UPDATE: Congress launches probe into NOAA study that duped world leaders over ‘global warming’
- Republican Lamar Smith has announced an inquiry to acting chief of NOAA
- He has demanded for all internal documents and communications between staff
- It follows an investigation by the Mail on Sunday and information leaked by Dr John Bates
Dr John Bates was one of two NOAA ‘principal scientists’ working on climate change
Revelations by the Mail on Sunday about how world leaders were misled over global warming by the main source of climate data have triggered a probe by the US Congress.
Republican Lamar Smith, who chairs the influential House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology, announced the inquiry last week in a letter to Benjamin Friedman, acting chief of the organisation at the heart of the MoS disclosures, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
He renewed demands, first made in 2015, for all internal NOAA documents and communications between staff behind a controversial scientific paper, which made a huge impact on the Paris Agreement on climate change of that year, signed by figures including David Cameron and Barack Obama.
The paper – dubbed the ‘Pausebuster’ – claimed that contrary to what scientists had been saying for several years, there was no ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in the rate of global warming in the early 21st Century, and that in fact it had been taking place even faster than before.
The ‘pause’ had been seized on by climate sceptics, because throughout the period, carbon dioxide emissions continued to rise.
This month, this newspaper revealed evidence from a whistleblower, Dr John Bates, who until the end of 2016 was one of two NOAA ‘principal scientists’ working on climate change, showing that the paper based its claims on an ‘unverified’ and experimental dataset measuring land temperatures, and on a then newly issued sea-temperature dataset that is now to be withdrawn and replaced because it exaggerates both the scale and speed of warming.
The ‘Pausebuster’ paper’s claims were trumpeted around the world when it was published by the journal Science in June 2015, six months before the UN Paris climate-change conference. Its assertions were
Point: Trump’s Too Smart to Fall for Harmful GOP Establishment Carbon Tax Plan
Editor’s Note: For an alternative viewpoint, please see:Counterpoint: Carbon Dividends — the Gipper Would be Proud
Some old-guard Republicans are floating the idea of a national tax on carbon-dioxide emissions. The newly minted Climate Leadership Council (CLC), composed of aged establishment Republicans who’ve seen their stature diminish with the rise of the tea-party movement and election of Donald Trump as president, tried to appear relevant by pitching the worn-out idea of a carbon tax-and-rebate scheme in a meeting with President Trump on February 8.
In exchange for the tax, CLC proposes eliminating nearly all of former President Barack Obama’s climate policies. It’s almost certainly true regulatory greenhouse gas restrictions imposed by the Obama administration distort energy markets more than a straight carbon tax would, but why replace a bad set of policies with a slightly less bad tax? This is not one of those repeal and replace moments. Let’s just get rid of the regulations, full stop, no replacement!
The only reason to discourage the use of fossil fuels is to prevent supposedly dangerous climate change. Yet the best evidence — as opposed to dubious computer model predictions — suggests humans aren’t causing the climate to change in ways that even remotely threaten human health or environmental integrity.
Don’t Let ‘Party Elders’ Fool You on Carbon Tax
If the 2016 election proved anything, it’s that our nation’s best and brightest are far less capable of predicting and managing complex change than they like to tell themselves.
It’s a lesson that has been a long time coming. From a financial crisis that wrecked all the best models designed by the smartest minds on Wall Street to the collapse of a health care overhaul designed by the pointiest heads in Washington, events have long been conspiring to warn policymakers against their own hubris.
One would hope, then, that Washington might have made a collective New Year’s resolution against grand plans built on overconfident assumptions. Yet, some within the Republican establishment – the very people who proved least capable last year of responding to unpredictable events – seem inclined instead to double down on the worst instincts of those in power, conspiring in back rooms to impose yet another wrongheaded technocratic policy: a new carbon tax.
Conservatives have long opposed a carbon tax for the same reason we oppose tax increases generally: They grow government and throw a wet blanket on the economy. A carbon tax would maximize both negative effects. After an election year dominated by talk of the decline of American industry, it would strike a major blow to already weak manufacturing sector and would continue the Obama Administration’s eight-year-long assault on coal country – an assault President Trump commendably promised he would end.
Moreover, compared to the income tax with which Americans are most familiar, it would be barely visible and therefore be easy to raise. According to press reports, the carbon tax currently being contemplated would already raise $3 trillion in ten years, and its advocates insist that even this tax would be only a starting point. Say goodbye to fiscal restraint when this kind of cash comes pouring into Washington.
The tax’s proponents claim it will be revenue neutral, that the money generated would be returned directly to American taxpayers in the form of a rebate. Not only would this be next-to-impossible to implement as intended, it would almost certainly be subverted to other political considerations.
