By William Yeatman, CEI
The Competitive Enterprise Institute today charged that a senior official of the U.S. Environment Protection Agency actively suppressed a scientific analysis of climate change because of political pressure to support the Administration’s policy agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.
As part of a just-ended public comment period, CEI submitted a set of four EPA emails, dated March 12-17, 2009, which indicate that a significant internal critique of the agency’s global warming position was put under wraps and concealed.
The study the emails refer to, which ran counter to the administration’s views on carbon dioxide and climate change, was kept from circulating within the agency, was never disclosed to the public, and was not added to the body of materials relevant to EPA’s current “endangerment” proceeding. The emails further show that the study was treated in this manner not because of any problem with its quality, but for political reasons.
“This suppression of valid science for political reasons is beyond belief,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “EPA’s conduct is even more outlandish because it flies in the face of the President’s widely-touted claim that ‘the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.’”
CEI’s filing requests that EPA make the suppressed study public, place it into the endangerment docket, and extend the comment period to allow public response to the new information. CEI is also requesting that EPA publicly declare that it will engage in no reprisals against the study’s author, a senior analyst who has worked at EPA for over 35 years. Read more here.
See also Watts Up With That post on this issue here.
The EPA apparently doesn’t care about any negative comment of their GHG Endangerment findings, even internally, so the exercise in Democracy we did yesterday apparently was for naught.
“The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision...I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.”
- Internal EPA email, March 17th, 2009
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has caught EPA administration red-handed in concealment of internal dissent as well as apparently proceeding with plans in advance. From this PDF circulated today by CEI, here are the points:
CEI is submitting a set of four EPA emails, dated March 12-17, 2009, which indicate that a significant internal critique of EPA’s position on Endangerment was essentially put under wraps and concealed. The study was barred from being circulated within EPA, it was never disclosed to the public, and it was not placed in the docket of this proceeding. The emails further show that the study was treated in this manner not because of any problem with its quality, but for political reasons.
CEI hereby requests that EPA make this study public, place it into the docket, and either extend or reopen the comment period to allow public response to this new study. We also request that EPA publicly declare that it will engage in no reprisals against the author of the study, who has worked at EPA for over 35 years.
The emails, attached hereto, consist of the following:
1) a March 12 email from Al McGartland, Office Director of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE), to Alan Carlin, Senior Operations Research Analyst at NCEE, forbidding him from speaking to anyone outside NCEE on endangerment issues;
2) a March 16 email from Mr. Carlin to another NCEE economist, with a cc to Mr. McGartland and two other NCEE staffers, requesting that his study be forwarded to EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, which directs EPA’s climate change program. The email notes the quantity of peer-reviewed references in the study, and defends its inclusion of new research as well. It states Mr. Carlin’s view that “the critical attribute of good science is its correspondence to observable data rather than where it appears in the technical literature.” It goes on to point out that the new studies “explain much of the observational data that have been collected which cannot be explained by the IPCC models.” (Emphases added);
3) a March 17 email from Mr. McGartland to Mr. Carlin, stating that he will not forward Mr. Carlin’s study. “The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision...I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.” (Emphasis added);
4) a second March 17 email from Mr. McGartland to Mr. Carlin, dated eight minutes later, stating “I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change.”
Mr. McGartland’s emails demonstrate that he was rejecting Mr. Carlin’s study because its conclusions ran counter to EPA’s proposed position.
i>Icecap Note: Mr. Carlin who told us he was a regular Icecap visitor, was an invited guest of Icecap at the Heartland Institute ICCC III. Kudos to him for trying to understand and inject science into what is clearly a politically driven process.
UPDATE: CEI has released the suppressed study here.
By Dr. Ed Blick, Emeritus Professor, Engineering and Meteorology, University of Oklahoma
The first part of President Obama’s “I Have a Scheme” plan is the passage of the “Cap and Trade (Tax)” fossil fuel rationing bill. It will be the largest tax increase in the world’s history. It is scheduled for vote in the House of Representatives, this Friday, June 26. It is another huge bill (over 1200 pages) that no one has read except the global warming crooks at the UN, who wrote it. Please pass this information on to your legislators and local media outlets. This bill must be defeated!
