Research and Story Ideas

If you have story ideas, suggestions, or would like me to feature your organization's research in the Exchange, please contact me at dbakst@johnlocke.org

All the best,

Daren Bakst, J.D., LL.M.
Legal & Regulatory Policy Analyst
John Locke Foundation


In the Spotlight

Weather Channel Founder Calls Global Warming a Sham

John Coleman, who founded the Weather Channel, recently expressed his view on global warming.

"It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming... It is a SCAM.

Some scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long-term scientific data back in the late 1990's to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental wacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus."

Read More of Coleman's Op-Ed:
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/comments_about_global_warming/


NewsBusters has examined how the media has covered this major story:

"Although this was prominently featured at the Drudge Report for almost 36 hours, the major television news media completely ignored Coleman's words with the exception of CNN and Fox News... Any questions as to why none of the broadcast networks have interviewed Coleman concerning his views on this matter, not even "Good Morning America" which he used to be on?"

Read More from NewsBusters:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/11/13/weather-channel-founder-discusses-global-warming-myth-beck


Research & Perspective from SPN Members & Friends

Lights On: An Energy Policy Survey for California | Thomas Stanton | Pacific Research Institute
"Among the issues discussed in the report is Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which seeks to reduce the carbon content of transportation fuels by 10 percent. Under the plan, transportation fuel sold in California will be subject to a ceiling on the amount of carbon it can emit per unit of energy it contains."
Read More: http://www.pacificresearch.org/publications/id.3410/pub_detail.asp

Taxes and Regulations Good for the Economy? Wait Just a Minute | Roy Cordato | John Locke Foundation
"A News & Observer story published Wednesday focused on an Appalachian State University Energy Center study, which determined that new taxes and regulations meant to fight global warming will generate more than 300,000 jobs for the state and $14 billion in new income. But unfortunately the N&O looked no further, implying that these results should automatically have some respectable status because they came from the Energy Center, the ASU entity that produced the report."
Read More:
http://www.carolinajournal.com/jhdailyjournal/display_jhdailyjournal.html?id=4397

Why So Hot Under the Collar? | John Hood | John Locke Foundation
"A journalist friend of mine asked me the other day why my colleagues and I at the John Locke Foundation have so closely followed - and criticized - the workings of two state global warming panels. The answer is simple: there are few issues of greater significance to the future of North Carolina than getting our energy policies right.

Climate-change alarmists believe that energy prices are too low. Most of their policies either would raise utility and gasoline bills directly or are contingent on future energy-price increases that the activists expect and welcome. Few North Carolinians would agree that the electricity and motor fuels they buy are underpriced. That's why those formulating global-warming action plans prefer to keep the details and cost-benefit projections fuzzy. Close public scrutiny is not their friend."
Read More: http://www.carolinajournal.com/jhdailyjournal/display_jhdailyjournal.html?id=4414

Wising Up to Georgia's Water Woes | Benita M. Dodd and Harold Brown | Georgia Public Policy Foundation
"Conservation and water efficiency, generally good ideas, will not fill the additional capacity needs of the growing population. Taxpayers help utilities subsidize water service to ratepayers. Utilities lose revenue when less water is used, so fining violators reported by the neighborhood snitch is one way to compensate. But Sowell, in his California column, also points out a better way: ‘When an economist hears about a shortage that persists for years, the first question that comes to mind is: Why doesn't the price rise until supply and demand are equal? If you said, ‘the government,' go to the head of the class.'"
Read More: http://www.gppf.org/article.asp?RT=&p=pub/Water/water071102.htm

Death by a Thousand Cuts | John A. Charles, Jr. | Cascade Policy Institute
"All of these regulations are designed to make energy more expensive so that you will use less of it. None of the regulatory proponents can tell you what environmental or social benefits you will see as a result, because there is no known causal link between human activity and climate change. In fact, we might go hundreds of years paying more for energy and get no climate benefits at all."
Read More: http://www.cascadepolicy.org/pdf/pub/newsletter4_07.pdf

The Freedom 21 Agenda for Prosperity | Michael S. Coffman et al. | Freedom 21 Coalition
"The action plan to implement sustainable development was published in a forty-chapter policy document titled Agenda 21, which was signed by 178 nations in 1992 during the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The basic premise behind Agenda 21 is the management of human population, activities and development through a series of environmental treaties administered by the United Nations under "global governance." Central to that effort is the belief that
government should serve as the principal agent to protect the environment and bring prosperity to the people by aggressively regulating private property rights and commerce...

