Source: https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/regions/usa/comment-page-2/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 07:01:27+00:00

Document:
This thread is for discussion of American aspects of global warming.
The kids of course, will know nothing of the solar influence evident in climate cycles because it’s not “accepted science”.
Unless solar cycles turn up in geology or other non climate science module in their geography class that Andy reports up-thread. Fine to teach the CO2-centric theory but how does it apply to Little Ice Ages (18 in the last 7500 yrs) when climate was radically different to the “anthropocene” and likely to be repeated in the near future i.e. in those kids lifetime for sure?
It would be a rolling mean. Once again, you should never apply polynomial regressions to time series. Tamino has been blogging recently about autocorrelation in the noise of temperature data and how to correct for it, smoothing is a simple way of doing that.
It’s not a rolling mean, aka moving average, because it extends over the entire series. Look at the first and last datapoints in relation to the curve, there’s a corresponding curve point. If it were a 7 year moving average say, there would be 6 yrs missing at the start of the curve.
What a load of rubbish. Tamino has applied a polynomial of some order and it represents the cyclical nature of the data with a very high correlation value I’m sure. It’s just a matter then, of looking for the long-term cycles that fit the curve in order to know if projection can be made and how long for. In this case it would go against the prevailing cycles to do so at this juncture because there’s no driver acting to extend it on that trajectory. Scafetta will find that out eventually too.
The IPCC are being gazumped by natural cycles right now but don’t know it obviously because they can only point to “natural variation” while they’re scrabbling around to explain the unpredicted (by them) standstill.
This all will make an excellent case study for educational institutions in the future.
“I don’t know about you, but I think a balanced view of global warming would involve teaching the evidence against global warming as well as the evidence for it. Human activities are “major factors”? Surely they may be major factors. Surely the failure of temperatures to rise in recent years suggests that they may equally be minor factors. Should the attribution statement not be qualified with the fact that it depends on computer models that may be useful as toys for scientists but, having no proven ability to predict future climate, are far being ready to inform policymakers?
It will be an ARIMA model which is a moving average. Also note that the temperature series is solely the continental US (48 States) and that last year was exceptionally hot in the US.
“teased out”? Or identified by smoothing? There are wads of literature on the 60 year cycle (as per PDO BTW) and the multitude of natural cycles evident in times series of climate (just read Scafetta for example) but they don’t find their way into IPCC assessments natch.
If you, Tamino, or anyone, are going to use an ARIMA model to forecast climate, the forecast will be meaningless unless the longer-term cycles (and corresponding drivers) are taken into account. Anyone using ARIMA or EMD or PCI or polynomial or moving average or linear regression for forecasting without cognizance of the limitations of the tool or what the components they are seeing in the data actually represent in the real world are fooling themselves.
Tamino obviously does not understand the earth’s solar driven ocean heat sink based enthalpy, or ENSO processes, or thermal inertia and lag, or solar varation. He thinks they can be “taken out” of the data but by doing so he overlooks key indicators and is left with a totally unrealistic trajectory. Mind you he is not alone on that. There are papers and articles by scientists from the non-CO2 side making the same mistakes.
It’s the (very) approx 200 year cycle that’s biting the IPCC on the backside right now (and Tamino over the next few years – he’s already wrong since 2010 in the GAT metric).
>”Anyone using ARIMA or EMD or PCI…” – PCA that should be.
I get a similar profile but not smoothed as much as Tamino’s US atm temp ARIMA (?) smoothing in IMF6 (last intermediate mode) from an EMD analysis of HadSST2 but the residual signal tells a totally different story (rapid warming is over contrary to ARIMA – if that’s what Tamino used).
I wouldn’t project the centennial scale residual from a 132 yr series for prediction though but it is a key leading indicator that evolves (will get dropped to IMF7 and new residual eventually) as new data comes in. IMF6 is mukti-decadal oscillations and IMF5 is inter-decadal oscillations.
