By Anthony Watts, Watts Up With that
For those of you who don’t know him, Joe Bastardi is one of the lead forecasters for AccuWeather. He’s also a global warming skeptic.
Fox news invited Greenpeace to come on and support their press reports here and here that:
“Climate change is driving a new generation of fires with unknown social and economic consequences,”
and
“With climate models predicting increased heat waves in the coming years, we are fast approaching a global emergency.”
These are statements from Miguel Soto, Greenpeace Spain forests campaigner. I think he’d be surprised to learn, and possibly even deny, that the biggest contributor to the cause of California wildfires was an ocean cooling event, La Nina.
Fox news invited Greenpeace to come on, they initially accepted. Then late declined. Perhaps they heard they’d be up against Joe Bastardi. Watch the video as Joe takes apart the Greenpeace argument and more.
For further background, see my arguments on 60 minutes recent re-run about global warming and wildfires.
Right on cue, CBS news 60 minutes is expected link the recent California fires to “global warming”. Never mind that the fire was caused by arson, or that the area hadn’t burned in 40-60 years, leading up to a collection of dry dead underbrush which is part of the natural fire cycle. Never mind that La Nina made for a dry couple of years exacerbating the problem. Never mind that we get fires in California about this time every year. No, its the “Age of Megafires”. WUWT reader Jason writes to tell us that this story is a rerun, and originally aired in 2007.
NYT was saying it is all getting worse back in 1996. Curiously though, you won’t find a single mention of “global warming” or “climate change” in that story. It was all about forest management issues:
But the recent methods used to control the growth of Western forests has also been blamed. In view of this summer’s debacle, debate is intensifying on how to better manage these forests. Loggers correlate today’s wildfires with a Federally mandated cut in timber harvests from national forests, from a peak of 12 billion board feet a year in the 1980’s to about 4 billion this year. But after World War II, a Smokey the Bear ethic took hold in the West, and total fire suppression became a national goal. Without regular low-level fires, Western forests grew dense, and massive amounts of fuel built up. Today, when a Western forest ignites, it often explodes with a force unknown in earlier times. Racing from tree crown to tree crown, fires last longer and travel farther.
Scott Pelley is the same reporter that went to Antarctic in 2007 at the height of the melt season to tell us that “Antarctica is Melting”. They called that one the “The Age of Warming” Of course Scott never told his viewers that it was the peak melt season or that Antarctic ice is above normal.
And finally, never mind that 100 years ago, we didn’t have CNN or 60 minutes or “Action News” to regularly scare us to death with dramatic visual linkages. Back then, fire were just another part of the natural landscape.
From my perspective , we live in the “Age of MegaFUD”.
NOAA National Climate Data Center
34TH COLDEST SUMMER US
The average June-August 2009 summer temperature for the contiguous United States was below average - the 34th coolest on record, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. August was also below the long-term average. The analysis is based on records dating back to 1895.
For the 2009 summer, the average temperature of 71.7 degrees F was 0.4 degree F below the 20th Century average. The 2008 average summer temperature was 72.7 degrees F. A recurring upper level trough held the June-August temperatures down in the central states, where Michigan experienced its fifth, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and South Dakota their seventh, Nebraska its eighth, and Iowa its ninth coolest summer. By contrast, Florida had its fourth warmest summer, while Washington and Texas experienced their eighth and ninth warmest, respectively. The Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota region experienced its sixth coolest summer on record. Only the Northwest averaged above normal temperatures.
AUGUST BELOW NORMAL US
The average 2009 August temperature of 72.2 degrees F was 0.6 degree F below the 20th Century average. Last year’s August temperature was 73.2 degrees F. Temperatures were below normal in the Midwest, Plains, and parts of the south. Above-normal temperatures dominated the eastern seaboard, areas in the southwest, and in the extreme northwest. Several northeastern states were much above normal for August, including Delaware and New Jersey (eighth warmest), Maine (ninth), and Rhode Island and Connecticut (10th). In contrast, below-normal temperatures were recorded for Missouri and Kansas.
