As for " the vast majority of climate Scientists are showing it by their studies and research," that was the lie told by the IPCC and East Anglia University, and Al Gore. It just isn't true. It was a lie then and a lie now. You are believing a lie.
Sure the climate is changing, and as I said before, islands are not sinking into the sea, polar bears are not drowning and starving, and record hurricane activity not occurring. The predictions have not come true. Surely you can see that.
So the famous "majority" of scientists proclaimed rising oceans, islands disappearing, polar bears starving to death, record hurricanes and you simply ignore the fact that none of these things have occurred and you still want to argue that it is I who have to prove something?
Well, why don't you prove that your Global Warming scientist friends HAVE TOLD THE TRUTH AND THEIR PREDICTIONS OF IMPENDING DOOM ARE TRUE? I don't have a thing to prove. I am simply stating the obvious. Those famous scientists you quote are full of you know what.
Arn
Please show where THE SCIENTISTS have proclaimed these things were to have happened by now. I have never seen it.
How could I prove the predictions of impending doom when I have never even seen any? The science I have seen has predicted a continued trend of Climate Change which has been shown time and time again by the studies.
Quoting: The boss of the United Nations will stop his personal involvement in the battle to regulate the world climate. Instead, he will try to achieve "immediate gains" in the field of clean energy and sustainable development. Even his U.N. colleagues have apparently understood that there can't be any "deal". . . .
I wonder what is meant by "clean" energy? If "clean" implies low-carbon emissions, then he really isn't siding totally with the climate change skeptics. I guess time will tell.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 01-28-2011).]
Originally posted by rinselberg: I wonder what is meant by "clean" energy? If "clean" implies low-carbon emissions, then he really isn't siding totally with the climate change skeptics. I guess time will tell.
I didn't say he was. There are starting to be signs that the whole global warming thing is falling apart.
Quoting: The boss of the United Nations will stop his personal involvement in the battle to regulate the world climate. Instead, he will try to achieve "immediate gains" in the field of clean energy and sustainable development. Even his U.N. colleagues have apparently understood that there can't be any "deal". . . .
I wonder what is meant by "clean" energy? If "clean" implies low-carbon emissions, then he really isn't siding totally with the climate change skeptics. I guess time will tell.
The fight he is talking about is the fight against pollution. This is a critical fight all over the world. It is a different fight than the Global Warming scam. It is the real result of chemical pollution of things like oil refineries, dirty coal fired plants, and the chemical industry. It is where the focus should have been all along. Not the weather.
The record-setting snow and cold afflicting much of the nation in recent weeks doesn’t seem to jibe with Al Gore’s dire warnings about global warming. But Gore has an explanation for what’s causing the wintry conditions: global warming.
The former Vice President on Monday responded to Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly’s on-air question last week: “Why has southern New York turned into the tundra?” O’Reilly then said he needed to call Gore.
“I appreciate the question,” Gore wrote on his website.
“As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now and they say that increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming.”
Gore then quoted an article by Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune in early 2010: “In fact, scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe. Snow has two simple ingredients: cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow.
“A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species.”
Actually the Global Warming conspirators have been wrestling with how to cover the record cold all over the world. They also are hoping nobody notices that there are no drowning polar bears, no record hurricane seasons, and no disappearing islands.
The one small glimmer of hope are the Republicans in the American Congress and Senate.
Internet creator and global-warming monger Al Gore can’t seem to get a break. Gore’s website crashed moments after Matt Drudge linked to it on Tuesday, according to a report on Fox News.
Gore’s website was down from about 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. EST. The gory claim that offended DrudgeReport.com? The former vice president held fast to his global warming mantra despite this winter’s record-setting temperatures in response to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly question, “Why has southern New York turned into the tundra?” O’Reilly then said he needed to call Gore. Gore
Gore replied on his website: “As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now and they say that increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming.”
Gore’s snow job was quickly picked up by the Drudge site via link and subsequently, Gore’s site experienced a meltdown.
Gore, no stranger to controversy, stated in a CNN “Late Edition” interview with Wolf Blitzer, “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”
Gore has come under attack by a growing cadre of scientists who debunk the man-made global warming theory — and for his own energy consumption, most recently for his mansion in Montecito, Calif., which has 6,500 square feet of living space and a swimming pool and fountains. He also made headlines for his exorbitant energy consumption at his 10,000-square-foot Nashville home.
