Good news for taxpayers. IBD:

Tesla’s announcement of a new stock and notes offering, partly to pay back an Energy Department loan early and with CEO Elon Musk’s participation, boosted its shares more than 5% after hours Wednesday. The electric car maker’s stock was up 1.9% during the regular session, and 150% for the year through Wednesday.

After failures of government-backed energy outfits such as solar manufacturer Solyndra, and amid the shaky status of that other federal loan-funded luxury electric car maker — Fisker Automotive — Tesla Motors (TSLA) chief [Elon] Musk has been intent on getting Tesla’s own government loan balance down, and fast.

The company said in a press release emailed after the market close that it expects to raise about $830 million through public offerings of about 2.7 million shares of common stock and $450 million in convertible senior notes due 2018, as well as through options granted to underwriters and private placement.

“Tesla intends to use the net proceeds from the offerings to prepay Tesla’s outstanding loan from the United States Department of Energy, pay the cost of convertible note hedge transactions and for general corporate purposes,” the company said in its announcement.

The rest here.

There are currently nine petitions asking the Court to review the “EPA’s interpretation of both the Clean Air Act and the Supreme Court’s April 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA.” Marlo Lewis of CEI recently wrote in Forbes to explain the issue:

As the EPA reads the statute, “major” stationary sources – entities that emit 250 or 100 tons per year of a regulated air pollutant – must obtain permits from environmental agencies to construct or operate their facilities. Carbon dioxide became a regulated air pollutant when the EPA’s greenhouse gas motor vehicle standards took effect on Jan. 2, 2011.

Whereas only large industrial facilities emit 250 or even 100 tons of conventional air pollutants per year, literally millions of small, non-industrial facilities – office buildings, restaurants, schools – emit CO2 in those quantities. The EPA and its state counterparts suddenly faced the prospect of having to process 81,000 pre-construction permits annually (instead of 280) and 6.1 million operating permits annually (instead of 15,000).

That gigantic work load would overwhelm their administrative resources unless, the EPA estimated, agencies hire 320,000 additional full-time staff at a cost of $21 billion annually. Otherwise, ever-growing bottlenecks would paralyze environmental enforcement and freeze economic development. Both the application ofcomplex and costly permitting requirements to tens of thousands of non-industrial facilities and the quantum jump in taxpayer burden qualify as “extreme measures.”

And Reuters has the latest:

With a barrage of legal briefs, a coalition of business groups and Republican-leaning states are taking their fight against Obama administration climate change regulations to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other industry groups, along with states such as Texas and Virginia, have filed nine petitions in recent weeks asking the justices to review four U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations that are designed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

If the court were to take up any one of the petitions, it would be the biggest environmental case since Massachusetts v. EPA, the landmark 2007 decision in which the justices ruled that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that could be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The court’s decision on whether to take up any of the petitions, likely to come in October, could help shape or shatter the administration’s efforts to solidify its climate change agenda before President Obama leaves office in 2017.

The EPA regulations are among Obama’s most significant tools to address climate change after the U.S. Senate scuttled in 2010 his effort to pass a federal law that would, among other things, have set a cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

The petitions give the court various options for cutting back on, or even overturning the 2007 ruling, according to John Dernbach, a law professor at Widener University in Pennsylvania, who represented climate scientists in the 2007 case.

If the court decides to hear any of the petitions, it “would be opening a really big can of worms,” he said.

The rest here.

CNNMoney reports:

Booming North American oil production is reshaping world markets and will help satisfy the growing thirst for oil in the developing world, according to the International Energy Agency.

“North America has set off a supply shock that is sending ripples throughout the world,” said IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven. “This is helping to ease a market that was relatively tight for several years.”

Growing North American production will help the U.S. begin to meet its own energy demands, leading it to cut back on imports that will instead start flowing to emerging markets.

In its latest report, the Paris-based IEA forecasts that North America’s oil supply will grow by nearly 4 million barrels per day between 2012 to 2018, amounting to nearly 50% of global output growth over that period.

“The shock waves of rising U.S. shale gas, light tight oil and Canadian oil sands production are reaching virtually all recesses of the global oil market,” stated the IEA report.

The U.S. is experiencing an oil boom, in large part thanks to high world prices and new technologies, including hydraulic fracking, that have made the extraction of oil and gas from shale rock commercially viable.

The rest here.

