My recent post at MasterResource, Climategate: Here Comes Courage!, has been picked up in the blogosphere (such as at WattsUpWithThat) and has received several thousand views at MasterResource.
In my post, I profiled three individuals in the Houston area who in the post-Climategate environment have spoken up more forcefully against climate alarmism:
- Dr. Neil Frank (a former director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami and a weather forecaster at KHOU-Channel 11 in Houston);
- Michelle Michot Foss, an internationally respected energy economist with the University of Texas at Austin and the past president of both the U.S. Association for Energy Economics (2001) and the International Association for Energy Economics (2003); and
- Peter Hartley, the George and Cynthia Mitchell Chair in Sustainable Development and Environmental Economics, and Professor of Economics, at Rice University.
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This post by Richard Schlesinger of EnergyBizInsider is reproduced with permission. The problem of rent-seeking by corporations (political capitalism) has been explored previously at MasterResource.
Although the electric industry has endorsed the concept of cap-and-trade as the least onerous approach to carbon regulation, at least one major company endorses it with unalloyed enthusiasm. Exelon not only supports the idea, it stated in a second-quarter conference call to analysts, which it posted to its Web site, that it expects to see a “$1.1 billion and growing annual upside to Exelon revenues from implementation of Waxman-Markey.” Is that number real or simply wishful thinking? Does Exelon know something that’s escaped the rest of us?
Actually, if one makes a couple of assumptions, the potential earnings boost is very real. Here’s how it works.…
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This post is Part 2 of my examination of EPA’s Tailoring Rule — the Agency’s attempt to amend the Clean Air Act’s (CAA) Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program and Title V operating permits program so that they can be applied to carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) without spawning an economically-chilling administrative morass. Yesterday’s post argued that the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA set the stage for an administrative disaster that EPA rightly describes as “unprecedented” and “absurd.” Today’s post examines the adequacy of the Tailoring Rule as a regulatory relief measure, finds it woefully inadequate, and advises EPA not to oppose legislative action to protect the economy from Mass. v. EPA‘s regulatory fallout.
V. Tailoring Rule: Small Business Protection Is Temporary, Dubious, and Incomplete
Industry is unlikely to challenge the Tailoring Rule, since it aims to shield substantial numbers of small entities from PSD and Title V regulation of CO2 for a period of six years.…
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