Doesn’t identify the 60 yr cycle with any clarity though, ARIMA would do a good job of that I suspect if Tamino projected a longer series Scafetta style. But both guys miss what the EMD residual reveals, what the 200 yr cycle implies, and what SC24 is now telling everyone that wont listen to what the likes of De Jager, Duhau, Abdussamatov, Timo Niroma up-thread, and a bunch of others are saying.
Maybe it is but the resulting curve looks exactly like a 4th order polynomial with trajectory heading skywards in the 21st century (using SST instead of USAT). A 5th order poly turns down in the 21st century OTOH.
Leads me to think that the orders of the polynomial representations in ARIMA (if that’s what it is) determines the shape of the model profile in the same way that manual selection of polynomial order does for a trend regression.
New York would need about $US382 billion ($367 billion) and wind turbines covering an area equivalent to 13 per cent of the state’s land mass if it followed a Cornell University plan to derive all of its power from renewables.
Robert Howarth, a Cornell ecology professor, suggested last month the state could get half its power from wind and enough from solar, tidal and other forms of clean energy to replace fossil fuels by 2030. The plan for 254 gigawatts of generation capacity would cost about $US1.5 million a megawatt, or $US382 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The findings cast doubt on the ability of the state to eliminate oil, natural gas and coal from its energy supply. The Cornell proposal would require onshore wind turbines covering an area 3.3 times the size of New York City’s five boroughs.
“It’s too ambitious by 2030 to replace all the state’s power with renewables, although big progress could be made,” Angus McCrone, a senior analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in London, said today. The projections, he said, look “unrealistic” for individual technologies.
U.S. Breadbasket At Risk From Global Cooling NOAA Indicates – Crop Failures, World Hunger A Result?
As has been well documented, global warming has gone AWOL and in some regions of the world, global cooling trends have materialized, which scientists across the world are starting to express concern with.
In the key crop regions of the U.S., there has been an extended cooling trend that persists despite the immense human CO2 emissions released over the last two decades. The above four NOAA charts depict those cooling trends across the a wide swath of American agricultural production. These charts represent the main American corn, soybean, spring and winter wheat growing areas.
What the huge U.S. breadbasket needs at this point is a few years of some good old fashioned global warming that will reverse the potential devastation a mass cooling would deliver to crop yields.
Unfortunately, though, it appears nature is not delivering what the American farmers and ranchers need this spring.
The Supreme Court, in Mass v. EPA, stated that the EPA must treat CO2 and other Greenhouse Gases (GHGs), as “pollutants” and then carryout an analysis to determine whether the increasing concentrations in atmospheric CO2 may reasonably be anticipated to endanger human health and welfare. The Court did not mandate regulation; rather it mandated that EPA go through an Endangerment Finding process.
EPA did so and on December 15, 2009 issued its ruling that CO2 and other GHGs must be regulated. This EPA finding and associated rulings were immediately challenged in the DC Circuit Court. The DC Circuit ruled in favor of EPA, but given the two strong dissents from the December 20, 2012 decision denying rehearing en banc, the matter is likely going to the Supreme Court.
SLF’s petition is the only petition to the Supreme Court that includes a purely science argument developed to show that EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding (EF) should be Vacated. Other Petitioners argue that such a decision is in order but make purely legal or process arguments.
Now let’s go back to that quote from the International Energy Agency analyst: ”energy policy needs to replicate a war blockade.” and “the only country that has meaningful investments in coal to liquids is China.” It seems that one of the reasons that China is investing in coal-to-liquids is that it expects to be subject to a war blockade in a war that it will start itself. On the other side of the Pacific, the United States, which will do the heavy lifting in any such war started by China, is handicapped by denying itself a potential supply of liquid transport fuels and the optimum allocation of its resource endowment. That, dear readers, is the worst consequence of the witchcraft and voodoo that is the current state of official climate science.
Irish deputy leader of Opposition calling Obama a war Criminal.
