By Marlo Lewis

That’s the topic of this week’s National Journal energy blog. In my contribution, I argue that EPA has been playing a mischievous game that endangers democracy, and that Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s legislation to veto the agency’s endangerment finding would remove this threat.

In a February 22 letter to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson warns that enactment of the Murkowski legislation would scuttle the joint EPA/National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) greenhouse gas/fuel economy rulemaking, which in turn would compel the struggling auto industry to operate under a “patchwork quilt” of state-level fuel-economy regulations.

Ms. Jackson neglects to mention that the patchwork threat exists only because she, reversing Bush EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson’s decision, granted California a waiver to implement its own GHG/fuel economy program. Had Jackson reaffirmed Johnson’s denial, there would be no danger of a patchwork, hence no ostensible need for the joint EPA/NHTSA rulemaking to avert it.

As my blog post explains, EPA should not have approved the waiver in the first place. The California GHG/fuel economy program violates the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which prohibits states from adopting laws or regulations “related to” fuel economy. Worse, the waiver creates a reverse right of preemption whereby states may nullify federal law within their borders - an affront to the Supremacy Clause.

Specifically, the waiver would allow California, and other states opting into the California program, to nullify within their boundaries the reformed national fuel economy program that Congress enacted in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA). That leads straight to a patchwork of state-by-state compliance regimes inimical to a healthy auto industry.

The game EPA is playing is a classic case of bureaucratic self-dealing.

First, EPA endangers the U.S. auto industry by authorizing states to flout federal law and the Constitution. Then, EPA proposes to avert disaster via a rulemaking that just happens to put EPA in the driver’s seat in regulating fuel economy - a power Congress never delegated to EPA when it enacted and amended the Clean Air Act.

Nor is that all. The joint GHG/fuel economy regulation will compel EPA to regulate CO2 from stationary sources - another power Congress never delegated to EPA. By expanding its control over the transport sector, EPA will then have to expand its control over manufacturing, power generation, and much of the commercial and residential sectors, too, because all emit CO2.

In addition, the motor vehicle GHG rule sets the stage for EPA to “tailor,” that is amend, the Clean Air Act so that the agency can delay imposing pre-construction and operating permit requirements on small business, which would surely ignite a political backlash.

So thanks to the endangerment finding, EPA not only gets to play in NHTSA’s fuel-economy sandbox, and extend its tentacles throughout the economy, it also gets to play lawmaker, violating the separation of powers.

In light of all the new powers EPA now expects to wield, it is hardly surprising that EPA never made the strong case against Clean Air Act regulation of CO2 in Massachusetts v. EPA. Here’s what EPA should have argued:

EPA cannot regulate GHG emissions from new motor vehicles under Sec. 202 of the Clean Air Act without regulating CO2 under the Act as a whole. 
Applying the Act as a whole to CO2 leads ineluctably to “absurd results” that contravene congressional intent. Therefore, Congress could not have intended for EPA to regulate GHG emissions under Sec. 202.

Did EPA throw the fight in the 11th round? I dunno, but losing the Massachusetts case was surely sweet victory to those in the agency who long to regulate America into a “clean energy future”. The Massachusetts decision laid the groundwork for EPA to deal itself into a position to bypass the people’s elected representatives, impose its will on the auto industry, and, in time, dictate national climate and energy policy.

What happens if Congress enacts Sen. Murkowski’s resolution, nixes the endangerment finding, and mothballs the GHG/fuel economy rule? The authority to make law and national policy returns to where the framers of the Constitution intended - the people’s elected representatives. See more here.

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The greatest scandal connected to global warming is not exaggeration, fraud or destruction of data to conceal the weakness of the argument. It is those who are personally profiting from promoting this fantasy at the expense of the rest of us.

Al Gore is the most visible beneficiary. The world’s greatest climate-change fear-monger has amassed millions in book sales and speaking fees. His science-fiction movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won an Academy Award for best documentary and 21 other film awards. He was co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Gore was laying his own foundations. As he was whipping up hysteria over climate change, he cannily invested in “green” firms that stood to profit in the hundreds of millions of dollars (if not more) from increased government regulations and sweetheart deals from connected politicians and bureaucrats. The multimillionaire climate dilettante was given a free pass by reporters, who refused to ask him hard questions about the degree to which he was profiting from the panic he was causing.

