On Bernie Sanders’ website, there is this statement of the utopian future of energy:
Transitioning toward a completely nuclear-free clean energy system for electricity, heating, and transportation is not only possible and affordable; it will create millions of good jobs, clean up our air and water, and decrease our dependence on foreign oil.
OK, let’s see what that means: no fossil fuels, no nuclear, undoubtedly no or little hydro. What’s left? Basically wind and solar. Sure enough, there’s this:
We will act boldly to move our energy system away from fossil fuels, toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal because we have a moral responsibility to leave our kids a planet that is healthy and habitable.
And don’t get the idea that Bernie is alone in these fantasies. In the same March speech where she said “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” Hillary also added that her energy policy would “bring economic opportunity - using clean, renewable energy as the key - into coal country.”
Can anybody around here do basic arithmetic? These ideas can’t possibly add up unless the government subsidies necessary to induce the development of wind and solar power are treated as completely costless free money. Government as the infinite source of costless free money—actually that’s the essence of progressivism, so I don’t know why I should have expected anything else from these guys.
Over at the Manhattan Institute, Robert Bryce is out with a new report titled “What Happens To An Economy When Forced To Use Renewable Energy?” Of course, the answer to the question is that so-called “renewable energy” is much more expensive than the fossil fuel alternatives, and the extra costs necessarily have to get piled on the population somewhere or other—in higher electricity prices, in higher taxes, in lost jobs or economic opportunities, or something else. The world “leaders” (if we want to call them that) in so burdening their populations are the big countries of Europe, so we can assess the consequences of these policies by comparing the experience of those countries since they started down this road to our own experience. Really, it’s an unmitigated disaster, particularly in the economic burdens imposed on the lower-income portion of the population. To take just a few examples from Bryce’s report:
Since the EU adopted its Emissions Trading Scheme in 2005, electricity prices in Europe have increased at about double the rate of increase in the U.S.—63% in Europe vs. 32% in the U.S.
But the increases have been far more dramatic in the countries that have intervened the most in their energy markets: “During 2008-12, Germany’s residential electricity rates increased by 78 percent, Spain’s rose by 111 percent, and the U.K.’s soared by 133 percent.”
“In 2016 alone, German households will be forced to spend $29 billion on renewable electricity with a market value of $4 billion - more than $700 per household.”
“Germany’s energy minister has warned that the continuation of current policies risks the ‘deindustrialization’ of the country’s economy.”
Spain until recently was famous for the most aggressive promotion of wind and solar of all European countries. How has that worked out? “The country’s electric utilities have accumulated a $32 billion deficit that must now be repaid, by adding surcharges of about 55 percent to customers’ bills. High energy costs are only adding to Spain’s economic woes. During 2004-14, Spain’s GDP grew by just 0.6 percent per year, on average, and the country’s unemployment rate now stands at about 21 percent.”
Meanwhile, at the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions, John Droz today links to an archived 2014 post by a guy named John Weber titled “Prove This Wrong—Wind Makes Zero Sense.” If you think that wind energy is infinitely clean and free, this post is filled with lots of data and many pictures that show the extent to which the production of wind energy relies on a massive underlying fossil-fuel infrastructure. The post kicks off from a 2009 proposal from Stanford Engineering Professor Mark Jacobson to provide 50% of the world’s electricity by 2030 by the simple strategy of building lots of wind turbines. According to Jacobson (who thinks it is a good idea), it would take 3.8 million of the turbines at 5 MWe each to reach the 50% level. Current humongous wind turbines are only about 2.5 MWe each, so it would take more like 7.6 million of the smaller ones. Bernie thinks that all power (not just half) should be provided this way, so make that 15.2 million! Then put aside for the moment that wind turbines only work the far-less-than-half the time when the wind blows at the right speed. Also put aside the big transmission losses from moving the electricity from where the wind blows to where the electricity is used. Anyway, Weber’s post just focuses on the large and really unavoidable use of fossil fuel energy in building all these wind turbines.
