ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING NEWSLETTER 16 JUNE 2014

This week's edition includes: If you need older URLs contact George at [email protected]. Please Note: This newsletter contains articles that offer differing points of view regarding , energy and other environmental issues. Any opinions expressed in this publication are the responses of the readers alone and do not represent the positions of the Environmental Engineering Division or the ASME. George Holliday

This week's edition includes: 1. ENVIRONMENT A U.S. SUPREME COURT HOLDS STATUTE OF REPOSE IS NOT PREEMPTED BY CERCLA FEDERALLY REQUIRED COMMENCEMENT DATE On June 9, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 decision that a North Carolina statute of repose is not preempted by the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA). CTS Corp. v. Waldburger et al., No. 13-399 (June 9, 2014). The North Carolina statute of repose requires that tort lawsuits must be brought within 10 years after the defendant’s last culpable act. The Supreme Court, reversing the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, distinguished statutes of repose from statutes of limitations, which are preempted by CERCLA in certain circumstances. CERCLA preempts state statutes of limitations to the extent that they conflict with CERCLA’s approach that the limitations period begins to run only when the plaintiff discovers, or reasonably should have discovered, that the harm was caused by the contaminant. The Supreme Court distinguished the objective of a statute of repose—to provide finality to defendants after a legislatively-determined period of time following the culpable conduct—with the objective of a statute of limitations—to encourage plaintiffs to bring lawsuits in a timely manner. Based on this distinction, the Supreme Court determined that CERCLA’s preemptive language is not applicable to statutes of repose. The lawsuit at issue involved contamination of well water, alleged by a group of landowners to have originated from storage of chemicals at CTS’s electronics facility in Asheville, North Carolina. The district court had dismissed the suit after determining that CTS’s 1987 sale of the facility placed the last alleged act or omission of that company outside the North Carolina statute of repose’s 10-year window. Env140616 Rodger Zygmunt B. WHITE HOUSE CONTINUES TO BOAST 'ALL OF THE ABOVE' STRATEGY IN NEW REPORT Robin Bravender, E&E reporter Published: Thursday, May 29, 2014 The Obama administration wants to have it all when it comes to energy production and climate change. In a new report released today, the White House touts President Obama's "all of the above" energy strategy -- alongside the administration's efforts to curb emissions. "The President continues to push on multiple fronts to strike the right balance of energy sources that will power our economy forward," the White House said today in a statement. "The President's plan is three-pronged: to support economic growth and job creation, to enhance energy security, and to lay the foundation for -- and take critical steps towards -- a low-carbon energy future." The report comes as the administration prepares next week to propose major new rules to clamp down on power plants' greenhouse gas emissions. Obama yesterday framed climate change as "a creeping national security crisis" during a major foreign policy speech at the U.S. Military Academy's graduation ceremony (Greenwire, May 28). In the new report, the White House touts trends in beefed-up production across sectors like oil, natural gas and renewables -- noting that some of those trends predate the Obama administration. The administration is supporting those trends through "environmentally responsible" production of oil and natural gas, the White House said, while advancing the growth of energy sources with low or zero carbon emissions like wind, solar, other renewables and nuclear power. The White House notes that natural gas consumption has risen 18 percent since 2005; total energy from wind, solar and geothermal has more than doubled since 2009; and the is a leading producer of petroleum and natural gas. Meanwhile, the United States has cut its total emissions more than any other nation since 2005, and the administration says it is promoting energy efficiency and supporting "an ambitious program" of carbon capture, utilization and storage for coal and natural gas power plants and for industrial facilities, according to the report. The "all of the above" rhetoric from the White House has come under fire from critics on the left and right. A coalition of major environmental organizations earlier this year wrote to Obama, asking him to scrap the phrase and arguing that it is "fundamentally at odds" with his stated goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions (E&E Daily, Jan. 17). But the administration didn't budge. Obama's adviser John Podesta -- whose arrival at the White House this year was hailed as a victory for green groups -- shot back with a letter critical of the groups' request. "The president has been leading the transition to low carbon energy sources and understands the need to consider a balanced approach to all forms of energy development, including oil and gas production," he wrote back (Greenwire, Jan. 20). Shortly afterward, the "all of the above" approach made its way into Obama's State of the Union speech, prompting more criticism from the left in addition to attacks from the right that the administration isn't truly committed to boosting fossil fuel production (E&E Daily, Jan. 29). Arnold Feldman

