Dem AG backs down in Exxon climate fight

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/dem-ag-backs-down-in-exxon-climate-fight/article/2595284

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Wednesday, Exxon agreed to stand down its legal action given Walker’s agreement to withdraw his subpoena. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

Dem AG backs down in Exxon climate fight

 

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A group of Democratic attorneys general have suffered another blow in their bid to find oil-giant Exxon Mobil guilty of fraud in a highly-politicized climate change investigation.

 

A court document issued Wednesday evening says Claude Walker, attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands, has agreed to withdraw his subpoena demanding documents and emails from the oil company related to its discussion of the risks posed by climate change.

 

Walker is part of a group of 17 state attorneys general who said they would use their prosecutorial powers as law enforcement officials to go after those that have sought to cover up the evidence of climate change that is placing the public at risk.

 

The AGs based their investigations on a series of articles published by Inside Climate News, the Los Angeles Times and other news outlets that reported the company had covered up findings by Exxon’s own scientists that showed manmade climate change was warming the Earth and creating risks for the company. The company adamantly denies the charges, and is asking several courts to level injunctions against the AGs for violating the company’s rights under the Constitution.

Fossil Fuel Advocate Alex Epstein Challenges Al Gore to $100,000 Debate

http://climatechangedispatch.com/fossil-fuel-advocate-alex-epstein-challenges-al-gore-to-100000-debate/

This past March, Al Gore proudly stood shoulder to shoulder with more than a dozen state attorneys general to declare war on climate skeptics. Led by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, the group (“AG’s United for Clean Power”) vowed to prosecute companies like ExxonMobil that have “misled…the public on the impact of climate change.”

Shortly after the press conference, Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker served a subpoena on the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), demanding a decade’s worth of internal communications on climate policy.

The moves against ExxonMobil and CEI are not a complete surprise, given the increasingly shrill attacks against individuals and organizations that question the validity of man-made global warming.

Earlier this year, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch confirmed that the Department of Justice has discussed the possibility of bringing civil actions against climate skeptics.

Tellingly, the witch hunt is now widening. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey recently demanded that Exxon disclose any and all communications with 12 organizations that advocate for fossil fuels, including the Center for Industrial Progress (CIP) led by Alex Epstein, the author of ‘The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.’

Epstein, who recently made headlines during a testy Senate committee hearing with Barbara Boxer (D-CA), has chosen to fight back in a rather public manner. He’s formally challengingAl Gore to a public debate on energy policy. And since the former vice president currently receives $100,000 per speaking engagement, Epstein has pledged to deliver the full fee—if Gore will accept.

Unfortunately, Gore has steadfastly refused to debate any critics since the 2006 release of ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ But Epstein’s challenge carries real currency. Not only does he represent the fossil fuel viewpoint that Gore abhors but he’s also one of the very figures now being publicly flayed by Gore’s cohorts.…

CALL FOR CLEXIT – Fledgling movement cited as one whose ‘time has come’

First there was Grexit, the prospect of Greece exiting the Europe Union, which didn’t happen. Then came Brexit, the British voters’ stunning decision to leave the “superstate.”

Now there are calls for a “Clexit,” through which wise and thinking people would leave the U.N. Climate Agreement, promoters say.

“The U.S. needs to join the fledgling ‘Clexit’ movement and demand the U.S. withdraw from the UN Paris climate agreement,” wrote Marc Morano on his Climate Depot site.

“The time has come for a U.S. and Australia led ‘Clexit’ from the climate madness.”

The idea comes on the heels of a Breitbart report about Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s suggestion that the government could prosecute those who deny “climate change,” which was “global warming” until evidence showed warming had stopped.

Lynch said the issue of “deniers” has been referred to the FBI “to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action on [sic].”

“Climategate” exposes the global warming scam. Get it now at the WND Superstore.

The Obama administration had said in a statement that the “similarities between the mischief of the tobacco industry pretending that the science of tobacco’s dangers was unsettled and the fossil fuel industry pretending that the science of carbon emissions’ dangers is unsettled has been remarked on widely, particularly by those who study the climate denial apparatus that the fossil fuel industry has erected.”

“Under President Clinton, the Department of Justice brought and won a civil RICO action against the tobacco industry for its fraud. Under President Obama, the Department of Justice has done nothing so far about the climate denial scheme.”

Then, this week “leading climate doomsayer” Michael Mann said data and models about global warming “increasingly are unnecessary” because the warming is so obvious.

“Fundamentally, I’m a climate scientist and have spent much of my career with my head buried in climate-model output and observational climate data trying to tease out the signal of human-caused climate change,” he told the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee.

“What is disconcerting to me and so many of my colleagues is that these tools that we’ve spent years developing increasingly are unnecessary because we can see climate change, the impacts of climate change, now, playing out in real time, on our television screens, in the 24-hour news cycle.”

Morano noted the “Clexit” call was posted online at Carbon-Sense.com.

That organization is a “voluntary group …

Will Germany join Clexit movement?! Reuters: Germany waters down climate protection plan –

Germany has abandoned plans to set out a timetable to exit coal-fired power production and scrapped C02 emissions reduction goals for individual sectors, according to the latest draft of an environment ministry document seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

An earlier version of the draft document that was leaked in May had suggested that Germany should phase out coal-fired power production “well before 2050” as part of a package of measures to help Berlin achieve its climate goals.

The new version, which was revised following consultation with the economy and energy ministry, has also deleted specific concrete C02 emissions savings targets for the energy, industry, transport and agriculture sectors.

The document forms the government’s national climate action plan for 2050 and lays out how it plans to move away from fossil fuels and achieve its goal of cutting CO2 emissions by up to 95 percent compared to 1990 levels by the middle of the century.

The original proposals met with hefty opposition from unions, coal-producing regions and business groups who said it would cost jobs and damage industry.

Christoph Bals, policy director at environmental NGO Germanwatch, criticized the changes.

“Seven months after the successful climate summit in Paris the government is capitulating to the interests of the fossil fuel industry and missing the chance to give the economy a modernization impulse by presenting clear plans,” he said.…

How Brexit Will Affect Paris UN ‘Global Warming’ Treaty

The fate of the European Union’s global warming commitments negotiated as part of the Paris Protocol may be in jeopardy as result of Brexit. The U.S. on the other hand, should take a page out of the U.K.’s playbook and not only withdraw from the Paris agreement, but also withdraw participation from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change altogether.

Last December, leaders from around the world convened at the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris. The agreement reached at the end of the Paris conference set a target of achieving a 2 degree Celsius warming threshold with intentions to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

To achieve that goal, countries made individual commitments to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, largely centered on shifting away from affordable natural resources such as coal, oil, and natural gas, and toward more expensive, intermittent, subsidy-dependent renewables.

Known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, the Obama administration pledged to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2025.

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The EU, on the other hand, submitted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions on behalf of its member countries, pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

How the U.K.’s exit affects the EU’s commitment remains to be seen. As Bloomberg BNA reports:

Without the U.K. included, the 40-percent, EU-wide reduction target will be more difficult, since the U.K. was expected to have a more ambitious internal target, with the Committee on Climate Change, an autonomous U.K. government advisory body, recommending a 57-percent domestic reduction in emissions compared to 1990 levels by 2030.

Because carbon dioxide emitting energy sources provide more than 80 percent of the entire world’s energy consumption, decarbonizing the energy economy will drive up energy costs, costs which must be absorbed or passed on. Costs that hit families and businesses over and over again.…