When you see these things from a distance in the countryside, it’s hard to realize how truly gigantic they are. Weber gives the following statistics for just one 2.5 MWe wind turbine: tower height - 100 meters (328 feet); total height to top of blade - 485 feet; total weight - 2000 tons (!), mostly of steel and concrete. (Source: Kansas Energy Information Network here.) Here’s a picture of the base of a 2.5 MWe turbine under construction, with some men in the picture to give a sense of the scale. That’s about 45 tons of steel re-bar:
That base is soon to be filled with a pour of about 1200 tons of concrete. Then you attach the 328 foot tower. The tower comes in two sections. Here’s a picture of the smaller (approx. 120 foot) section arriving on a 208 foot long truck:
To state the obvious, the whole idea of wind turbines is a non-starter without the enormous underlying fossil-fuel-powered infrastructure to make and deliver the steel, concrete and other materials. Here is a 2014 post from the Energy Collective acknowledging the same point.
Then there’s air travel—has anyone figured out a way to do that with wind power? Ocean shipping? Theoretically, with enough batteries, you could do all-electric cars with wind power. You can buy a Tesla for around $75,000 today. But don’t worry, the government has plenty of free money lying around to subsidize that down until the price is competitive with the evil fossil-fuel powered vehicles.
Denmark’s government abandoned plans to build five offshore wind power farms Friday amid fears the electricity produced there would become too expensive for Danish consumers.
“Since 2012 when we reached the political agreement, the cost of our renewable policy has increased dramatically,” said Climate Minister Lars Christian Lilleholt, a Liberal Party politician representing the country’s minority government, according to Reuters.
The government would have had to pay $10.63 billion to buy electricity from the five wind farms - a price deemed too expensive for consumers who already face the highest electricity prices in Europe.
“We can’t accept this, as the private sector and households are paying far too much. Denmark’s renewable policy has turned out to be too expensive,” Lilleholt said.
Denmark gets about 40 percent of its electricity from wind power and has a goal of getting half of its electricity from wind by 2020. But that goal has come up against a stronger prevailing headwind: high energy prices.
Danes have paid billions in taxes and fees to support wind turbines, which has caused electricity prices to skyrocket even as the price of actual electricity has decreased. Now, green taxes make up 66 percent of Danish electricity bills. Only 15 percent of electricity bills went to energy generation.
Electricity prices have gotten so high, the government has decided to slash green taxes on consumer energy bills.
“The PSO tariff is expensive and ineffective. We have long believed that the rising costs are unsustainable and now it is abundantly clear that we have to find an alternative. Therefore the government is ready for a showdown over the PSO levy,” Tax Minister Karsten Lauritzen said Tuesday.
Danish politicians still want the country to be completely independent of fossil fuels by 2050 as part of their effort to combat global warming, but ratcheting down green energy taxes means they’ll have to find other ways to finance wind projects.
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Northeast Pipeline Blocked by Progressive Politicians
Another Pipeline Blocked: Pipelines are considered the safest way to transport liquid fuels and gases. For no clear reasons other than political, the Obama Administration blocked the building of the extension of the Keystone Pipeline from Canada into the US. The pipeline would have expanded crude deliveries from Canada to Texas, partially replacing imports of heavy crude from unstable Venezuela and elsewhere outside of North America.
For no clear reasons, other than political, the administration of Governor Cuomo of New York blocked a pipeline from Pennsylvania to New York and New England, which would bring inexpensive natural gas to these areas that have some of the highest electricity prices in the country. Natural gas is the low-cost alternative to coal-fired power plants for electricity and is also needed for heating. The pipeline may save up-state New York homeowners $1000 per year.
There was no solid justification given for this denial of permits except the pipeline failed to meet the state’s water quality standards, which were unspecified. Cuomo has used the same argument to ban hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in the state.
Governor Cuomo considers himself to be a progressive-liberal, as does President Obama. Though not directly these actions, political columnist George Will writes about the attitudes of progressive-liberals when writing about the calls for RICO investigations:
“Four core tenets of progressivism are: First, history has a destination. Second, progressives uniquely discern it. (Barack Obama frequently declares things to be on or opposed to “the right side of history.") Third, politics should be democratic but peripheral to governance, which is the responsibility of experts scientifically administering the regulatory state. Fourth, enlightened progressives should enforce limits on speech (witness IRS suppression of conservative advocacy groups) in order to prevent thinking unhelpful to history’s progressive unfolding.”
There is little reasoning with those who have such high beliefs in themselves.