President Obama mocked critics who contend climate change is not a threat or deny its reality.
The president said climate change posed an immediate threat, with the 12 hottest years on record all occurring in the past 15 years.
I see Oblahblah’s right up with the latest, but irrelevant, data. And the stock response to critics too (or, how to insult, anger and alienate a large part of the populace). People voted for that?
U.S. President Barack Obama will rely on the federal Clean Air Act as he tries to make good on his latest vow to address the threat of global warming.
Obama will direct the Environmental Protection Agency to use the Act to finish a plan setting carbon pollution limits on new power plants by September 20 this year and draft a plan for existing power plants by June 2014.
Legal challenges are almost guaranteed for federal rules written under the Clean Air Act. Industry groups and coal-reliant states have already signaled that they will challenge power plant regulations if they feel the EPA produces a plan that has overly strict timetables or emissions limits that “violate the spirit of the Clean Air Act,” one industry representative said.
On June 25, President Obama, resorting to his usual props and theatrics, spoke outside on a typical June muggy day in Washington D.C., and spelled out his aggressive plan to address man-made global warming. Often during his speech, he pulled out his bright white handkerchief and wiped his forehead, a bit of stagecraft that the cameras gobbled up.
For those unfamiliar with Georgetown University, it also has an enormous indoor, air-conditioned auditorium (see slideshow) where other prominent figures have given addresses to large crowds. So why didn’t Obama choose the more secure, cooler auditorium rather than the humidity-soaked outdoor location? Stagecraft.
It certainly has not been enabled by something so mundane as the law. We rather suspect that the overwhelming judgment of Congress would be against the president’s program of regimenting the entire American economy under the management of a newly empowered EPA. But the president has made it clear that he intends to act largely through administrative fiat, subverting the democratic process and the people’s elected representatives. Unhappily, the Supreme Court has abetted this ambition by misconstruing the Clean Air Act as a warrant of action on global warming.
If ever there was an indictment on climate alarmism, “the Supreme Court has abetted this ambition by misconstruing the Clean Air Act as a warrant of action on global warming” is it.
I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this from the USA.
A dangerous, arrogant, fact-free tirade.
Obama used the erroneous phrase “carbon pollution” a total of twenty times in his Georgetown speech.
He is, of course, really speaking of CO2, an odorless, invisble gas essential to plant life and in no way a pollutant. Yet the Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) still designates CO2 a “harmful substance” so as to allow greater bureaucratic control of industry under the Clean Air Act. In Tuesday’s address, the president promised to expand the EPA’s CO2 regulations to cover existing power stations, an action sure to cost billions of dollars and millions of jobs for no environmental benefit. EPA’s claim is based on three lines of evidence that a recent amicus brief [hotlinked] filed with the U.S. Supreme Court shows are invalid. Regardless, calling CO2 “carbon” helps Obama politically since it encourages people to think of CO2 as associated with soot, something that is pure carbon and is clearly dirty and undesirable.
Of course, we can and should reduce the amount of soot going in to the atmosphere, and apart from China, significant advances have occurred. Scrubber technology for coal-fired power plants has been available for a long time. If Obama really wants to help people’s health and the environment, he should encourage all possible use of scrubbers.
Some of the signatories to the October 2009 letter and other independent scientists, in a group that also included some of the amici before this Court, lodged an amicus brief with the court of appeals making similar points about the data and EPA’s scientific conclusions. Brief of Amici Curiae Scientists in Support of Petitioners Supporting Reversal, Coalition for Responsible Regulation, Inc. v. Environmental Protection Agency, No 09-1322 (CADC June 8, 2011), ECF No. 1312291. The D.C. Circuit declined to grant leave for that brief to be filed.
