The CEO of Whole Foods — a foot retailer that’s been capitalizing on sustainability, organic foods and other environmentally friendly products — now doubts that there is any scientific consensus proving that global warming is a threat.

A report in The Huffington Post laments the change of heart espoused by CEO John Mackey. He reveals in the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine that it would be a shame to allow the “hysteria about global warming” to lead to tax increases that would “lower our standard of living and lead to an increase in poverty.”

The taxes, of course, are a reference to the cap-and-trade emission legislation approved by the House last year. The Senate plans to approve a similar bill this year.

Mackey’s conversion from alarmist to denier apparently came about after reading the book Heaven and Earth: Global Warming — the Missing Science. The book argues that there is no consensus on the science linking climate change to human activities like driving cars and burning coal.

There’s been a 14% drop in the number of Americans who think there’s solid evidence that Earth is warming up due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. In September, 57% said the science linking GHG emissions to global warming was strong. In April 2008, the number was 71%.

And, the number of people who think global warming is a serious problem has also dropped — 35% today compared to 44% a year ago.

But these new numbers aren’t stopping Congress from barreling ahead on a GHG cap-and-trade legislation.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has released her version of a global warming bill, a gigantic 925-page draft that she calls the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. It mostly echoes a bill adopted by the House earlier this year.

Boxer’s committee holds three comprehensive hearings this week to wade through her draft. She says her bill would cost Americans about $100 a year.

Some business groups are still jumping on the climate change bandwagon.

For example, Pennsylvania Business Leaders for a Clean Energy Economy will testify that the mix of GHG reduction and clean energy measures in Boxer’s bill will create 78,000 green jobs in the Keystone State. Job creation will fall largely in three areas: energy efficiency, renewable energy and controlling GHG emissions.

Many more traditional industries will lambaste the measure for raising energy prices, making U.S. companies less competitive and driving more production offshore.

Meanwhile, a new study by statisticians debunks recent claims that the Earth is cooling rather than warming.

EPA says about 10,000 companies are covered by a new GHG reporting rule. This rule targets companies that release more than 25,000 metric tons a year of any mix of:

• carbon dioxide
• methane
• nitrous oxide
• hydrofluorocarbons
• perflyorocarbons, and
• fluorinated gases — sulfur hexafuloride, nitrogen trifluoride and hydrofluorinated ethers.

The actual cost is debatable. They’ll spend about $115 million in the first year. In subsequent years, EPA says it will cost $72 million a year in Clean Air Act compliance costs.

Industry reaction is mixed. Some say EPA understates the cost. However, one industrial operator tells GreenerWorking.com that the per-facility costs is minor. He’s treating this rule as “just an accounting exercise.” Other GHG rules will be much more worrisome, he says.

Who to believe? History shows that EPA’s estimates are closer to the mark. But until the rule’s been in place for a couple of years, the debate over costs will continue.

But what is clear is which companies will be hit by EPA’s GHG regulations.

The facilities that will have to report these releases are mostly fossil fuel suppliers and industrial gas suppliers, manufactures of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, power plants, and facilities that burn fossil fuels. And yes, livestock operations have to report if they release more than the 25,000 metric ton GHG threshold. Since most animal farms don’t, EPA downplays this impact.

To see if your company is regulated, EPA has an on-line tool to assess an operation based on its on-site fuel combustion.

There are several industrial categories that are NOT covered by this reporting rule:

• electronics manufacturers
• ethanol producers
• fluorinated gas producers
• food processors
• magnesium producers
• oil and natural gas systems
• sulfur hexafluoride released from electrical equipment
• underground coal mines
• industrial landfills
• wastewater treatment, and
• coal suppliers.

Companies covered by the GHG reporting rule must start tracking and keeping records of their GHG emissions January 1, 2010. First reports to EPA are due in 2011, and EPA will make these reports public.

But this is just the start. An even more extensive GHG regulation will be released by EPA soon. This one will regulate actual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants and large industrial facilities. Facilities that release more than 25,000 metric tons of CO2 a year will have to control these releases through an EPA permitting process that regulates new and modified facilities.

