SB 375 (Chapter 728, Statutes of 2008) directs the California Air Resources Board to set regional targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The new law establishes a “bottom up” approach to ensure that cities and counties are involved in the development of regional plans to achieve those targets.

SB 375 builds on the existing framework of regional planning to tie together the regional allocation of housing needs and regional transportation planning in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from motor vehicle trips.

San Diego County has become the first major county to file its SB 375 compliance plan. So far, there have 德州扑克 been two ongoing court fights over whether the county’s long-term infrastructure-improvement planning does enough to push the region to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, as mandated by Steinberg’s law.

The county had to file its plan at the same time it was formulating its long-term approach to traffic congestion. Recent improvements to Interstate 15 have paid huge dividends. This made San Diego Association of Government officials even more committed to an expansion of Interstate 5 from the Del Mar area north to Camp Pendleton. Work is supposed to begin next year. Traffic engineers concluded there was no single project that would do anything close to relieving the congestion that would be accomplished with the I-5 improvements.

But that upgrade is now imperiled because greens have won at the appeals court level in both of the legal fights over the adequacy of San Diego County’s long-term plans.

What should 57% of infrastructure $ go to?

So what is one of the key fights in the legal battles over the county’s plan?

The contention of one side that spending on mass transit should start at 38 percent of infrastructure spending and reach 57 percent from 2040-2050.

There is no history of mass transit being popular anywhere but in packed-in cities like Tokyo and New York. California is not Tokyo or New York.

So how could those insane tree-huggers propose that 57 percent of future infrastructure spending in the San Diego region go to mass transit?

Bulletin: That isn’t what the Sierra Club supported. It’s what the county proposed and the Sierra Club and many other environmental groups rejected as unacceptable.

This is crazy enough on its face. But when you think about it more deeply, it becomes absolutely ridiculous. A state law is pushing local governments to assume mass transit will be the most logical way to move people around in a spread-out state — in 2040! This is happening even though there are so many promising energy-technology initiatives in the works — and even though there have been plenty of concrete gains since 2008.

Cars get cleaner as freeways de-emphasized

I had more on this issue in a Tuesday U-T San Diego editorial.

California is not the boroughs of New York City writ large. It is a sprawling state, and that is never going to [embrace mass transit] so long as housing is cheaper on the edges of the state’s population centers. Cars are infinitely more convenient for a typical day’s requirements — commuting to work; running errands on lunch breaks; getting kids to school, music classes, sports practice or jobs.

But instead of acknowledging this immense convenience factor, greens seek policies that would create mass inconvenience. The Interstate 5 experience in North County is already often bad; if the freeway upgrade is blocked, it will become routinely horrible. For people who hate cars, this amounts to a desired result.

They think this way even as we see rapid progress in developing far cleaner cars — and not just the Prius. As The New York Times reported Sunday, the “once-distant promise of clean, affordable hydrogen-powered cars is starting to become a reality,” with very positive implications for global warming. Pragmatic environmentalists will see this as good news. But not those who view cars and freeways the same way that most people think about bubonic plague.

Here’s a link to the NYT story on hydrogen-powered cars.

]]> https://calwatchdog.com/2014/12/02/nutty-sb-375-about-to-become-ongoing-nightmare-for-ca/feed/ 6 70961 https://calwatchdog.com/2014/05/17/update-more-on-climategate-cooked-books/ https://calwatchdog.com/2014/05/17/update-more-on-climategate-cooked-books/#comments Sat, 17 May 2014 16:14:04 +0000 http://calwatchdog.com/?p=63760 AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, continues to gut the California economy.

Even after the 2009 revelations of Climategate showing that “climate scientists” cooked the books on the numbers.

Even after Climategate II in 2011.

Now we have Climategate III. James Delingpole reports:

Professor Lennart Bengtsson — the scientist at the heart of the “Climate McCarthyism” row — has hit back at his critics by accusing them of suppressing one of his studies for political reasons.

The paper, which Prof Bengtsson wrote with four co-authors, suggested that climate is probably less sensitive to greenhouse gases than is admitted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and that more research needs to be done to “reduce the underlying uncertainty”. However, when submitted for publication in the leading journal Environmental Research Letters, the paper failed the peer-review process and was rejected.

One of the peer-reviewers reportedly wrote:

‘It is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of “errors” and worse from the climate sceptics media side.’

This, Prof Bengtsson told the Times, was “utterly unacceptable” and “an indication of how science is gradually being influenced by political views.”

He added:

‘The problem we now have in the climate community is that some scientists are mixing up their scientific role with that of a climate activist.’

In truth, to anyone familiar with the Climategate emails there will be nothing surprising or unusual in this incident or this claim. As the emails leaked in 2009 made abundantly clear, the organised suppression of sceptical papers in learned journals by the alarmist establishment has long been rife within the field of climate science.

What’s more significant is that this story has made it to the front page of the Times. Like most of the mainstream media, the Times has been remarkably slow to latch onto the corruption, malfeasance, waste, dishonesty, bullying and lies which are rife throughout the climate change industry. If it hadn’t been for the internet and sites like Watts Up With That? and blogposts like this one the Climategate scandal would have passed almost without notice.