C. NETL's May 2014 Carbon Storage Newsletter Dear Carbon Storage Newsletter subscriber, Check out the May 2014 edition of the National Energy Technology Laboratory’s (NETL) Carbon Storage Newsletter to stay up to date on recent public and private sector carbon storage news from around the world. Carbon Storage News from Around the World: · The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Tampa Electric Company announced the startup of a pilot project to demonstrate carbon capture technology in a coal gasification unit at the Polk Power Plant Unit-1 in Tampa, Florida. · The Big Sky Carbon Sequestration Partnership (BSCSP) broke ground for the first production well for the Kevin Dome Carbon Storage project. · Company officials announced that construction on Shell Canada’s Quest carbon capture and storage (CCS) project has reached the halfway point and the facility is expected to begin operation in late 2015. · Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P. announced it will expand carbon dioxide (CO2) infrastructure in Colorado and expand the Cortez Pipeline for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects. · Shell has joined a joint industry project to study a potential CO2-EOR industry in the North Sea. · The Energy Technologies Institute is developing a CO2 monitoring system using marine robotics. · Elk Petroleum announced that it has acquired wells in Nebraska to conduct CO2-EOR operations. · CO2 Solutions Inc. announced that it has achieved technical performance milestones for its oil sands project. · Ricardo-AEA won a contract to study the European Union Directive on CCS technology. · Representatives from CMC Research Institutes, Inc. and the United Kingdom Carbon Capture and Storage Research Center signed a memorandum of understanding. Research Articles: · Resolving or managing uncertainties for carbon capture and storage: Lessons from historical analogues · When to invest in carbon capture and storage technology: A mathematical model · Perceptions of sub-seabed carbon dioxide storage in Scotland and implications for policy: A qualitative study · Predictors of risk and benefit perception of CCS in regions with different stages of deployment · Experimental Observation of Permeability Changes In Dolomite at CO2 [Storage] Conditions · Inverse Modeling of Water-Rock-CO2 Batch Experiments: Potential Impacts on Groundwater Resources at Carbon [Storage] Sites · Effects of Carbon Dioxide on the Mobilization of Metals from [Formations] · Control of CO2 Permeability Change in Different Rank Coals during Pressure Depletion: An Experimental Study · 3D geomechanical modeling for CO2 geological storage in faulted formations. A case study in an offshore northern Adriatic reservoir, Italy · Microfluidic Studies of CO2 [Storage] by Frustrated Lewis Pairs · Pyrogenic carbon stocks and storage mechanisms in podzolic soils of fire-affected Quebec black spruce forests · Soil carbon stock and accumulation in young mangrove forests · Reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions by energy efficiency measures and international trading: A bottom-up modeling for the U.S. iron and steel sector SAVE THE DATE! DOE/NETL Carbon Storage R&D Project Review Meeting. DOE’s 2014 Carbon Storage R&D Project Review meeting will be held at the Sheraton Station Square Hotel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, on August 12-14, 2014. Among a number of other technical sessions, this year’s meeting will include plenary sessions on a number of carbon storage topics and lessons learned over the past 10 years from the Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships (RCSPs). Participants will share knowledge and resources to assist in planning future carbon storage efforts. Based on past attendance, this meeting is expected to attract 200 or more attendees. Did you know that the United States has at least 2,400 billion metric tons of potential CO2 storage resources in saline formations, oil and gas reservoirs, and unmineable coal? Download DOE’s United States Carbon Storage Atlas to learn more. Be sure to read current event information and other special announcements in your May 2014 Carbon Storage Newsletter from DOE’s NETL. Learn more about DOE's Carbon Storage Program. Please share this email with anyone interested in carbon storage technology news, projects, and events. Arnold Feldman