That’s the way the U.S. Chamber of Commerce hopes to derail federal plans to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2), the most abundant greenhouse gas (GHG) released. The LA Times reports that group is seriously proposing to recreate the Scopes Monkey Trial that so entertained Americans in the summer of 1925.

The Chamber’s Bill Kovacs thinks having a judge decide whether climate change science — supported by the National Academy of Sciences and other reputable, international scientific organizations — is true or not. Kovacs has asked EPA to hold a public hearing/trial/spectacle to end the debate about global warming science.

The Chamber hopes to rouse public opposition against a pending EPA plan to declare that CO2 is a “pollutant” that could be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that EPA has the legal authority to do this.

The so-called EPA “endangerment” proposal is separate from the pending plan in Congress to create a cap-and-trade program to regulate American GHG emissions. EPA chief Lisa Jackson has said her agency would not use the Clean Air Act to regulate GHG emissions if Congress adopts cap-and-trade legislation.

However, if Congress fails to act, EPA will, and any EPA action is expected to be more onerous than a federal cap-and-trade program. Reason: EPA could directly regulate each facility’s GHG emissions, and the agency has the enforcement muscle to make noncompliance more expensive than compliance.

The Chamber hopes the climate change trial would prove that EPA hasn’t used the latest scientific analysis to support its possible regulation. The Chamber reports on its blog that the agency used secondary scientific sources that weren’t adequately peer-reviewed to justify regulating CO2 and other GHG releases. The Chamber fears that such regulation would wreck havoc on the U.S. economy. Click here.

EPA will deny this trial request, so watch for the Chamber to then ask a federal court to order this climate change trial.

Note: The Scopes Monkey Trial pitted Clarence Darrow against Williams Jennings Bryan in an evolution vs. creationism debating match. Darrow’s client was found guilty of teaching evolution.

The law was simple. Tennessee had banned teaching of evolution.

Bryan won in court, but most observers felt he lost the debate. In any case, the effort exposed him to widespread ridicule and he died five days later.

Repainting a roof white can deflect 75% of the sun’s light back into the atmosphere, thus reducing the impact of global warming attributed to the sun.

And, with all that heat bouncing off the roof, a business can dramatically reduce its air conditioning bill, which then helps reduce the other cause of climate change: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

It’s a strategy that Steven Chu, Secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE), started promoting as something simple and relatively easy to do.

The Washington Post reports that research at Chu’s former employer, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, predicts that painting 63% of roofs white in 100 cities in the world’s temperate and tropical areas would have the same global warming reduction impact as removing all cars off the road for 10 years. The Post story is here.

Chu says DOE will explore ways to encourage more white roofs on private and public buildings in the U.S.

But the white roof idea’s not just a math exercise. California already requires flat roofs to be white and Wal Mart has white roofs on 75% of its stores.

Smaller buildings are also adopting the white roof idea. In Tallahassee, FL, a new FSU Credit Union branch will include a white roof. The building will qualify for a silver rating under the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

Builder Culpepper Construction Co., Inc. says the white roof will cut the sun’s heat effect in half and reduced the size of the bank’s air conditioning system.

Click here for FSU’s story.

Two economic analysts with EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics say the agency’s using outdated science and outside experts to justify its plans to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions instead of developing its own in-house expertise to assess global warming.

Had the agency used the most current research data, the researchers say EPA would have realized that:

• global temperatures are declining
• there’s no longer a scientific consensus that Atlantic hurricanes are intensifying due to global warming
• Greenland’s not losing its ice sheet as rapidly as earlier believed, and
• the current recession has reduced GHG emissions worldwide, a fact that has been ignored by international assessments on global warming.

The economists’ report was released by the conservative think tank, the Competitve Enterprise Institute as proof that the Obama administration is suppressing dissenting options on global warming. The CEI report is here.

The EPA staffer’s dissenting report is here.

A new study from the U.S. Global Change Research Program concludes there’s no doubt that climate change is here, and that unless action is taken to reduce CO2 and other GHG emissions, like today and right away, the effects will intensify. The program uses scientific experts from 13 federal agencies and the White House.

