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EPA Employees Blow the Whistle on Flawed Climate Bills
Agency Specialists Say Greenhouse Gas Offsets Unenforceable and Demand Probe
Washington, DC - The major bills before Congress to regulate greenhouse gases to combat global climate change suffer from "multiple unfixable flaws" that undermine their effectiveness, according to a detailed congressional disclosure by two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees, posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). These agency experts' unofficial protest is also testing new agency guidelines on employee free speech rights following EPA's order last fall that the two employees remove a YouTube video they had produced on the frailties of cap-and-trade.
The two EPA employees, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, are enforcement attorneys speaking as private citizens. They contend that the integrity failings of greenhouse gas offsets, the lynchpin for major climate bills before Congress, ensure that such legislation will be an ineffective - and deceptive - waste of funds. Specifically, they argue that:
- The complexity and subjectivity of offsets renders them impossible to certify, regulate or enforce;
- There is no reliable way to distinguish offset projects which will occur because of the offset incentive from those which would have happened anyway;
- In some cases, such as in the context of forestry projects, the offsets will fail to appreciably mitigate demand and the polluting activity (such as logging) will simply shift elsewhere; and
- The offsets will create perverse incentives to keep polluting activities legal so they can keep being sold as offsets.
Williams and Zabel assert that these offsets, in essence, are a new "creative financial instrument" which carries the same deceptive potential to bankrupt markets as did the creative instruments peddled on Wall Street. The two ask for a congressional probe into the reliability of any offset program before enactment.
In speaking out as private citizens, Williams and Zabel are contradicting positions endorsed by their own agency, the EPA, which attempted to silence them last fall by demanding under threat of "disciplinary action" that they remove a YouTube video that was critical of the offsets. EPA was embarrassed by the public furor that ensued. Earlier this month, the Office of Government Ethics posted a government-wide clarification of its free speech policy (curiously dated March 19, 2010) that fails to lay out clear guidance for when and under what circumstances its employees may voice personal opinions.
In response, Williams and Zabel noted that, "We are extremely grateful to our attorney, Tom Devine of the Government Accountability Project, our EPA ethics officials, and the White House ethics counsel for providing a clarification that has allowed us to go forward with our dissent. While we appreciate the recent resolution of our First Amendment dispute with EPA, we are still troubled that federal employees have not received greater clarity about their ability to discuss non-confidential on-the-job experiences when engaged in personal non-commercial speech regarding important issues of public concern." Added PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, "Despite its rhetoric about openness, today's EPA often suppresses open debate, both inside and outside its hallways, on matters of vital public interest. Laurie and Allan work inside EPA but they actually work for the public and, as public servants, seek to better serve their true employers."
Read the whistleblower disclosure
See their censored YouTube video
View the unclear EPA clarification on employee free speech
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34 Comments so far
Show AllI hope these two have lined up some private sector jobs, because regardless of any "clarification" about free speech, they are "toast" at EPA, and would be at any other government agency.
This article proves that the Obama Regime is once again using the same legislative template they used for the Obamacare bill, the Obamabankster bill and other "Obama legislative victories":
1) The industries that created the need for the respective bill in the first place get to write a bill that is designed to enhance their profits.
2) The subject bill is designed to exacerbate, not solve the problems that created the need for the bill, and
3) The bill has loopholes big enough to fly a 747 through.
Yes raydelcamino, just what we need: another faux "legislative victory." Obama continues to fight bullshit with bullshit while people starve for truth!
Yes raydelcamino, just what we need: another faux "legislative victory." Obama continues to fight bullshit with bullshit while people starve for truth! If Obama realized that he's the only one (with the bully pulpit) who can possibly counter the corporate media by shining the light of truth on the Congressional vipers that stop every move to help 99% of Americans, and make the wimpy administration afraid to make the best moves (like single payer, favored by 70% in polls) there'd be more of a chance of removing these vipers from their horrific representation of their citizens.
What's depressing is that what they are disclosing are hardly secrets. Why aren't these issues being discussed openly in the halls of EPA and Congress? Who has taken the much more straightforward idea of a carbon tax "off the table"?
