‘Days of trust-me science are over’ — GOP House Science Chair Lamar Smith warns warmists
…Great debate!? Judith Curry, John Christy & Roger Pielke Jr. set to battle against Michael Mann at House Science Committee Hearing on March 29
by Judith Curry Witnesses: John Christy, Judith Curry, Michael Mann and Roger Pielke Jr. The hearing will be held next week, March 29. The announcement for the Hearing is [ here ]. I’ve completed my written testimony, I will post it Wednesday once the Hearing has commenced.
Al Gore claim: I’ve Got 10 GOP Senators Ready To Fight Trump On Global Warming
Former Vice President Al Gore claimed 10 Republican senators are ready to turn on President Donald Trump on global warming policy.
“There’s a new development, there are now 30 Republican members of the House of Representatives who have changed sides on this issue and have become part of a group committed to solving the climate crisis,” Gore told The Independent. “There are about 10 Republican senators who right now are considering changing sides, a couple already have.”
Gore did not identify who these ready-to-defect Republican lawmakers are, but said with their help, “we are going to win this, there’s no question about that,” and that “[h]istory is on our side.”
He made these remarks at an event in the United Kingdom, where he previewed his new film, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.”
Gore also argued Trump wouldn’t be able to stop the environmental movement.
“He [Trump] is seemingly determined to eliminate all of the Government programs that he can eliminate that would help the US reach its goals but the speed and force of this transformation underway in the West may lead to the achievement of the US goals regardless of what he does,” Gore said.…
Sen. Inhofe says environmentalist policies undermine US economy and national security
By KEVIN MOONEY, CONTRIBUTOR • 3/23/17 2:19 PM
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., has “some good news” for Americans who have been burdened by environmental regulations and the dubious scientific findings that have been used to justify those regulations.
“Obama’s war on fossil fuels is temporarily over,” he said during a video presentation this morning addressing scientists, economists, engineers, and policy experts who are taking part in the Heartland Institute’s 12th annual International Conference on Climate Change. Since 2008, the Chicago-based free market think tank has brought together more than 4,000 people from across the globe to participate in the conferences.
President Trump’s victory, combined with Republican majorities in Congress and in statehouses across the country, strongly suggests that most Americans are not beguiled by alarmist theories on global warming, top officials with Heartland have argued. Inhofe, who is one of the leading climate skeptics in Congress, drove this point home during his presentation. But at the same time, he also urged conference participants to “remain vigilant” in anticipation of coming political battles.
“The outlook for environmental activists and climate change alarmists is grim,” he said. “With significant losses in the White House, and Congress and the Supreme Court, and a persistently skeptical public, their political leverage and relevance has dwindled.”
Even so, Inhofe warned, that “liberal extremists are not going to give up.” During Obama’s eight years in office, the former president “built a culture of radical alarmists,” who will “be back,” Inhofe said.
America’s economic and national security posture deteriorated significantly under Obama as a result of climate change policies that absorbed vital resources that could have been better invested, Inhofe told the conference.
“Every administrative entity under Obama was forced to embrace climate change as a top priority and it was used as a convenient sounding board,” Inhofe said. “We’ve seen this with agencies such as the Department of Defense diverting resources away from their core responsibility of defending America.” Inhofe also quoted Obama as saying that “climate change is a greater threat than terrorism.”…
James Inhofe: EPA ‘Brainwashing’ Children With Climate ‘Propaganda’
Sen. James Inhofe piled on the EPA as it faces a 31 percent cut in President Donald Trump’s first budget, charging on Thursday that the agency was “brainwashing” children with “propaganda.”
The Republican Oklahoma senator, and supporter of current Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, made the comments to anchor Poppy Harlow during an appearance on CNN’s “New Day.”
“We are going to take all this stuff that comes out of the EPA that is brainwashing our kids, that is propaganda, things that aren’t true, allegations,” Inhofe said, though at the time he did not point to any specific examples.
Inhofe, a frequent climate change skeptic, made similar comments to conservative talk show host Eric Metaxas after the senator said that one of his grandchildren asked why he was a climate change denier, according to Newsweek.
“You know, our kids are being brainwashed? I never forget because I was the first one back in 2002 to tell the truth about the global warming stuff and all of that,” Inhofe said.
“And my own granddaughter came home one day and said, … ‘Popi, why is it you don’t understand global warming?’ I did some checking, and Eric, the stuff that they teach our kids nowadays, you have to un-brainwash them when they get out.”…
Bloomberg News: Obama ‘stashed’ $77 billion in ‘climate money’ across agencies to elude budget cuts
Key excerpts: At the National Science Foundation, the geosciences program almost doubled to $1.3 billion.