Finally, it seems, the MSM is beginning to wake up to something it really ought to have picked up on long ago: the greatest and most expensive scientific scandal in history, in which a cabal of lavishly grant-funded, activist-scientists from Britain to Australia, Germany to the US, has exaggerated the evidence for “man-made global warming” and attempted ruthlessly to suppress the work of sceptical scientists who dispute the “consensus.”

Professor Bengtsson’s McCarthyite purging may one day come to be seen as the climate alarmists’ “Bridge Too Far” moment. As Judith Curry, climatologist and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has argued, “It has the potential to do as much harm to climate science as did the Climategate emails.”

The reason, quite simply, is that it shows the climate change establishment in such an appalling light. These people have long traded on the public’s acceptance that they are the “experts”, the guys we can trust. Yet here they are shown behaving not like loftily-minded seekers-after-truth but simple playground bullies.

Will California now dump AB 32 into the trash can of history and restore our industrial economy, with great jobs for the middle-class, not just Silicon Valley geniuses? Will it bring back great manufacturing jobs to drop our poverty rate from the worst in the nation? Will it, perhaps, finally put behind it the narcissistic policies, including AB 32, of Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

By WAYNE LUSVARDI

The environmental movement is suffering from a cluster of scandals.

First there was Climategate.

Then there was Climategate 2.0.

Now, there’s Climategate 3.0 — also called “Gleickgate.”

Climate activist Dr. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute of water policy in Oakland may face criminal charges that he deceptively obtained data from a conservative think tank, the Heartland Institute, then “doctored” it and disseminated it on the web to libel that organization. Gleick has admitted he is the source of the leaked data but denies he produced the doctored document.

Andrew Revkin, the Dot Earth columnist for the New York Times, says Gleick’s admission that he deceptively obtained emails from the Heartland Institute will destroy his reputation and career.

Centrist professor of foreign affairs at Bard College Walter Russell Mead states on his Via Meadia blog:

“Reckless and sensationalist actions like Gleick’s are a reminder of the wild and loony side of the green movement — no group certain of its own arguments should feel the need to stoop to this level, and it will take a long time for the movement to be trusted again in the eyes of the public.”

The ClimateChangeDispatch.com website is reporting Gleick is likely to face criminal charges which could involve serving jail time for libeling the Heartland Institute.  The Heartland Institute has reportedly called the FBI into the case.

Liberal economist Megan McArdle, writing at The Atlantic magazine online, says she is “very surprised a man of Gleick’s stature would take this sort of risk, on such flimsy evidence.”

What did Gleick do?  Writing in Forbes magazine, James Taylor, a senior environmental policy analyst at the Heartland Institute online, explains it:

“In short, Gleick set up an email account designed to mimic the email account of a Heartland Institute board member. Gleick then sent an email from that account to a Heartland Institute staffer, in which Gleick explicitly claimed to be the Heartland Institute board member. Gleick asked the staffer to email him internal documents relating to a recent board meeting. Soon thereafter, Gleick, while claiming to be a ‘Heartland Insider,’ sent those Heartland Institute documents plus the forged ‘2012 Climate Strategy’ document to sympathetic media and global warming activists.” 

In the liberal magazine The Atlantic, Megan McArdle explains the heart of the ethical problem involved:

“Impersonating an actual person is well over the line that any reputable journalist needs to maintain. I might get a job at Food Lion to expose unsafe food handling.  I would not represent myself as a health inspector, or regional VP.  I don’t do things that are illegal. 

“Nor would I ever, ever claim that a document came from Heartland unless I personally received it from them, gotten them to confirm its provenance, or authenticated it with multiple independent sources. And ethics aside, what Gleick did is insane for someone of his position — so crazy that I confess to wondering whether he doesn’t have some sort of medical condition that requires urgent treatment.  The reason he did it was even crazier…. I would not have risked jail or personal ruin over something so questionable, and which provided evidence of…what? That Heartland exists?  That it has a budget?  That it spends that budget promoting views which Gleick finds reprehensible?” 

According to Mark Gunther ,writing at the EnergyColletive.com Website, Gleick likely sees himself as something of a hero who possibly hopes to use the discovery process in any legal action taken against him to embarrass the Heartland Institute.  But embarrass them with what: That they used donors’ funds to exercise their First Amendment right of free speech?

Ironically, it is reported that Gleick was chairman of the American Geophysical Union’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics until he resigned last week.

Dr. Gleick may have perpetrated a fraud and libeled the Heartland Institute. But that is not the only action of Dr. Gleick that has been questionable.

Slick Gleick’s Water Tricks

Here at Calwatchdog.com, we have previously taken Dr. Gleick to task for his misleading op-ed columns in newspapers across the state saying:

1) There “isn’t enough water to satisfy 100 percent of demand” in California;
2) Agriculture consumes 80 percent of all the water in California; and
3) There are eight times as many water rights given away as there is water available in an average year.