If it passes, Obama hopes to have enough money to pay for his Universal Health Care Rationing scheme. He hopes the taxes from Cap and Trade will drive gasoline to $8 per gallon or higher. Then the public will buy his “putt-putt” cars from his newly extorted auto companies, Government Motors and Chrysler/Fiat. His scheme involves setting up a “straw man” (straw molecule?), carbon dioxide (CO2), that is used to frighten the public. He tells us this mean molecule CO2 is causing a climate disaster by warming the Earth, melting our polar ice caps, raising our sea level, and inundating our coastal cities. (Can we restrict it to Washington, DC?) There is no credible scientific evidence to support any of this nonsense. Anthropogenic Global Warming and its new name, Climate Change are politicized science. This politicized science scheme is a variation of Politics 101, which uses fairy tales to frighten the public, and then the government promises to save them by some scheme that involves raising their taxes. It’s a big con job by the government.
All of the rhetoric about a shortage of oil is baloney. America has 25% of the world’s coal. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. We can make oil and gas from coal using the Fischer-Tropsch technology used by the Germans in WW II. SASOL in South Africa has produced petroleum from coal for decades! They have no indigenous petroleum supplies. The German synthetic oil and gasoline were so good that as U.S. General Patton’s Third Army began outracing their supply lines they transferred the synthetic gasoline from German vehicles and raced ahead. A recent Royal Dutch Shell report indicated that when oil prices hit $64 per barrel, it is economical to produce oil from coal. The term “we are running out of oil” is obsolete. We can make sulfur-free petroleum in any quantity and any grade we want! In addition by using fast breeder reactors, the world has enough nuclear fuel to last for tens of thousands of years! Obama needs to abandon these punitive tax schemes on fossil fuels that will kill our prosperity and start developing coal to oil and nuclear energy programs.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is a harmless gas. It is not a pollutant. CO2 and O2 are gases of life. God in His wisdom set up a synergism between the living gases of animals and plants. Animals inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Plants inhale CO2 and exhale O2 by the process of photosynthesis. Why is Obama ignorant of these basic facts? When CO2 levels drops below 200 parts per million (ppm), plants start to die and then man dies. During the 20th century, a warmer ocean increased atmospheric levels of CO2 which increased crop yields worldwide. CO2 has not caused measurable increase in global temperatures.
The U.S. House of Representatives Committee of Energy and Commerce, chaired by Henry Waxman recently passed the “Cap and Trade” bill. Duplicating Europe’s failed scheme would be a knockout blow for the U.S. economy because it would dramatically increase energy costs and cripple the nation’s dwindling manufacturing base. It would be a giant economic dagger aimed at the nation’s heartland, where 20 states get 60-98% of their electricity from coal.
This bill compels an 80% CO2 reduction, by imposing punitive cap-and-trade restrictions on virtually every business, motorist, and family using hydrocarbon fuels. Anything and anyone who uses electricity and/or fossil fuels will be taxed. The National Economic Council puts the tax bite at $1.3 to $3 trillion, which averages out to $4000 to $10,000 per person. Since businesses pass their increased tax cost on to the consumer, everything will cost more. Every item we buy will increase in price, including clothing, food, drink, housing, cars, gasoline, travel, fuels, wood, and raw materials. America will be the most toxic-tax place in the world to do business. Of course many businesses will flee America, taking their jobs with them.
An 80% reduction in CO2 could take us back to 1905 according to Oak Ridge National laboratory data. At that time coal and wood heated homes. New York City’s vehicle emissions were 900,000 tons of horse manure annually. America had a population of 84 million versus 300 million today. There were no cars, jet liners, or electricity for offices, factories, schools or hospitals.
The bill was so lengthy, that chairman Henry Waxman, had not read it all. A TV clip showed a colleague asking him a question about the bill and Waxman answered, he didn’t know, but the scientists [bureaucrats] at the IPCC knew all of the details. This let the cat out of the bag that the UN had written the bill! IPCC is the “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” and is the “political junk science division” of the corrupt UN. This bill is governmental gangsterism. “The right response to the non-problem of global warming is to have the courage to do nothing,” said Lord Christopher Monckton, former science advisor to U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
The mentally challenged EPA want to put a tax on flatulence of cows, sheep and pigs! The EPA claims animal flatulence contains methane, which is causing global warming which will destroy our planet! The EPA is considering that the tax on dairy cows may be $175 per dairy cow, $88 on beef cattle, and $20 on each hog! Unbelievable! Can they also tax Al Gore’s gas? Read full rant here.
