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Misrepresenting Climate Change Economic Studies

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“H.R. 2454 American Clean Energy and Security Act threatens the United States $14.4 trillion economy, measured by GDP, which is the largest national economy of the world. Of this amount, 7.5 percent ($1 trillion) of the US economy is attributed to by the oil and natural gas industry. To give you an idea of how the United States derives it source of energy, the below outlines the division of the energy industry:

* 40% from petroleum
* 23% from coal
* 23% from natural gas
* 7.4% from nuclear power
* 6.6% from renewable energy

Affect on Employment
The oil and natural gas industry alone represents 63% of US energy production and supplies the US economy with over nine million jobs to Americans. However, according to the Brookings study, H.R. 2454 would cause a 15% decline in refining employment and a 35% drop in crude oil employment1. Buttressing Brookings Study, the National Black Chamber of Commerce found that a net 2.5 million jobs will be lost after accounting for the new green jobs being created.

Affect on Individual Finances
According to the Heritage foundation, the Waxman-Markey (H.R. 2454) would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020; which equates to about $1,900 for a family of four. As the emissions limits decrease, the costs rises to $6,800 per family by 2035. In today’s terms, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the net present value of the bill would equate to approximately $12,000. Another way of stating the above statistics to more practical terms; the Congressional Budget office states that H.R. 2454 would add up to 77 cents per gallon of gasoline, while the Heritage Foundation has a more conservative analysis of gasoline prices rising by more then 74% by 2035.”

-Heriberto Latigo, Houston Personal Finance Examiner

http://www.examiner.com/x-17064-Houston-Personal-Finance-Examiner~y2009m10d4-HR-2454-American-Clean-Energy-and-Security-Act

————–

Heriberto Latigo makes it sound like the Brookings Study is on this particular bill and that the analysis is meant as evidence against the move. Actually, if you click on the first link in his Bibliography, the Brooking Report which he claims to be getting his information about the bill from and you’ll see this:

* Not an analysis of particular bills
*Not a cost?benefit analysis
» Looking only at mitigation costs and emissions
reductions
* Looking for ways to pursue environmental goals at lower cost

So that tells you right off that the study isn’t what he makes it out to be. However, a fact sheet reveals that the current bill is “consistent” with some of the emission paths the study looks at. Here are the key findings:

The study estimates that alternative paths to reach an emission reduction target of 83% below 2005 levels by 2050 will:

• reduce cumulative U.S. emissions by 38% to 49%, about 110 to 140 billion metric tons CO2
• reduce total personal consumption by 0.3% to 0.5%, or about $1 to $2 trillion in discounted present
value from 2010 to 2050
• reduce the level of U.S. GDP by around 2.5% relative to what it otherwise would have been in 2050
• reduce employment levels by 0.5% in the first decade, with large differences across sectors
• create an annual value of emission allowances peaking at around $300 billion by 2030, and a total value
of about $9 trillion from 2012 to 2050

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/events/2009/0608_climate_change_economy/20090608_cap_trade.pdf

Below is a picture showing the huge impact that the bill will have on our economy. You need a magnifying glass just to see the differences in 2050.

Brookings Study Graph

But Heriberto Latigo isn’t the only one trying to misrepresent that report, as you can see here:

http://climateprogress.org/2009/06/09/brookings-study-waxman-markey-economy/

And what’s the second source he claims “buttresses the Brookings Report”? The National Black Chamebr of Commerce. Just put that into Wikipedia and you see that they are sponsored by:

* Tobacco Company Altria. NBCC has opposed tobacco control legislation.
* ExxonMobil has provided $225,000, per a Greenpeace analysis titled ExxonMobil’s Continued Funding of Global Warming Denial Industry[1]
* AT&T and Verizon. NBCC has opposed Network Neutrality, a position strongly held by AT&T and Verizon.
* Comcast. NBCC has opposed A La Carte pricing, a position strongly held by Comcast.

And what are their other positions on legislation?

* In testimony submitted to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions regarding Senate Bill S.625, the NBCC stated that it opposes increased Food and Drug Administration regulation of tobacco. The reason for its opposition is that the regulation would impose fees affecting small tobacco retailing and distribution businesses in the U.S., many of which are owned by Black Americans.[2] The statement contained no reference to health risks associated with using tobacco products.
* The NBCC indicated that the Microsoft settlement was inadequate in terms of consumer protection and that additional remedies were required

And what’s source #3? An oldie but a goodie. The Heritage Foundation. A conservtive think tank that uses the supply side business model of Reagan and Bush II. Here’s one of their key strengths according to Wikipedia:

“Heritage’s influence is also due in part to its decision to publish shorter policy papers that are designed to convey usually complex topics in an executive summary format more likely to be read by governmental officials. Other Washington think tanks historically have produced lengthier publications or book-length works, which Heritage also publishes, but only rarely.”

So that’s why they’re so much more popular than the American Enterprise Institute and other right-wing think tanks. They publish “Far Right-Wing Ideology for Dummies.”