You mean jobs from evil fracking? Or does he mean jobs from Keystone? Maybe enviros will clarify and let us know which of these they’ll let Obama actually enact. (See the last line of the excerpt below) Rolling Stone:

Despite the congressional opposition, do you feel the Obama administration has made inroads in the climate fight?
The thing I’m proudest of that we were able to get done in the first term was the Recovery Act. It had $90 billion in clean-energy programs. We had a lot of money going into research and development, and also tax credits for wind and solar energy. Republicans say to me, “That’s not government’s role,” and I say, “Why in the devil do you think we have the investment tax credit you guys get for drilling for oil? How did that start?” The reason it started was six, seven decades ago, we didn’t have the technology to know how many dry wells you had to dig before you hit a gusher, so we rewarded people for going out and exploring. We still spend $4 billion a year on that – and they don’t even need it anymore. And yet they fight us on renewable-energy tax credits.

In terms of conservation, we’ve doubled the fuel-economy standards, which is going to save hundreds of millions of barrels of oil and about $1.7 trillion over time – without, basically, any Republican support. In the meantime, also, there has been at least a near-term boom in terms of natural gas. Theoretically, it would be nice not to have any carbon fuels. But natural gas is a hell of a lot less polluting. So in this budget, we’re continuing to push for the transition from coal-fired plants to natural-gas electric plants. If you moved the trucking fleet in this nation to natural-gas-run vehicles, you’d save hundreds of millions of dollars and cut greenhouse-gas emissions. And you’d reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

But it’s been hard to get our arms around, with this Congress, what you know you should be doing. You should be attacking the carbon emissions, period, and whether it’s cap-and-trade or carbon tax or whatever, that’s the realm in which we should be playing. In the meantime, the president is going to use his executive authority to, essentially, clean up the bad stuff, encourage the good stuff and promote private industry moving in that direction. If we had a different Congress, I think you’d see a more aggressive emissions legislation.

You mentioned a carbon tax. Is the Obama administration going to follow the lead of China and propose such a policy?
The truth is, right now, no, because we know it will go nowhere. Look, one of the things we are doing, and the president is asking me to kind of get ahead of here, is that we have a real chance, both in this hemisphere and with China, to enter into joint ventures on renewable energy and on cleaner-burning natural gas. Let me give you an example: The Chinese are building something like one new coal-fired plant a week – a week. So pick the biggest coal-fired plant you know around here that’s spewing pollution, and they’re building them every week, and they’ve been doing that for the last six or seven years.

The Chinese have figured out that they have a giant environmental problem. Folks in Beijing, some days, literally can’t breathe. Over a million Chinese die prematurely every year because of air pollution. And the pollution generated in China is choking us, not just the Chinese. One of the examples I used on the campaign trail last year was that after the Japanese tsunami, we had huge chunks of cement, chunks of piers, washing up on the beach in Oregon. If the current can carry that stuff across the ocean, imagine what’s coming across in the atmosphere. So we have a great opportunity here to figure out how we can not only begin to wean ourselves off of carbon-based fuels but wean the world off of them too. It’s just a gigantic opportunity, and it produces a boatload of jobs. There are going to be 600,000 new jobs out there in the gas industry over the next 10 to 12 years.

The whole interview here.

You’d think this isn’t part of Chrysler’s plan, but it is. Note the last paragraph below where Chrysler’s CEO admits the only reason they’re selling the 500e is to meet the government’s average fuel economy requirement:

The Fiat 500e is Chrysler’s first all-electric vehicle. The Fiat 500e is gearing up to go on sale, and last week Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne dropped a small bombshell when speaking at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress: Chrysler will lose approximately $10,000 on every 500e sold.

Available only in California, the 500e serves Chrysler in many ways. It is a test-bed for Chrysler’s electric vehicle technology. Although the in-car entertainment technology is limited (much like the regular Fiat 500), the vehicle is targeted to the technologically-savvy set who want an electric vehicle in a stylish small city car. Lastly, it is a compliance vehicle for Chrysler to keep the company’s average fuel economy high. The cost of the 500e rings in at $32,500.

Marchionne makes no qualms about describing the 500e as a compliance vehicle for the requirement that the corporate average fuel economy for a manufacturer to be at 54.5mpg by 2025. Presently auto manufacturers producing alternative-fuel vehicles can earn credits they can apply to the average mileage rating. However, battery technology is expensive. Most manufacturers lose money when selling electric vehicles. It is believed Fisker loses a half a million dollars on each electric vehicle sold!