Obama Gives Green Light to Canadian Oil Sands
Climatico, 21 June 2009
President Obama, in close discussions with Energy Secretary Stephen Chu and Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is to give the green light for US consumption of oil sand oil, or rather the import of fuels considered among the “dirtiest” in the fuel market. In a meeting last week, President Obama decided that the Canada’s oil sands represented an important part of national security supplies for petroleum in America’s near future.
The move is not without immediate precedent, as Francois Cardinal at cybercress.ca notes, both Hillary Clinton had offered support for oil sands at a recent conference on energy security, and Obama’s national Security adviser General Jim Jones was similarly adamant that the US would be foolish to reject the possibility of a stable source from a close partner in Canada.
The move will disappoint many in the green movement, given Obama has previously been less supportive of oil sands, noting that the Us needed to ween itself off dirty and dangerous oil supplies.
FULL STORY here.
Britain Green Suicide Note: 5,000 Pound Power
By Louise Barnett, Consumer Editor
ENERGY bills will hit a shocking 5,000 UK pounds a year to strike a blow to millions of struggling families, experts warned last night. Consumer champions said the massive sum was a “wake-up call”, marking the end of cheap electricity and gas.
Bills will rise by up to 42 per cent ayear over the next decade - with the biggest single increase an eye-watering 1,280 pounds. But they said this will be boosted by a yearly 548 pounds to help overhaul the UK’s out-of-date energy supply system. And they warned that the huge rise would stretch household budgets to breaking point and dump hundreds of thousands more people into fuel poverty. Experts at uSwitch.com said that average annual bills have more than doubled from 580 pounds five years ago to 1,243 pounds today.
Over the next decade customers will suffer even steeper price rises with fees quadrupling by 2020, they warn. Investment in outdated infrastructure and new green energy policies will drive bills higher.
FULL STORY here.
Russia Offers 30% CO2 Emissions Increase by 2020
By Simon Shuster, Reuters
Russia plans to release 30 percent more greenhouse gases by 2020 under an emissions target scheme announced on Friday by President Dmitry Medvedev. The plan would reduce emissions by 10-15 percent from Russia’s emissions in 1990 when it was part of the Soviet Union and its emissions were far higher than they are today. This angered environmentalists, and the target also is likely to fall short of expectations from developing countries.
“It’s not enough, it’s very low,” said Alexey Kokorin, the Russia spokesman for environmental protection group WWF. Medvedev’s announcement was interpreted as an opening shot in United Nations negotiations meant to seal a new climate treaty in December to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Under those talks, rich nations are meant to propose mid-term emissions targets. Russia is the last major country to do so.
Green groups and developing countries want industrialized countries to trim their emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels, referring to a range of cuts suggested by a U.N. panel of climate scientists. “Based on the current situation by 2020 we could cut emissions by about 10-15 percent,” Medvedev told Russian state television, according to a copy of his comments supplied by the Kremlin. Arkady Dvorkovich, the Kremlin’s chief economic adviser, later clarified to Interfax news agency that the reduction would be from 1990 levels, before the Soviet Union fell and Russia’s heavy industry collapsed.
Since then, its carbon emissions have returned to an upward curve along with its industrial revival, preserving Russia’s place as the world’s third largest polluter behind China and the United States. The target laid out on Friday meant cumulative cuts of 30 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases from 1990 to 2020, Medvedev said. This implies Russia will emit about 3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas in 2020 compared with 2.2 billion tonnes in 2007.
“We will not cut off our development potential,” Medvedev said. Under Kyoto, Russia has to return its emissions to 1990 levels by 2008-12. Green groups and developing countries were disappointed last week by Japan’s proposals for a 2020 target barely stiffer than its Kyoto Protocol goal, and were again downbeat on Friday after Russia’s announcement. Medvedev said Russia would take a responsible approach to greenhouse gas emissions but expected other countries to follow suit.
“We expect our partners to take reciprocal steps. That is why I have said many times—the problem of climate change has to be addressed by everyone or not at all,” he said. Dvorkovich later added that Russia must find “the right balance” between addressing climate change and reaching Russia’s goals for economic growth, Interfax reported. Experts saw the goal laid out on Friday as a first shot in six months of intense talks meant to culminate in a new climate pact in Copenhagen this year.
FULL STORY here.
Thanks to Dr. Benny Peiser, CCNet. To subsribe to newslatter, send an e-mail to listserver@ljmu.ac.uk ("subscribe CCNetMedia").