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Protesters Gather at 2 Oil Refineries In Washington State
Protesters Gather at 2 Oil Refineries In Washington State, by Phuong Le and in the May 13 The Olympian link begins as copied below.
Hundreds of people in kayaks and on foot are gathering at the site of two oil refineries in Washington state to call for action on climate change and a fair transition away from fossil fuels.
Hundreds of people are gathering at the site of two oil refineries in Washington state near Anacortes to call for action on climate change and a transition away from fossil fuels, but it is important to note that climate change here in Washington state’s Puget Sound Lowlands is reflected in the official climate data reported by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center Climate at a Glance indicating that:
* Meteorological winter temperatures here in Washington state’s Puget Sound Lowlands have trended downward at a rate of 0.3 degrees F per decade during the 25 winters from 1990 to 2014.
* Meteorological winter temperatures here in Washington state’s Puget Sound Lowlands have trended downward at a rate of 0.9 degrees F per decade during the 20 winters from 1995 to 2014.
* Meteorological winter temperatures here in Washington state’s Puget Sound Lowlands have trended downward at a rate of 2.0 degrees F per decade during the 10 winters from 2005 to 2014.
Meteorological winter temperatures here in Washington state’s Puget Sound Lowlands have trended downward at increasing downward rates during the 25 winters from 1990 to 2014, as indicated by the official climate data reported by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center above, even as our atmospheric CO2 concentrations have continued to increase.
George Mason University Must Release Documents Calling for Prosecution of Political Opponents
Some of the RICO 20
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) prevailed in a Virginia Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA) lawsuit against George Mason University (GMU). The VFOIA request sought public records showing how the “RICO-20” group of academics, using public funding, organized their call for a federal racketeering investigation of “corporations and other entities” who disagreed with them on climate policy.
The judge ruled for CEI on all counts in an April 22 ruling in Christopher Horner and CEI v. George Mason University that the court released today. The ruling concluded that by leaving it to faculty who simply told the school’s FOIA officer they had no responsive records, GMU failed to conduct an adequate search; the judge also ruled that documents including emails from GMU Professor Ed Maibach must be released to CEI.
“This victory puts on notice those academics who have increasingly inserted themselves into politics, that they cannot use taxpayer-funded positions to go after those who disagree with them and expect to hide it,” said Chris Horner, CEI fellow and co-plaintiff. “These records are highly relevant to the state attorneys general campaign that these academics hoped for, and will be of great assistance to the public in trying to understand how their tax dollars are being used for political fights.”
In 2015, George Mason University (GMU) faculty claimed “no records” existed in response to CEI VFOIA request for records regarding Professor Ed Maibach’s role as a ringleader of the RICO-20 campaign. Other universities provided proof that the “no records” claim was not true, which prompted CEI to sue GMU over the FOIA dispute.
The RICO-20, including six GMU faculty, wrote a September 1 letter from 20 climate scientists to President Barack Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and White House science adviser John Holdren requesting a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) investigation of “the fossil fuel industry and their supporters.” The scientists allege that the aforementioned interests “knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, in order to forestall America’s response to climate change.” CEI’s FOIA efforts extend to each public university represented in the letter. GMU is not the only school to falsely claim “no records” existed.
In May 2015, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) called for a RICO investigation of “fossil fuel companies and their allies."The academics “strongly endorse” Sen. Whitehouse’s proposal. Documents provided by two universities suggest the RICO-20 recruited this support, not for any legislation, but for his call to prosecute political opponents, in consultation with Sen. Whitehouse.
In April, 2016, CEI was subpoenaed by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands for a decade’s worth of climate policy related work. CEI is vigorously fighting the subpoena, which is an attack on its First Amendment rights.
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See in the post how the roaches are scurrying now that the lights are on. Some of the emails have been released and like climategate they are very interesting. Junk Science may have a more complete set of letters released.
When critics trash a film, they’ve usually actually seen it - but, not ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel. So, the filmmaker of movie debunking climate hysteria is challenging Kimmel to attend a private screening.
The “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host used seven minutes of his Monday show to mock a climate skeptic’s film he obviously hadn’t seen - since he repeats the very alarmist talking points the film debunks.
Kimmel bashed “Climate Hustle,” a climate skeptic film that aired in 400 theaters nationwide Monday, by making misleading, unsupportable, and inaccurate claims, and personally attacking Gov. Sarah Palin for supporting the film.