The rest here.

Dear Dems: you first.

AP:

ROME – The latest weapon in the U.N.’s fight against hunger, global warming and pollution might be flying by you right now.

Edible insects are being promoted as a low-fat, high-protein food for people, pets and livestock. According to the U.N., they come with appetizing side benefits: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and livestock pollution, creating jobs in developing countries and feeding the millions of hungry people in the world.

But in all seriousness, if push comes to shove and the world needs to start eating bugs because of zombies, aliens or something even more remote like climate change that will destroy life as we know it on the planet, it’s great news that we can eat bugs if we have to. Exit question: do the alarmist climate models that predict we won’t have enough food to survive if we don’t do something to stop CO2 emissions take bug-eating into account?

I’m linking to the article in Mother Jones to add extra “oomph” that this isn’t a piece by one of us knuckle-dragging climate-deniers. But it does illustrate what us knuckle-draggers have been saying for years: you can’t trust the models.

Finally, Some Not-Terrible Climate News: Greenland Not Melting Any Faster

Back in 2006, scientists in Greenland made an alarming observation: Glaciers were crumbling into the ocean twice as fast. And not in little cocktail-sized cubes, either: Glaciologist Jason Box accurately predicted the spot where a hunk four times the size of Manhattan would later shear off into the sea.

At the same time, the inland top of the ice sheet was thawing at record levels; last summer, for the first time in 150 years, its entire surface was melting. By summer’s end, this water alone raised sea levels all over the world by a millimeter.

As Box told our Climate Desk Live audience in January, rising air and water temperatures—driven by greenhouse gas emissions—are to blame. And with more warming on the way, he made a grim prediction: melting from Greenland and the world’s other land-based glaciers could ultimately raise global sea levels by 69 feet, Box warns.

But don’t start building your flood-proof Ark quite yet: Advanced imaging released in August suggested the ice sheet is capable of quickly reversing its melting habit. And a study out today in Nature finds that the sped-up ice loss on the water’s edge, while still a problem, is unlikely to get much worse, even with a big rise in global temperatures. Taken together, these two studies suggest that Greenland’s ice melt problem isn’t as bad as experts like Box had predicted.

For the Nature study, Faezeh Nick, a researcher at Norway’s University Centre in Svalbard, led a team that took the closest-ever look at so-called “outlet glaciers,” the 200 or so outermost arms of the ice sheet that flow straight into the sea. Their findings suggest that the increase in melting rate is about to slow down, suggesting that in a medium warming scenario these glaciers will likely contribute just 19-30 millimeters to global sea levels by 2100. That’s much less than if the current acceleration of melting were to persist, but still a noteworthy share of the quarter- to half-meter rise projected by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Shocker: we don’t need to start planning for world-wide floods, but Planet Gore readers already knew that.

The rest here.

The Los Angeles Times:

The Tesla Model S high-end electric sedan has garnered a rare honor from Consumer Reports, with one significant caveat.

Add VPG to the list of government-funded failures:

A Michigan maker of vans for the disabled that received a $50 million Energy Department loan has quietly ceased operation and laid off its staff.

Vehicle Production Group, or VPG, stopped operations after finances dipped below the minimum required as a condition of the government loan, says former CEO John Walsh. Though about 100 staff were laid off and its offices shuttered, the company has not filed for bankruptcy reorganization.

VPG, of Allen Park, Mich., received its Energy Department loan under the same clean-energy program — now under fire by House Republicans — that originally committed $527 million to troubled plug-in hybrid carmaker Fisker Automotive and $535 million to solar start-up Solyndra, which has filed for bankruptcy reorganization. VPG was deemed eligible for the clean energy loan because some of its vans were to be fitted to run on compressed natural gas.

Bonus: It’s also a failure of the Pickens Plan to change the nation’s automobile fleet to compressed natural gas:

“. . .the company had raised $400 million in private capital from investors, including financier T. Boone Pickens, and built 2,500 MV-1 vans.”

And can we go for the hat-trick? Ties to an Obama fundraiser:

VPG’s DOE loan was controversial. In 2011, The Washington Post raised questions about a fundraiser for President Obama and the loan. It reported that VPG was part of the portfolio of companies under Washington, D.C.-based investment firm Perseus, whose vice chairman, James Johnson, was an Obama adviser and fundraiser. Perseus said at the time that Johnson played no role in procuring the loan for VPG. The Energy Department said at the time that the loan was based entirely on merit after two years of review.