D. WHY CLIMATE CHANGE DOESN’T SCARE ME Posted on June 7, 2014 by Guest Blogger Guest essay by Walter Starck Be scared, the experts tell us, be very scared. Well there is certainly cause for concern, but not about those “rising” temperatures, which refuse to confirm researchers’ computer models. A far bigger worry is the corruption that has turned ‘science’ into a synonym for shameless, cynical careerism Despite the increasingly shrill insistence by climate alarmists that we face an imminent catastrophe, reason and evidence continue to indicate otherwise. Both the theoretical understanding of anthropogenic global warming (a.k.a. climate change) and the empirical evidence remain highly uncertain, tainted by dubious claims and manipulations. While the basic physics of infrared heat absorption by CO2 is well established, both theoretical understanding and real world evidence strongly indicate the effect of increased CO2 in the complex dynamics of the global climate system has been greatly exaggerated. The amount of back-radiated infrared energy from the planet’s surface is limited and is not increased by more CO2 in the air above. Although a small amount of CO2 in the air results in significant warming, this effect is quickly saturated. At pre-industrial levels of CO2 the portion of the IR spectrum in the absorption bands of CO2 was already 99.9% absorbed within a few tens of metres of the surface. Although doubling CO2 must halve the distance over which such absorption occurs, any increased heating near the surface is continuously distributed into a much larger volume of the atmosphere by wind, convection and turbulence. How close to the surface initial warming occurs has minimal effect on the total amount of heat energy being absorbed or on the temperature of the much larger volume of atmosphere into which it is being mixed. http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2014/06/climate-change-doesnt-scare/ or http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/07/why-climate-change-doesnt-scare-me/ Editor’s Note: This is an outstanding discussion of “so called Climate Change” and the errors used to justify reducing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. GHH

E. NOAA SHOWS ‘THE PAUSE’ IN THE U.S. SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECORD OVER NEARLY A DECADE Posted on June 7, 2014 by Anthony Watts

After years of waiting, NOAA has finally made a monthly dataset on the U.S. Climate Reference Network available in a user friendly way via their recent web page upgrades. This data is from state-of-the-art ultra-reliable triple redundant weather stations placed on pristine environments. As a result, these temperature data need none of the adjustments that plague the older surface temperature networks, such as USHCN and GHCN, which have been heavily adjusted to attempt corrections for a wide variety of biases. Using NOAA’s own USCRN data, which eliminates all of the squabbles over the accuracy of and the adjustment of temperature data, we can get a clear plot of pristine surface data. It could be argued that a decade is too short and that the data is way too volatile for a reasonable trend analysis, but let’s see if the new state-of-the-art USCRN data shows warming. A series of graphs from NOAA follow; plotting Average, Maximum, and Minimum surface temperatures follow along with trend analysis and original source data to allow interested parties to replicate it. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/07/noaa-shows-the-pause-in-the-u-s-surface-temperature- record-over-nearly-a-decade/#more-110995 Editor’s Note: The graphs in the report are of better quality than presented here. GHH

F. L.A. SPILL CASE HAS EXPOSED FLAW IN PIPELINE SAFETY OVERSIGHT On March 17, a Los Angeles-area oil pipeline spilled between 1,500 and 3,000 gallons of crude onto a neighborhood street, surprising residents and creating a noxious mess that took weeks to fully rectify http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20140603/la-spill-case-has-exposed-flaw-pipeline-safety- oversight David Sassoon

G. HOW AMBITIOUS IS EPA'S CLIMATE CHANGE RULE, REALLY? Brandishing her pen on Monday morning to sign proposed rules that would significantly cut carbon dioxide emissions from the nation's electric power plants, Environmental Protection Agency head Gina McCarthy said: "This is the opening of our second round of engagement." http://insideclimatenews.org/carbon-copy/20140603/how-ambitious-epas-climate-change-rule- really David Sassoon

H. 7 REASONS WHY WALL ST. ISN'T BUYING THE 'WAR ON COAL' Monday's unveiling of the Obama administration's proposal to cut carbon emissions triggered a withering response from politicians and business groups tied to the coal industry—the most vocal of them proclaiming Obama's "war on coal" would decimate jobs and companies, create the next energy crisis and devastate the U.S. economy. http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20140606/7-reasons-why-wall-st-isnt-buying-war-coal David Sassoon