With the global-warming story line unraveling, the New York Times allowed Mr. Gore to run what amounted to an unpaid advertisement for his brand of climate-change hysteria. This screed, published Saturday, reiterated his claim that the world faces an “unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.” That’s pretty good rhetoric for the person with the largest carbon footprint in the world.

Mr. Gore is not the only one profiting from climate fraud. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace prize with Mr. Gore, is also the director general of the Energy and Resources Institute. The New Delhi-based research group has received substantial financial grants to examine the issue of the world’s vanishing glaciers, a purported crisis that was highlighted in the 2007 IPCC climate-change report. The glaciology unit is headed by Syed Hasnain, who in 1999 claimed that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035, which became a noted scare quote in the IPCC report.

A more detailed study found that glacial melt was far less pronounced and widespread than claimed by the global-warming proponents. Mr. Pachauri denounced this skepticism as “voodoo science.” However, in January, Murari Lal, who wrote the glacier section of the 2007 IPCC report, admitted that the alarmist claims were not backed by peer-reviewed science but had been included in the report for a political purpose, which was to “impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.” No word on whether Mr. Pachauri will return his institute’s grant money, but we doubt it.

The greatest potential profits are possible in the ill-defined “carbon trading” industry, currently valued at $126 billion. The trade in carbon emission credits - a key aspect of the beleaguered “cap-and-trade” energy bill now stalled in Congress - will make quick fortunes for the “carbon brokers” assisting companies with reducing their carbon footprints. But because carbon quotas and the acceptable means of measuring them will be determined by the government, this will benefit those who combine presumed expertise with political access, which in the Obama administration means the climate-change alarmists.

Mr. Gore is heavily involved in this scam through Generation Investment Management LLP, which he chairs, and Mr. Pachauri also has been accused of making millions from carbon trading. The dubious science of cap-and-trade and its productivity-killing implications make the bill unlikely to be passed in an election year, but any moves toward this framework will enhance the fortunes of these and other well-connected adherents to the global-warming cult at the expense of businesses and private citizens.

Given the clear conflicts of interest of those who both promote and profit from climate-change alarmism, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize should be rescinded.

Press Release

Climate scientist delivers false statement in parliament enquiry

It has come to our attention, that last Monday (March 1), Dr. Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU), in a hearing with the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee made a statement in regards to the alleged non-availability for disclosure of Swedish climate data.

Dr. Jones asserted that the weather services of several countries, including Sweden, Canada and Poland, had refused to allow their data to be released, to explain his reluctance to comply with Freedom of Information requests.

This statement is false and misleading in regards to the Swedish data. All Swedish climate data are available in the public domain. As is demonstrated in the attached correspondence between SMHI (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute), the UK Met Office and Dr. Jones (the last correspondence dated yesterday March 4), this has been clearly explained to Dr. Jones. What is also clear is that SMHI is reluctant to be connected to data that has undergone “processing” by the East Anglia research unit.

STOCKHOLM INITIATIVE
Goran Ahlgren, secretary general
Kungsgatan 82
112 27 Stockholm, Sweden

See PDF of letter here.

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Climategate Reloaded
By Myron Ebell, Freedom Action

Washington, D.C., March 5, 2010 - Prominent climate scientists affiliated with the U.S. National Academies of Science have been planning a public campaign to paper over the damaged reputation of global warming alarmism, according to recently disclosed e-mail messages.  Their scheme would involve officials at the National Academies and other professional associations producing studies to endorse the researchers’ pre-existing assumptions and create confusion about the revelations of the rapidly expanding “Climategate” scandal. 

The e-mails were first reported in a front-page story by Stephen Dinan in the Washington Times today. The Competitive Enterprise Institute has independently obtained copies of the e-mails and has posted them at GlobalWarming.org.