The front-running cap and trade system will be a huge new profit center for corporations, and will increase pollution.
A carbon tax or cap and dividend system will not provide many profit opportunities for corporations, and might actually reduce pollution.
Still wondering why carbon tax is off the table ?
Because you can't bundle, chop up and trade a tax on a derivatives market. Or (jesus!) can they?
I attended a 'climate' panel a few weeks ago featuring
learned gentle folk from Nist/Noaa and so on --
right here in Boulder, Co. ----
some of the panelists intimated that Copenhagen was a train wreck, that the necessary policy shifts are a long way off...
and so on
however, they all finished by insisting they were optimistic about the future ----- another way of saying..."we want to keep our jobs (please sir, if you don't mind)" --
in the realm of climate science, those who can maintain the veneer of progress remain secure in their jobs --
they fulfill the function of pleasing their masters --
a pleased master will continue to cheerfully toss dog biscuits to the climate science-dog
the EPA is an agency with thousands of employees -- nearly every one of whom probably knows that these 'renegades' speak nothing less than the truth ----
so...the climate science fraud machine grinds forward --
quietly robbing us of any opportunity to make actual effective changes --- what else is new? oh, yeah...it's roughly the same paradigm in effect with ocean drilling and the myriad of other scams gradually collapsing civilization --
which is why the true climate scenario is probably one of total global collapse and chaos --
does anyone remember the year 1960? I sort of do...I was alive...it wasn't that long ago -- In 2050, someone will rewrite this comment and ask "does anyone remember 2010, when we still had a chance to turn it around?" --
I could be mistaken, but I don't think the standing evidence suggests that we will continue to be befuddled by climate issues --- instead, "we" will be a population thinned by billions of lost lives, trying to save small sections of the planet for human habitat --
it's not about Mayan calendars -- it's about humanity becoming sparse in the face of naked destruction ... the snouts of those destructive forces are right in our face -- the jaws gradually expand...
...but only to those with eyes to see...individuals who think the fate of the planet might be as significant as their next paycheck...a small band of brothers and sisters indeed ---
Good post, DD.
yes indeedee..dd
"does anyone remember the year 1960? I sort of do...I was alive...it wasn't that long ago -- In 2050, someone will rewrite this comment and ask "does anyone remember 2010, when we still had a chance to turn it around?" --"
I remember in 1980 discussing global warming and deciding that it was inevitable since the timeline of the political class did not exceed 5 years.
Another day in the pay your bills and die world of the Europeans. Didn't lay any bets in Vegas they would have the "Earth Saved" today. Did post at a Native Site the big oil spill in China, and about the Article that said China has become the biggest energy consuming Nation upon Creator's earth.
So once China with around a billion people really gets cranking they will be spewing out all those toxic poisons into the air, water, and land. They have plans for many more coal and nuclear plants.
The death trap pay your bills and die world of the Europeans except it's a globalist system, and you don't have "Jack" to say about what the Chinese do in their Nation.
You think some Carbon Tax is going to save the earth. How ridiculous. All a Carbon Tax will do is line the pockets of the Corporations in your pay your bills and die world.
Reality what a concept. But you have Elections coming up that either Democrats or Republicans will win so I wouldn't lay any bets in Vegas about anything changing.
Have a nice day.
Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.
Yeah, but it's better than Bush!
Better than McCain/Palin!
Better than...better than...
Ride with the Republicans and you will hit a brick wall at 100 mph.
Ride with the Democrats and hit the same wall at 90 mph.
Take your pick !
That's a very skimpy menu you offer. Thank you, but I dine elsewhere.
It's getting hot here in normally temperate western PA. No records set, but pecularly and persistently well above average. Cold fronts pass, but the weather is only hotter in the clear weather after the front passes! Never seen anything like it. At least the hot weather is accompanied by stong west winds so the wind turbines on the plateau are running at full capacity.
Moscow, and even some siberian cities have been reporting 35-38C (93 to 100) for the past week. Normal daily high is 21C.
Carbon Tax will work, cap n' trade won't as it is much more easily gamed.