He then aired a two-minute climate change advocacy “message” featuring scientists dropping the “F-Bomb” to insult anyone skeptical of man-made climate change.
Kimmel’s rant against “Climate Hustle” displays a complete ignorance of the content of the film - and deploys the same shopworn deceitful and mean-spirited tactics the film exposes and addresses.
In “Climate Hustle”:
Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. explains how, since alarmists can’t debate the facts, they attack the messenger (as Kimmel personally insults Palin and the scientists drop the F-Bomb on skeptics),
The “97% scientific consensus” claim Kimmel cites is revealed to be the product of slanted methodology - one of which didn’t even poll 97 scientists,
Kimmel’s “hottest years ever” claim is dismantled and debunked,
The Big Money driving climate influence is shown to be on the activist side - in terms of grants, research funding, alarmist advocacy, etc. - not, as Kimmel claims, coming from corporate “polluters,” and
Renowned dissenting scientists (including a Nobel Laureate and a moon-mission astronaut) share data and analysis debunking climate hysteria - not the ignorant, average slobs Kimmel accuses his dissenting viewers of being.
In response to Kimmel’s uninformed, agenda-driven rant on national television, “Climate Hustle” producer, writer and host Marc Morano is challenging Kimmel to view the film.
Morano tells MRCTV:
“It is obvious Mr. Kimmel has not seen ‘Climate Hustle’ or he would have known better than to recite the same propaganda litany of climate ‘facts’ which the movie deals with head-on. Using a video of cursing scientists warning of a tired litany of doom, using terms like ‘apocalyptic’; ‘catastrophic’; and ‘extremely dire’ was bland and predictable and the very reason that ‘Climate Hustle’ was made.
“Apparently, Kimmel thinks failure to believe in man-made global warming fears is akin to not believing in gravity or yogurt. Odd.
“Mr. Kimmel, I challenge you to watch ‘Climate Hustle’ and issue an apology for your climate pabulum that you spewed to viewers. ‘Climate Hustle’ was made to counter the very boilerplate rants that you, Mr. Kimmel, engaged in. The public needs to view ‘Climate Hustle’. if, for no other reason, than to hear Mr. Kimmel’s climate talking points dismantled.
“Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.”
“If Jimmy Kimmel is actually interested in the facts, he’ll step up and watch the film, instead of continuing to recite inaccurate, fear-mongering cliches on blind faith,” Morano added.
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Triumph! Climate Hustle packs ‘em in
Thank you to everyone who went to the movies Monday night and saw Climate Hustle.
Together, we had a huge success.
We have only anecdotal evidence of the movie’s strength so far, but what anecdotes!
Friends from across the nation report strong attendance.
There were sellouts or near sellouts in Albuquerque, Indianapolis, Dallas, Minneapolis, Seattle, Toronto, Long Island and many more. A Boy Scout Troop made a movie night of it in St. Augustine, Florida. Another group got together before the film in Minnesota for dinner and discussion.
I saw it in Virginia and we sold out there with around 180 people in attendance. The crowd’s eyes were glued to the screen. The audience reaction was very positive. Folks laughed out loud and applauded at all the places we hoped they would. We had loud applause at the end.
People engaged more than any movie I’ve recently seen. They hung around and chatted in the lobby. People were not anxious to head home, they wanted to discuss the film and process what they had learned. They were loaded with the right questions and eager to learn more.
Last night thousands of people left the theater Informed, open-minded, engaged questioners.
That’s going to give the warming crowd hives.
Jimmy Kimmel is either hustling us, or he has been hustled himself.
Either way, thousands of people left the theater last night armed with the facts they need to see through the kind of nonsense Kimmel was spouting.
That’s a good night’s work all around.
Thank you to everyone who made Monday night such a success. Great things lie ahead. Stay tuned.
InsideClimate News likes to say it has received prestigious awards for being an influential “pioneer of nonprofit advocacy journalism.” In reality, it is funded by wealthy far-left foundations and excels at creating “self-sustaining environmentalist echo chambers.” Its active partnerships with the LA Times, Associated Press, Weather Channel and other media outlets enable it to orchestrate one-sided stories on climate change, fossil fuels, renewable energy and other environmental issues.