The Kristol Method

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“By the end of the Clinton administration, I was content to celebrate the triumph of conservatism as I understood it, and had no desire for other than incremental changes in the economic and social structure of the United States. I saw no need for the estate tax to be abolished, marginal personal-income tax rates further reduced, the government shrunk, pragmatism in constitutional law jettisoned in favor of “originalism,” the rights of gun owners enlarged, our military posture strengthened, the rise of homosexual rights resisted, or the role of religion in the public sphere expanded. All these became causes embraced by the new conservatism that crested with the reelection of Bush in 2004,” – Richard Posner

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/09/quote-for-the-day-ii-2.html#more

“Given how often Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and other right-wing populist rabble-rousers make coarser versions of the same argument today, it’s important to note that Kristol and his colleagues initially refused to propose a political response to the rise of new class. Adopting Trilling’s ambivalent stance toward the adversary culture of the intellectuals, Kristol explicitly rejected a “populist perspective” that portrayed new class elites as “usurp[ing] control of our media” and using “their strategic positions to launch an assault on our traditions and institutions.” Such a simple-minded view was, for Kristol, “misleading and ultimately self-defeating.” The rise of the new class and the adversary culture could not simply be willed or wished away, since they had emerged out of and had their roots in the extraordinarily complicated dynamics of modern, urban civilization itself. The appropriate response to recent troubling trends was thus careful study and reflection on the complexities of contemporary American life–not futile and destructive calls to stamp them out through political action.

“But Kristol’s moderation and detachment would soon come to an end…. Two years later, Kristol would assert that defending the American way of life against foreign and domestic enemies required that citizens develop a “religious attachment” to their country. In future years he would go even further, to claim that modern conservatism should be based on a synthesis of religion, nationalism, and economic growth–and that Republicans should give up their resistance to the transformation of their party into an explicitly religious organization–all for the sake of banishing liberalism, now flatly described as the “enemy,” from American political life.”

http://www.tnr.com/blog/damon-linker/irving-kristols-other-journey?page=0,1

“Among the core social scientists around The Public Interest there were no economists…. This explains my own rather cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or fiscal problems. The task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority – so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government…”

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/09/movement-conservatism-and-debt.html

“David has the righteous answer,” Mattera said, “because he is taking pride in his Christian beliefs.” No matter that Mattera didn’t accurately grasp David’s biography or the biblical timeline. In conserva-land, David, a character from the Old Testament, was a Christian even before Christ was born. “Anyone who came against his God,” Mattera said, “David would take it personally.”
…
During the panel, Mattera took the David and Goliath metaphor another perverse step: If conservatives (David) smite liberals (Goliath), they will be rewarded with the hot conservative women, just like King Saul promised his daughter to the warrior who slew the evil giant. “You know his daughter must have been beautiful because there’s no guy whose gonna die for an ugly girl,” Mattera chortled. “Our women are hot. We have Michelle Malkin. Who does the left have, Rachel Maddow? Sorry, I prefer that my women not look like dudes.”

http://www.campusprogress.org/fieldreport/4585/taking-it-personally

Republican Party Chart

Meritocracy

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This is a pretty funny story….

“I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration.

The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle’s chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics.

Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon’s domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.

“With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. ‘I oppose it,’ Irving replied. ‘It subverts meritocracy.’ ”

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/jan/28/campos-to-the-manner-born/

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/09/from-kristol-to-beck.html#more

“There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn’t work.” – Irving Kristol

More “We’re All Going to Die” Links

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For most people, the Scopes Monkey trial is a symbol of rigid Fundamentalism trying to take science out of the education process, but not to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They are actually calling for the EPA to hold a “Scopes”-like hearing on the evidence climate change is manmade:

http://climateprogress.org/2009/08/25/memo-to-alcoa-kodak-ibm-nike-pepsi-toyota-luddite-chamber-of-commerce-seeks-the-scopes-monkey-trial-global-warming/

It’s funny that the same side that argues Global Warming is like a religion use their own highly-questionable interpretations of the Bible to make their points:

http://climateprogress.org/2009/07/31/lobbyist-dick-armey-gospel-of-pollution-global-warming/

Here’s an article about how three benchmark glaciers used by geological surveys shows that a major meltdown is imminent:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/07/global.warming/index.html

Here’s some declassified spy satellites hidden by the Bush Administration showing retreating polar icecaps:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/26/climate-change-obama-administration

Here’s the latest in a series of studies that found glaciers melting faster than anyone predicted:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/07/global.warming/index.html

Here’s an article about how water melting from Antarctica could flood Washington D.C.:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16545-antarctic-bulge-could-flood-washington-dc.html

Here’s an article about how hot climates can create sluggish economies:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106697286

“Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.”

Here’s the Top Ten Bogus Statements (BS) in the Climate Change Debate:

http://climateprogress.org/author/bill-becker/

Here’s a funny Daily Show clip about the birthers:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-july-22-2009/the-born-identity

Here’s an article about how Bush believed the Iraq War had been foretold in Revelation as the prophecy of ‘Gog and Magog’:

http://sedulia.blogs.com/sedulias_translations/2009/05/bush-chirac-gog-and-magog.html

Andrew Sullivan on the Bailouts:

“It’s despotism when we lose, freedom when we win. We should have more confidence in the people and the country than this. We should also have more charity to our political opponents – who after all are contending with hideous problems bequeathed to them by … by … well suddenly we Republicans cannot seem to remember who preceded Barack Obama in office. To listen to us, you’d think that the bailouts and takeovers started on January 20, 2009, not the previous March. You’d never know that TARP was supported by almost every Republican commentator, including the editors of National Review. Or that Vice President Cheney argued urgently in favor of the rescue of the Detroit automakers. Or that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enjoyed the backing of Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers.

One bad election converts us from ardent admirers of the American people to glum declinists who can see only a miserable moldering of a once great nation. I should have thought that conservative patriotism was made of stronger stuff.”

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/07/who-was-president-before-obama.html