“The response of these alarmist scientists to the Climategate scientific fraud scandal has little to do with their responsibilities as scientists and everything to do with saving their political position.  The e-mails reveal a group of scientists plotting a political strategy to minimize the effects of Climategate in the public debate on global warming,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

“Of special interest is the disclosure by Stanford Professor Stephen H. Schneider that he has already sent an e-mail to ‘media, NGOs etc’ that accuses Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) of McCarthyite behavior and asks them to ‘decry this McCarthyite regression, and by name point out what this Senator is doing by a continuing smear campaign,’” said Ebell.  “Apparently, Professor Schneider objects to a report on Climategate that Sen. Inhofe recently released which merely lists 17 of the scientists involved in the scandal.”

Prof. Paul Falkowski, who kicks off the email exchange, claims the public has “lost faith in science” because scientists “do not speak out to the public.”

“Falkowski’s got it backwards,” said CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis. “The public has lost faith not in science but in scientists whose shrill alarmism and cheerleading for energy rationing schemes exposes them as advocates and partisans.”

“While these people claim to be acting as scientists, they’ve got an embarrassingly clear political agenda,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “Their plans range from turning the Academies into a ‘transformational agent in America’ to planning a new Academy report that would be ‘factual’ and ‘authoritative’ even though the purpose of its preordained conclusions would be to ‘provide talking points.’”

Selected Excerpts from the National Academies Email Exchange

Paul Falkowski, Feb. 26: “I will accept corporate sponsorship at a 5 to 1 ratio...”

Paul Falkowski, Feb. 26:  “I want the NAS to be a transformational agent in America.”

Robert Paine, Feb. 27: “The beltway’s foolishness about climate change seems especially ironic given the snowless plight of the Vancouver Olympics.”

Paul R. Ehrlich, Feb. 27: “Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules.”

William Jury, Feb. 27: “I am seeing formerly committed public sector leaders backing off from positions aimed at reducing our fossil fuel dependence.”

Steve Carpenter, Feb. 27: “We need a report with the authority of the NAS that summarizes the status and trends of the planet, and the logical consequences of plausible responses.”

Paul Falkowski, Feb. 27: “...but the issue at hand is not integrity of the IPCC - it is making sure that the public is aware of OUR concerns for all of our futures.”

George Woodwell, Feb. 28: “Those who deny the biophysical facts of the world would deny the reality of the law of gravity. The product of such denials is systematic progress destroying this civilization.  If one wants a view of where that process leads, take a quick look at Haiti at the moment.”

George Woodwell, Feb. 28: “Yes, you will blast me for such an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach, but you are wondering how to be effective against an enemy that is very skillfully using our classical reasonableness against us...”

The New York Times Fights Back Against the Climate-gate Scandal

The Grey Lady finally notices that the climate change establishment knows it’s under fire. The New York Times published a doozy of a front-page story by John M. Broder on Wednesday on the Climate-gate scientific fraud scandal. Those who have been lambasting our national “paper of record” for months for largely ignoring the scandal, while every London paper has run multiple big stories full of juicy new revelations, can now relax. The wise and good Grey Lady has finally taken notice.

Well, not exactly. Broder’s story, headlined “Scientists Take Steps to Defend Climate Work,” is all about how the climate science establishment have realized that they “have to fight back” against critics who have used the Climategate revelations to call into question the scientific case for global warming alarmism. Those whose only source of news for the past three months has been The Times will have a hard time figuring out exactly what they have to fight back against.

Broder’s analysis follows the party line that has been worked out among the leading alarmist climate scientists since the scandal broke on November 19, 2009. And Broder makes no effort to conceal where his sympathies lie. He writes: “But serious damage has already been done,” and then discusses polling data that shows increasing public disbelief in the global warming crisis. From my perspective, that’s serious good that has been done, not damage, but then I’m not an unbiased, objective Times reporter.

Broder further opines on his own behalf: “The battle is asymmetric, in the sense that scientists feel compelled to support their findings with careful observation and replicable analysis, while their critics are free to make sweeping statements condemning their work as fraudulent.” That, of course, is not reporting, but agreeing with one of the alarmists’ talking points.