Charles Krauthmammer on Friday said if Godzilla appeared on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Al Gore would blame it on global warming.
Such marvelously happened when the discussion on PBS's "Inside Washington" turned to the nation's crazy weather (video follows with transcript and commentary):
GORDON PETERSON, HOST: It’s been a terrible winter. If global warming is the problem, why are we having such a tough winter? Well Al Gore told Gail Collins of the New York Times there’s about a four percent more water vapor in the air now in the atmosphere than there was in the ’70s because of warmer oceans and warmer air, and it returns to earth as heavy rain and heavy snow. That’s what Al Gore says.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Look, if Godzilla appeared on the Mall this afternoon, Al Gore would say it’s global warming…
[Laughter]
…because the spores in the South Atlantic Ocean, you know, were. Look, everything is, it’s a religion. In a religion, everything is explicable. In science, you can actually deny or falsify a proposition with evidence. You find me a single piece of evidence that Al Gore would ever admit would contradict global warming and I’ll be surprised.
Krauthammer as usual was spot on.
Consider that last Sunday, climate alarmist extraordinaire Joe Romm blamed the Egypt crisis on global warming.
There's absolutely nothing these zealots won't blame on climate change, and there's nothing they will ever admit refutes it.
The latest assertion by Gore that Global Warming causes record snowfall is, of course, a concocted bit of baffle gab.
If Global Warming were a reality, it would not be snowing in Texas. It would be raining. If you look at the Jet Stream some folks think it drives the weather. While it is true the Jet Stream pulls air along, what is lost on folks is that the high speed of the Jet Stream makes it highly susceptible to sideways pressure. If there is a strong air mass on one side of it, it bellies away from that air mass.
In the case of our current winter, the cold air mass from the Arctic Circle is so big and cold that it is forcing the Jet Stream south over the continent. The Jet Stream in turn, pulls that cold air southward. It is a re-enforcement of the cold not the creator of the cold.
Additionally, if you live "up North" you know that you don't need heat to produce snow. Daaahhhhhh.......... Scientists call it Sublimation. The cold air converts both water and snow to water vapour. We get "snow fog" in Canada, caused by extreme cold sublimating the surface snow.
The fact is, as Fierobear has pointed out, we are having one hell of a winter. The only way it is overcome is by the tilt of the earth and the resulting increase in Solar radiation.
Further, as you can see at http://spaceweather.com/ we have only 2 Sunspots currently with no threat of solar flares. This means that winter is having its way.
Even our somewhat biassed Environment Canada Climatologist, who is a fervent backer of the Gorites, admits today that the Groundhogs were wrong. We will not have an early spring. We will likely have a cooler than normal summer.
If the Sun doesn't pick up activity, we are in for a series of cold winters followed by cool wet summer.s
But, remember that the Gorites will not give up. They have too much money and time invested in the lie. They stand to lose Billions if Congress kills the solar and wind initiatives. This fight is far from over.
Two top House Republicans and the Senate’s leading global warming skeptic asked the Supreme Court Monday to throw out a lawsuit seeking to force electric utilities to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), his energy lieutenant Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) submitted an amicus brief Monday in the high-profile American Electric Power v. Connecticut case.
The lawmakers urged the judges to reverse a lower court ruling that allowed states and environmental groups to move ahead with a public “nuisance” lawsuit seeking to force the utilities to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.
“[C]ourts are not equipped to make judgments about the appropriate emissions standards for utilities located throughout the country,” the lawmakers wrote. “Judicial establishment of such standards would violate decades of Supreme Court precedent and unconstitutionally interfere with Congressional and Executive branch efforts to address climate change-related matters.”
American Electric Power Co., Duke Energy, Southern Co., Xcel Energy Inc. and the Tennessee Valley Authority asked the high court to review the case after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled in 2009 that states and environmentalists could move forward with their “nuisance” lawsuit. Eight states, New York City and environmental groups sued the utilities in 2004 over their heat-trapping emissions.
Attorneys for the utilities have argued that nuisance lawsuits targeting power plants are the wrong way to tackle global warming. The Obama administration also asked the high court to reverse the ruling, arguing that the Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and that the nuisance claims would be better handled by legislation or regulations than by the courts.
Obama administration attorneys say EPA was already moving forward with efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, which undercut the need for nuisance lawsuits. But while the agency has announced plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions from older facilities, the agency hasn’t finalized those rules.