The budget for NASA’s Earth Science program increased 50 percent, to $1.8 billion.
Feds awarded $1 billion through its Community Development Block Grant program to projects protecting against climate change-related natural disasters.
In 2012, the Federal Highway Administration made climate-adaptation projects eligible for federal aid.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs created the Tribal Climate Resilience Program.
The range of climate programs is vast, stretching across the entire government.
The Congressional Research Service estimated total federal spending on climate was in 2013. It concluded 18 agencies have climate-related activities, and calculated $77 billion in spending from fiscal 2008 through 2013 alone. But that figure could well be too low.
Obama Administration goal was to make ‘programs hard to disentangle’
Obama ‘integrated climate programs into everything the federal government did’
Obama sought to integrate climate programs into everything the federal government did.
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Via:
To Cut Climate Money, First GOP Must Find Where Obama Stashed It
by-
Obama aides spread money across the government to elude cuts
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Most recent estimate puts tab at $77 billion from 2008-2013
President Donald Trump will find the job of reining in spending on climate initiatives made harder by an Obama-era policy of dispersing billions of dollars in programs across dozens of agencies — in part so they couldn’t easily be cut.
There is no single list of those programs or their cost, because President Barack Obama sought to integrate climate programs into everything the federal government did. The goal was to get all agencies to take climate into account, and also make those programs hard to disentangle, according to former members of the administration. In some cases, the idea was to make climate programs hard for Republicans in Congress to even find.
“Much of the effort in the Obama administration was to mainstream climate change,” said Jesse Keenan, who worked on climate issues with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and now teaches at Harvard University. He said all federal agencies were required to incorporate climate-change plans into both their operations.
The Obama administration’s approach will be tested by Trump’s first budget request to Congress, an outline of which is due to be released Thursday. Trump has called climate change a hoax; last November he promised to save $100 billion
Bills to fix EPA science introduced in House
Both inspired by the work of JunkScience.com (as told in “Scare Pollution“). The media release is below. For the the full background story, read “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA.” ### SST Committee Members Introduce the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act of 2017, EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act … Continue reading Bills to fix EPA science introduce in House
‘I’m Not Ashamed’: GOP Lawmaker Defends His Bill To Abolish EPA In Front Of Angry Voters
‘I will fight for the environment’
Source: ‘I’m Not Ashamed’: GOP Lawmaker Defends His Bill To Abolish EPA In Front Of Angry Voters…
NYT, WaPo, Time, CNN Praise ‘Republican’ Calls for Carbon Tax
…Congress Slashes Funding For NASA’s Global Warming Research
Congress Slashes Funding For NASA’s Global Warming Research
Andrew Follett
Energy and Science Reporter
4:11 PM 02/20/2017
The U.S. Senate passed legislation recently cutting funding for NASA’s global warming research.
The House is expected to pass the bill, and President Trump will likely sign it. Supporters say it “re-balances” NASA’s budget back toward space exploration and away from global warming and earth science research. Republicans plan to end the more than $2 billion NASA spends on its Earth Science Mission Directorate.
“By rebalancing, I’d like for more funds to go into space exploration; we’re not going to zero out earth sciences,” Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, told E&E News. “I’d like for us to remember what our priorities are, and there are another dozen agencies that study earth science and climate change, and they can continue to do that.”
NASA’s spending on earth and global warming science increased by 63 percent over the last eight years, making it the largest and fastest growing budget of any NASA science program. The agency now spends more on environmental research than many of its other science functions, including astrophysics and space technology. Those programs only get $781.5 million and $826.7 million, respectively.
“We only have one agency that engages in space exploration, and they need every dollar they can muster for space exploration,” Smith continued.
Trump tapped former Republican Pennsylvania Rep. Bob Walker as a senior adviser to his NASA transition team — a man who thinks NASA should do less “politically correct environmental monitoring” and more space exploration.
“NASA should be focused primarily on deep-space activities rather than Earth-centric work that is better handled by other agencies,” Walker and Peter Navarro, another senior adviser to the Trump campaign, wrote in an October opinion piece. “Human exploration of our entire solar system by the end of this century should be NASA’s focus and goal.”
Republicans aren’t the only ones looking to cut environmental science spending.
Experts blame President Obama for delaying plans to send astronauts to Mars until 2030. As early as 2007, then-Sen. Obama called for delaying the Constellation program to replace NASA’s Space Shuttles for five years in order to pay for his education program.…