I. OPINION: GLOBAL WARMING CLAIMS ARE PRIMARILY AND DELIBERATELY A PRODUCT OF BUREAUCRATIC POLITICAL ACTIVITY Posted on June 8, 2014 by Anthony Watts Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism. – Mary McCarthy Guest essay by Dr. Tim Ball The Daily Mail headline says, “Canada bans government meteorologists from talking about climate change.” It implies government censorship, but is actually another part of the political battle over global warming. It is reminiscent of James Hansen’s false claim that the Bush White House was muzzling him. John Theon, his NASA boss at the time, says in a US Senate Report it was untrue. There is always a story behind a headline and it is rarely what the media report or imply. This Canadian story forewarns of the problems of controlling bureaucracy. The Obama administration used the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) and Administrative Law to bypass the checks and balances of the people (Congress). By losing the lawsuit brought against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by the State of Massachusetts that said the EPA were not fulfilling their role of protecting the people from “harmful substances”, they triggered arbitration by SCOTUS. EPA now imposes Obama’s political ambitions through the bureaucracy. The question is how do you control a bureaucracy? The simple answer, as the US Founding Fathers intended, was cut off funding, but like all things political it’s easier said than done. Establishing Bureaucratic Political Control. Maurice Strong took ideas from his involvement with the Club of Rome and transformed them into a bureaucratic structure. He created the United Nations Environment Programme within which was formulated Agenda 21, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). One article summarized his abilities as follows. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/08/opinion‐global‐warming‐claims‐are‐primarily‐and‐ deliberately‐a‐product‐of‐bureaucratic‐political‐activity/

2. SAFETY A. DEEPWATER HORIZON OIL SPILL LINKED TO FAILED BLOWOUT PREVENTER Chemical Safety Board Says a Piece of Safety Equipment Punctured Pipe, Releasing Oil Federal investigators probing the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster say a critical piece of safety equipment helped trigger the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The report by the Chemical Safety Board, an independent investigative arm of the federal government, renews questions about the effectiveness of blowout preventers, giant sets of valves that are supposed to seal off an oil well in an emergency. The draft report concludes that the pipe running from the subsea oil well to the drilling rig through the blowout preventer, or BOP, buckled around the time a surge of natural gas from the well ignited, causing an explosion which killed 11 crew members. The pipe was damaged in such a way that the blowout preventer couldn't cut it and seal it off, the board said. The buckling (pressure buckling solved by Arthur Lubinski in 1961) occurred because of big differences in pressure inside and outside the pipe, which ran through about 5,000 feet of water. The blowout preventer itself punctured the pipe, the board said, allowing oil to start leaking into the Gulf of Mexico close to the seabed. About five million barrels of oil flowed into the gulf before the well was closed off, 87 days later. "The pipe buckling—unlikely to be detected by the drilling crew—could render the BOP inoperable in an emergency," said Mary Beth Mulcahy, who led the technical analysis for the board. "This hazard could impact even the best offshore companies, those who are maintaining their blowout preventers and other equipment to a high standard." The American Petroleum Institute, the energy industry's trade group, criticized the report, saying it "appears to omit significant facts and ignores the tremendous strides made to enhance the safety of offshore operations." The federal government expects to issue a new rule later this year on blowout preventers BP, which owned the well about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, said Transocean Ltd. Switzerland: SWX Europe June 6, 2014 3:32 pm Volume : 209,317 P/E Ratio 9.80 Market Cap Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Li... which owned the drilling rig and the blowout preventer, "failed to, among other things, properly maintain the BOP and control the well." Transocean said the report "confirms that the Deepwater Horizon BOP had been tested successfully in accordance with regulatory requirements and activated as intended at the time of the incident." WSJ 6 June 2014.

3. TRANSPORTATION A. NOTHING OF INTEREST

COMMENTS: A. OBAMA’S NEW POWERPLANT CO2 RULES: GUARANTEED TO SUCCEED (RETROACTIVELY) June 2nd, 2014

It’s hard to find anything new to say about the new EPA rules being announced by the Administration today that seek to lower CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants by 30% by 2030. Job-killing, poverty-exacerbating, electricity rate-raising, unmeasurable temperature-benefitting. And with no demonstrable technology for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), there is no way to make coal-fired plants meet the new rule. Roy Spencer http://www.drroyspencer.com/

B. BUSTED: TOL TAKES ON COOK’S ’97% CONSENSUS’ CLAIM WITH A RE-ANALYSIS, SHOWING THE CLAIM IS ‘UNFOUNDED’ Posted on June 4, 2014 by Anthony Watts