Upton, Inhofe and Whitfield are also working to block the executive branch from regulating greenhouse gases. The trio unveiled draft legislation earlier this month to strip EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
David Doniger, a climate attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council representing environmentalists in the case, called the lawmakers’ request to the court ironic, given the fact that they are also seeking to block the administration’s climate rules.
“If Upton’s and Inhofe’s legislation would pass, EPA wouldn’t be allowed to use the Clean Air Act, the Clean Air Act would be revoked, and that would mean that the states have no remedy other than this federal common law remedy,” he said, which they are also trying to upend.
The court is expected to hear oral arguments in the case this spring.
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe on Wednesday not only stood by his famous hoax declaration on global warming, but the Oklahoma Republican somewhat reluctantly tipped his hand on plans to publish a book.
“I won’t tell you what it’s about, but the name of the book is ‘The Hoax,’?” he said during testimony before a House subcommittee.
“I did finish it last week.’’
Inhofe was the lead-off witness at a somewhat contentious and lengthy hearing on a proposal that he and Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, are pushing essentially to kill the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the other major attraction at the hearing, testified after Inhofe.
Different sides were drawn years ago on the long-running debate over climate change, its causes and what governments should do or not do to address the issue.
Wednesday’s hearing at the Subcommittee on Energy and Power followed that script.
That included lengthy statements from members of the panel with limited time for witnesses to respond.
Inhofe and House Republicans on the subcommittee focused on what they consider the enormous costs of EPA’s efforts to regulate greenhouse emissions, the jobs that could be lost and the questions that, in their view, continue to surround climate change science.
Science is mixed, Inhofe said, but the economic impact is not.
“In other words, all pain for no climate gain,’’ he said in prepared remarks that he ignored so he could “ramble’’ through his testimony.
Even if one assumes the predictions of more droughts, floods, intense storms and cases of disease are true, Inhofe said, EPA’s expected regulations will not affect that.
Jackson and Democrats on the panel argued the debate over science is over, a consensus by the nation’s leading researches that climate change is occurring and why has been reached, and the U.S. economy can continue to grow while addressing the issue.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the full committee’s ranking member, said the underlying premise of the proposal is that climate change is a hoax, citing Inhofe’s long-held view.
Jackson also urged lawmakers to think of their own role.
“Politicians overruling scientists on a scientific question, that would become part of this committee’s legacy,’’ she said.
One of the primary pioneering theorists on apocalyptic global warming is Guenther Schwab (1902-2006), an Austrian Nazi.[i] In 1958, Schwab wrote a fictional novel built off of Goethe's (1749-1832) Faustian religious play entitled "Dance with the Devil." While a few scientists since the late 1800's had contemplated the possibility of minor global warming coming from industrial pollution, Schwab used Goethe's dramatic approach to convert the theory into an apocalyptic crisis. The book outlines many looming environmental emergencies, including anthropogenic global warming. Guenther Schwab's very popular novel was an apocalyptic game changer. By the early 1970's, it had been translated into several languages and had sold over a million copies.
At one point in his novel, Schwab opines on the fragile relationship between oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Assuming the planet has only about 100 years remaining, Schwab frets over the continuing rise of carbon dioxide that "will absorb and hold fast the warmth given out by the earth. This will cause the climate to become milder and the Polar ice will begin to thaw. As a result, there will be a rise in the level of the ocean and whole continents will be flooded."
Schwab had been a strong nature lover since boyhood, and by the 1920's he became very active in the emerging environmental movement in Austria. Later, he joined the Nazi Party. While this may sound odd to many who have bought into the Marxian propaganda over the years that the Nazis were right wing capitalistic extremists, greens who signed up for the Nazi Party were actually very typical of the day. The most widely represented group of people in the Nazi Party was the greens, and Guenther Schwab was just one of among many. The greens' interest in lonely places found a solitary niche in the singleness of Adolf Hitler, who ruled the Third Reich from his spectacular mountain compound, high in the Bavarian Alps called the Berghof. In English, this could easily be translated as Mountain Home, Bavaria.