The Tax is simple - how much carbon are you spewing out? The science on that is straightforward for big stack producers of carbon. Maybe leave the little guys out, any company producing less than x. Its the big polluters doing most of the pollution (ignoring cars, deal with that separately with higher mpg, etc), and they can afford to deal with the tax.
In the meantime, I biked to work today and left my 60 MPG 2000 honda insight at home. If you really care about global warming, each of us has to do what we can!
I'm really glad that these folks exposed this highly questionable practices as what they are; fraudulent.
The ball is in Obama's court.
U.S. Congress authorized the National Academy of Sciences to study the research put forth in MBH98 which has been the basis of all of the global warming scare and the graph used in "An Inconvenient Truth". the NAS study found that the MacIntire and McKitrick research that disputed MBH98 was correct.The U.S. House Commitee on Energy and Commerce also did a study that found that the MBH98 data was wrong and also supported MacIntire and McKitrick. The IPCC scientists that dispute the global warming scare are being silenced by a media controlled by those that have an interest in creating a global warming scare. Look back at the 1970's global cooling scare and all of the books and data produced around that. Look into "Global Warming or Global Governance?" and BBC 4's "The Great Global Warming Swindle". Look up the facts on global warming. CO2 only makes up about 2% of all greenhouse gases and humans produce less than 1% of that. 98% of all greenhouse gas is water vapor. look into the Medieval Optimal and the Mini Ice Age. These are both naturally occuring, drastic, temperature changes. I believe in global warming and global cooling, I just don't think we are the cause of it. I know that we are doing untold amounts of damage to the Earth, but there is an agenda here that has nothing to do with saving the Earth. Just look at the facts.
robbin505:
Who shot cock robin? The little corporate arrows have shot you through and through. MEDIC!!!!
During the medieval optimal the temperatures were higher than they are now. This is the period when we grew exponentially due to higher temperatures increasing output of crops. Also this is when Iceland was settled by the Vikings. The land that they once farmed is now under ice. We are heading into a solar maximum period that produces higher than normal solar activity that creates major changes in our, and the other planets, atmosphere. The mini ice age was when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein during the year without a winter. This was also a major world wide time of extreme famine and draught due to the extremely low temperatures. The facts are there. Please look at them before it is too late. I am the last person to spout the rhetoric of corporate garbage. Global Warming due to humans is a SCAM!
Checked the NAS web site. Nothing about vindicating McIntire... Any chance you could provide a link to this study? I'll give you credit that it might be some Fox News style heavily edited and spun story that you hit upon. Or maybe you just made it up.
I did find the G-8 + 5 Acacdemies Global Warming Statement. Basically states we need to get out of the carbon based economy ASAP (like yesterday!).
http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/G8+5energy-climate09.pdf
Do yourself a favor and check out the NOAA and NASA GISS websites. These guys are pros. Check out Realclimate and Climate Progress blogs and others. Of course there will be profiteering as he economy changes, but its not a hidden agenda. If we don't reduce to sustainable CO2 emissions in 15 years or so, we eventually WILL have either total anarchy or some sort of socialist government rationing everything from food to fuel to housing to babies. (And make you be nice to the refugees if you aren't one yourself.)
It is a bit hard to find a lot of these things anymore, but here is the NAS data.http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=R14
I can't even find the house committee stuff anymore. That is why I like books. I don't have to worry about them being changed after I read them. It's not like it says,"we hereby vindicate Macintire and McKintrick", but the evidence shows that the temperatures were the same in the medieval optimum as they are today. Also the graph doesn't go back to show times earlier than that. Temperatures fluctuate and I don't see how a global tax is going to change that.
Interesting book! Yes. The authors concluded that Mann may not have been completely justified in calling the decade of 1990 and the year 1998 as the warmest in millenia, but agree he was probably correct. They also stated the proxy based temperature record is not the primary evidence of human caused warming.
I recall something about newer proxy studies indicating the medieval warm period was localized to Europe, but I'm not certain.
