CARBONGATE

Carbongate

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, June 26, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Climate Change: A suppressed EPA study says old U.N. data ignore the decline in global temperatures and other inconvenient truths. Was the report kept under wraps to influence the vote on the cap-and-trade bill?

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Read More: Global Warming

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This was supposed to be the most transparent administration ever. Yet as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on the Waxman-Markey bill, the largest tax increase in U.S. history on 100% of Americans, an attempt was made to suppress a study shredding supporters' arguments.

On Friday, the day of the vote, the Competitive Enterprise Institute said it was releasing "an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency."

In the release, the institute's Richard Morrison said "internal EPA e-mail messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the administration's agenda of regulating carbon dioxide."

Reading the report, available on the CEI Web site, we find this "endangerment analysis" contains such interesting items as: "Given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until at least 2030), there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."

What the report says is that the EPA, by adopting the United Nations' 2007 "Fourth Assessment" report, is relying on outdated research by its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The research, it says, is "at best three years out of date in a rapidly changing field" and ignores the latest scientific findings.

Besides noting the decline in temperatures as CO2 levels have increased, the draft report says the "consensus" on storm frequency and intensity is now "much more neutral."

Then there's one of Al Gore's grim fairy tales — the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and glaciers the size of Tennessee roaming the North Atlantic. "The idea that warming temperatures will cause Greenland to rapidly shed its ice has been greatly diminished by new results indicating little evidence for operations of such processes," the report says.

Little evidence? Outdated U.N. research? No reason to rush? This is not what the Obama administration and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were telling us when they were rushing to force a Friday vote on Waxman-Markey. We were given the impression that unless we passed this cap-and-tax fiasco, polar bears would be extinct by the Fourth of July.

We have noted frequently the significance of solar activity on earth's climate and history. This EPA draft report not only confirms our reporting but the brazen incompetence of those "experts" that have been prophesying planetary apocalypse.

"A new 2009 paper by Scafetta and West," the report says, "suggests that the IPCC used faulty solar data in dismissing the direct effect of solar variability on global temperatures. Their report suggests that solar variability could account for up to 68% of the increase in Earth's global temperatures."

The report was the product of Alan Carlin, senior operations research analyst at the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE). He's been with the EPA for 38 years but now has been taken off all climate-related work. He is convinced that actual climate observations do not match climate change theories and that only the politics, not the science, has been settled.

Thomas Fuller, environmental policy blogger with the San Francisco Examiner, wrote Thursday in a story developed in conjunction with Anthony Watts' Web site wattsupwiththat.com: "A source inside the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed many of the claims made by analyst Alan Carlin, the economist/physicist who yesterday went public with accusations that science was being ignored in evaluating the danger of CO2."

All this is particularly interesting because of the charges by Al Gore, NASA's James Hansen and others that the Bush administration and energy companies actively suppressed the truth about climate change.

One of the e-mails unearthed by CEI was dated March 12, from Al McGartland, office director at NCEE, forbidding Carlin from speaking to anyone outside NCEE on endangerment issues such as those in his suppressed report.

Read the rest of the story here...........

In response to passage of the "American Clean Energy and Security Act" by the House Energy and Commerce Committee

Joint statement by:

Greenpeace USA * Friends of the Earth * Public Citizen * Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana *Citizen Power * Center for Biological Diversity * TURN-The Utility Reform Network * Sustainable Energy & Economy Network * Green Delaware * Massachusetts Environmental Energy Alliance * Massachusetts Forest Watch * Coal Moratorium Now!

Washington-In response to passage of the "American Clean Energy and Security

Act" by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a coalition of environmental, legal, consumer, and community advocacy groups released the following joint statement:

"While a week of debate failed to adequately strengthen protections for consumers, communities, and the climate in this bill, it erased all doubt of who will benefit most from it: Big Business. Despite the best efforts of Chairman Waxman, the decision-making process was co-opted by oil and coal lobbyists determined to sustain our addiction to dirty fossil fuels, even as the country stands ready to rebuild our economy and clean up the environment with real clean energy. The resulting bill reflects the triumph of politics over science, and the triumph of industry influence over the public interest.

"Regrettably, we cannot support this legislation unless and until it is substantially strengthened. The lives and livelihoods of 7 billion people worldwide will be affected by America 's response to the climate crisis. The response embodied in today's bill is not only inadequate it is counterproductive.

"As passed through the Energy & Commerce Committee, the American Clean

Energy and Security Act sets targets for reducing pollution that are far weaker than science says is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change. The targets are far less ambitious than what is achievable with already existing technology. They are further undermined by massive loopholes that could allow the most polluting industries to avoid real emission reductions until 2027. Rather than provide relief and support to consumers, the bill showers polluting industries with hundreds of billions of dollars in free allowances and direct subsidies that will slow renewable energy development and lock in a new generation of dirty coal-fired power plants. At the same time, the bill would remove the President's authority to address global warming pollution using laws already on the books.

"The international community cannot solve global warming without real leadership from the United States . We urge the President to demonstrate that leadership by working with Congressional leaders to craft a real, science-based response to the challenge of global warming and by immediately exercising his substantial authority to regulate global warming emissions under existing laws."

Gas-water-rock interactions in Frio Formation following CO2 injection:

"To investigate the potential for the geologic storage of CO₂ in saline sedimentary aquifers, 1600 t of CO₂ were injected at 1500 m depth into a 24-m-thick sandstone section of the Frio Formation, a regional brine and oil reservoir in the U.S. Gulf Coast. Fluid samples obtained from the injection and observation wells before CO₂ injection showed a Na-Ca-Cl–type brine with 93,000 mg/L total dissolved solids (TDS) at near saturation with CH₄ at reservoir conditions. Following CO₂ breakthrough, samples showed sharp drops in pH (6.5–5.7), pronounced increases in alkalinity (100–3000 mg/L as HCO₃) and Fe (30–1100 mg/L), and significant shifts in the isotopic compositions of H₂O, dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), and CH₄. Geochemical modeling indicates that brine pH would have dropped lower but for the buffering by dissolution of carbonate and iron oxyhydroxides. This rapid dissolution of carbonate and other minerals could ultimately create pathways in the rock seals or well cements for CO₂ and brine leakage. Dissolution of minerals, especially iron oxyhydroxides, could mobilize toxic trace metals and, where residual oil or suitable organics are present, the injected CO₂ could also mobilize toxic organic compounds. Environmental impacts could be major if large brine volumes with mobilized toxic metals and organics migrated into potable groundwater. The δ¹⁸O values for brine and CO₂ samples indicate that supercritical CO₂ comprises ∼50% of pore-fluid volume ∼6 mo after the end of injection. Postinjection sampling, coupled with geochemical modeling, indicates that the brine gradually will return to its preinjection composition."

This is the link to the web site for more information and documentation