After the war in the 1950's, Guenther Schwab's brand of environmentalism also played a fundamental role in the development of the green anti-nuclear movement in West Germany. The dropping of the atom bomb and the nuclear fallout of the Cold War helped to globalize the greens into an apocalyptic 'peace' movement with Guenther Schwab being one of its original spokesmen. The unprecedented destruction in Germany brought on by industrialized warfare never before seen in the history of the world only served to radicalize the German greens into an apocalyptic movement. Their hatred toward global capitalism became even more vitriolic precisely because the capitalists were now in charge of a dangerous nuclear arsenal that threatened the entire planet.
Later, Guenther Schwab joined the advisory panel of "The Society of Biological Anthropology, Eugenics and Behavior Research." Schwab was especially concerned with the burgeoning population explosion of the Third World that he was sure would eventually overrun Europe. By advocating modern racial science based on genetics, Schwab believed that the population bomb, together with its associated environmental degradation, could be averted. Here, Schwab shows his basic commitment to the Nazi SS doctrine of 'blood and soil' -- an explosive concoction of eugenics and environmentalism loaded with eco-imperialistic ambitions that had devastating consequences on the Eastern Front in World War II.
The success of Schwab's book helped him to establish an international environmental organization called "The World League for the Defense of Life." Not surprisingly, Werner Haverbeck, former Hitler Youth member and Nazi environmental leader of the Reich's League for Folk National Character and Landscape, later became the chairman of Schwab's organization. In 1973, Haverbeck blamed the environmental crisis in Germany on American capitalism. It was an unnatural colonial import that had infected Germany like a deadly foreign body.
Both Schwab's organization and Haverbeck were also instrumental in establishing the German Green Party in 1980. Such embarrassing facts were later managed with a little housecleaning and lots of cosmetics, which was further buoyed by characterizing such greens as extreme 'right wing' ecologists -- a counterintuitive label that continues to misdirect and plague all environmental studies of the Third Reich. Worst of all is that Haverbeck's wife is also a Holocaust denier.
Long before Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth," green Nazi Guenther Schwab played a large role in catalyzing the frightening theory of global warming. With no small thanks to Schwab, the Great Tribulation of Global Warming was ushered into the modern consciousness behind the collapse of the Millennial 1,000 year Third Reich. There is therefore a swastika in the German woods that needs to be closely watched here.
Global Warming By Another Name Obama's clean energy boondoggle will be expensive for America President Barack Obama uttered not a peep about global warming in his State of Union this year. No dire warnings about climate apocalypse. No calls for cap-and-trade. Has this cold winter convinced him to put his global warming agenda on ice?
Hardly. Indeed, even in this age of deficits and debt, the president’s budget is chock full of global warming items—except he wraps them around a new cause: clean energy.
And that may be enough to get Republicans to sign on.
That "clean energy" is code for "anti-warming" is obvious, given that even Environmental Protection Agency numbers show that virtually all emissions have dropped dramatically in recent decades—except for greenhouse gases.
To cut those, Obama's budget aims to hike Department of Energy spending by 12 percent from 2010 levels. He proposes $8 billion more for various clean-energy programs—on top of the $30 billion "invested" via the 2009 stimulus. Even that's only the tip of the iceberg.
To pay for it all, Obama would stick it to Big Oil. He wants to eliminate $43 billion in oil-tax breaks over 10 years. That would be fine if he were aiming for a "level" energy market, with the government playing no favorites; in fact, he's just looking to divert the subsidies to his favorites. (Even before Obama’s stimulus binge on renewables, total U.S. energy subsidies were close to $16.6 billion and about 30 percent—the largest share—went to renewables.)
Despite his talk of promoting nuclear power, the president's budget cuts support for it by 0.6 percent from 2010 levels. The big winners are—surprise!—solar (88 percent rise), biomass and biorefinery (57 percent), geothermal (136 percent) and wind (61 percent).
Obama is also doubling the budget of the Advanced Research Projects Agency to encourage R&D on renewables. That's because progressives are suddenly convinced (thanks to "Where Good Technologies Come From," a paper by the Breakthrough Institute) that the basic research for nearly every major technological invention—blockbuster pharmaceuticals, high-yield crops, the Internet—has been the result of government funding.
Pumping money into pie-in-the sky energy projects has been a perennial presidential project since Jimmy Carter. But Obama has a new wrinkle: The White House believes that past pushes for alternative fuels failed (despite subsidies) because they did nothing to ensure a market for the new products. So Obama has decreed that he wants 80 percent of America's energy to come from clean sources by 2035.
