U.S. House Science Committee
July 9, 2015
Via: The HARRY READ ME File: Testifying before Congress, EPA’s McCarthy defends the Agency’s climate regs as ‘enormously beneficial’ when asked about the rules climate benefit of reducing global temps by just one one-hundredth of a single degree Celsius.
CHAIRMAN LAMAR SMITH: “On the Clean Power Plan, former Obama Administration Assistant Secretary Charles McConnell said at best it will reduce global temperature by only one one-hundredth of a degree Celsius. At the same time it’s going to increase the cost of electricity. That’s going to hurt the lowest income Americans the most. How do you justify such an expensive, burdensome, onerous rule that’s really not going to do much good and isn’t this all pain and no gain.
ADMINISTRATOR GINA MCCARTHY: “No sir, I don’t agree with you. If you look at the RIA we did, the Regulatory Impact Analysis you would see it’s enormously beneficial.
CHAIRMAN SMITH: “Do you consider one one-hundredth of a degree to be enormously beneficial?”
ADMINISTRATOR MCCARTHY: “The value of this rule is not measured in that way. It is measured in showing strong domestic action which can actually trigger global action to address what’s a necessary action to protect…”
CHAIRMAN SMITH: “Do you disagree with my one one-hundredth of a degree figure? Do you disagree with the one one-hundredth of a degree?”
ADMINISTRATOR MCCARTHY: “I’m not disagreeing that this action in and of itself will not make all the difference we need to address climate action, but what I’m saying is that if we don’t take action domestically we will never get started and we’ll never…”
CHAIRMAN SMITH: “But if you are looking at the results, the results can’t justify the cost and the burden that you’re imposing on the American people in my judgement.”
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Related Links:
Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. on EPA climate regs: ‘Won’t influence future extreme weather or its impacts in any detectable way’ – ‘The so-called climate benefits of the regulations are essentially nil’ – Pielke Jr. : ‘The so-called climate benefits of the regulations are thus essentially nil, though I suppose one could gin some up via creative but implausible cost-benefit analyses. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is a stock and flow problem and these proposed regulations make a only a very tiny contribution to the flow side of the equation. That is just math. The US carbon regulations won’t influence future extreme weather or its impacts in any detectable way. Hard to believe I felt compelled to write that…These regulations mainly switch electricity from coal to gas and thus do very little to increase the US proportion of carbon-free electricity generation.’
EPA: CO2 emission reduction has little impact on climate change – ‘Any policy that the U.S. does that purports to be climatically important, in fact is not’ – ‘Nothing to do with saving the planet from carbon dioxide emissions.’ – ‘EPA’s so-called ‘temperature change calculator’, which shows how reducing carbon emissions would affect climate change, indicates that a doubling of fuel economy in trucks by 2018 would have virtually no impact on rising temperatures.’