Obama DOJ Contradicts EPA Chief on climate regs: Claims: ‘All about pollution control’ vs. EPA chief: ‘This is not about pollution control’
Defending EPA’s sweeping climate regulations before the U.S. D.C. Circuit, Obama Department of Justice attorney Eric Hostetler wholly disavows EPAs purported reason for writing the Clean Power Plan. Hostetler: “This rule is all about pollution control and nothing else.”
State of West Virginia v. EPA
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
-September 27, 2016
#
FLASHBACK:
“[The Clean Power Plan] is not about pollution control. […] This is an investment strategy…”
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy
-Senate EPW Committee
-July 23, 2014
“[The Clean Power Plan] is not about end of pipe controls. It’s about driving investments in renewables and efficiency. It’s about advancing our ongoing clean energy revolution […] That’s what… reinventing a global economy looks like.”
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy
-Council on Foreign Relations
-March 11, 2015
Senate Dem Report Attacking EPA Critics Traced to Green Pressure Group
Document scrubbed of traces to environmentalist group after Free Beacon inquiries
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) / AP
BY:
A Democratic Senator moved to conceal his apparent behind-the-scenes collaboration with an environmentalist pressure group on Wednesday after inquiries into the group’s role in crafting a report accusing political opponents of doing the bidding of special interests.
A report posted on Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D., R.I.) website on Monday accused Environmental Protection Agency critics of being in the thrall of the fossil fuel industry. According to metadata in the report, the document was created by an attorney with a green group currently defending EPA policies in federal court.
After the Washington Free Beacon sought comment from Whitehouse and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), one of the report’s co-authors, a new version of the document appeared online without digital fingerprints identifying the environmentalist attorney as its author.
EPA Quietly Passes New ‘Climate Change’ Regulations for Household Appliances
EPA Finalizes Two Rules to Reduce Use and Emissions of Potent Greenhouse Gases
WASHINGTON- Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized two rules that will reduce the projected growth and emissions of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a class of chemicals commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioning that are potent greenhouse gases and can be hundreds to thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide. These rules are the latest in a series of actions demonstrating continued commitment by the United States to reduce emissions of climate-damaging HFCs at home, while working with other countries to amend the Montreal Protocol to address HFCs globally.
“These two rules demonstrate the United States’ continued leadership in protecting public health and the environment,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “We are reducing emissions of HFCs that are harmful to the climate system and showing the world that we can do this responsibly and thoughtfully by working with businesses and environmental groups. I’m especially excited that we have taken these actions ahead of next month’s Montreal Protocol negotiations.”
Under Section 612 of the Clean Air Act, EPA’s Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) program is adding to the list of safer and more climate-friendly chemicals for use in the refrigeration and air conditioning and fire suppression sectors; listing several new substitutes as unacceptable in specific end-uses in the refrigeration and air conditioning sector; and changing the status of a number of substitutes that were previously listed as acceptable in the refrigeration and air conditioning and foam blowing sectors. Foam products that contain unacceptable foam blowing agents are also listed as unacceptable.
In each instance where EPA is listing a substitute as unacceptable or changing the status of a substitute from acceptable to unacceptable, EPA has determined that there are other alternatives that pose lower risk overall to human health, the environment, or both. This rule results in environmental benefits from avoided HFC emissions of up to 7 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent (MMTCO2eq) in 2025, equal to the greenhouse gas emissions from 1.5 million cars in one year.
In today’s second action, EPA is strengthening the refrigerant management program under Section 608 of the Clean Air Act and extending the regulations to non-ozone depleting substitutes such as HFCs and other substitutes. This action will lead to reductions in emissions by lowering …
Alarmists Freak Out That Global Warming Will Expose Top Secret Nuclear Facility, It Won’t
Global warming will expose a secret Cold War-era nuclear base in the coming decades — that’s according to The Guardian newspaper on a recent climate study.
The tone of the article is that Camp Century, a defunct U.S. military base in northwest Greenland, is on the verge of being exposed by global warming. The camp and the supposedly radioactive waste it conceals were part of an “underground cold war network that had been thought buried forever, until climate change made that highly unlikely,” according to The Guardian.
Camp Century is “likely to be uncovered by rising temperatures within decades,” The Guardian urgently reported. The study’s lead author added to The Guardian article’s sense of urgency.
“They thought it would never be exposed,” William Colgan, a glacier scientist at York University, told The Guardian.
Will this finally convince skeptics!? NEWSWEEK: ‘GLOBAL WARMING COULD WIPE OUT BREAKFAST CEREALS BY 2070’
Global warming could rapidly reduce the cultivation of wheat and rice, threatening the production of breakfast cereals along with half of all the calories consumed by humans.