That won't happen automatically, so the Center for American Progress (the Obama White House's unofficial think tank) argues for a federal "35 by 35" standard—mandating that 35 percent of America's energy come from renewables by 2035. This means the feds would force all utilities to generate more than a third of their electricity from renewables—a guarantee of far higher prices.
A Heritage Foundation study found that even a scaled-down version of the plan, a 22.5 percent renewable standard by 2025, would bump household-electricity prices 36 percent and industry prices 60 percent by 2035—producing a net GDP loss of $5.2 trillion between 2012 and 2035.
So much for green growth and jobs.
Obama also means to make America's transportation oil-free to ensure a low-carbon future for mankind. To this end, he wants a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.
So, while low-income families face a cut in heating assistance from Uncle Sam (and higher electric bills), rich people would get $200 million for a $7,500 tax rebate to use toward each $40,000 Chevy Volt.
Obama also wants a $4 billion downpayment toward a six-year, $53 billion plan to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail. In fact, his own transportation secretary admits that this can't be done for less than $500 billion.
Obama has no political capital left to pursue grand global-warming schemes, so he is taking an incremental, piecemeal approach. Once these programs are in place, the constituency of activists and industry they'll spawn will use their very failure to argue for their expansion.
You'd think that Republicans would have nothing to do with this. But unlike global warming, clean energy polls well. So virtually no Republican has denounced it.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) actually supports a renewable standard. Republican Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has committed only to examining Obama's energy budget "line by line"—not killing it.
Global warming is a dying cause because the costs of the favored "fixes" for the problem vastly outweigh the supposed benefits—and China and India aren't going to stop industrializing, and stay poor, simply to please Western elites. Republicans should wake up and not let Obama use the guise of clean energy to keep the anti-warming crusade alive.
His Democrat buddies, headed up by Al Gore are heavily invested in the anti-global warming initiatives. If he doesn't come through for them, they will lose millions.
It is really about not losing investment money at this point.
But please mark my words well. Come July, when we are in our hottest month of the year, the Global Warming rhetoric will heat up again. About when Congress is debating the money items, the northern hemisphere will be escaping the clutches of winter and we will once again be battling those @#$%^&* scam artists.
Google's political agenda and influence is growing. Now they are using their resources to pump up the climate hoax. You see, folks, they just haven't explained it well enough. Uh huh. You can read that as "we haven't sufficiently propagandized these morons, so we need better propaganda."
I say it's time to boycott Google. I've already stopped using Google search, and will soon change from Google Chrome browser back to Firefox.
Physics professor explains the "hide the decline" part of Climategate, and how this is not acceptable in science. Note that he believes global warming *could* be a problem, but he seems to be reasonable about his arguments.
Adopting the Baucus amendment would put Congress's legislative stamp of approval on EPA's end-run around the legislative process.
Last week, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) introduced an amendment to S. 493, a bill reauthorizing small business research and technology programs. Baucus’s amendment would essentially codify EPA’s Tailoring Rule, which exempts small emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from regulation under the Clean Air Act’s (CAA’s) Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) preconstruction permitting program and Title V operating permits program.
But that just means the Baucus amendment would codify the entire ever-growing ensemble of EPA climate policy initiatives of which the Tailoring Rule is only a small piece.
The Tailoring Rule presupposes EPA’s Tailpipe Rule, which establishes first-ever GHG standards for new motor vehicles, and, more importantly, EPA’s Endangerment Rule, which contains the agency’s “finding” that GHG emissions endanger public health and welfare. The Endangerment Rule both authorizes and obligates EPA to issue a host of other regulations — GHG emission/fuel-economy standards for all types of mobile sources, GHG/energy-efficiency standards for all categories of industrial sources, and even national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GHGs.
Congress, however, never authorized EPA to determine fuel economy standards for motor vehicles, much less dictate national policy on climate change. The CAA, after all, was enacted in 1970, years before global warming was even a gleam in Al Gore’s eye. Adopting the Baucus amendment would put Congress’s legislative stamp of approval on EPA’s end-run around the legislative process.
The Baucus amendment has almost no chance of passing in the GOP-led House of Representatives. However, it does not need to pass to perpetuate EPA’s shocking power grab. All it has to do is peel off enough votes in the Senate to prevent passage of the Inhofe-Upton Energy Tax Prevention Act. That bill, which is almost certain to pass in the House, would repeal EPA’s Endangerment Rule and permanently stop the agency from implementing climate policies Congress never approved.