EIGHT WETTEST SUMMER
The Northeast region had its eighth wettest June-August summer on record. By contrast, the South, Southeast and Southwest regions, were drier than average. Arizona had its third driest summer, while both South Carolina and Georgia had their sixth driest.
VOLCANIC SUMMER
Recall after Mt Redoubt erupted in spring and Sarychev in Russia later, we noted Oman et al (2006) had suggested they favored high latitude blocking usually characterized by a negative Arctic Oscillation (AO) Index. The AO index for June and July was at the lowest lowest level since 1950! Indeed for years after a high latitude volcano, summers were cool where this summer was cool because of this blocking.
See Canadian temperatures here. It was the 6th coldest in the prairies.
By Paul Miller
On Meet the Press this past Sunday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman railed against internet news sources, referring to them as an “open sewer of untreated, unfiltered information.” He continued to mock new media, suggesting that the American public is incapable of deciphering between facts, fiction and opinion, when he said that modems should have a warning label from the surgeon general that reads “judgment not included.” What Mr. Friedman cannot understand is that web-based information sources like blogs, wikis and vlogs (video blogs) are the new beat reporters and investigative journalists of our time.
Their importance was revealed, just this past weekend, before which, very few Americans recognized the name Van Jones. The White House environmental adviser was one of thirty-two “Czars” appointed by the president who is accountable only to the president, immune to government oversight and senate confirmation. The major networks and newspapers including Mr. Friedman’s employer, the New York Times, failed to acknowledge his existence until after new media watchdog’s revealed information that the mainstream press failed to uncover.
In an on online story posted last April 6, New Zealand blogger Trevor Jones exposed the world to the Van Jones the Obama administration did not want you to know about. Three days later, the American website World Net Daily exposed Jones’ research to a wider audience. The article revealed Jones’s ties to radical leftist groups, being a self-proclaimed communist and racially incendiary remarks. These revelations did not trigger any journalistic instincts at the major networks, cable news channels or major newspapers. It did, however, reach a core with citizen watchdogs.
During the six months after Jones and then WND published their first Van Jones stories, new media sources uncovered his signature on a petition suggesting the Bush administration was involved in the September 11 attacks. Citizen investigators produced a recording of Van Jones exposing his disdain for the existence of Israel. On a lighter note, a video surfaced showing the president’s “green jobs” Czar calling Republicans an expletive. The discovery that Mr. Jones was a supporter of Philadelphia cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, served as icing on the cake. These revelations were met with silence from the Washington Post, New York Times and major news networks.
At the eleventh hour, approximately twenty-four hours before Van Jones resigned, the “big three” and the so-called newspaper of record, the New York Times, acknowledged the Jones fiasco. It is a shame that Thomas Friedman and company will never admit that new media did the job the American people previously entrusted in traditional media.
Not anymore.
In a June 18, 2009, article in Forbes magazine, pollster John Zogby noted that over twice as many Americans trust internet news sources more than television, newspapers and radio. That poll came just eighteen months after a Sam Adams Alliance, a Chicago-based nonprofit that utilizes new media to promote government accountability and transparency. Opinions expressed are not endorsed by any organization and are strictly those of the author.
Mr. Friedman is right that information should be filtered, but that process should be left to the individual to decide what is credible and what matters. Journalists have an obligation to their profession and the public to disseminate the facts, especially when they involve government officials whose actions greatly impact the country. The mainstream media didn’t just drop the ball regarding Van Jones - they never showed up to the game. Thankfully, new media players were able to step up to the plate and bring home a victory for the people and the journalism profession. Copyright 2009, AT Read full story here.
By Robert Bryce, Wall Street Journal
On Aug. 13, ExxonMobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with crude oil or other pollutants in uncovered tanks or waste-water facilities on its properties. The birds were protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which dates back to 1918. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees.
ExxonMobil is hardly alone in running afoul of this law. Over the past two decades, federal officials have brought hundreds of similar cases against energy companies. In July, for example, the Oregon-based electric utility PacifiCorp paid $1.4 million in fines and restitution for killing 232 eagles in Wyoming over the past two years. The birds were electrocuted by poorly-designed power lines.
