In the Pipeline: 7/23/13

She’s ready. Are you? The Daily Caller (7/22/13) reports: “In an address to staff, the newly confirmed Environmental Protection Agency chief stated that regulators had the ‘responsibility’ to take on global warming, per the president’s call to action. ‘We have a clear responsibility to act now on climate change,’ said EPA administrator Gina McCarthy. ‘That’s what President Obama has called on us and the American people, so that we protect future generations…This agency has the courage to act,’ McCarthy added. We can make it happen, but we need all hands on deck.’”

When bureaucrats are your biggest ally, you should likely reexamine your position. The Washington Examiner (7/19/13) reports: “Drama is high these days for ethanol makers, whose fate is on the line in Washington – fitting for an industry dependent on government. The oil industry has launched an assault on the ethanol mandate that drives demand for the plant-based fuel. The Senate recently confirmed an industry friend to head the Environmental Protection Agency. And the EPA is finalizing a controversial rule to allow higher blends of ethanol in gasoline. Ethanol is a fuel made from fermenting and distilling plant matter – mostly corn in the U.S. From the industry’s earliest days, government has subsidized the fuel. The most important benefit for the industry today is the Renewable Fuel Standard. The 2005 Republican-passed energy bill created the RFS, known as the ‘ethanol mandate,’ and the 2007 Democrat-passed energy bill expanded it. Under the law, oil refiners must purchase a set quantity of ethanol every year.”

Marginal improvements, but anything is better than being totally gutted. The Wyoming Business Report (7/22/13) reports: “A proposed national hydraulic fracturing rule could cost about $345 million annually to implement, according to a new economic analysis commissioned by the Independent Petroleum Association of America and Western Energy Alliance. This may be relatively good news for producers, though, since this cost estimate comes after the rule was revised from its original May 2012 proposal.”

Ignore the man behind the curtain, the science is settled. MG4W (7/19/13) reports: “Expert witnesses called by Sen. Barbara Boxer to testify during Senate Environment and Public Works hearings yesterday contradicted a key assertion made by President Barack Obama on climate change. Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser less than a month before directing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to impose costly new restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions, Obama said, ‘we also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago…I don’t have much patience for people who deny climate change,’ Obama added. However, climate scientists including United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lead author Hans von Storch report temperatures have remained essentially flat for the past 10 years, and indeed for the past 15 years. Storch told Der Spiegel that 98 percent of IPCC climate models cannot replicate the prolonged pause in global warming, and IPCC may need to revise its computer models to correct their apparent warming bias.”

Beware, this is a no fly zone. Birdwatch (7/21/13) reports: “New research from the United States indicates that bird deaths from wind farm collisions may have been underestimated by up to 30 per cent. After the sad death of the White-throated Needletail on Harris, Outer Hebrides, on 26 June when it hit the shaft of a wind turbine on the island, some birders were vocal in their disapproval of the prominent energy generators, proclaiming them to be killers of bird in large numbers. While some of these claims were somewhat exaggerated, it turns out that they may indeed be more dangerous than thought previously.”