Like Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s (D-W.Va.) amendment to delay EPA’s GHG regulations for two years, the Baucus amendment provides political cover for Senators who want to appear to be doing something to rein in EPA while in fact protecting the agency’s purloined power to restrict America’s access to affordable, carbon-based energy.
Three points are especially worthy of note.
(1) Baucus’s amendment implicitly confirms that Congress never authorized EPA to regulate GHGs through the CAA.
EPA’s Endangerment Rule obligated the agency to issue a Tailpipe Rule establishing GHG emission standards for new motor vehicles. According to EPA’s Triggering Rule, once the Tailpipe Rule took effect (Jan. 2, 2011), CO2 became a “regulated air pollutant” and “major” stationary sources automatically became “subject to regulation” under the PSD and Title V permitting programs. The problem, as is now widely known, is that literally millions of non-industrial buildings and facilities (office buildings, apartment complexes, big box stores, hospitals, schools, large houses of worship, Dunkin’ Donut shops) emit enough CO2 — 250/100 tons per year — to meet the PSD/Title V numerical definition of “major” source.
Thus, the Endangerment Rule inexorably leads to what EPA itself calls “absurd results” – policy outcomes that conflict with and undermine congressional intent. EPA and its state counterparts would have to process an estimated 81,000 PSD preconstruction permit applications per year (instead of 280) and 6.1 million Title V operating permits per year (instead of 15,000). The permitting programs would crash under their own weight, crippling both environmental enforcement and construction activity. A more potent Anti-Stimulus Program would be hard to imagine. This is not what Congress authorized when it enacted the CAA in 1970, nor when it amended the statute in 1977 and 1990.
To avoid a red tape nightmare and an angry political backlash, EPA “tailored” the statutory numerical definitions of “major” source to exempt all but the largest GHG-emitters from PSD and Title V. “Tailoring,” however, is just bureaucrat-speak for “amending.” An administrative agency has no power to amend statutes. Certainly the CAA nowhere authorizes EPA to revise statutory provisions to avoid an administrative debacle of its own making.
Not once during the four years when when Massachusetts v. EPA was litigated before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court did counsel for EPA bother to point out that regulating GHGs via the CAA would lead to absurd results, nor did counsel mention that EPA would have to play lawmaker and amend the CAA in order to avoid an administrative meltdown. More fundamentally, EPA’s counsel never made the basic point that EPA could not issue a GHG endangerment rule without eventually regulating GHGs under the CAA as a whole – a gigantic shift in public policy that Congress could not possibly have intended when it enacted the CAA in 1970. That EPA’s counsel pulled its punches is hardly surprising. By losing the case in the Supreme Court, EPA gained the truly awesome, economy-restructuring power to regulate CO2, the most ubiquitous byproduct of industrial civilization.
Although ostensibly an amendment to a small business bill, what the Baucus amendment chiefly and more importantly amends is the CAA. That’s what codifying the legally dubious Tailoring Rule means. The amendment confirms in spades that the CAA is an unreasonable, even absurd framework for determining climate policy. The only way to make GHGs fit into CAA regulatory provisions without immediately disrupting the economy is to amend the Act so that it is no longer the same statute under which the Court decided Mass. v. EPA.
(2) Baucus’s amendment provides zero protection from the most absurd risk arising from EPA’s Endangerment Rule – GHG regulation via the NAAQS program.
EPA’s Endangerment Rule (p. 66516) holds that the “elevated concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health and welfare.” Having made this “finding” under CAA Sec. 202, EPA could not without blatant self-contradiction fail to make the same finding in a Sec. 108 endangerment proceeding. Sec. 108 requires EPA to initiate a NAAQS rulemaking for “air pollution” from “numerous or diverse mobile or stationary sources” if the Administrator finds that such pollution “may reasonably be determined to endanger public health or welfare.” Carbon dioxide obviously comes from numerous and diverse mobile and stationary sources, and EPA has already determined that the associated “air pollution” — the “elevated concentration” – endangers public health and welfare. Logically, EPA must now establish NAAQS for GHGs, with the standards set below current atmospheric concentrations.
Eco-litigation groups were quick to pick up on this logic. In December 2009, the Center for Biological Diversity and 350.Org petitioned EPA to establish NAAQS for CO2 at 350 parts per million (about 40 ppm below current concentrations) and for other GHGs at preindustrial levels. Numerous other environmental organizations and activists (including Al Gore and NASA scientist James Hansen) have joined the 350 Petition.