Freedom 21 illustrates that the United Nations bases its concept of sustainable development on the misguided belief that the state should be the principal agent to both safeguard the environment and reduce poverty by managing property rights and the marketplace."
Read More (via the Heartland Institute): http://downloads.heartland.org/Freedom21.pdf

Increasing America's Domestic Fuel Supply by Building New Oil Refineries | D. Sean Shurtleff and H. Sterling Burnett | National Center for Policy Analysis
"Rising oil and gasoline prices have many causes that are beyond the control of the U.S. government. However, government policies have contributed to higher prices by reducing domestic refining capacity, which has limited the supply of gasoline. No new oil refineries have been built in the United States for almost 30 years, and many refineries have closed. Building new oil refineries or expanding existing ones is among the most affordable, effective and reliable ways to increase supplies of gasoline and diesel fuels and to lower prices."
Read More: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba603/

Hooked on Subsidies | Peter Van Doren and Jerry Taylor | Cato Institute
"When it comes to politics, we don't often find ourselves in agreement with Bonnie Raitt or Graham Nash. But now that they are campaigning against new nuclear plants, they're our friends. Raitt, Nash, the Indigo Girls and other vocal rockers are attacking a provision in pending Senate legislation that would award what they call "massively expensive loan guarantees--potentially a virtual blank check from taxpayers" for nuclear power plant construction."
Read More: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8792

Competitive Nuclear Energy Investment: Avoiding Past Policy Mistakes | Jack Spencer| Heritage Foundation
"However, the commercial nuclear energy industry in the U.S. is no longer thriving. Investors hesitate to embrace nuclear power fully, despite significant regulatory relief and economic incentives.

This reluctance is not due to any inherent flaw in the economics of nuclear power or some unavoidable risk. Instead, investors are reacting to the historic role that federal, state, and local governments have played both in encouraging growth in the industry and in bringing on its demise. Investors doubt that federal, state, and local governments will allow nuclear energy to flourish in the long term. They have already lost billions of dollars because of bad public policy."
Read More: http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2086.cfm

Congress Should Not Overlook Benefits of Nuclear Energy | Jack Spencer and Nick Loris | Heritage Foundation
"Congress is considering an assortment of legislative proposals to ostensibly curb greenhouse gases and promote energy independence. Unfortunately, the result of most of these proposals would be less energy, greater dependence on foreign sources of energy, and higher prices.

Most of the bills focus too much on the process of energy production rather than on the product itself. For example, some language under consideration excludes nuclear power by creating mandates that can only be fulfilled with other sources of energy; or it creates so-called renewable portfolio standards that mandate only certain types of energy production."
Read More: http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1704.cfm


The Federal Scene

Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Hold Hearing on the Domestic Energy Industry
"The purpose of the hearing is to receive testimony on whether domestic energy industry will have the available workforce - crafts and professional - to meet our nation's growing energy needs and if gaps exist, what policies the Congress should take to address these gaps."
Read More: http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=1660

Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Holds Hearings on "America's Climate Security Act of 2007, S. 2191
Read More: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Home

EPA Praises Smart Growth Efforts
"'President Bush and EPA see smart growth as smart for our environment, smart for our economy and smart for our quality of life," said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. ‘And together with our vital community partners - including these 2007 award recipients - we are helping America responsibly build toward that healthier, brighter future.'"
Read More:http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/218285308497b90085257393005efb15!OpenDocument


In the States

Minner Hopes to Keep Wind Power Project Alive | The News Journal (Wilimington, Delaware)
Read More: http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071115/NEWS/711150352/1006/NEWS

Governors Join in Creating Regional Pacts on Climate Change | New York Times
Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/washington/15climate.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

Granholm Forms Council to Cut Greenhouse Gases | Crain's Detroit Business
Read More: http://www.crainsdetroit.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071115/REG/71115002/1018/-/-/granholm-forms-council-to-cut-greenhouse-gases

Legislators Hear Global Warming Disputed: Called a Myth of Gore, U.N., Media | Lexington Herald-Leader
Read More: http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/story/231346.html

Governor Schwarzenegger Announces Lawsuit Against U.S. EPA for Failing to Act on California's Tailpipe Emissions Request | CA Office of the Governor
Read More: http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/press-release/8047/


The Other Side

Statement of Environmental Defense on the Environmental Aspects of Wal-Mart's Sustainability Report | Environmental Defense
Read More: http://www.environmentaldefense.org/pressrelease.cfm?contentID=7323

Global Warming Index: Costs of Inaction | Environmental Defense
Read More: http://www.environmentaldefense.org/article.cfm?contentID=7321

Ninth Circuit Tosses Out Bush Administration Fuel Economy Standards for Light Trucks | Sierra Club
Read More: http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/releases/pr2007-11-15.asp