In the midst of an unsettled and vigorous international debate regarding the existence of purported global warming and the role—if any—of human-emitted greenhouse gases (GHGs) in contributing to that alleged warming, EPA concluded with near absolute certainty that temperatures in the second half of the twentieth century were “unusually” high because of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. 74 Fed. Reg. 66518 (2009). That sweeping conclusion was a critical component of the EPA’s Endangerment Finding, and so was an impetus for the most significant and far-reaching regulatory program ever devised by a federal agency.
Amici urge the Court to grant petitioners’ request for certiorari because the three “lines of evidence” from the administrative record that EPA relied on do not support the conclusion that manmade greenhouse gas emissions have caused climate warming in the latter half of the twentiethcentury. Indeed, each line of evidence is demonstrably invalid.
EPA’s first line of evidence, its purported basic physical understanding of the effect of GHGs and other factors on climate, is invalid because it relies on the existence of an atmospheric “hot spot” or “fingerprint” that simply does not exist in the real world’s temperature data.
Its second line of evidence, the assertion that temperatures around the globe rose to unusual and dangerously high levels over the last fifty years, is also demonstrably false using the best temperature data available.
Likewise, EPA’s third line of evidence, involving computerized climate models, is also invalid. It can be shown that those models, premised on faulty assumptions, just do not produce forecasts that match up with the real world.
No specialized scientific education or previous experience with climate science is needed to see that those facts are true. Each of EPA’s lines of evidence requires that the most relevant and credible temperature data available show upward-sloping trends in temperature. That is true for the Hot Spot or GHG Fingerprint theory, the assertion that worldwide temperatures have been anomalous, and for actual data to conform to EPA’s model forecasts of rising global average surface temperature (GAST). In science, theories must be validated against the most credible empirical data. Each of EPA’s three lines of evidence will be shown to be invalid via such easy to understand hypothesis testing.
EPA reached its invalid conclusions through a highly deficient process. EPA refused to examine “relevant data,” FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., 556 U.S. 502, 513 (2009) (quoting Motor Vehicles Mfrs. Assn. of U.S., Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 43 (1983)), and made other procedural errors. EPA’s Endangerment Finding is not “rational,” but arbitrary and capricious. Fox, 556 U.S., at 516. Amici therefore respectfully request that this Court grant petitioners’ request for certiorari in this case.
Presumably these measures will depress the price of coal even further which will be good news for “green” countries like Germany who are building 24 new coal fired power plants.
Yes perhaps, but it does not necessarily follow. There will be a long time lag for that to occur that will take events beyond the Obama presidency but I think US coal producer stock prices have already taken a hit. It would be insane though if all this went ahead.
It has been observed that US would just increase exports of coal to Asia (China) and Europe (Germany) so it will be similar the the AU situation. Not good news for Solid Energy but it might mean cheaper coal would prolong Huntly or even make a new coal burner economic. Even now it’s not out of the question.
On May 23, 2013 eleven of us filed a brief with the US Supreme Court supporting the Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) et al’s Petition for a writ of certiorari. The brief is asking the Supreme Court to consider our scientific argument that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) CO2 Endangerment Finding be dropped because of scientific and legal errors. The following is the press release explaining our Brief, which is attached.
About SLF: Founded in 1976, Southeastern Legal Foundation is celebrating its 37th year as an national constitutional public interest law firm and policy center that advocates limited government, individual economic freedom, and the free enterprise system in the courts of law and public opinion. Our mission is to engage in litigation and public policy advocacy in support of these principles.
We look for cases and issues in which our involvement makes a difference, not just to the parties involved, but also on the policies and issues in dispute. We believe that the U.S. Constitution is a complete document, creating limits on government. When government — federal, state and local — goes beyond the constitutional limits, we are there to enforce constitutional limitations. We are not a single-issue organization; rather, we are a conservative public interest law firm and policy center dedicated to creating binding legal precedent and positive public policy change for all Americans.
Southeastern Legal Foundation is a public interest law firm which advocates limited government, individual economic freedom, and the free enterprise system. We look for cases in which our involvement can make a difference, not just to the parties involved, but also on the policies or issues that are in dispute.