My article this week delves into ICN’s inner workings, alliances and funding arrangements. It gives citizens and voters new reasons to question the narratives purveyed by “public interest” environmental groups and the “mainstream” media.
Thank you for posting it, quoting from it, and forwarding it to your friends and colleagues.
Best regards,
Paul
Inside climate propaganda
InsideClimate News excels at propagating environmentalist and Obama thinking and policies
Paul Driessen
Have you ever wondered how the LA Times, Associated Press, Weather Channel and your local media always seem to present similar one-sided stories on climate change, fossil fuels, renewable energy and other environmental issues? How their assertions become “common knowledge,” like the following?
Global temperatures are the hottest ever recorded. Melting ice caps are raising seas to dangerous levels. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts have never been more frequent or destructive. Planet Earth is at a tipping point because of carbon dioxide emissions. Fracking is poisoning our air, water and climate. 97% of scientists agree. A clean renewable energy future is just around the corner.
It’s as if a chain of command, carefully coordinated process or alliance of ideological compatriots was operating behind the scenes to propagate these fables. This time, conspiracy theorists have gotten it right.
A major player in this process and alliance is one that most citizens and even businessmen and politicians have never heard of. InsideClimate News (ICN) has been called “highly influential,” a “pioneer of nonprofit advocacy journalism,” the recipient of “prestigious awards” for “high-impact investigative stories” on important environmental issues.
The Washington Free Beacon, National Review and Energy in Depth offer detailed and far less charitable assessments. Less friendly observers, they note, call ICN a “mouthpiece” for extreme environmentalist groups, because it is run by and out of a deep-green public relations consultancy (Science First) and is funded almost exclusively by wealthy foundations that share its and the PR firm’s anti-fossil fuel, pro-renewable energy, Bigger Government agenda. ICN was founded by David Sasoon, a true believer in catastrophic manmade climate change who wants to do all he can “to usher in the clean energy economy.”
Even praise from its supporters underscores the dark side of this “influential” force in eco-journalism. Its approach is “advocacy,” not fairness, accuracy or balance. Its goal is to drive a monolithic, hard-line, environmentalist narrative and political agenda, with little suggestion that other perspectives even exist.
Some of its awards come from an organization that has itself become politicized and too closely allied with Big Green views and organizations: the Society of Environmental Journalists. They increasingly operate too much as mutual admiration societies and support groups, say outside observers.
ICN and its Science First alter ego received their 2007 startup grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, where Sasoon once served as a consultant. They now derive the bulk of their funding from the RBF, NEO Philanthropy (aka, Public Interest Projects), Marlisa Foundation and Park Foundation. These and other sugar daddies are covered in a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staff report, which describes a “Billionaire’s Club” of “left-wing millionaires and billionaires [which] directs and controls the far-left [US] environmental movement.”
The same foundations also give major tax-exempt donations to the Sierra Club, Earthworks, NRDC, EarthJustice, the climate crisis coalition 350.org, and many other anti-coal, anti-drilling, anti-fracking, anti-Keystone pressure groups that together form the $10-billion-a-year US environmentalist industry.
ICN has active partnerships with the LA Times, Associated Press, Weather Channel, Bloomberg News and other media organizations that help coordinate and disperse stories. The Times promotes the “dangerous manmade climate change” meme and refuses to print letters that reflect skeptical views.
The Associated Press has likewise become a reliable purveyor of manmade climate chaos stories. The Weather Channel and ICN teamed up in 2014 on a series of “investigative reports” that claimed hydraulic fracturing was causing serious environmental and human health problems in Texas.
The partners team up and coordinate to “have one group write on an issue, another quote them or link to them, and so on,” Media Research Center VP Dan Gainor explains. “It keeps going until they create this perception that there’s real concern over an issue, and it bubbles up to top liberal sites like Huffington Post, and from there into the traditional media,” which itself is too predisposed to the green narrative.
The foundations “have incorporated ostensibly dispassionate news outlets into their grant-making portfolios,” says the Free Beacon’s Lachlan Markay, “creating what some describe as self-sustaining environmentalist echo chambers.”
They make it look like widespread public concern and spontaneous grassroots action - when in reality it is loud but small Astroturf activism, orchestrated by the ICN brigade and the foundations behind it.
