that such regulation is unwarranted, has been retracted by that newspaper with an apology.

Abbott's petition earlier this year challenged the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that climate-changing greenhouse gases are dangerous, a legal prerequisite for the regulation of industrial emissions that the EPA is now planning to phase in.

One of the attorney general's arguments was that the EPA's "endangerment finding" was based largely on the conclusions of the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC's chairman, Rajendra K. Pachauri, "has, and certainly appears to have, several conflicts of interest," Abbott asserted.

Abbott's petition, rejected last month by the EPA, alleged that these conflicts of interest "indicate that the IPCC is being led toward a conclusion that climate change is a dire threat to the planet that must be reversed; a conclusion that would enrich Dr. Pachauri and the entities that employ him."

One of the Texas petition's footnoted sources for this claim was an article published by Britain's Daily Telegraph last December, which dealt with Pachauri and The Energy and Resources Institute, a non-profit research organization focusing on energy, environment and sustainable development where he is director general. More►

From "green fees" to "Aggie Energy,"
Texas colleges embracing sustainability
Aug. 25, 2010

Texas universities and colleges have been in the news lately because of assorted developments related to cleaner energy, energy conservation and associated subjects.

Taken together, they suggest that interest in sustainability concerns – particularly regarding energy – is becoming a more prominent, more routine part of the higher-education experience in a state where fossil fuels still famously reign.

Here's a sampling.

“Renewable” branding for the fans

Alums and other supporters of both the Longhorns and Aggies now have the opportunity to help programs at the University of Texas and Texas A&M while they simultaneously boost the state's renewable energy industries.

Athletic programs at the two universities both recently entered agreements that will market electricity from renewable sources to residential and business customers in parts of the state with deregulated power markets.

Both programs involve partnerships with the same pair of companies – Dallas-based Branded Retail Energy and Houston-based Champion Energy Services. The plans are being marketed via the Texas Longhorns Energy and Aggie Energy brands. More►

Heat, fires, floods and an ice island:
Signs of manmade climate change?
August 12, 2010

sun It's hot these days in Texas – Dallas had its thirteenth straight day of triple-digit temperatures today, for instance, and the state's AC-driven electricity demand hit a new record high on Wednesday.

Still, there's nothing unusual about a hot summer in the Lone Star State, and nothing so far suggests the summer of 2010 will be jaw-droppingly memorable here.

Following a June with above-normal temperatures "across the state," July temperatures were "slightly above normal" in the eastern half of the state and "below normal" in the western half, the Office of the Texas State Climatologist at Texas A&M University concluded in the latest monthly reports.

Weather extremes and related events are attracting enough notice in other parts of the U.S. and around the world, however, that an unsurprising question is being asked in some quarters: Could they be evidence of manmade global warming and climate change? More►

What are the Texas implications
if there's no federal climate bill?
July 28, 2010

Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision last week to delay – at least – Senate action on a comprehensive energy-climate bill carried a variety of implications for Texas.

Those potential impacts extend from Congress and the federal courts to energy companies and the state Legislature.

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama and his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, insisted that despite the setback posed by Reid’s action, such a measure still might win passage later this year. That hope was also expressed last week by Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, a co-author of the bill that Reid said doesn’t have enough votes now to overcome a filibuster.

Many media reports, however, portrayed the chances of a broad energy-climate bill becoming law in this Congress as slim, at best. The Associated Press described “bleak prospects.” Reuters, meanwhile, reported that Reid’s decision to press instead for passage of a much narrower energy bill without climate provisions was a “potentially fatal blow” to a comprehensive bill with a cap on carbon dioxide emissions.

Last summer, the House narrowly passed an energy-climate bill with a broad cap-and-trade system that would cap industries’ greenhouse emissions and set up a system for trading emission permits. Despite considerable pressure in their home state to vote no, nine of the 12 Democratic House members from Texas supported the bill. More►

Science roundup: Butterflies, BP and more
July 3, 2010

Butterflies. Religion. Undersea methane from the BP spill. Solar technology. Capturing carbon dioxide.

Texas scientists and engineers have been in the news lately because of their work in a variety of areas involving climate change and related energy subjects.

Here’s a roundup of some of that coverage.

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Journalist and author Seth Shulman profiled Camille Parmesan, a biologist and butterfly expert at the University of Texas, in an article in Grist, “Are butterflies the silent harbingers of global warming?”

Her interest in the subject dates to her research on the Edith’s checkerspot butterfly as a graduate student in the early 1990s. She “realized that the butterflies could be sensitive indicators of global warming” and continued to study the checkerspot for another four and a half years:

The work paid off. Parmesan's landmark 1996 paper in the British science journal Nature was one of the first definitive looks at the effects of climate change on a living species. When she started out tracking checkerspots, Parmesan wasn't sure she'd be able to discern any effects of climate change. But even discounting sites where urban sprawl or other human interference might have impinged upon the butterflies' habitat, Parmesan was startled to find that at the southern edge of their range, in Mexico and southern California, populations of Edith's checkerspots had declined by 80 percent. More►