And it is untrue. Anyone who has ever seen some of the leading scientific proponents of alarmism in action knows that they are not about “careful observation and replicable analysis.” In fact, the major revelation of Climate-gate has been that top climate scientists refused to share their data and methodologies because they were concealing intentional data manipulation as well as incompetence. Which is exactly what their critics have maintained for years.

But blatant bias in news stories from The New York Times is not news. What makes Broder’s story unintentionally compelling is the cast of characters that he quotes to represent the calm, objective voice of establishment science.

First up is Dr. Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academies of Science (NAS). That is an august position, and the principal reason Cicerone occupies it is because he is a wily political operator. As President of the NAS, he has worked overtime to enforce the alarmist “consensus”. When Professor Michael E. Mann’s hockey stick graph came under suspicion, Cicerone craftily convened a National Research Council (or NRC - a government-funded scientific consulting company closely affiliated with the NAS) panel to investigate and appointed Professor Gerald R. North of Texas A. and M. University as chairman. The deceptively affable North has proven to be a reliable water carrier for whoever is in authority.

Cicerone did not share with the panel the probing questions that had been sent to him by then-Chairman of the House Science Committee and then the House’s leading green Republican, Sherwood Boehlert. Instead, Cicerone provided his own loaded questions.

When the panel’s report was nonetheless quite critical of the hockey stick research, Cicerone arranged a press release and conference that put a deceptive spin on the panel’s conclusions. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media reported what they were told at the press conference. Cicerone is now using the NRC to rush out a report to minimize Climate-gate and defend the alarmist establishment. A group of NAS members led by Stanford Professor Stephen H. Schneider, who has long been the alarmist scientists’ chief political organizer and strategist, asked Cicerone for the study. It is clear that it is intended to be a whitewash.

Broder’s story also quotes Dr. John P. Holdren, now the White House science adviser and a long-time collaborator with Stanford Professor Paul R. Ehrlich of Population Bomb fame. Holdren has made a career of bending science to support left-wing politics and has an unblemished forty-year record of wild doomsday predictions that have all proven wrong.

After a quick quote from Dr. Rajendra K Pachauri, the Chairman of the U. N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who is a railway engineer by profession, Broder concludes by consulting Dr. Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City:

“Climate scientists are paid to do climate science,” said Gavin A. Schmid… “Their job is not persuading the public.” If only that were so, even in the case of Dr. Schmidt. True, his salary is paid by American taxpayers, but it is almost certainly the case that over the past few years he has been spending a good part of his time during office hours and using government equipment to produce political propaganda for RealClimate.org, a web site run by Schmidt and Michael E. Mann. RealClimate.org has received help from Fenton Communications, the key P.R. firm for the Soros-funded left.

Thus Broder portrays Schmidt as just a scientist trying to be left alone to do his job, but in fact Schmidt is primarily a moderately-skilled political operative working to promote global warming alarmism. Here is Broder quoting Schmidt again:

“What is new is this paranoia combined with a spell of cold weather in the U. S. and the ‘climategate’ release. It’s a perfect storm that has allowed the nutters to control the agenda.”

“Nutters” is English (and Schmidt is English) slang equivalent to “nut” in the sense of crazy person. Well, Schmidt should know - his boss is the director of GISS, Dr. James E. Hansen. Hansen is widely considered to be the leading scientific promoter of global warming alarmism and as such is a highly political animal. He is also increasingly kooky and extreme.

Hansen claimed a few years ago that the Bush Administration was censoring him. It turned out he had given over 1,300 interviews during the Bush years! Hansen predicted over twenty years ago that much of Manhattan would be under water by now as the result of sea level rise caused by global warming.

Last year, Hansen, a federal employee, was arrested for protesting at a coal mine in West Virginia. He has endorsed industrial sabotage as justified by the climate crisis we are facing and said that oil company executives should be put on trial for “high crimes against humanity and nature.”

So Schmidt has it right: the nutters are in control--of the global warming alarmist agenda. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the New York Times to publish that story. Read more here.  See also this review of the long history of failed predictions of dome and gloom by one alarmist outraged at ths skeptics challenges of modern day hyperalarmism here.