So, what did the DOE think this company could do at the time? 

Oh, well. Just a little bit off judging the “merit after two years of review.”

The DOE approved loans of only $8.4 billion out of the $25 billion authorized, so overall losses will be minimized. And of the $8.4 billion loaned, $5.9 billion went to Ford while $1.4 billion went to Nissan — companies that can pay the loans back regardless of the success of their underlying venture. This is not, as Veronique de Rugy pointed out in her must-read analsysis of the ATVM program, as good news as it seems:

The worst part of this story, once again, is that most of the money guaranteed by the Department of Energy went to companies that should have borrowed money on their own. Instead, the government played venture capitalist with our money, causing systemic and unintended distortions to the market.

Yep.

Via the Washington Post:

As the centerpiece of Europe’s pledge to lead the global battle against climate change, the region’s market for carbon emissions effectively turned pollution into a commodity that could be traded like gold or oil. But the once-thriving pollution trade here has turned into a carbon bust.

Under the system, 31 nations slapped emission limits on more than 11,000 companies and issued carbon credits that could be traded by firms to meet their new pollution caps. More efficient ones could sell excess carbon credits, while less efficient ones were compelled to buy more. By August 2008, the price for carbon emission credits had soared above $40 per ton — high enough to become an added incentive for some companies to increase their use of cleaner fuels, upgrade equipment and take other steps to reduce carbon footprints.

That system, however, is in deep trouble. A drastic drop in industrial activity has sharply reduced the need for companies to buy emission rights, causing a gradual fall in the price of carbon allowances since the region slipped into a multi-year economic crisis in the latter half of 2008. In recent weeks, however, the price has appeared to have entirely collapsed — falling below $4 as bickering European nations failed to agree on measures to shore up the program.

The collapsing price of carbon in Europe is darkening the outlook for a greener future in a part of the world that was long the bright spot in the struggle against climate change. It is also presenting new challenges for those who once saw Europe’s program as the natural anchor for what would eventually be a linked network of cap-and-trade systems worldwide.

Carbon “started as the commodity of the future, but it has now deteriorated,” said Matthew Gray, a trader at Jefferies Bache in London and one of a diminishing breed of carbon dealers in Europe. “Its future is uncertain.”

The problems plaguing Europe’s cap-and-trade system underscore the uphill battle for international cooperation in the global-warming fight. After middling progress at various summits, officials from more than 190 countries have been charged with forging a global accord by 2015 aimed at cutting carbon emissions. But critics point to the inability of even the European Union — a largely progressive region bound by open borders and a shared bureaucracy — to come together on a fix for its cap-and-trade system as evidence of how difficult consensus building on climate change has become.

The rest here.

Via the Green River Star:

Southwest Wyoming might have the most lithium in the United States. The University of Wyoming’s Carbon Management Institute discovered the deposits as part of their CO2 storage research project for the Rock Springs Uplift, which is east of Rock Springs and north of Point of Rocks. According to UW News, the 25-mile area might have 228,000 tons of lithium which would handle all U.S. demand, and it’s possible there could be up to 18 million tons of lithium in the area. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, world production and reserves of lithium in 2011 was 34 million tons.

The demand for lithium worldwide has increased because it is used in so many electronics.  Lithium batteries are used in laptop computers and other portable electronics and in power tools. Car manufacturers are also starting to use lithium batteries more often for hybrid and electric vehicles.

“Given how valuable it is, it’s very exciting. It helps diversify our mining industries,” Wyoming Governor Matt Mead said.

He added he hoped the reserves turned out to be immense, and if it was, he said southwest Wyoming would know how to take advantage of it. Rock Springs Chamber of Commerce Director Dave Hanks said the finding was significant, but added there would be economic hurdles to developing it. He explained it was good knowing about it for future use. 

The rest here.

The Hill:

Several House Democrats are calling on Congress to recognize that climate change is hurting women more than men, and could even drive poor women to “transactional sex” for survival.

The resolution, from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and a dozen other Democrats, says the results of climate change include drought and reduced agricultural output. It says these changes can be particularly harmful for women.

“[F]ood insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health,” it says.

Two things: 

One, we should run this idea by Al “Second Chakra” Gore to see if he agrees with the science? And. . .

Two, with a recent survey declaring that 9 percent of Yale students have accepted money for sex, we need to ask the question, “Is it too late to stop global warming from turning women into prostitutes?” If so, simply cutting carbon emissions might not be enough to help these women cope with the horrors of a warming planet.