Yet there is one group of energy producers that are not being prosecuted for killing birds: wind-power companies. And wind-powered turbines are killing a vast number of birds every year.
A July 2008 study of the wind farm at Altamont Pass, Calif., estimated that its turbines kill an average of 80 golden eagles per year. The study, funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, also estimated that about 10,000 birds - nearly all protected by the migratory bird act - are being whacked every year at Altamont. Altamont’s turbines, located about 30 miles east of Oakland, Calif., kill more than 100 times as many birds as Exxon’s tanks, and they do so every year. But the Altamont Pass wind farm does not face the same threat of prosecution, even though the bird kills at Altamont have been repeatedly documented by biologists since the mid-1990s.
The number of birds killed by wind turbines is highly variable. And biologists believe Altamont, which uses older turbine technology, may be the worst example. But that said, the carnage there likely represents only a fraction of the number of birds killed by windmills. Michael Fry of the American Bird Conservancy estimates that U.S. wind turbines kill between 75,000 and 275,000 birds per year. Yet the Justice Department is not bringing cases against wind companies. “Somebody has given the wind industry a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Mr. Fry told me. “If there were even one prosecution,” he added, the wind industry would be forced to take the issue seriously.
According to the American Wind Energy Association, the industry’s trade association, each megawatt of installed wind-power results in the killing of between one and six birds per year. At the end of 2008, the U.S. had about 25,000 megawatts of wind turbines.
By 2030, environmental and lobby groups are pushing for the U.S. to be producing 20% of its electricity from wind. Meeting that goal, according to the Department of Energy, will require the U.S. to have about 300,000 megawatts of wind capacity, a 12-fold increase over 2008 levels. If that target is achieved, we can expect some 300,000 birds, at the least, to be killed by wind turbines each year.
On its Web site, the Wind Energy Association says that bird kills by wind turbines are a “very small fraction of those caused by other commonly accepted human activities and structures - house cats kill an estimated one billion birds annually.” That may be true, but it is not much of a defense. When cats kill birds, federal law doesn’t require marching them to our courthouses to hold them responsible.
During the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Rob Lee was one of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s lead law-enforcement investigators on the problem of bird kills in Western oil fields. Now retired and living in Lubbock, Texas, Mr. Lee tells me that solving the problem in the oil fields “was easy and cheap.” The oil companies only had to put netting over their tanks and waste facilities.
Why aren’t wind companies prosecuted for killing eagles and other birds? “The fix here is not easy or cheap,” Mr. Lee told me. He added that he doesn’t expect to see any prosecutions of the politically correct wind industry. This is a double standard that more people - and not just bird lovers - should be paying attention to. In protecting America’s wildlife, federal law-enforcement officials are turning a blind eye to the harm done by “green” energy.
By John Dodds
ADDED CO2 FAILS TO CAUSE WARMING
The global warming computer models and IPCC claim that adding extra CO2 results in a larger greenhouse effect and more warming and hence a hockey stick temperature.. This is false. It leads to a failure to abide by the Law of Conservation of Energy and the creation of temperature that does not exist. The amount of energy absorbed by the GHGs is LIMITED by the amount of energy coming in and going out at any particular time, NOT by the amount of CO2 or GHGs. When the sun goes down every night, the incoming energy drops, the temperature goes down and the amount of energy available to be transported to space by GHGs or CO2 decreases. There is then excess CO2 in the air, that is NOT being used by the Greenhouse effect. In fact if all the CO2 was used by the greenhouse effect when the temperature was at the world record of 58C, then now, when the air is at the global average of 16C, there is at least 40% of excess CO2 in the air, not being used by the greenhouse effect. The Stefan-Boltzmann Law, by the ratio of temperatures to the 4th power identifies the maximum fraction of the energy is available to be transported out at a given temperature. With excess CO2 in the air, then reducing this excess CO2 by Cap and Trade etc will have no impact on temperature. The Kyoto treaty is based on flawed science. Extra GHGs do not cause warming. This is obvious from the fact that it does NOT get warmer as you go further underwater and encounter more of the GHG H2O. In fact given that CO2 was near 2000ppm during the Dinosaur age (250-65M Years ago), when vegetation was very lush (even in North Dakota and the Australian interior deserts) and able to support many large dinosaurs, it is most probable that the excess CO2 resulted in greater plant algae and food production.