Some EPA apologists assure us that the agency would never go down this road. In fact, the Obama administration has already hinted that it considers NAAQS a viable mechanism for regulating GHGs.
In an August 2010 brief filed on behalf of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Obama Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to vacate an appeals court decision (State of Connecticut et al. v. American Electric Power et al.) that would allow states and other parties to sue coal-burning electric utilities for their alleged contribution to global warming-related “injuries.” The brief argues that EPA’s current and future GHG regulations preempt federal common-law litigation to control GHG emissions. The brief mentions Sec. 202 (motor vehicle standards), Sec. 165 (PSD permitting), Section 111 (new source performance standards), and Title V (operating permits) as applicable CAA authorities. No surprise there. But then we find this shocker:
Section 108 of the CAA also provides EPA with a mechanism for listing pollutants that “endanger public health or welfare” and meet certain other criteria. When an air pollutant is listed, the Act requires States to regulate emissions to prevent pollution from exceeding EPA standards.
If EPA would never issue NAAQS for greenhouse gases, then why mention Sec. 108 in a brief intended to prove that CAA regulation of greenhouse gases “displaces” federal common-law injury claims? Why not just discuss the authorities everybody knows EPA is currently using or plans to use? Including NAAQS as a regulatory option in a brief to the Supreme Court is troubling, especially given the aggressive push eco-litigation groups are making on this front.
The potential for mischief is hard to exaggerate. Not even a worldwide depression permanently reducing global economic output and emissions to, say, 1970 levels, would stop CO2 concentrations from rising over the next 90 years. Note also that the CAA allows states only five or at most 10 years to attain NAAQS or face sanctions such as loss of highway funding. For perspective, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, which Senate leaders considered too economically risky to bring to a vote, aimed to help stabilize CO2 concentrations at 450 ppm by 2050. The economic sacrifices required to implement a CO2 NAAQS set at 350 ppm hugely exceed those associated with any climate bill Congress has either rejected or declined to pass.
The Baucus amendment, if enacted, would do nothing to defuse this ticking time bomb. If it does not pass but merely prevents the Energy Tax Prevention Act from passing, the amendment will perpetuate the NAAQ threat and other regulatory uncertainties emanating from EPA’s Endangerment Rule.
(3) Baucus’s amendment would codify EPA’s end-run around Congress, allowing the agency to dictate national policy on climate change as it sees fit.
What would the Baucus amendment stop EPA from doing? Only that which the agency does not want to do anyway! EPA has no wish to apply BACT and PSD to small stationary sources of CO2. That’s why EPA issued the Tailoring Rule. Granted, the Tailoring Rule is such an overt flouting of the separation of powers that courts may overturn it. But the risk to small entities from PSD and Title V is not the main reason Congress should stop EPA.
The principal reason is that EPA is wielding powers beyond any plausible legislative mandate. Let’s start with the EPA Tailpipe Rule, which establishes GHG emission standards for new motor vehicles. As EPA acknowledges, 94-95% of motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions are carbon dioxide from motor fuel combustion. And as both EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) acknowledge, “there is a single pool of technologies for addressing these twin problems [climate change, oil dependence], i.e., those that reduce fuel consumption and thereby reduce CO2 emissions as well” (p. 25327). Because EPA’s GHG emission standards can only be met by decreasing motor fuel consumption, the standards implicitly regulate fuel economy. The CAA, however, provides no authority for fuel economy regulation. Congress delegated that power to the NHTSA under other statutes (1975 Energy Policy Act, 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act).
Having hijacked fuel-economy regulation, EPA is now poised to “enact” similar fuel-consumption standards for marine vessels, aircraft, non-road vehicles, and engines. No existing statute authorizes any agency to impose such controls. Congress typically deliberates for years before revising fuel-economy standards for motor vehicles, because the consumer and economic impacts are potentially so large. Congress has not held a single hearing on how or, more importantly, whether to adopt fuel-consumption standards for marine vessels, aircraft, and the like. Yet EPA charges ahead as if the authority it conferred upon itself, via the Endangerment Rule, eliminates the need for hearings, legislative debate, on-the-record votes, and political accountability to the people at the ballot box.