Details here.

And I can see why Team Obama is so thrilled with Mayor Foxx as he buys into the administration’s agenda of spending money on transportation projects without a clue on how to pay for them:

Charlotte faces a $3.3 billion funding gap to complete its transit corridor plan, and the price tag is likely to increase because of future delays to secure financing.

Those grim numbers were disclosed this week as part of a presentation to a transit funding work-study group formed at the suggestion of Mayor Anthony Foxx.

Jeffrey Parker, head of the infrastructure advisory group at Ernst & Young and a frequent adviser to the Charlotte Area Transit System, outlined the projections during the 30-member study group’s meeting at the Government Center. The figures exclude the Blue Line Extension, a 9.3-mile, $1.2 billion light-rail line scheduled to open in 2017. Construction is expected to begin in January for the line spanning uptown to UNC Charlotte.

Because their advocacy on the “90% issue” of background checks worked out so well? Via @BarackObama:

ABC News reports:

He’s a Hollywood actor, producer and director, but Ben Affleck will be living beneath his means in a big way.

The Oscar winner, 40, is joining Josh Groban, Debi Mazar, Sophia Bush and “The Avengers” star Tom Hiddleston and getting involved with the Live Below the Line campaign, which encourages people to live on $1.50 per day for five days, from April 29 to May 3.

“1.4 billion people live on less than $1.50/day,” Affleck tweeted. “I’m joining Live #BelowTheLine on behalf of @easterncongo. Will you?”

With all due respect, it’s pretty easy to live for five days on $1.50 a day when you live in the United States. As a matter of fact, if you live in New York City you can have the online-grocer Fresh Direct deliver a five-pound bag of rice right to your home for $6.19, well under the $7.50 Affleck has budgeted for his 5-day-stunt. Or, if you think you need more than a pound of rice per day to live, go with a friend to Walmart and pick up a 20 pound bag for about $12. That gives you and your socially-conscious pal 10 pounds each for only $6. That’s roughly a diet of 3200 calories per day, well above the recommended daily allowance. But if you go with the two-pounds-of-rice-a-day regimen, please plan some exercise so you don’t gain weight during your five-day sacrifice.

But is Ben Affleck sacrficing at all?

Let’s look at it step-by step:

First, Ben Affleck will drive to a grocery store and purchase his rice. At the store, his rice will be fresh and free of contaminants like insects, leaves and animal waste. Next he’ll cook his rice on a stove, powered by either natural gas or electricity and use clean water from his tap that won’t give him any diseases. Any leftover rice can be stored in Affleck’s refrigerator which will keep the uneaten portion from spoiling and will allow the Oscar winner to eat his $1.50 a day worth of food at his leisure. And if his kitchen gets too hot while cooking his rice, he can always turn up the air conditioning in his home to make his sacrifice more comfortable.

Hypocrisy, they name is Ben Affleck along with the rest of these H’Wood clowns.

It may make the uber-wealthy in this country fee better to live like those in Congo for a whopping five days, but if they really want to help the poorest of the poor, there are other issues to address like making sure there is access to electricity and clean water. Bjørn Lomborg put it quite nicely in his Earth Day op-ed:

Poor countries should have the same opportunity to develop — so they, too, can have clean drinking water and switch to cleaner energy sources, instead of using dung and twigs for fuel.

We can also directly intervene in poor countries. Many charitable organizations are involved in solving these problems by improving access to clean water and sanitation. By addressing these challenges, we do far more good for our planet.

Maybe I’m wrong and Ben Affleck is using dung and river-water to cook his rice just like the people he wants to help in Congo. If so, I’ll gladly correct my post.

Freedom Works: 13 Worst Predictions Made on Earth Day, 1970

Washington Post: Europe is becoming a green-energy basket case

Hot Air: Blue states to sue EPA for not crushing coal industry fast enough

Daily Caller: States, enviros threaten lawsuit to force EPA to issue new emissions rules

New York Times: Chinese consumers wants bigger cars.

And no Earth Day is complete without a “Google Doodle”. . . 

And to our readers, I leave you with this: an homage to Clement Clarke Moore:

But I heard Al Gore exclaim, ere he flew on a private plane out of sight,
HAPPY EARTH DAY TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!

By tweeting a “Native American” proverb:

Oh, really Mayor? What tribe first spoke these inspirational words? Perhaps it’s part Elizabeth Warren’s high-cheek-boned family tradition.