GRAVITY FROM 60 Yr JUPITER /SATURN RESONANCE CYCLE CAUSES 60 Yr WARMING CYCLE
A new paper, “ John Dodds’ Wobble Theory of Global Warming (c)” (140+ page paper available electronically for a nominal $10, at www.scribd.com, a free 10+ page Summary and Abstract is also available there) identifies the various forces of gravity from the Sun, moon, and the planets. These forces and the associated energy transfer result in a near 60 year cycle of energy entering the Earth. This 60 year cycle of 30 years cooling followed by 30 years warming, peaks in 1880, 1940, 1998/9 and will cool for thirty years through ~2028, then warm again until about 2058. It is the variable energy from the forces of gravity, primarily from the Jupiter and Saturn 60 year resonance cycle, where Earth & the planets line up near their perigee (closest point/maximum gravity) to Earth, that results in the peak energy input, and the peak temperature on Earth. Charts showing the correlation of the 60 year planetary gravity peaks and the temperatures from the GISP2 ice cores, agree for thousands of years. Planetary gravity variation due to eccentricity caused primarily by Jupiter’s eccentricity also have longer term nominal 900 year eccentricity cycles which cause the slightly variable 450 year cooling (1100 to 1600, 2000 to 2400 etc) and 450 year warming (2800BC to 2300BC,1600-2000...) cycles. It is these energy peaks and valleys that result in longer term temperature cycles that also correspond to GISP2 and VOSTOK ice core temperatures. Even longer Jupiter eccentricity cycles in the multi- thousand year timeframe, should also be responsible for the 20,000 year precession, 41,000 year tilt cycle ,the 100,000 year ice age cycle, the 405,000 year and 2.4M Year Earth eccentricity cycles. When the variable forces of Gravity are added to the Milankovitch theory, to solve its major problem of having insufficient energy to cause ice ages, then Milankovitch is also validated.
GRAVITY FROM 60 Yr JUPITER/SATURN RESONANCE CYCLE CAUSES NORTH-SOUTH PDO/NAO/EL NINO/LA NINA CYCLES
The 60 year resonance cycle also has a North-South component in that when the peaks occur, both Jupiter and Saturn are below the Sun- Earth ecliptic plane resulting in more energy coming into the Southern hemisphere. Thirty years later the planets are above the ecliptic plane resulting in more energy energy up north. This explains why there are 60 year cycles (& also 12 year Jupiter caused cycles) in the PDO, NAO, El Nino/La Nina etc. The planet Venus also provides a periodic short term boost to energy input, primarily associated with Venus energy spikes which induces El Ninos etc. When this peaks the combination of all three energy sources peaking results in more warming and tropical storms. An energy peak is predicted in October 2010, so there should be increased storm activity then than in recent years. In order for the PDO etc to maintain a sustained temperature above or below the average, it is required that a continuous source of additional energy (gravity) be supplied. Otherwise daily and yearly orbital variations would return the hot spots to equilibrium. The identification of this variable and predictable energy source should enable better PDO/NAO/El Nino/La Nina, hurricane/cyclone/drought prediction.
By James Lewis, The American Thinker
Science Magazine has good news for global warming crowd: The Hockey Stick is back! It was shown to be a fraud before, but now - Shazam! It’s back!
Gee it’s hot today. But… compared to what? That’s the big question in the global warming game. The best ways of measuring world temps is with satellites and weather balloons, using space-age electronics. Which didn’t exist until recently. So if it seems hotter today, we have to guess at the historic baseline for the last 2,000 years.