That's the problem. No one is certain about this. A lot of this has been hype by a corporate controlled media. When the facts came out that Mann wasn't right they still kept pushing an agenda. Why would the corporate media be pushing an agenda that would be bad for their owners? I don't trust the U.N. after reading through the codex alimentarius and have seen what their ideas are.
"Corporate media pushing an agenda" in favor of action on climate change? I guess I need not have wasted my time in replying to you earlier :)
There is a chapter in George Monbiot's book "Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning" called "The Denial Industry" that goes into the techniques used by the...well...the denial industry funded by other industries. The techniques were developed in the "service" of Big Tobacco, and later perfected when "Big Oil" hired some of the same characters, including some "scientists" to cast doubt on the climate science. I don't know if you can recognize any of the techniques used in the sources you've quoted in your earlier post.
Of course, in this case, the job of the denial industry was too damned easy - which also explains their level of "success". Because serious action on climate change would require a lifestyle change and not many Americans are ready for it. And psychologically, I seriously suspect that many people realize this - that their "way of life" is at stake. Hence the so many unpaid (volunteer?) deniers lapping up the talking points and the "evidence" supplied by the denial industry (a lot of the talking points used by such volunteer-deniers can be traced back to paid-deniers, and the rest to right-wing zealots who accept science only when it's convenient). Not only lapping it all up, but actively spreading them, too.
robbin505, you have to realize that even the fossil fuel industries are not disputing climate change nor the role of humans in causing it - anymore. The phase of denial, then creating doubts is over. Even the denial industry has moved on to discrediting the scientists, NOT by attacking the science, but by looking for goofs and gaffes and some sloppy report writing.
Yes, the CO2 concentration is very small - approaching 400 parts per million (co2now.org). But it was at less than 280 ppm even 200 years ago. And it had been at that level for the previous few thousand years. And the overall system was in some kind of an equilibrium: CO2 emitted by decaying organic matter was reabsorbed by trees and the ocean, and there was no large-scale burning of fossil fuels until the Industrial Revolution started. What has happened is that the balance or equilibrium that had existed before was now seriously being disturbed, and it has been disturbed at increasing rates for the last 200+ years. CO2 emission rates have increased, and absorption rates have decreased (loss of forests, oceans gradually absorbing less CO2, etc.). And this is only CO2 we're talking about. Other effects as a result include loss of heat-reflecting surface in the Arctic, Greenland, etc., and the most dangerous of all - the potential (some say it's already starting to happen) - release of methane from under the Siberian permafrost. Methane is 25 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
You may have spent a lot of time trying to convince yourself that humans are not responsible for climate change and that the scientists have an agenda. It finally comes down to the question of who are you're gonna trust, and that would depend on your own world view and how much you are willing to change your lifestyle if it comes to that. But keep in mind that most Americans can get ONLY the kind of (mis-)information that "they" want you to get. The timing, amount and nature of information reaching the public can be decided with an amazing - actually, frightening - level of control. Unless someone happens to be working in an environment were such topics are routinely discussed, debated, researched, etc., or someone goes out of his/her way to educate themselves, it is VERY hard to know what's going on. This is a frightening reality.
It was this kind of "successful" media control that enabled the denial industry to first create the doubts on the science, then the motives of those "pushing" climate change. It was easy for them to scare people using Al Gore's name. It was possible for them to create the impression that this whole issue became important only recently. That is why many Americans are not aware of the Kyoto Protocol (signed in 1997), and that many countries went ahead and did achieve reductions in their GHG emissions to BELOW 1990 levels (as agreed upon under Kyoto). These countries are not stupid. However, some of these countries are now reluctant to commit to more ambitious targets to reduce emissions because they have seen what countries like the USA and Canada have done in the last 12 years. Their emissions have gone UP - even when much of their manufacturing has been moved to other countries. Politicians in these countries will cleverly point to China and India, while no one will question them why the hell the emissions went up when manufacturing jobs were lost.
The effect of **additional** CO2 due to the burning of fossil fuels (starting with coal) in warming the atmosphere was hypothesized by a Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, and he published a paper on this topic in 1896 (not 1986). So, it's not a new thing - as the denial industry would want people to believe.