All of the above statements by Gleick about California water are partial truths and overblown distortions that are never put in context.  Nor are the assumptions about such statistics disclosed as would be required by any ethical scientist.   Let’s take a quick look at Gleick’s claims.

1.   Gleick: Not Enough Water To Meet 100 Percent of Demands.

According to data from Cal State University at Stanislaus, there is on average 194.2 million acre-feet of precipitation and imported water in California per year (see table below). An acre-foot of water is enough to supply two families per year; or one acre of farmland. Deducting the 39.4 million acre-feet of water that goes to the environment on an average year, that would leave 154.8 million acre-feet of water.  That would equate to enough water for 774 million people per year. (154.8 x 2 x 2.5 persons per household.) Or it would be 154.8 million acres of farmland. So much for Gleick’s claim that there isn’t enough water to supply 100 percent of demand in a year.

Contrary to Gleick’s widely disseminated claims, there is enough potential water.  The problem is not necessarily a shortage of water caused by waste by agriculture or cities but capture, storage, conveyance, and treatment of potential water resources.

2. Gleick: Agriculture Uses 80 Percent of All Water.

According to the California Department of Water Resources official statistics, agriculture uses 42 percent of all “dedicated” water for human use in an average year.  In a wet year, agriculture uses 28 percent of the water and in a dry year, 52 percent.
To claim that agriculture uses 80 percent of the water one would have to assume that every year is a dry year and that the pool of water one is referring to is the total amount of water for “human use.”

A percentage is the ratio between a whole and a part.  If you make the whole smaller, the part appears bigger.

There are three concentric rings of water in California (see table below):

1. The largest amount of water is total precipitation and imported water, which is 194.2 million acre feet per year on average;
2. The next largest is total “available” water, which is about 82.5 million acre-feet on average; and
3. The smallest amount is water for “human use,” which is 43.1 million acre-feet of water on average.  Gleick uses this amount to determine the percentage of agricultural use of water, but only on a dry year.

In other words, one would have to assume the smallest amount of water — water for “human use” — and a continuous drought to say that agriculture uses 80 percent of all water in California.  Failure to disclose these preconditions is misleading.

California depends on “monsoon-like” rains in wet years to fill reservoirs. Cites and farms depend on the water from wet years until the next cyclical wet year.  To accurately report how much water agriculture uses, “average” data must be used, not data from a dry or a wet year.  Gleick uses data from a dry year and the narrow supply of water for “human use” — not total potential water or all available water — to derive his 80 percent figure. He also presumes there is no water storage or groundwater resources available.  Cities and farms often use groundwater during dry years to offset less imported supplies.

To repeat, 42 percent is the official figure the California Department of Water Resources uses for average agricultural water use.  This is about half of what Dr. Gleick claims.

And if we take into consideration all the water supplies from precipitation and imported water in a wet year, then agriculture would only use about 8 percent of total potential water.

It is misleading to not disclose the assumptions on which an estimate is based.  Dr. Gleick never discloses what circumstances would result in agriculture using 80 percent of “dedicated” water supplies. Such circumstances would include:

* Wet or dry year;
* Total potential water;
* Available water;
* Water only for human use;
* Whether all storage reservoirs and groundwater basins are empty.

When assumptions are not disclosed, it is not ethical science that is reported but propaganda.

3. Gleick: Eight Times Water Rights Have Been Contracted.

It is likely true that eight times as much water has technically been contracted as there is water available from various water sources.  But under what conditions is this true?  As Mike Wade of the Agricultural Coalition explains: “The truth is water rights permits are issued for time and place of use, not gross quantity.”

For example, it is typical to grant greater water rights during a wet year. And then by comparing the amount of water in those wet year grants to the water in a dry year, one can fallaciously conclude that the water rights granted are eight times the amount available in a dry year.  But in a dry year, it is typically not permitted to draw water or only draw to less of it.

The exercise of water rights is based on contingencies such as rainfall.  It can also be based on court adjudicated restrictions such as the “safe yield” of a groundwater basin so that the basin is not depleted.

So it is misleading to say the contracted water rights are eight times the capacity. If it were true that water rights granted were eight times the amount of available water, this would have perpetrated a contractual fraud.  And such frauds and disputes have historically been brought before courts of law for adjudication.  One would have to assume there is no court system to adjudicate the claims of those who hold water rights to make the outlandish statement that water rights exceed water supplies.

Many Phish Swim In Unpure Water

We will await the outcome of any future legal actions to report what, if any, alleged crimes Gleick may or may not have committed with Heartland Institute documents.  Gleick’s self-admitted reckless and apparently delusional actions in the Heartland scandal don’t aid in the credibility of his interpretations of the data about agricultural water usage.

What Gleick admittedly did is called “phishing” in Internet language, which is defined as: To request confidential information over the Internet under false pretenses in order to fraudulently obtain credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal data.

There is a saying, “Water that is too pure has no fish.”

So of Gleick’s actions, we could say, “Unpure water has many phish.”

Percentage of Agricultural Water Under Various Scenarios (Million Acre Feet)