The report clearly makes the case that former vice president Al Gore was right about global warming.

Weather changes are already making an impact in the U.S. include more severe droughts in the Southwest, more storms in the Midwest and East and rising sea levels from Alaska to Florida. The cause? Human activity, from the industrial revolution through today.

And, what’s going to really upset those who don’t want to believe global warming is a problem, is that this report isn’t the work of President Obama, but the summation of 10 years of research conducted by the Bush administration.

The report warns that the weather changes caused by global warming will be more severe as the years pass. For example, summertime in Illinois will soon feel like steamy Louisiana.

As weather patterns change, snowpack and water supplies are already diminishing in the West, Southwest and Northwest. This hurts more than farmers and ranchers. Falling water levels in streams and rivers reduces hydroelectric power generation.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program report is here.

To see a slide of the extreme jump in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere compared over the past 800,000 years, click here. The site includes other slides graphically proving that global warming is occurring now.

The study’s top 10 key findings that will make global warming skeptics howl are here.

The price tag: $92.8 billion! That’s the warning coming from a new analysis of what a GHG cap-and-trade program will cost companies.

Consultants Trucost and the nonprofit group, the Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute, project that the costs of buying all the GHG emission credits needed to operate under a cap-and-trade system would devastate the earnings potential of many companies.

The two groups reviewed likely costs on the companies listed in the S&P 500 index and found financial impacts vary widely. Some companies may see earnings potential drop 117% while others would suffer only 1% setbacks.

The utility sector would be hit hardest because it is the single largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most prevalent GHG emission. Companies that buy power from these coal-fired power producers would see higher electric bills as utilities try to pass on these regulatory costs.

The analysis bases these predictions on the likely scenario that a GHG credit will sell for $28.24 a ton in 2012.

The Trucost report is here.

Trucost is also developing a product that helps state and local governments identify which companies and facilities to target for GHG control rules. Click here for details on its Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA).

It may be hard for some global warming skeptics to believe, but the effects of all those greenhouse gases (GHGs) accumulating in the atmosphere are already creating severe climatic changes.

A new study from the U.S. Global Change Research Program concludes there’s no doubt that climate change is here, and that unless action is taken to reduce CO2 and other GHG emissions, like today and right away, the effects will intensify. The program uses scientific experts from 13 federal agencies and the White House.

The report clearly makes the case that former vice president Al Gore was right about global warming.

Weather changes are already making an impact in the U.S. include more severe droughts in the Southwest, more storms in the Midwest and East and rising sea levels from Alaska to Florida. The cause? Human activity, from the industrial revolution through today.

And, what’s going to really upset those who don’t want to believe global warming is a problem, is that this report isn’t the work of President Obama, but the summation of 10 years of research conducted by the Bush administration.

The report warns that the weather changes caused by global warming will be more severe as the years pass. For example, summertime in Illinois will soon feel like steamy Louisiana.

As weather patterns change, snowpack and water supplies are already diminishing in the West, Southwest and Northwest. This hurts more than farmers and ranchers. Falling water levels in streams and rivers reduces hydroelectric power generation.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program report is here.

To see a slide of the extreme jump in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere compared over the past 800,000 years, click here. The site includes other slides graphically proving that global warming is occurring now.

The study’s top 10 key findings that will make global warming skeptics howl are here.

New York yesterday joined Illinois and Virginia and dozens of cities in banning purchases of bottled water by state and municipal agencies.  NY Gov. David Paterson (D) says bottled water manufacturing alone creates 2.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year.

The bans are designed to cut costs of the water and related disposal/recycling expenses and critically, to promote the use and safety of municipal tap water.

These regulatory phaseouts also serve as a warning to all companies to consider ways to reduce their environmental footprints.

To see a list of other cities and states considering ways to discourage bottled water usage, click here.

Bottle water also contributes to global warming because of the associated CO2 emissions from fossil fuels used to power trucks, vans and ships that deliver the product. Another key negative is that it takes more water to make a bottle of bottled water than the bottle contains.  To see one such analysis, click here.

To calculate what the associated GHG emissions might be for your products, click here for EPA’s calculators.