A study looking ahead to 2070 found that climate change was occurring 5,000 times faster than certain grasses can adapt, New Scientist reported.
Wheat, rice, maize, rye, barley and sorghum are all edible grasses that yield nutritious grains. In many parts of the world and throughout history, wheat or rice famines have led to widespread starvation.
The research examined how 236 grass species could adapt to the local environments they depended on for survival.
Experts predict evolutionary adaptation seems particularly unlikely for domesticated species and the result will be devastating for some human populations.…
Spiegel: Experts Slam Proclamations Of An Anthropocene As ‘Political’… ‘Unscientific’…’Science Sloganeering’!
Science journalist and geologist Axel Bojanowski at the online German Spiegel news weekly comments on the drive by activists to proclaim an “Anthropocene” age because they claim that man has so much altered the planet and is adding a new geological layer in doing so.
It all stems from accusations that man has altered the surface of the earth, its biodiversity, the oceans and atmosphere through its activity, and that this is becoming visible in the earth’s most recent geological layer.
But Bojanowski writes that a number of leading experts are calling such claims erroneous. In the subheading he writes:
Activists, artists and scientists are calling for the heralding of a new age – man has profoundly altered the planet. They’re wrong.”
He writes that these experts view the newly proposed geological designation as “a momentous error and unacceptable influence on research by political activists. It’s the story of a large misunderstanding.”
Already policymakers and leaders are scrambling to adopt the new designation and thus enact laws accordingly, he reports. And why not? A number of scientists and everywhere the media are already using the term.
Even the Scientific Advisory Council to the German government, WBGU — headed by PIK alarmist Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber — liberally uses the term. There is a push to officiailly declare the “Anthropocene” as a geological age. Bojanowski reports that seven years ago 37 scientists began a working group charged with searching out geological evidence to support the move to adopt an Anthropocene age: the Anthropocene Commission.
According to the Spiegel journalist, the commission, headed by Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester, will attempt to convince three geological commissions to adopt the age, which started at about 1950. Journal “Science” has already presented the first results, he writes.
But Bojanwski adds that a large number of experts are calling the move “bad science” because it does not meet any of the strict geological scientific standards one typically uses for establishing geological periods.
“Sloganeering in science “
Bojanowski cites James Scourse, ocean geologist at Bangor University in Wales, who says the term is “misleading and useless” and that Earth is shaped by factors well beyond the control of man. Other experts like Whitney Autin of Suny-College in New York and John Holbrook of Texas Christian University call the discussion an esoteric debate, claiming, Bojanowski reports,
Green Fraudsters: US Calls Out Europe For Emissions Cheating
…FREEMAN DYSON: THE GREENING OF THE UNIVERSE
…‘Fake’ Nobel Laureate Uses Super PAC To Attack Trump On ‘Global Warming’
A handful of scientists are using a super PAC to get their colleagues to align against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump over his “embrace of conspiracy theories, anti-science attitudes, and disregard for experts.”
“We urge our peers to join us in making it clear that Mr. Trump’s statements are not only at odds with scientific reality, but represent a dangerous rejection of scientific thinking,” reads an online petition started by anthropologist Eugenie Scott on the website of Not Who We Are PAC.
Scott, who made her name fighting against teaching creationism in schools, joined up with Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann and three others to attack Trump for his beliefs on issues, like global warming, vaccines and evolution.
“Vaccines save lives every day, but Mr. Trump has stoked discredited fears about vaccines and autism and accused doctors of lying to people about them,” reads Scott’s petition.
“Every major country on Earth is adapting to a changing climate and reducing emissions from fossil fuels, but Mr. Trump has claimed it is a hoax, a statement that prompted a response from hundreds of members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the country’s leading scientific advisory body,” she wrote.
Scott also attacked Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, for giving “a speech to the House of Representatives challenging the teaching of evolutionary science in classrooms based on a misreading of how evolution works.”
Don’t Worry, the Earth Is Not Locked into Ten Degrees of Warming
The internet is abuzz with a new climate study that seemed to deliver a bombshell conclusion: the amount of carbon humans have put into the atmosphere may have already committed the planet 3 to 7 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 12.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming.
Three to 7 degrees Celsius is a big amount of warming—an apocalyptically big amount. The Paris climate accord, adopted less than one year ago by nearly 200 nations, resolved to slash global carbon emissions so that we don’t exceed 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming overall. If we’ve already blown that target, not only is humanity’s landmark climate agreement depressingly obsolete, coral reefs, low-lying island nations, and many of our planet’s coastal cities are doomed.
Here’s the good news: prominent experts are calling this a load of malarkey. “This is simply wrong,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Gizmodo. “The actual committed warming is only 0.5 to perhaps 1 [degree Celsius]—and nothing in the study changes that.”…