EPA is now administering “best available control technology” (BACT) determinations for new or modified large GHG-emitters such as power plants, refineries, pulp and paper mills, cement production facilities, and steel mills. It is also developing GHG performance standards for power plants and refineries. In time, EPA will establish GHG standards for every category of mobile and stationary source, effectively imposing an economy-wide climate and energy policy. None of these actions implements, or is pursuant to, any climate or energy bill that Congress has enacted.
Stranger than Fiction
The weird irony of this situation is that Sen. Baucus is almost uniquely qualified to rebut the claim that the CAA authorizes EPA to regulate GHGs. During congressional deliberation on the CAA Amendments of 1990, Baucus sponsored legislation requiring EPA to adopt CO2 standards for new motor vehicles. As originally introduced on September 14, 1989, S. 1630, the Senate version of the 1990 CAA Amendments, contained a Section 216 on “Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Passenger Cars.”
SEC. 216. (a) PROMULGATION OF REGULATIONS- The Administrator shall promulgate regulations providing for standards applicable to emissions of carbon dioxide from passenger automobiles (as defined in 15 U.S.C. 2001(2)). Such standards shall require that for model years 1995 to 2002, the average of such emissions from passenger automobiles manufactured by any manufacturer shall not exceed two hundred and forty two grams per mile, and for model year 2003 and thereafter, such average shall not exceed one hundred and seventy grams per mile.
The Senate declined to adopt that provision. Another part of Baucus’s legislation, Title VII of S. 1630, would have made “global warming potential” a basis for regulating “substances manufactured for commercial purposes,” such as chlorofluorcarbons and halogens. Although Title VII declared reductions in CO2 and methane emissions as a national goal, it did not explicitly provide authority to regulate those gases, which are byproducts of combustion and agricultural activity rather than “substances manufactured for commercial purposes.”
In any event, the House-Senate conference committee ultimately rejected even that limited basis for global warming regulation while also dropping Title VII’s goal of reducing CO2 and methane emissions. The only trace of Title VII’s climate language that survived is Section 602(e) of Title VI, which directs the Administrator to “publish” the “global warming potential” of ozone-depleting substances. To ensure that EPA’s trigger-happy regulators would not go off half-cocked, the phrase “global warming potential” is immediately followed by this admonition: “The preceding sentence shall not be construed to be the basis of any additional regulation under [the CAA].”
With the possible exception of Michigan Rep. John Dingell (see pp. 65-66 of this committee print), who chaired the House-Senate conference committee on the 1990 CAA Amendments, nobody on Capitol Hill should know better than Sen. Baucus that Congress never authorized EPA to regulate GHGs for climate change purposes. Baucus tried to persuade the Senate to approve CO2 standards for new motor vehicles — and failed. House and Senate conferees also rejected the other GHG regulatory provisions he had proposed. A lawmaker just doesn’t forget stuff like that.
So Baucus’s amendment might be titled Baucus’s Revenge. But it is also democracy’s peril.
By introducing his amendment, Baucus has joined the ranks of those who think the greenhouse regulatory agenda is more important than any constitutional principle that might interfere with it. Their unstated premise is that “We are entitled to win in politics even if our side loses in the halls of Congress and on Election Day.” It is a very strange notion of democracy. Unfortunately, several members of Congress seem to hold this view.
In last year’s debate on Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s resolution to overturn EPA’s Endangerment Rule, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) complained that if the public has to wait for Congress to enact controls on GHG emissions, “that might not happen, in a year or two, or five or six or eight or 10.” Yes, but how in the world does that authorize EPA to substitute its will for that of the people’s representatives? The fact that Congress remains deadlocked on climate and energy policy is a reason for EPA not to act, not a license for EPA to behave as a Super Legislature.
The legislative process is often frustrating and slow. It is supposed to be! By constitutional design, it is much easier to block and delay legislation than it is to pass legislation. This moderates our politics and promotes continuity in law and policy. The legislative process is more valuable than any result that an administrative agency might obtain by doing an end-run around it. Of all people, U.S. senators should understand this basic precept of representative government. How Senators vote on the Baucus amendment will be a test of their respect for the Constitution.
Oops. Yet another grossly inaccurate prediction about global warming. And they tried to erase the fact they did the prediction. Nothing like adding fraud on top of fraud, eh?
Please, let me guess, Al Gore will say that the disappearing ice means it takes up less space in the ocean. Therefore the water level drops...........daaahhhh, wait a minute, the ice isn't disappearing either Al....