As David Kreutzer and Nicolas Loris of The Heritage Foundation point out, such grand plans ignore obvious political economy problems: “Just the sniff of a new revenue stream to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually has the special interests
DELINGPOLE: Reagan Would Have Hated this Stupid ‘Conservative’ Carbon Tax Idea
Donald Trump should pursue a regressive, counterproductive, pointless tax policy to deal with a non-existent problem because it’s “what the Gipper would have wanted.”
Yeah, right.
What the late Ronald Reagan is actually doing right now, I strongly suspect, is reaching for the celestial sickbag over this absurd proposal – endorsed by, amongst others, his former Secretary of State George Shultz – that President Trump should bring in a “carbon tax” in order to “combat climate change.”
Obviously the New York Times is very excited about this proposal because it thinks it’s a sign that conservatives are seeing the light:
A group of Republican elder statesmen is calling for a tax on carbon emissions to fight climate change.
The group, led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, with former Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Henry M. Paulson Jr., a former secretary of the Treasury, says that taxing carbon pollution produced by burning fossil fuels is “a conservative climate solution” based on free-market principles.
Mr. Baker is scheduled to meet on Wednesday with White House officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, Jared Kushner, the senior adviser to the president, and Gary D. Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, as well as Ivanka Trump.
Nope. What this story actually does is remind us of one of the main reasons why Donald Trump – and not any of his more Establishment rivals – ended up winning the GOP nomination: because the GOP Establishment had drifted so far away from the conservative principles they were supposed to uphold that they might just as well have been Democrats.
According to Baker: “I’m not at all sure the Gipper wouldn’t have been very happy with this.”
Oh, that delicate use of litotes to make his elegant point! It’s the kind of refined circumlocution you can imagine going down an absolute storm at Skull and Bones reunion gatherings or 12-course Bilderberg dinners or anywhere else where you might find the right sort of people in the Republican party.
Actually though what it really is – and this is typical of that weasellish political breed – is a clever way of saying something completely untrue without quite lying.
Ronald Reagan would, in all likelihood, have rejected a carbon tax for at least two reasons.
First, a tax on “carbon” is a tax on growth because carbon-dioxide is a natural by-product of …
Senior GOP figures are pushing the White House to consider carbon tax to fight climate change
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-gop-carbon-tax-20170207-story.html
Associated Press
A group of Republican senior statesmen is pushing for a carbon tax to combat the effects of climate change and hoping to sell the plan to the White House.
Former Secretary of State James A. Baker is leading the effort, which also includes former Secretary of State George Shultz. In an opinion piece published Tuesday night in the Wall Street Journal, they argued that “there is mounting evidence of problems with the atmosphere that are growing too compelling to ignore.”The group will meet Wednesday with White House officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, senior advisor Jared Kushner and Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and Kushner’s wife, is also expected to attend, according to a person familiar with the plans who was not authorized to discuss the meeting publicly.
Carbon taxes are designed to raise the cost of fossil fuels to bring down consumption. Baker and Shultz detailed in the opinion piece their plan for a gradually increasing carbon tax, with dividends being returned to consumers, as well as border adjustments for the carbon content of exports and imports and the rollback of regulations.…
Cheers! Global warming skeptic Rep. Lamar Smith sets ‘Make EPA Great Again’ hearing
A Texas congressman has scheduled a committee hearing next week “to examine the Environmental Protection Agency’s process for evaluating and using science during its regulatory decision making activities.”
Invigorated by the new climate change-doubting presidential administration, a Texas congressman known for his ardent denial of global warming — and early support for President Donald Trump — has scheduled a committee hearing next week “to examine the Environmental Protection Agency’s process for evaluating and using science during its regulatory decision making activities.”
Invited witnesses, including the head of an industry group, “will discuss how EPA can pursue environmental protection and protect public health by relying on sound science,” according to a charter for Tuesday’s hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
The hearing, titled “Make EPA Great Again,” will be the first time the committee has met since Trump took office and the 115th Congress convened.
Environmentalists preparing to battle Trump, GOP in court
Environmentalists preparing to battle Trump, GOP in court
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3518837/posts
Environmentalists facing a hostile Trump administration and a Republican-dominated Congress say the courts may offer their best chance to block changes they oppose. Advocacy groups nationwide are hiring more staff lawyers and coordinating with private attorneys and firms volunteering their services. They are seeking donations, setting priorities and reviewing laws that could be the basis of lawsuits against Trump policies concerning climate change, endangered wildlife, pollution and other issues.