But the question still needs to be answered: what do you do in the face of uncertainty? Even if this "uncertainty" is clearly a manufactured one by paid deniers? If you have the time, please check out this video series on YouTube by a science teacher in Oregon:
How It All Ends
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg
or here:
http://highintel.com/content/how-it-all-ends
It's about decision-making regarding climate change, especially in the face of uncertainty.
Those are really great videos. I completely agree with the fact that we are all uncertain and fallible. I come from the group that was a strong supporter of global warming to, through research and discovery, the group that doesn't believe in it. Or better stated that I believe in global warming, because any idiot can see the graphs, just not all of what is said about it. I don't have a car. I ride the bus and walk. I read and spend time outside. I eat locally grown products and am a pretty good vegetarian(as in I don't preach about it, I hate that). I just know that when I follow facts that things aren't adding up. The world is already bad enough. Great, maybe they will say that the world was saved by creating global governance, but that isn't a world I want to be a part of. This is an incredibly important time in human development and people are either going to stand up to the corporations and say enough, or we will continue to be consumer culture slaves becoming more and more indebted to the global elites pulling the strings. If I am wrong, well I'll be the first to admit it, but if I am right I certainly won't be the one saying I told you so. I'm not much for religion so the closest I can get is to say "may you find Tao". Good Luck.
Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, you 2 are HEROES. I just finished reading the "heroes" article, and you 2 are the example of what patriots ( although I don't really like that word much ) and heroes really are.
You're like the HERO from Marathon; you are doing your job and trying to win this battle! Well, at least there's 2 of you in the government.
I am so tired of "transparency" because I can't see through it at all.
ACCOUNTABILITY is what is needed!
O.K., be ACCOUNTABLE collective EPA! To paraphrase Oliver Twist: "Please sir, may I have more?"
Offsets? cap n trade? people are still really trying to sell this? mercy. i guess i been hanging out with too many people who are still conscious, but I really thought those hoary notions went out with button shoes.
let's review. there is no way that "offsets" are anything but environmentally and socially destructive, with the extra add on that they harm indigenous people, whose farmland is taken over by megacorps to plant their trees. For their "offsets".
What a great couple, ready to risk their career of 20-years (each) with a government agency! I wish more such people would expose and explain using such simple language as to what's being done (or NOT done) to address climate change.
The only reason we are even able to hear about such dissent is because the denial industry has done its job of sabotaging the outcome at Copenhagen last December. They obviously KNOW that whatever bill reaches the Congress will not affect their business as much. The purpose of the "climate-gate" and more importantly its timing was to sabotage the outcome at Copenhagen. Or rather, it was just taking out additional insurance - because the real work of blocking any real change has been going on for more than 15 years, and especially picked up after the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997. They are even spinning some of the failures and shortcomings of the Kyoto treaty (which was clearly meant to be a modest first step) as proof that such treaties do not work.
Watch out for all kinds of arguments clearly meant to confuse the public.
One way to see if any proposal is genuinely intended to tackle climate change is to look for a "cap" - that is, an upper limit on emissions, that is set to be lowered every year. More importantly, one that is binding and can be enforced.
Then look for loopholes to get around this cap. As Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel point out in their video, the provision of "offsets" with up to 2 billion tonnes is a HUGE loophole.
Watch out for other proposals that skirt around a binding "cap" on emissions. Such as the "intensity-based" targets proposed by the Harper government in Canada that is meant to cut down the "emission intensity" for various industries over a period of time. It's like gradually increasing the fuel efficiency of cars, WITHOUT putting a cap on how much gasoline you can burn in a given year. Your car may be more efficient, but if you are driving around more, it doesn't help.
Another gimmick is to allow industries to adopt "voluntary" targets.
Watch out for a sudden concern over the economy and JOBS, and how any action on climate change will affect jobs, "especially" in these times. A related concern would be about "competitiveness", China, India, and so on.
watch the dvd 'age of stupid' to see where we are heading.....
This has been one of my favorite vids for a long time now. Enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T_3WJPYY9g
(it's best to watch on the high resolution setting)
Yes, that was a needed reminder.