InsideClimate News now brags about its involvement in the extensive collusion among the leftist foundations, environmental pressure groups and state attorneys general that are devising, coordinating and advancing AG prosecutions of ExxonMobil, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and other groups for alleged “racketeering” and “fraud,” to hold them “legally accountable for climate change denial.”
The efforts “stretch back at least to 2012,” ICN notes, when a meeting was held in California to develop legal strategies. In late 2015, letters from several Democrat members of Congress called for investigating and prosecuting climate skeptics; the letters cited independent journalism “investigations by the Los Angeles Times and InsideClimate News” to back up their request.
However, the intrepid Times and ICN investigators had conducted no investigation. They simply parroted and amplified “research” from a group of activist professors and students at the Columbia School of Journalism - without disclosing who had funded the CSJ studies. Transparency for thee, but not for me.
It was George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, along with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Family Foundation, Energy Foundation, Lorana Sullivan Foundation and Tellus Mater Foundation - all of which virulently oppose hydrocarbon production and actively promote climate change alarmism.
Emails subpoenaed by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute later revealed that many of the same environmentalist groups and lawyers met again in January 2016 at a secret meeting in the Rockefeller Family Fund’s Manhattan offices. Yet another secret meeting was held in March 2016, between climate activists and state attorneys general - hours before the AGs announced that they were launching RICO and other prosecutions of “climate skeptic” companies and think tanks.
The success of this campaign thus far, says ICN, has persuaded the activists to “step up efforts to pressure more attorneys general to investigate [more climate crisis skeptics] and sway public opinion, using op-eds, social media and rope-line questioning of [Republican] presidential candidates at campaign stops.”
This collusion among activists, foundations and attorneys general seeks to silence, bankrupt and defund organizations that challenge their catechism of climate cataclysm. These conspirators want to deprive us of our constitutional rights to speak out on the exaggerated and fabricated science, the coordinated echo- chamber news stories, and the pressure group-driven policies that impair our livelihoods, living standards, health, welfare and environmental quality. We will not be intimidated or silenced.
As CFACT’s new Climate Hustle film notes, manmade plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide has not replaced the powerful natural forces that have always driven Earth’s temperature, climate and weather.
The problem is not climate change. It is policies imposed in the name of preventing climate change.
That’s why Climate Crisis, Inc. wants to silence and jail us. Just imagine how much more they’ll be foaming at the mouth after throngs go to ClimateHustle.com and buy tickets for its May 2 one-night-only showing in hundreds of theaters across the United States.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has launched a fierce counter-attack against Claude Walker, the attorney general for the Virgin Islands, who recently served a subpoena on CEI demanding documents related to CEI’s research on global “climate change.”
On April 20, CEI’s attorney, Andrew Grossman, filed a long and extensive objection to the subpoena and made it clear that CEI will not comply with it. Grossman, a lawyer at BakerHostetler and co-founder of the Free Speech in Science Project, told Walker in his cover letter that the attorney general’s legal action targeting CEI is “a blatant attempt to intimidate and harass an organization for advancing views that you oppose.”
The only reason to try to force CEI to turn over its internal research and documents on this issue is “to punish [CEI] for its public policy views, chill its associations, and silence its advocacy.”
Grossman cites Walker’s own statements at the press conference held by AGs United for Clean Power on March 29 to show that Walker launched this investigation to achieve political ends, not “carry out any law enforcement duty.”
Walker said his investigation was intended to “make it clear to our residents as well as the American people that we have to do something transformational” about climate change, stop “rely[ing] on fossil fuels,” and “look at reliable energy.” As Grossman says, Walker is entitled to his opinions on public policy, but Walker doesn’t have a right to wield his “power as a prosecutor to advance a policy agenda by persecuting those who disagree with” Walker.
The objection filed by Grossman on behalf of CEI not only points out the constitutional problems with Walker’s investigation, but some crucial procedural mistakes made by Walker. For example, Walker didn’t actually get a court in the Virgin Islands to issue the subpoena; he simply issued it himself.
Subpoenas that are not issued by a “court of record” and that are not part of a “pending judicial action” cannot be domesticated in another jurisdiction like the District of Columbia where CEI is located and was served with the subpoena. This is the type of basic error that one might expect from a young law firm associate, not the attorney general of a U.S. protectorate.
