About That Climate Change Thing

The hoax is continuing to be unraveled:

“The science behind climate change is settled, and human activity is responsible for global warming. That conclusion is not a partisan one.” – Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson. ^[2]

Forget being partisan or not. That conclusion of settled science isn’t existent. It hasn’t been for a long time, but they are especially bold words in light of the climate scandal involving the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and the flaws uncovered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Yesterday, the Senate Minority Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) released a new report that scrutinizes the climate scandal ^[3] and CRU and its connection with the IPCC and U.S. government policy.

The report delves into the email trail, the IPCC consensus of “unequivocal warming”, the legal and policy issues of Climategate and the EPA’s reliance on the IPCC to make regulatory decisions in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA’s endangerment finding, which took effect January 14, gives the EPA authority under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act (CAA) to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs). Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said:

“So this administration has said, “All right. We couldn’t go it legislatively so we’re going to do it on our own. We’re going to do the damage, inflict the economic damage to this country that would have come under cap and trade the same as if we had been able to pass it.” Now, I think that’s interesting. I would like to say this one thing. The chairman made the statement that the Supreme Court’s mandating this stuff. They’re not mandating a thing. The Supreme Court said you have three choices. You can either, well, either find an endangerment finding or do not find it, or you can say that the science is uncertain.

And I think what we’re going to be asking you to do, during the question and answer time is to find that it’s not certain. You can have an endangerment finding. That can change because you didn’t know at the time that you were basing this on the IPCC flawed science, that the science was flawed. You didn’t believe that, but nonetheless that’s where we are today. We’re going to be making the request, Madam Chairman, that we go back, relook at this and also that — that — and the EPA have their I.G. (Inspector General)looking into this just the same as all the other nations are doing at this time all throughout Europe.”

You can find the full report here ^[3]. What’s most interesting is that it’s the politicians arguing that the science is settled while the climatologists suggest otherwise. Even Phil Jones, former director of the East Anglia’s CRU admitted ^[4], “I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.”

The EPA needs to reevaluate the science before it moves forward on a long road of expensive and expansive ^[5] environmental regulations.

As it happens, the EPA apparently agrees. Well...kind of:

Let’s wait until the economy recovers a little before we step on it with costly environmental regulations. That was the message from Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson in a response to eight Democratic senators from industrial coal states the authority of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. Administrator Jackson said ^[2] by April she will “take actions to ensure that no stationary source will be required to get a Clean Air Act permit to cover its greenhouse gas emissions in calendar year 2010.”

As the Clean Air Act is currently written, the EPA could regulate sources or establishments that emit 100 or 250 tons or more of a pollutant per year. The EPA is proposing a “tailoring rule” that would amend the CAA so that only entities that emit 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year would be affected. But even the 25,000 ton threshold is subject to change said Jackson: “I expect the threshold for permitting will be substantially higher than the 25,000-ton limit that EPA originally proposed.” These regulations for the largest of emitters are expected to take place between the latter half of 2011 and 2013.

Smaller entities would be exempt from carbon dioxide regulations – for now. Schools, farms, restaurants, hospitals, apartment complexes, churches, and anything with a motor–from motor vehicles to lawnmowers, jet skis, and leaf blowers–could be subject to regulations – but no sooner than 2016 said Jackson.

Although Jackson is delaying the regulatory pain, the business uncertainty the EPA is creating is preventing economic recovery today. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), in a response to Lisa Jackson’s statement, said ^[3], “Until the specter of command-and-control regulations goes away, it will remain a counterproductive threat hanging over the work that must be done to find common ground.” A December 2009 National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) survey of small and independent business owners asked ^[4] owners to rank the single most important problem they faced. Behind poor sales, taxes and government regulations/red tape finished second and third, respectively. Government regulations and red tape jumped three spots from a year ago.

Even without regulations, the prospect of them is enough to impose economic harm. Rising uncertainty can drive down investments in riskier projects and prohibit expansion. The EPA may be delaying carbon dioxide regulations but they’re also delaying a quicker economic recovery with looming uncertainty.

Step one here is to thoroughly blow away the notion of man-made global warming (or any kind of man-made climate change). The evidence supports no such 'consensus' or 'settlement', and in fact, appears to prove just the opposite. Step two is to point out that even the Left understands what their plans would do to the American way of life - it would be like detonating a bomb on the economy. For them to hold off on doing what they are almost desperate to do because of economic reasons, it's got to hold tremendously severe ramifications.

If that's the case, wouldn't it be wise to question whether or not it should be done at all?

But don't try to get a liberal to follow this logic. When it comes to ideology, a liberal is perfectly happy to chuck logic out the window...right into the nearest man-made global warming-caused snow drift.

There's my two cents.