A new paper by Dr. Richard Tol published today in ScienceDirect, journal of Energy Policy, shows that the Cook et al. paper claiming that there is a 97% consensus among scientists is not just impossible to reproduce (since Cook is withholding data) but a veritable statistical train wreck rife with bias, classification errors, poor data quality, and inconsistency in the ratings process. The full paper is available below. Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re- analysis Richard S.J. Tol dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2014.04.045 Abstract A claim has been that 97% of the scientific literature endorses anthropogenic climate change (Cook et al., 2013. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 024024). This claim, frequently repeated in debates about climate policy, does not stand. A trend in composition is mistaken for a trend in endorsement. Reported results are inconsistent and biased. The sample is not representative and s validation test shows that׳contains many irrelevant papers. Overall, data quality is low. Cook the data are invalid. Data disclosure is incomplete so that key results cannot be reproduced or tested. Conclusion and policy implications The conclusions of Cook et al. are thus unfounded. There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct. Cook et al., however, failed to demonstrate this. Instead, they gave further cause to those who believe that climate researchers are secretive (as data were held back) and incompetent (as the analysis is flawed). It will take decades or longer to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero—the only way to stabilize its atmospheric concentration. During that time, electoral fortunes will turn. Climate policy will not succeed unless it has broad societal support, at levels comparable to other public policies such as universal education or old-age support. Well-publicized but faulty analyses like the one by Cook et al. only help to further polarize the climate debate. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421514002821

C. NEW PAPER: MAN-MADE AEROSOLS HAVE HAD A NET COOLING EFFECT SINCE BEGINNING OF INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Posted on June 5, 2014 by Anthony Watts

Historical Sulfur Dioxide Emissions from 1850 More aerosols, means more clouds, which means cooler temperatures. Now that we are cleaning up aerosols worldwide, this may explain why the Earth is getting slightly warmer – more sunlight reaches the surface A paper published today in Science claims the transition from “pristine” to “slightly polluted” atmosphere at the beginning of the industrial revolution in the 18th century had a “dramatic aerosol effect [of increasing] clouds” over the oceans. According to the authors, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/05/new-paper-man-made-aerosols-have-had-a-net-cooling- effect-since-beginning-of-industrial-revolution/#more-110879 http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/

D. THE PAUSE CONTINUES – STILL NO GLOBAL WARMING FOR 17 YEARS 9 MONTHS Posted on June 4, 2014 by Anthony Watts By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley According to the RSS satellite data, whose value for May 2014 has just been published, the global warming trend in the 17 years 9 [months] since September 1996 is zero (Fig. 1). The 213 months without global warming represent more than half the 425-month satellite data record since January 1979. No one now in high school has lived through global warming.

Figure 1. RSS monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies (dark blue) and trend (thick bright blue line), September 1996 to May 2014, showing no trend for 17 years 9 months. The hiatus period of 17 years 9 months is the farthest back one can go in the RSS satellite temperature record and still show a zero trend. But the length of the pause in global warming, significant though it now is, is of less importance than the ever-growing discrepancy between the temperature trends predicted by models and the less exciting real-world temperature change that has been observed. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/04/the-pause-continues-still-no-global-warming-for-17- years-9-months/

E. ANALYSIS: SKEPTICAL ‘HEDGE’ WORDING CREEPING INTO NEWSPAPER ARTICLES Posted on June 4, 2014 by Anthony Watts From the University of Colorado at Boulder Reporters using more ‘hedging’ words in climate change articles, CU-Boulder study finds The amount of “hedging” language—words that suggest room for doubt—used by prominent newspapers in articles about climate change has increased over time, according to a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder. The study, published in the journal Environmental Communication, also found that newspapers in the U.S. use more hedging language in climate stories than their counterparts in Spain. “We were surprised to find newspapers increased their use of hedging language, since the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that humans are contributing to it has substantially strengthened over time,” said Adriana Bailey, a doctoral student at CU-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, and lead author of the paper. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/04/analysis-skeptical-hedge-wording-creeping-into- newspaper-articles/ F. ANTARCTIC SEA ICE INCREASE AND GLOBAL WARMING Posted on June 6, 2014 by Anthony Watts by Norm Buske Although I am a long-time, casual skeptic of global warming, I agree that evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH) is compelling. The warming of the NTH explains progressive loss of Arctic sea ice. Meanwhile, the average temperature of the planet surface has evidently stabilized for the last dozen years or so: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/06/antarctic-sea-ice-increase-and-global-warming/#more- 110922