Or rather, we end up using “baseline surrogates.” Like Arctic ice cores, tree rings, and such. Politicians do it all the time with job figures and the economy. Look how many jobs we didn’t lose this quarter! It could have been a lot worse! They just make up a low baseline for comparison. Kids do the same thing when they come home with a bad report card. It could have been a lot worse, Mom!
Now the trouble with “surrogate baselines” for anything in science is that it takes a long time to figure out what they really mean. Is your cholesterol level really a good “baseline surrogate” for your chances of blowing a gasket down the line? Turns out it isn’t that good. You can have low cholesterol and run into trouble in middle age, or high cholesterol and live to a ripe old age. With longitudinal measures (over long periods of time) we usually find out how good they are after a long time passes, to check the surrogate against real data. Until then we are just speculating. A huge amount of scientific debate is precisely about that question. It goes on all the time. It’s only in the warming game that temperature surrogates are accepted without question. If they are low enough, so we can “prove” that things have gotten hot, hot.
Science magazine is run by a True Believer in global warming. These people have conquered the commanding political heights in science. They control British medical science, for example, on behalf of the UK Medical Monopoly, which is run by the BritLeft. So you have to assume that in reaching Science magazine you’re always reading the New York Times, and you always have to read for spin and bias. It’s a breakdown of normal science, and it is potentially a disaster. (Arguably a lot of people have already died from politicized science since the rise of the Boomer Left. Viz., Rachel Carson.)
Science magazine is the house organ of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the big money union for science. At one point they spelled their name AAA$ in their glossy ads. Which was at least honest.
Obama just rewarded his academic buds by doubling the budget of the National Science Foundation, and sending a couple of hundred billion to the climate alarmists. Science magazine has been outright supporting the Democrats for years in its editorial pages. Academic Pell Grants have increased by 25% in just one year. It all goes to the Big U Lobby. Academia is a powerful political lobby, and they lean Hard Left. What we are reading in Science magazine today is not exactly free from that Party Line.
Which makes me wonder why ice cores are considered such reliable measures of global temps in the Arctic two millenia ago. Who knows what was really going on to change a few degrees of melting and freezing, melting and freezing in layer upon layer of ice mixed with dirt and bacteria, week after week over a couple of thousand years? The Arctic is a very complicated, very dynamic place. New glaciers constantly grow and calve off. Moss and bacterial films raise the ice temps underneath. Salinity changes the melting temperature of sea water. Krakatoa erupts in the Pacific Ocean and blasts a layer of carbon particles around the world, warming the top layers of ice, maybe down to ten centimeters or more; as a result, algae may bloom and melt ice layers where they thrive. The Great Southern Oscillation (El Nino) flips every now and then, sending streams of warm water in different directions around the world. There are whole ecosystems that thrive at very high heat around oceanic vents and use sulfur-based metabolism. A total surprise when they were discovered in the 1990s; it overturned four centuries of biological classification research. Were there similar “extremophile” organisms in the ice during the Maunder Minimum five hundred years ago? Who knows? Those critters are long gone, their populations are constantly adapting to changing conditions. Micro-organisms are amazingly adaptive.
The idea of a perfectly stable “surrogate baseline” for 2,000 years of global temps is dubious in the extreme. And there’s no proof—it’s all dependent on somebody’s computer model, and all computer models are wrong when it comes to the real world. All the banks that went down the tubes in the Market Crash of 2008 were relying on super-duper computer stock market models that turned out to be wrong. Biological and climate models are no better. If anything, they are more primitive.
The burden of proof in real science is always on the proposer. It’s the global warmers who have to prove their claims beyond a shadow of a doubt. Albert Einstein had to prove Special Relativity Theory (via the famous solar eclipse expeditions of 1914). That’s how healthy science always works. A lot of science doesn’t get proven until the proposer is long dead. Max Planck wasn’t recognized until very late in life.
If you flip the burden of proof, every End of the Earth fantasist can have his own “scientific” empire. It’s like flipping the burden of guilt in a criminal trial: Would you please prove your innocence to the satisfaction of a hanging judge? That’s how witchcraft trials work, and Stalinist show trials. So the burden of proof has to be on the proposer.
