Spin Cycle: EPA’s Clean Power Plan

The Spin Cycle is a reoccurring feature based upon just how much the latest weather or climate story, policy pronouncement, or simply poo-bah blather spins the truth. Statements are given a rating between 1-5 spin cycles, with less cycles meaning less spin. For a more in-depth description, visit the inaugural edition.

---

The first paragraph of EPA’s 1500+ page Clean Power Plan, released on August 3, says this:

These final emission guidelines…will lead to significant carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reductions from the utility power sector that will help protect human health and the environment from the impacts of climate change.

This isn’t simply an exaggeration, a misstatement or a sophomoric rhetorical flourish.  It is simply not true.

The operative claim is that EPA’s  plan “will help protect human health and the environment from the impacts of climate change.” 

It will do no such thing.  The EPA’s own policy analysis model, called MAGICC*, tells us how much global warming will be prevented by the new plan:  0.019°C by the year 2100 (based on procedures similar to those we detailed here).  That’s the amount of temperature change a person will experience in about every second of life. It is simply impossible to detect this change in any global temperature history.

Even that is an overestimate of the actual impact of the plan.  The EPA has also published a “base case” which includes emissions reductions expected from existing state and federal regulations.  The difference between the plan and the base—i.e., the future temperature savings directly attributable it drops to 0.009°C—let’s be generous and call that 0.01°C.  

It is global warming that causes the “climate change” that we will be “protected” from.  So, if the amount of saved warming can’t be detected (the cause), there will be no detectable alteration in the trajectory of related climate change (the effect).

For that, we award the Clean Power Plan a “Heavy Duty” spin cycle award.

 

Heavy Duty. Government regulations or treaties claiming to save the planet from certain destruction, but which actually accomplish nothing. Can also apply to important UN climate confabs, such as Copenhagen 2009 (or, quite likely, the upcoming 2015 Paris Summit), that are predicted to result in a massive, sweeping, and world-saving new treaty, followed by self-congratulatory back-patting. Four spin cycles.

 *Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-Gas Induced Climate Change