G. CHINESE STUDY ‘IMPLIES THAT THE “MODERN MAXIMUM” OF SOLAR ACTIVITY AGREES WELL WITH THE RECENT GLOBAL WARMING’ Posted on June 5, 2014 by Anthony Watts

This shows comparisons between the 11-year running averaged Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) and the temperature (T) anomalies of the Earth (global, land, ocean). From Science China Press [h/t to Mark Sellers] Has solar activity influence on the Earth’s global warming? A recent study demonstrates the existence of significant resonance cycles and high correlations between solar activity and the Earth’s averaged surface temperature during centuries. This provides a new clue to reveal the phenomenon of global warming in recent years. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/05/chinese-study-implies-that-the-modern-maximum-of- solar-activity-agrees-well-with-the-recent-global-warming/#more-110862

H. EPA’S NEXT WAVE OF JOB-KILLING CO2 REGULATIONS Posted on June 5, 2014 by Anthony Watts Unleashing EPA bureaucrats on American livelihoods, living standards and liberties By David Rothbard and Craig Rucker Supported by nothing but assumptions, faulty computer models and outright falsifications of what is actually happening on our planet, President Obama, his Environmental Protection Agency and their allies have issued more economy-crushing rules that they say will prevent dangerous manmade climate change . Under the latest EPA regulatory onslaught (645 pages of new rules, released June 2), by 2030 states must slash carbon dioxide emissions by 30% below 2005 levels http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/05/epas-next-wave-of-job-killing-co2-regulations/#more- 110840

I. NOVEL IDEA: CLEANING THE AIR WITH ROOF TILES Posted on June 4, 2014 by Anthony Watts Recently WUWT carried a story about “solar roads” which had a ridiculous premise with a big batch of “feel good” Eco-egineering that is technically and economically implausible. This idea for catalytic reduction of smog looks far more plausible and less expensive. Students develop titanium dioxide roof tile coating that removes up to 97 percent of smog- causing nitrogen oxides RIVERSIDE, Calif. (www.ucr.edu) — A team of University of California, Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering students created a roof tile coating that when applied to an average-sized residential roof breaks down the same amount of smog-causing nitrogen oxides per year [produced by] as a car driven 11,000 miles. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/04/novel-idea-cleaning-the-air-with-roof-tiles/#more- 110849

J. CLIMATE CHANGE WEEKLY #129: OBAMA ANNOUNCES ECONOMICALLY DEVASTATING CO2 RESTRICTIONS The Obama administration announced proposed power plant restrictions requiring a 30 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 levels. The regulations allow states some latitude in formulating plans to meet their mandated emissions cuts, but states will almost certainly shut down most or all of their coal power plants to meet the mandates. Coal is the least expensive widely available source of electricity, but it also emits the most carbon dioxide. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce published a report finding EPA’s carbon dioxide restrictions will kill 224,000 jobs and reduce the nation’s economic output by $51 billion per year. The carbon dioxide restrictions will cost the average U.S. household nearly $500 per year. In 2009, President Obama urged Congress to pass legislation severely restricting carbon dioxide emissions. Congress rejected the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill despite Democrats holding large majorities in both chambers of Congress. Democrats and Republicans alike criticized the Obama administration’s newly proposed restrictions and the Obama administration’s decision to circumvent Congress through EPA. U.S. Senators Mark Pryor (AR), Mark Begich (AK), and Mary Landrieu (LA) spoke out against the restrictions, as did U.S. Senate candidates Alison Lundgeran Grimes (KY) and Natalie Tennant (WV). “While it is important to reduce carbon in the atmosphere, this should not be achieved by EPA regulations,” said Landrieu. “Congress should set the terms, goals and timeframe. Greater use of natural gas and stronger efficiency measures adopted by the industry have already helped us reduce carbon emissions to their lowest levels in 20 years, and this should continue.” “This proposed regulation is all pain and no gain. This is supposed to be about climate, but even if you trust the United Nations climate models, this regulation would result in no climatically relevant decrease in warming,” said Daniel Simmons, director of state affairs at the Institute for Energy Research. “In fact, EPA didn’t even bother to run a climate model to show how this would affect climate because they knew the results were too small.” http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2014/06/06/chris-christie-administration-endorses- obamas-carbon-dioxide-restrict-0