But more fundamentally, CEI is objecting on First Amendment grounds, citing to court cases prohibiting the compelled disclosure of the type of information and documents that Walker is trying to obtain. Grossman claims that the subpoena “violates the First Amendment because it constitutes an attempt to silence and intimidate, as well as retaliate against, speech espousing a particular viewpoint with which the Attorney General disagrees.”
CEI asserts that the subpoena is also “invalid because the underlying investigation is pretextual, is being undertaken in bad faith, is intended as a fishing expedition, and is in support of an investigation of charges that have no likelihood of success.”
In what may be a sign of the involvement of the plaintiffs’ bar in pushing these climate change persecutions in the same way it helped instigate the massive tobacco industry litigation, CEI says the subpoena is invalid and violates the Fifth and 14th Amendments because Walker has delegated “investigative and prosecutorial authority to private parties.”
CEI is referring to the fact that Walker’s subpoena was handled by a private law firm in Washington, D.C., Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, which has been called one of the “most feared plaintiffs’ firms” in the country. The firm itself brags about being the “most effective law firm in the United States for lawsuits with a strong social and political component” (emphasis added).
CEI says that Walker’s investigation “could result in penalties available only to government prosecutors.” Thus, delegating “investigative and prosecutorial authority to a private attorney, Ms. Linda Singer, and a private law firm, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, that are most likely being compensated on a contingency-fee basis, violates due process of law.”
That raises a very interesting question about “AGs United for Clean Power” - are they hiring private firms like Cohen Milstein on a contingency basis to target climate change deniers?
CEI’s objection also claims that Walker, Singer, and the Cohen Milstein firm may be subject to sanctions for violating a local court rule in the District of Columbia that required them to “take reasonable steps to avoid imposing undue burden or expense” on CEI, and that this broad, burdensome subpoena “plainly violates that duty given its facial invalidity, astonishing overbreadth, and evident purpose of imposing unwarranted and illegitimate burdens on CEI and CEI’s exercise of its constitutional rights.”
CEI says that Walker, Singer, and the firm “violated their ethical obligations” under a D.C. Bar Rule that prohibits an attorney from “knowingly us[ing] methods of obtaining evidence that violate the legal rights of” a third party.
CEI’s attorney concludes his letter to Walker by calling him (and all of the other attorneys general involved in this climate change cartel) out in very plain spoken terms:
Your demand on CEI is offensive, it is un-American, it is unlawful, and it will not stand.
He gives Walker a warning and a choice: “You can either withdraw [the subpoena] or expect to fight ...the law does not allow government officials to violate Americans’ civil rights with impunity.”
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Winter Buries Germany’s Spring Under Snow, Ice And Cold ...”Spring Nowhere In Sight” (In Late April)!
By P Gosselin on 26. April 2016
This morning, even here in the North German lowlands, close to sea level, snow fell as temperatures hovered near the freezing point.
Currently many Germans are struggling under snow, ice and cold as winter terminates spring for the time being. The cause: a low pressure centered over the Baltic Sea pumping in cold polar air through Europe.
Winter massberg April 26, 2016
Winter transforms Germany’s Thuringia Forest into a winter wonderland today. Massberg webcam photo 11.07 a.m.
Newsite Thuringia Antenne here writes that winter has returned and will stick around for awhile, reporting of icy roads, accidents and cold. Meteorologist Dominik Jung of www.wetter.net forecasts 5 to 10 cm of snow across wide regions of Germany, especially Bavaria and Thuringia.
The Rheinbrucke at Rees had to be closed for over an hour and a half early this morning due to accidents from icy conditions, the RP Online reports here.
Sub-zero temperatures were recorded at a number of weather stations throughout Germany this morning.
In the northeastern state of Saxony Bild national daily reports by video of a snow chaos as travelers struggle with an “enormous snow mass” as roads become impassable from the snow and snow plows are unable to keep up. The snow is expected to stay at elevations over 400 - 600 meters, wetter.net reports.
Much of Europe is forecast to remain cold at least for the next 7 days, as the following chart shows negative temperature anomalies:
Winter_April 26 2016 7 day forecast
In his video forecast from this morning, meteorologist Jung says for now, “Spring is nowhere in sight.”
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