Eleven Governors May Have Unknowingly Given Tax Dollars to Cap-and-Trade Project They Shunned, Analysis Shows!
Alexandria, VA) - State taxpayer dollars may have been diverted by the staff of the Western Governors Association (WGA) - against the wishes of many WGA Governors - to help pay for a climate tax scheme written largely by California environmental activists that would dramatically increase families’ energy costs, according to the 362,000-member National Taxpayers Union (NTU). NTU has sent all Western Governors a letter on the findings of its investigation, which raised “serious questions about the use of taxpayer funds in this effort from states that did not agree to partner” in the project.
The several-month investigation was based on voluminous documents released by the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Paul Chesser of the non-profit Climate Strategies Watch (CSW). CSW subsequently made the information available to NTU.
“As an organization that receives tax dollars from both state and federal sources, WGA has a responsibility to operate with full transparency and public disclosure in terms of its fiscal activities, where it receives its funding and how and where it spends those funds,” NTU President Duane Parde wrote to the Governors. “According to these documents ... WGA actively aligned itself with this effort and became intimately involved in a support role for the WCI’s mission and objectives. It is difficult to see how tax dollars from non-WCI states did not subsidize this process.”
WCI is a collaborative effort among the Governors of California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Montana that spent the last year-and-a-half developing a proposed Western regional carbon “cap-and-trade” scheme. While the work of the WCI was done in the name of those states’ Governors, the WCI process was heavily influenced, and funded in part, by large “corporate-style” environmental groups and foundations.
NTU’s investigation uncovered a wide range of evidence that the WCI was largely run by staff of the Western Governors’ Association, even though the majority of states in the WGA (Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Alaska, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas) specifically elected not to support the use of their tax dollar contributions in the project.
Even if it hasn’t publicly sanctioned WCI on behalf of all its members, Parde argued that WGA’s “deep involvement in the process gives the impression of the organization’s support for the research, modeling methodologies and policy recommendations that have emerged from WCI’s activities.”
“Consistent with our ongoing mission and history, we suggest that both WGA and WCI release to the public all relevant legal, operational, financial and supporting documents relevant to WCI’s activities and any support WGA gave them,” Parde’s letter concluded.
The Honorable Jon Huntsman (above).
Governor
Utah State Capitol Complex, 350 North State Street, Suite 200
Salt Lake City, UT 84114-2220
Dear Governor Huntsman:
On behalf of the 362,000 members of the National Taxpayers Union (NTU), over 3,500 of whom reside in Utah, I write first to express our gratitude for your leadership in working to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent frugally and carefully in your state. I am also writing to you, as Chair of the Western Governors’ Association (WGA), to request information regarding WGA’s involvement, and use of taxpayer and other funds, in the direction and management of the Western Climate Initiative (WCI).
Specifically, we wish to inquire about the possibility that taxpayer dollars from states not supporting the WCI process, as well as federal funds, were used to underwrite this project against the wishes of several Governors. Our request is based upon recently reported information from Paul Chesser of Climate Strategies, Inc. Mr. Chesser is an investigative researcher with expertise in the field of organizational finances, and has been a professional acquaintance of NTU’s for some time.
As you may know, NTU has taken an active role in protecting taxpayer resources from abuse on behalf of big-government agendas. For example, in the past we have expressed concern that the National Association of Governors as well as the National Conference of State Legislatures were advocating on behalf of the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (SSUTA) with the indirect assistance of tax dollars.
Read the rest here.
See also
Commandeered by Climate Alarmists
By Paul Chesser on 6.19.09 - American Spectator
Did the chief executives of a few Western states hijack the staff and resources of their regional coalition, against the will of most of their fellow governors, all to promote their vision for a regional cap-and-trade agreement?
It sure looks that way. Based upon documents I obtained from Patrick Cummins, program director for climate change and air quality at the Western Governors Association, it appears that a few governors and WGA staff violated rules (which require unanimous consent by its member governors) in devoting resources and staff time to the Western Climate Initiative. WCI seeks to create a regional agreement among its member states to cap greenhouse gas emissions, in order to avert what they believe to be a pending global warming catastrophe. Read the rest here.