K. SENSITIVITY? SCHMENSITIVITY! Posted on June 9, 2014 by Guest Blogger Even on business as usual, there will be <1° Kelvin warming this century By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley Curiouser and curiouser. As one delves into the leaden, multi-thousand-page text of the IPCC’s 2013 Fifth Assessment Report, which reads like a conversation between modelers about the merits of their models rather than a serious climate assessment, it is evident that they have lost the thread of the calculation. There are some revealing inconsistencies. Let us expose a few of them. The IPCC has slashed its central near-term prediction of global warming from 0.28 K/decade in 1990 via 0.23 K/decade in the first draft of IPCC (2013) to 0.17 K/decade in the published draft. Therefore, the biggest surprise to honest climate researchers reading the report is why the long- term or equilibrium climate sensitivity has not been slashed as well. In 1990, the IPCC said equilibrium climate sensitivity would be 3 [1.5, 4.5] K. In 2007, its estimates were 3.3 [2.0, 4.5] K. In 2013 it reverted to the 1990 interval [1.5, 4.5] K per CO2 doubling. However, in a curt, one-line footnote, it abandoned any attempt to provide a central estimate of climate sensitivity – the key quantity in the entire debate about the climate. The footnote says models cannot agree. Frankly, I was suspicious about what that footnote might be hiding. So, since my feet are not yet fit to walk on, I have spent a quiet weekend doing some research. The results were spectacular. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/09/sensitivity-schmensitivity/

L. WHY AUTOMATIC TEMPERATURE ADJUSTMENTS DON’T WORK Posted on June 10, 2014 by Anthony Watts The automatic adjustment procedure is almost guaranteed to produce spurious, artificial warming, and here’s why. Guest essay by Bob Dedekind Auckland, NZ, June 2014 In a recent comment on Lucia’s blog The Blackboard, Zeke Hausfather had this to say about the NCDC temperature adjustments: “The reason why station values in the distant past end up getting adjusted is due to a choice by NCDC to assume that current values are the “true” values. Each month, as new station data come in, NCDC runs their pairwise homogenization algorithm which looks for non-climatic breakpoints by comparing each station to its surrounding stations. When these breakpoints are detected, they are removed. If a small step change is detected in a 100-year station record in the year 2006, for example, removing that step change will move all the values for that station prior to 2006 up or down by the amount of the breakpoint removed. As long as new data leads to new breakpoint detection, the past station temperatures will be raised or lowered by the size of the breakpoint.” In other words, an automatic computer algorithm searches for breakpoints, and then automatically adjusts the whole prior record up or down by the amount of the breakpoint. This is not something new; it’s been around for ages, but something has always troubled me about it. It’s something that should also bother NCDC, but I suspect confirmation bias has prevented them from even looking for errors. You see, the automatic adjustment procedure is almost guaranteed to produce spurious, artificial warming, and here’s why. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/10/why-automatic-temperature-adjustments-dont- work/#more-111188

M. SCIENTIST MCKITRICK DEBUNKS GLOBAL WARMING HEALTH CLAIMS Scientist Ross McKitrick debunked the Obama administration’s assertions that global warming and power plant emissions are causing thousands of premature deaths each year. McKitrick applied the Obama administration’s statistical assertions to historical mortality data and found the administration claimed air pollution caused more deaths than the total number of people who died from all causes combined. http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/3602072824001

N. OBAMA’S NATIONAL CLIMATE ASSESSMENT DRAWS SHARP CRITICISM The Obama administration’s National Climate Assessment landed with a thud after being sharply criticized on a variety of fronts. Senior Fellow James M. Taylor pointed out staffers from activist groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, Planet Forward, The Nature Conservancy, and Second Nature had lead roles writing the report, which generated a great deal of media attention to the assessment’s lack of objectivity. A United Press International article on the assessment noted in its lead paragraph that Taylor described the assessment as “laughable” for its bias. Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Peter Ferrara debunked many of the assessment’s specific assertions in a column he wrote for Forbes.com. CLIMATE CHANGE WEEKLY #129:

O. SCIENTIST TELLS HOUSE COMMITTEE WHY HE RECENTLY BECAME A SKEPTIC Environmental scientist Daniel Botkin, who has held faculty positions at Yale University, the University of California, and George Mason University, told the U.S. House Subcommittee on Science, Space, and Technology that United Nations global warming predictions have failed miserably and are likely to continue doing so in the future. Botkin emphasized that he used to subscribe to global warming alarmism but recently became a skeptic after discovering crucial flaws in the alarmist narrative. http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-113-SY- WState-DBotkin-20140529.pdf

P. ARCTIC SEA ICE EXTENT

Don Shaw

Q. ASME. CAPITOL UPDATE - ADMINISTRATION REPORT DETAILS NATION'S ENERGY STRATEGY On June 2nd, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a new "Clean Power Plan" proposal aimed at cutting carbon emissions from existing power plants. Power plants account for roughly one-third of all domestic greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, and are the single largest source of carbon emissions. While there are limits in place for the level of arsenic, mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particle pollution that power plants can emit, there are currently no national limits on carbon emission levels. Editor’s Note: This ASME statement is not true. Carbon in the form of particulates and opacity are regulated. GHH The EPA plan would allow states and companies to employ a variety of measures — including new renewable-energy and energy-efficiency projects "outside the fence," or away from the power plant site — to meet the target for carbon reduction. This approach aims to keep consumer electricity prices from rising too sharply. However, this approach could also lead to the first legal challenges to the rule. Regulation of pollutants by the EPA has historically been limited to "bolt- on" controls at the point of emissions. In these instances, plant operators could be held liable if they failed to meet mandated targets. By allowing for an "outside the fence" approach to reduce overall costs, critics argue that the EPA is outside their legal authority and also leaves open the question of who is liable for meeting the new targets. According to the EPA's proposal, the plan could:  Cut carbon emissions (CO2) from the power sector by 30 percent nationwide below 2005 levels, which is equal to the emissions from powering more than half the homes in the United States for one year;  Cut particle pollution, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide by more than 25 percent;  Avoid up to 6,600 premature deaths, (CO2 is breathed in and out by all living things) up to 150,000 asthma attacks in children, (CO2 has never been shown to cause asthma, GHH) and up to 490,000 missed work or school days—providing up to $93 billion in climate and public health benefits (the economic justifiation is not contained in the prosed rule, GHH); and,  Shrink electricity bills roughly 8 percent by increasing energy efficiency and reducing demand in the electricity system (How can tis be true when separating and coppressing CO2 requires 25% to 30% of the plant total capacity? GHH) The Clean Power Plan would be implemented through a state-federal partnership under which states identify a path forward using either current or new electricity production and pollution control policies to meet the goals of the proposal. The EPA's outline provides guidelines for states to develop plans to meet state-specific goals to reduce carbon emissions, and gives states flexibility to design programs appropriate to their unique situation. Under the EPA's proposal, states would choose a mix of generation (eliminates coal production jobs, abandon useable coal fired generating plants: citizenes will have to pay for these changes with higher energy bills. GHH), energy efficiency, and demand-side management policies to meet the new targets. The proposal also allows states to partner and develop multi-state plans.

R. LATEST GLOBAL TEMPS

Latest Global Average Tropospheric Temperatures Since 1979, NOAA satellites have been carrying instruments which measure the natural microwave thermal emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere. The intensity of the signals these microwave radiometers measure at different microwave frequencies is directly proportional to the temperature of different, deep layers of the atmosphere. Every month, and I update global temperature datasets (see here that represent the piecing together of the temperature data from a total of fourteen instruments flying on different satellites over the years. As of June 2013, the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A) flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite has been removed from the processing due to spurious warming and replaced by the average of the NOAA-15, NOAA-18, NOAA-19, and Metop-A AMSUs. The graph above represents the latest update; updates are usually made within the first week of every month. Contrary to some reports, the satellite measurements are not calibrated in any way with the global surface-based thermometer records of temperature. They instead use their own on-board precision redundant platinum resistance thermometers (PRTs) calibrated to a laboratory reference standard before launch Roy Spencer

Regards George