— gReader Pro…
All hail Donald Trump: slayer of the Great Green Blob
Trump is going to be the best US president since Ronald Reagan and for at least one of the same reasons: he was never the GOP establishment’s preferred candidate, which means he has the attitude, the independence and the leeway to be much more radical — and effective — than any of his rivals would have dared to be.
Nowhere will this become more evident than in the fields of energy and climate change. It’s true that there were other climate–sceptical presidential candidates, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio among them, but it’s unlikely that when push came to shove any Republican other than Trump would have had the will to take on the powerful and entrenched green establishment once in office.
Partly it’s down to temperament: Trump relishes confrontation and, unlike most conservative politicians, feels under no pressure to moderate his position on the environment lest he be perceived as nasty or uncaring. Partly it’s because as a property developer he has much personal experience of the way environmental red tape impedes business. Partly, as one admiring DC insider explained to me, it’s because he’s the first US president since Reagan who doesn’t identify with the ‘bicoastal urban elite’.
‘The Democrats have been waging a war on rural America for decades. And the Bushes didn’t do a damn thing to help them. Trump actually promised he would do something and rural America got that. These are his people and he gets their problem. If you dig up stuff, if you make stuff or you grow stuff, then Donald Trump has got your back.’
How does Trump mean to Make America Great Again? He spelled it out in May last year in a speech in North Dakota. As well as withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, he would allow fracking on federal lands, ‘save’ the US coal industry, revoke environmental regulations like the ‘Waters of the US rule’ (a massive assault on property rights by the Environmental Protection Agency), revive the Keystone XL pipeline and put all future regulation to a simple test: ‘Is this good for the American worker?’ If it doesn’t pass this test, the rule will not be approved.
To sophisticated centrists this might come across as empty populist rhetoric; and to those on the green liberal-left as something worse: a scientifically illiterate, ideological recipe for unfettered capitalist greed and ecological disaster. In truth, though, …
Wisconsin Natural Rescoures Dept drops climate change from its site — media storm ensues
The Wisconsin DNR is getting flak for updating its site and removing any reference to #Climate Change. Rather, the Department of Natural Resources site writes the Earth has been going through changes throughout its “long history” and those changes are still being studied and debated. It also took down wording where scientists speculate on how global warming may affect the Great Lakes region, such as ice coverage and precipitation.
Prior to the changes, the DNR website said the Great Lakes region may see a variety of problems from global warming, despite no evidence of any changes. DNR reiterates its mission is to manage and protect the state’s waterways and lakes, including wildlife and plants. The site notes the DNR staff are equipped and ready to adapt to any foreseeable problems and changes to the #Environment.
Great Lakes Ice Coverage; 2016 vs 2015; Great Lakes ice coverage today is at 4.1%, compared to only 0.2% one year ago today.
Walker vs. Obama
Gov. Scott Walker (R) has been critical of President Obama’s onerous climate regulations that he believes are hampering economic growth. Walker is also responsible for hiring the head of the DNR and his Attorney General Brad Schimel joined other states suing the federal government over its Cle…
REPUBLICAN ATTORNEYS GENERAL EAGER TO DISMANTLE OBAMA’S CLIMATE AGENDA
As soon as President-elect Donald Trump assumes office Jan. 20, Republican attorneys general who have spent the past eight years battling the Obama administration’s climate change agenda will have a new role: supporting the Republican president’s complex legal effort to roll back that agenda.
Republicans have begun exercising their influence over the incoming president and his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who has built a political career by battling the very agency he is about to lead. (Associated Press) – Photo by: Sue Ogrocki
By contrast, states with Democratic leadership — such as California, where Gov. Jerry Brown has promised all-out war against Mr. Trump on global warming — will go from being environmental partners with the federal government to legal aggressors on their own.
Republicans have begun exercising their influence over the incoming president and his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who has built a political career by battling the very agency he is about to lead.
Earlier this month, 24 attorneys general signed an open letter laying out how the Trump administration could begin to dismantle President Obama’s global warming agenda. The effort was led by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican who often partnered with Mr. Pruitt in bringing lawsuits against what they said was EPA overreach
The letter focuses on the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, a proposal to limit carbon emissions from power plants that requires all states to meet strict pollution guidelines laid out by the federal government.
Federal data show the plan would drive up electricity prices.
The Supreme Court this year issued a stay halting implementation of the Clean Power Plan, but Republican attorneys general are eager for the proposal to be formally taken off the books.
“The incoming administration and Congress now have the opportunity to withdraw this unlawful rule and prevent adoption of a similar rule in the future,” the attorneys general wrote. “An executive order on Day One is critical. The order should explain that it is the administration’s view that the rule is unlawful and that EPA lacks authority to enforce it. The executive order is necessary to send an immediate and strong message to states and regulated entities that the administration will not enforce the rule.”…