So today Science mag is telling us that the infamous Hockey Stick curve is back. We have “proof” of amazingly fast warming in the Arctic over the last century, by as much as a whole degree centigrade—compared to that “surrogate” baseline.
Well, color me skeptical. These are the same climate modelers who have been repeatedly found to be ... well, let’s call it wrong ... on the evidence they cherry-picked. Just the way Pope Urban VIII was wrong about Galileo; not because they have a bias, you understand. Like the Inquisition, they just had a purely scientific debate with Galileo about the rings of Jupiter.
Today’s scientific popes are not in the Vatican; they are in the White House, the EPA and NASA. They control the UN and its bizarre forecasts about Global Armageddon any day now, which only UN bureaucrats can solve. That will be hundreds of billions from America; no, let’s go Obama. Make it trillions. Live a little.
James Hansen wants global warming skeptics prosecuted for Crimes Against Humanity, just like Galileo was persecuted by the Holy Inquisition. He’s not the only one, and with Obama those characters are all over DC. Why do you think Dr. “Let’s Kill the Demented” Emanuel has his personal empire at the National Institutes of Health in DC? He speaks for the Imperial Bureaucracy. That’s why he’s destined to become our High Medical Commissar.
It wouldn’t be that science funders have become biased and corrupted by the global warming game, would it? Naaahhh… I mean, that might mean that Swine Flu and Mad Cow have been insanely over-hyped for decades, just for the sake of scare headlines, the political fuel for socialist establishments all over the world. Keep the people good and scared, and promise them anything. That’s how Obama operates. That’s how socialists work in Europe.
But Scientists Are Good and Honest. They aren’t bought by showers of golden coins. Tenure, an endless flow of research grants, academic applause and public notoriety, well, I’m not saying. Scientists are easily seduced by the applause of the media, just like Madonna. Especially scientist-politicians like Hansen at NASA. Shut off his phone line to the media, and he’s ruined.
But today we have a Free Science medium, not controlled by the Left and by Establishment Science. You’re reading it. Now you can find out the best evidence, follow the honest debates (there are some), and make up your own mind. Science dies without a free media. Just like all the other personal freedoms. Science is just the freedom to think clearly and without coercion. Without freedom, it’s just another version of mental slavery. Read full post here.
Read Dr. Anthony Lupo’s take on the fable of extreme climate change here.
By Norm Kalmanovitch
If the Copenhagen conference is about addressing climate concerns, the focus should be on the detrimental effects of ‘global cooling’ and not about ‘global warming’ which ended over a decade ago. While ‘global warming’ was not only benign, it was beneficial, improving the global food supply with extended growing seasons for countries such as Canada which supplies wheat to many parts of the world facing food shortages. ‘Global cooling’ on the other hand has no beneficial attributes as is clearly demonstrated by the historical accounts of the Little Ice Age that caused such great hardships for large parts of the world.
The physical data clearly shows that the world has been cooling since 2002 at a somewhat alarming rate. Unlike the global cooling episode from 1942 to 1975, which was part of a shorter period cycle, this cooling might be part of the longer period cycle that brought the world from the Medieval Warm Period, to the Little Ice Age, to the warming that peaked in 1998, and is now reverting back to a long period of cooling. Most scientists agree that this cooling will last until the end of solar cycle 25 in 2030, but many fear that this cooling may last a lot longer.
To anyone with basic physical data and a modicum of common sense, the concept of a conference about greenhouse gas emissions reductions to stop ‘global warming’ can only be seen as ridiculous; considering ‘global warming’ ended over a decade ago, but CO2 emissions have kept increasing as the Earth continues to cool.
The conference is clearly not about climate and should be renamed to reflect the actual purpose of the conference.
If the conference is about greenhouse gases; it should be restricted to the use of CO2 in greenhouses as a way of improving productivity as CO2 is the only true greenhouse gas in the strictest sense of the word.
If the conference is about curbing fossil fuel energy; it should be restricted to nuclear energy, the only other viable energy source.