By Marc Morano, Climate Depot
Below is a small sampling of first reactions to the President Obama’s new global warming report. (See: Obama issues global warming report—‘Detailed picture of the worst case scenarios’—‘Poised for its most forceful confrontation with American public’ )
Sampling of Scientific Reactions to report:
Meteorologist: ‘This is not a work of science but an embarrassing episode for the authors and NOAA’ - June 16, 2009
By Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and former chairman of the American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting. D’Aleo publishes www.IceCap.US
Excerpt: The report issued was the Hollywood supported NOAA CCSP report which after two rounds of comments by many scientists citing peer review reasons to change, largely ignored the comments and delivered a document even more alarmist than the UN IPCC. It starts out DAY ONE being wrong on many of its claims but goes much further to rely on climate models for 2050 and 2100 to make even more dire prognoses. This is not a work of science but an embarrassing episode for the authors and NOAA. They gave the administration the cover to push the unwise cap-and-tax agenda.
U.S. Government Scientist: ‘I disagree strongly with the hurricane-related conclusions of this report!’ - June 16, 2009
Excerpt: U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA. Goldenberg is expressing his personal views on the report, not those of any organization. Goldenberg: I saw the news story on this and looked up the report. I have a pretty good grasp of the hurricane and AGW issues. I have skimmed over the hurricane findings (by the way --- I didn’t notice a single recognized hurricane climate expert in the list of authors) and they definitely ignore a large body of the published hurricane research. There are a number of hurricane climate experts (including myself) that would disagree strongly with the hurricane-related conclusions of this report! [...] I can only imagine how slanted the other portions of the report might be as well. (For Full Goldenberg reaction, go here:
Prof. Pielke Jr.: Report ‘misrepresents the science’—‘ignores relevant work in peer-reviewed literature’ - June 16, 2009
By Roger Pielke Jr., professor of environmental studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Excerpt: Imagine if an industry-funded government contractor had a hand in writing a major federal report on climate change. And imagine if that person used his position to misrepresent the science, to cite his own non-peer reviewed work, and to ignore relevant work in the peer-reviewed literature. There would be an outrage, surely . . . The Obama Administration has re-released a report (PDF) first issued in draft form by the Bush Administration last July (still online PDF). The substance of the report is essentially the same as last year’s version, with a bit more professionalism in the delivery. For instance, the photo-shopped picture of a flood appears to be removed and the embarrassing executive summary has been replaced by something more appropriate. This post is about how the report summarizes the issue of disasters and climate change, including several references to my work, which is misrepresented. This post is long and detailed, which is necessary to support my claims. But stick with it, or skip to the end if you’ve seen the details before (and long-time readers will have seen them often), there is a surprise at the end. [...] So to summarize: sentence one is not supported by the citations provided, which lead in both cases to selectively chosen non-peer reviewed sources, and the citations that are peer reviewed on this subject come to an opposite conclusion and are ignored.
‘So Much For That Whole Commitment To Science We Were Promised’ - June 16, 2009
Excerpt: Wow, that’s sure how I learned to handle a scientific report back when I was studying physics - scrub it of the science and give it to an activist PR firm! Do you need any more evidence that climate science has become substantially dominated by post-modernist scientists, where ideological purity and staying on message is more important than actually having the science right? [...] Apparently the report will make up for having all the science stripped out by spending a lot of time on gaudy worst case scenarios.
Obama ‘hires PR firm to embellish past scaremongering generated exclusively from virtual climate computer models’ - June 16, 2009
Excerpt: Despite the scientific evidence that the globe has been cooling (land, atmosphere and oceans) over the last 10+ years, Obama chooses to publish his first “science” report void of any recent, real-world climate science. Instead, his administration hires a PR firm to embellish the past scaremongering generated exclusively from virtual climate computer models. Unfortunately for real science and America, he has sided with the pseudo science of “virtual lies” and hysterical climate claims in order to get his badly needed revenue-generation engine, ‘Cap & Trade,’ passed in Congress.
Sen. Inhofe: ‘No surprise report released just in time for Climate bill vote’”Excerpt: “That the federal bureaucracy in Washington has produced yet another alarmist report on global warming is nothing new,” Sen. Inhofe said. It’s also no surprise that such a report was released just in time for the House vote on Waxman-Markey. [...] I would suggest that, given a little time, the world’s preeminent scientists will quickly and thoroughly debunk this study. As has been clearly demonstrated by the Senate Minority report of over 700 scientists questioning global warming hysteria, the debate on the science remains wide open.”