Actually, we really have no idea where the proverb came from. It’s been attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Amish, the Australian Minister for the Environment and Conservation, and many others.

Why couldn’t Booker just tweet it without attribution? Does “Native American” give some added oomph because it’s “Earth Day?”

There’s another “Native American” saying that goes something like, “Politicians who pander to the enviros of their base on made-up holidays tweet with a forked thumb.” Look that up, as I’m sure it’s as accurate as Booker’s.

I’m celebrating Earth Day by heating my home (and combating climate change!) with cheap, natural gas provided by the technological wonder of hydraulic fracturing.

Long live the anti-capitalist revolution!

McClatchy has a piece up today titled, “Coastal cities ponder how to prepare for rising sea levels” that’s filled with the usual alarmist hyperbole, but what stands out is how the piece depends on the reader’s inability to do simple math to make its case:

Rising sea levels caused primarily by global warming could worsen the effects of storms such as Sandy, particularly when it comes to storm surge. Since 1992, satellites have observed a 2.25-inch rise in global sea levels.

Let’s break this down:

1992 to 2013 is 21 years. 21 years divided by the 2.25-inch total global rise in sea levels gives us an annual average rise of .11 inches. (Roughly 3 millimeters per year, as determined by NOAA)

This means, at the current rate, it would take 109 years for sea levels to rise by just one foot.

Well, with 100 years to go, I’m pretty sure cities have time to “ponder” all they like.

Yes, he went there:

FORMER US Vice-President Al Gore didn’t mince his words as he painted a vivid portrait of the worldwide devastation being caused by the invisible, tasteless and odourless greenhouse gases.

Climate change is causing devastation like that depicted in the Bible’s book of ‘Revelations’, he told delegates, including Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore, at the Hunger, Nutrition, Climate Justice international conference at Dublin Castle.

“We have to win the conversation about climate change – when you hear denial speak up,” he said.

“We cannot continue sleep walking towards the edge of history’s cliff,” he added.

I think Gore left out the part where he’s the “false prophet.”

Via the Register:

The latest ice-core analysis from the Antarctic shows that nothing unusual in terms of melting is occurring.

In research published yesterday, a large team of scientists used a deep ice core from the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide to produce records going back some 2,000 years. Their analysis shown that recent melting in that area, which has caused a good deal of hysteria* in climate alarmist circles, is in fact normal.

“If we could look back at this region of Antarctica in the 1940s and 1830s, we would find that the regional climate would look a lot like it does today, and I think we also would find the glaciers retreating much as they are today,” comments Eric Steig, a senior earth-sciences boffin at the University of Washington and the lead author on the new research.

Ice loss in recent times from the Western Antarctic – considered to be one of the main places to worry about, if you worry about sea-level rises – may just “not be all that unusual”, according to Steig.

The problem, as with many climate change issues, is that conditions in the Western Antarctic vary so much over short time scales that it’s hard to work out if any long-term change is actually happening.

“The magnitude of unforced natural variability is very big in this area,” Steig comments.

The rest here.

Live Science:

The Mayan apocalypse may have been a bust, but a century-old understanding of the calendar that spawned the doomsday rumors appears to be right on.

In a new study, scientists used modern methods to double-check the match between the Mayan Long Count calendar and the modern European calendar. Understanding how the two coincide is important, because research on the rise and fall of the Maya suggests that climate change spelled their doom. To be certain of that link, however, researchers have to be able to match carved Maya historical records with dates in the modern calendar.

Linking the two calendars is no picnic. The Long Count calendar is essentially a cyclical count of days, known as k’in. The k’in are counted in 20-day cycles called winal or uinal, which in turn are catalogd in 360-day cycles called tuns. Twenty tuns make a 7,200-day k’atun (about 20 years), and 20 k’atuns then make a b’ak’tun.

The rest here.

Washington Post:

It’s official: EPA delays climate rule for new power plants

You might have been wondering whether the Obama administration was going to impose the first-ever greenhouse gas limits on new power plants, since the deadline is April 13.

We reported nearly a month ago that the Environmental Protection Agency was likely to delay the rule to bolster their legal case for imposing the new carbon restrictions.

On Friday, an EPA official who asked not to be identified confirmed that the agency would not finalize the controversial proposal on time.

“We are working on the rule and no timetable has been set,” the official wrote in an e-mail.