If the conference is about biofuels; it should be restricted to the detrimental effects of biofuels on the world food supply and the current global food crisis.
If the conference is about pollution; it should be restricted air water and soil pollution and how to make the western technology, that has come a long way in addressing these problems, and making this available to developing countries who are in desperate need of such technology to solve their pollution problems.
If the conference is about the economy; it should be restricted to the potentially disastrous economic implications of carbon trading which is a multi billion dollar enterprise that is about to collapse because there is absolutely no actual physical basis for it.
The Copenhagen Conference could be pivotal in ending this whole climate change issue that has had such devastating consequences for the world’s poor and has crippled the world economy, but unfortunately anyone with the common sense to make this happen will be barred from attending by those who want to perpetuate this global warming fraud. See PDF here.
Written by Ed Hiserodt
On August 25, the United States Chamber of Commerce, which claims to represent some three million large and small businesses in the United States, filed a 21-page request with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to hold a public debate on climate-change science or face litigation in federal court.
The Chamber’s concern originates with an April 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts et al. v. EPA, wherein the court sided with the 12 states that had sued the EPA for its lack of regulation of four greenhouse gases - including CO2 - from the transportation sector. The EPA, in a (wink, wink) defense somehow reminiscent of Br’er Rabbit’s admonition to Br’er Fox about the briar patch, argued that Massachusetts and the other states did not have standing to file the lawsuit. In a five-to-four decision the court ruled otherwise, finding the EPA’s refusal resulted in “actual” and “imminent” harm to the State of Massachusetts, primarily from rising sea levels along the state’s coast. The EPA didn’t bother refuting this with numerous studies that have found no detectable sea-level rise to be occurring there or anywhere else in the world for the last decade or more, Al Gore’s obituary on the Maldives to the contrary notwithstanding.
In April 2009, after the EPA performed an alleged scientific review, which ignored important findings of their own scientist economist, Alan Carlin, the EPA issued a proposed “endangerment finding” claiming greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare. During the 60-day comment period that ended on June 23, 2009, some 300,000 comments were received showing a great deal of public interest in the subject.
The Chamber is strongly opposing the “endangerment finding” that, according to Roger Pielke, Sr. of Climate Science, is the “culmination of a several year effort for a small group of climate scientists and others to use their positions as lead authors on the IPCC, CCSP, and NRC reports to promote a political agenda.” Dr. Pielke urges “that there be an independent commission of climate scientists who can evaluate the assessment process that led to the EPA findings as well as the climate science upon which it is constructed.”
Bill Kovacs, Chamber VP for environment, regulatory, and government affairs said, “They don’t have the science to support the endangerment finding,” adding, “We can’t just take their word for it.”
As expected, EPA Deputy Press Secretary Brendan Gilfillan rejected the Chamber’s claims. Falling back on the worn out “the science is settled” mantra, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said the proposed endangerment finding was based on “the soundest peer-reviewed science available, which overwhelmingly indicates that climate change presents a threat to human health and welfare.” If the science is so overwhelming in favor of greenhouse gases being the forcing agent in the warming of the Earth since the 1860s, shouldn’t the EPA be eager to show it to the skeptics?
The EPA has 60 days to respond to the request, which they will likely deny. The Chamber then has 60 days to appeal that administrative decision in court - something they (to their credit) have promised to do.
Writing in the ChamberPost, Brad Peck gives a succinct summary of the Chamber’s reasoning and motivation to oppose what would surely lead to the diminution or destruction of the U.S. economy as it now operates: In order to ensure that regulations which reengineer our economy are needed and would ultimately be effective, we are pushing the EPA to reveal the data they used to justify their endangerment proposal. The agency used secondary scientific sources, studies that largely weren’t adequately peer-reviewed and the selective use of scientific studies to justify a policy decision they wanted to make. There are many questions to be asked of the EPA, and forgive the Chamber for not accepting “Trust Us” as an answer.
We owe the Chamber kudos for a job that very much needs doing. See post here.