Geologist rips Obama’s ‘new scare report’: After following this subject now since the mid 1980s, I become more skeptical every year. I am now beginning to conclude that global warming simply does not exist.
See Marc’s full post and much more here.
By Suzanne Goldenberg, UK Guardian
The Obama administration is poised for its most forceful confrontation with the American public on the sweeping and life-altering consequences of a failure to act on global warming with the release today of a long-awaited scientific report on climate change.
The report, produced by more than 30 scientists at 13 government agencies dealing with climate change, provides the most detailed picture to date of the worst case scenarios of rising sea levels and extreme weather events: floods in lower Manhattan; a quadrupling of heat waves deaths in Chicago; withering on the vineyards of California; the disappearance of wildflowers from the slopes of the Rockies; and the extinction of Alaska’s wild polar bears in the next 75 years.
Today’s release is part of a carefully crafted strategy by the White House to help build public support for Obama’s agenda and boost the prospects of a climate change bill now making its way through Congress.
For many Americans, the report released today, entitled Global climate change impacts in the United States provides the most tangible evidence of the economic costs of climate change - from the need to relocate airports in Alaska built on permafrost, to the increased need for pesticides in agriculture, to an electrical grid straining to meet the increased demand for air conditioning in summer and ageing sewer systems brought to bursting point by heavy run-off in 770 American cities and towns.
Scientists and environmentalists who had seen today’s report praised the breadth of its science as well as its accessible language.
“It’s a clarion call for immediate action,” said Amanda Staudt, a climate scientist at the National Wildlife Federation who has seen advanced drafts of the report but not the version released today. “This report basically describes a state of emergency. It says we need to act quickly and decisively. Every state is going to be affected, and every sector of the economy.”
The final draft of today’s report uses climate models to map out starkly different futures if the current generation of Americans fails to act to reduce the carbon emissions that cause global warming.
If today’s generation acts on climate change, the average US temperature will rise 0.4C-1.83C (4-6.5F) by the end of this century, said the draft, which was finalised in April.
If it does not, average temperatures could rise by about 2.1C-4.3C (7-11F) with catastrophic consequences for human health and the economy.
Americans have already been living with evidence of changing climate, the report said. Over the last 30 years winters have grown shorter and milder, with a 2.1C (7F) rise in winter temperatures in the midwest and northern Great Plains. Hurricanes have become deadlier.
If climate change is left unchecked, the future promises to bring even more ferocious hurricanes to coastal regions - in the Pacific as well as the Atlantic, punishing droughts to the south-west, and increasingly severe winter storms in the north-east and around the Great Lakes.
The human consequences, as envisaged by the draft, are similarily catastrophic: potential food shortages because of declining wheat and corn yields in the breadbasket of the mid-west, increased outbreaks of food poisoning and epidemic diseases.
US cities will be choking because of deteriorating air quality; leisure pursuits will disappear. The report predicts that the ski season in the north-east will be 20% shorter. As for summer holidays, 14 of 17 North Carolina beaches will be permanently underwater by 2080, the draft forecasts.
Today’s release of the report was part of a methodically planned media roll-out by the Obama administration.
Scientists who have seen the report said the administration spent several weeks honing the language and graphics to make it accessible to non-scientists and to sharpen its core message: America must act now on climate change.
As part of the PR surrounding the release of the report, the administration approached the San Francisco consulting firm, Resource Media, which specialises in environmental campaigning, to oversee the release, and produce a shorter and more digestible brochure of today’s report for wider public distribution.
Read rest of the sad story here. See Dr. Ed Blick’s reply here.
The report issued was the Hollywood supported NOAA CCSP report which after two rounds of comments by many scientists citing peer review reasons to change, largely ignored the comments and delivered a document even more alarmist than the IPCC. It starts out DAY ONE being wrong on many of its claims but goes much further to rely on climate models for 2050 and 2100 to make even more dire prognoses. This is not a work of science but an embarrassing episode for the authors and NOAA. They gave the administration the cover to push the unwise cap-and-tax agenda.