EPA is likely to alter the rule in some way in an effort to make sure it can withstand a legal challenge, according to sources familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the standard has not been finalized. One possibility could include establishing a separate standard for coal-fired power plants, as opposed to gas-fired ones.

The rule, which the EPA proposed a year ago, would require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.

The rest here.

Quite possibly, yes. But not with its electric car.

A New York judge has just ruled in favor of Tesla allowing direct-to-consumer sales of its cars, bypassing a dealer network:

Tesla Motors Inc. says it’s won another round in its fight with established car dealers who want to stop the company from selling its electric luxury cars directly to consumers.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says, via Twitter, that a New York judge has tossed out a suit brought by New York auto dealers who challenged Tesla’s direct sales model as a violation of the state’s franchise laws.

Mr. Musk spent Wednesday in Texas making the case for a legislative proposal to change the law to allow direct sales of electric vehicles by U.S.-based manufacturers.Texas car dealers have opposed the measure, saying it would open the door for other car makers to sell electric cars direct to customers –  which could undermine the value of their franchises.

There are pluses and minuses to a dealer network, but at this time a consumer can’t buy a car directly from a manufacturer. And there are savings to be had if a consumer could do so. Charles Arlinghaus writes in the Union Leader:

A recent paper by the economic analysis group of the Department of Justice found potential savings of as much as $3,000 per vehicle from the currently prohibited direct-to-consumer sales of vehicles. In recent years, direct sales have been promoted by groups as diverse as the libertarian Cato Institute, the moderate Democratic Progressive Policy Institute, and the liberal Consumer Federation of America.

I’d, at the very least, like the option to purchase a car directly from the manufacturer and then use my own mechanic for its regular maintenance. 

Kimberley Strassel writes in today’s WSJ (no paywall):

Running for governor of Virginia, the Democrat’s main business credential is fast turning into a crony-capitalist embarrassment.

 

Turn over any green-energy rock, and wiggling underneath will be the usual creepy mix of political favoritism and taxpayer-funded handouts. Add to this the Clintons, Mississippi and a murky visa program, and you’ve got a particularly ripe political embarrassment for Terry McAuliffe.

Everyone remember The Macker? Best Friend of Bill. Chairman of Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign. Famed money-tree shaker. Former Democratic Party chief. Failed 2009 contender for the Virginia governorship but now back as the party’s nominee for that position in this fall’s election. Oh—and in Mr. McAuliffe’s words—”a Virginia businessman” intent on “creating jobs.”

Or at least that was the image Mr. McAuliffe sought to portray in 2009, when he became chairman of a car company called GreenTech Automotive, with plans to produce golf-cart sized electric vehicles. The former DNC chief is no stranger to moneymaking, having once used a friendly union pension fund to spin a $100 investment in a Florida land deal into $2.45 million. GreenTech, however, was designed to shed the moneyman image and to reposition Mr. McAuliffe as a (clean) job creator the way Mark Warner and Bob McDonnell used their pro-business credentials to win office in Virginia.

To this end, Mr. McAuliffe got out the political Rolodex and went on the money hunt. By October 2009, GreenTech announced it would build a plant in Tunica, Miss., after the state (under Republican then-Gov. Haley Barbour) promised at least $5 million in public loans and grants to aid the company moving in.

 

GreenTech bragged that in its first phase alone it would invest $1 billion, employ 1,500 and produce 150,000 cars annually. Mr. McAuliffe grandly unveiled his signature MyCar last July at a rock-star event attended by Messrs. Clinton and Barbour. Business creds in hand, he then announced his run for governor—and the problems began.

Here’s what I don’t get: where do you put the pizzas in the wonder-car? (Not to mention that the Dominos’s Pizza model is based on delivery personnel having their own cars and I doubt any franchise could be profitable if it had to have the capital expense of owning and maintaining its own delivery fleet.)

The rest here.

More taxpayer funded loses:

Fisker Automotive — the electric-car maker that was granted a half-billion-dollar federal loan and on Friday dismissed about 75 percent of its remaining workforce — is purportedly facing a lawsuit from the same firm that sued the government-funded Solyndra company.

Fisker laid off 160 of its roughly 210 employees Friday morning from its Anaheim, Calif., location, according to Automotive News.

Employees told the publication they were given no severance pay besides compensation for unused vacation days.

According to the class action suit filed by Outten & Golden, in a California district court, Fisker failed to notify the employees 60 days in advance, violating the federal U.S. Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act and a similar state WARN Act.

Outten & Golden won a $3.5 million settlement in a similar case against Solyndra, according to Reuters. The solar-panel maker received $535 million in loan guarantees from the Obama administration before falling into bankruptcy in 2011. 

But not by much. Gallup:

Democrats and Republicans retain markedly different views about global warming, with 75% of Democrats versus 40% of Republicans saying they personally worry about it a “great deal” or “fair amount.” Both groups’ levels of concern about global warming have fluctuated in recent years. Republicans — as well as independents, at 59% — show slightly increased levels of worry in 2013, following 10-year lows in 2010 and 2011. Concern has held steady at a high level among Democrats throughout the past decade.

The full poll here.

Former Secretary of State George Shultz and Nobel economist Gary Becker argue in today’s WSJ: (behind the paywall)

Why We Support a Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax

Coupled with the elimination of costly energy subsidies, it would encourage competition.

But their idea is a mess. Some excerpts:

. . .we should seek out the many forms of subsidy that run through the entire energy enterprise and eliminate them. In their place we propose a measure that could go a long way toward leveling the playing field: a revenue-neutral tax on carbon, a major pollutant. A carbon tax would encourage producers and consumers to shift toward energy sources that emit less carbon—such as toward gas-fired power plants and away from coal-fired plants—and generate greater demand for electric and flex-fuel cars and lesser demand for conventional gasoline-powered cars.

How exactly does demand for electric cars increase as electricity from coal-fired power plants makes their cost of ownership go up, not to mention the carbon-tax effects on mining the materials for the “green” car’s battery? And how do “flex-fuel” ethanol powered vehicles become more popular by ending corn subsidies? 

And where to place the tax? That’s to be determined:

The tax might be imposed at a variety of stages in the production and distribution of energy. You can make an argument for imposing it at the point most visible to the population at large, which would be the point of consumption such as gasoline stations and electricity bills. An administratively more efficient way of imposing the tax, however, would be to collect it at the level of production, which would reduce greatly the number of collection points.

Or how much to tax:

The tax should also further increase over time if the apparent severity of the climate effects is growing and, alternatively, the tax should fall over time if the severity appears to be decreasing. Finally, to equalize the present and future burdens, the carbon tax rate should rise over time approximately at the real interest rate (say, the real return on 10-year Treasurys), so that the present value of the burden would be the same to future consumers and producers as it is to present ones.

Who exactly gets to decide if climate effects are growing or decreasing? The above provision makes absolutely no sense. 

Finally, although subsidies will end, there’s still a role for taxpayer-funded science:

A revenue-neutral carbon tax should be supplemented by a reasonable and sustained support for research and development in the energy area. However, we would eliminate any program (loan guarantees, etc.) that tempts the government to get into commercial activities. Clearly, a revenue-neutral carbon tax would benefit all Americans by eliminating the need for costly energy subsidies while promoting a level playing field for energy producers.

“Clearly” this doesn’t make the case for a carbon tax without a whole lot of more information and thought.

Power from the Massachusetts wind project will only cost $2 billion more than from conventional power:

Nine years into the approval battles for the Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound, the project is now facing four new challenges in the state’s highest court.

Associated Industries of Massachusetts, the 7,000-member business group that is the state’s biggest business lobby, and three other groups asked the Supreme Judicial Court Monday to throw out a contract the Department of Public Utilities approved last month for utility giant National Grid, on behalf of its basic-service customers, to buy half of the electric output of the 130-turbine project. 

AIM general counsel Robert J. Rio says for his business members, most of whom buy power from competitive suppliers rather than from the utility directly, stand to be whacked with millions of dollars in increased costs. “They’re not receiving power from Cape Wind, yet they have to pay for Cape Wind, and we think that is fundamentally unfair,’’ Rio said.

Compared to current rates, it’s estimated that Cape Wind power — at 18.7 cents per kilowatt-hour, rising 3.5 percent annually — will cost about $2 billion more than conventional power under the National Grid contract.

But don’t worry. If things go Cape Wind’s way — meaning global economic catastrophy — the wind power will be competitive. . .

. . .supporters say it’s likely fossil-fuel prices could soar, making Cape Wind competitive or even a bargain, and it delivers many other benefits that justify the cost, including bolstering a small but growing Massachusetts wind-power sector.

Um, note to “supporters”: natural gas prices are really low right now. Please tell me the price that will make this boondoggle competitive.