Southeastern Legal Foundation: Case Center • Global Warming?
Nonetheless, despite more than 300,000 thousand lucid, relevant formal public comments submitted to the EPA during the 2009 public comment period on its proposed Endangerment Finding related to carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions, including a comprehensive report from SLF (see inside this website [top of page options] at “Why a Lawsuit?” and “How the EPA Got It Wrong”), EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson issued an Endangerment Finding on December 7, 2009.
The Endangerment Finding indicates that draconian, costly regulations will be promulgated by the EPA in 2010 and beyond (according to reports, more than 600 pages of new mandates that will impose costly and invasive burdens on American industry and energy and, therefore, consumers and taxpayers).
SLF, representing a group of well-informed and concerned Americans, including leaders in Congress who have been intimately involved in climate change issues for more than a decade, has brought the first of likely several court and administrative legal actions. The goal is to compel the federal government to follow the laws as enacted by Congress and to pursue legitimate public policy based on legitimate scientific data. The American people deserve no less, and the U.S. Constitution mandates it.
The proposed measures in the EPA’s arsenal will cripple the American economy at a cost of at least $1 trillion over the next decade – and will provide no significant environmental benefit to the climate and environment over the next 30 years.
SLF is providing background legal and scientific information on this website during the pendency of the various legal actions in order to ensure that the American people have access to the proceedings and to solid representative materials of the scientific inquiry into climate change.
Washington, D.C., April 1, 2011 – The scientific hypotheses underlying global warming alarmism are overwhelmingly contradicted by real-world data, and for that reason economic studies on the alleged benefits of controlling greenhouse gas emissions are baseless. That’s the finding of a new peer-reviewed report by a former EPA whistleblower.
Dr. Alan Carlin, now retired, was a career environmental economist at EPA when CEI broke the story of his negative report on the agency’s proposal to regulate greenhouse gases in June, 2009. Dr. Carlin’s supervisor had ordered him to keep quiet about the report and to stop working on global warming issues. EPA’s attempt to silence Dr. Carlin became a highly-publicized embarrassment to the agency, given Administrator Lisa Jackson’s supposed commitment to transparency.
However, most economic analyses of greenhouse gas emission controls, such as those being imposed by EPA, have been conducted with no consideration of the questionable nature of the underlying science. For that reason, according to Dr. Carlin, the actual “economic benefits of reducing CO2 emissions may be about two orders of magnitude less” than what is claimed in those reports.
Clapper vs. Congress: Further proof, if any were needed, that these garçons do not feel that they are beholden to their democratic governments.
“nativity” should be naivety. I used spellcheck to correct naivity assuming the correct rendition would be top of list – it wasn’t.
Senate Republicans have released a report debunking catastrophic predictions made about global warming in advance of the Environment and Public Works Committee hearing held today.
“Over nearly four decades, numerous predictions have had adequate time to come to fruition, providing an opportunity to analyze and compare them to today’s statistics,” reads the report from Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
The report examines the 15-year break from global warming, sea level rises, extreme weather, and the unilateral regulations proposed by the Obama administration.
US House Republicans proposed cutting the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by a third and denying funds for a key part of President Barack Obama’s plan to combat global warming.
The House Appropriations committee’s panel that oversees the EPA will consider cutting $US2.8 billion ($3.03 billion) from the agency’s 2014 budget, and prohibit the administration from spending on greenhouse-gas rules for power plants, the centerpiece of Obama’s climate plan. The budget for the year starting October 1, which will get a vote tomorrow in the subcommittee, also would bar the EPA from imposing new curbs on sulfur in gasoline and on the use of water by power plants.
“By holding back overly zealous and unnecessary environmental regulations, this bill can have a positive effect on our economy and will help encourage job growth,” Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, said today in a statement.
House Republicans are seeking to limit the president’s efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, which scientists say are causing global warming. While the measures with the restrictions have little chance of being adopted in the Democratic-led Senate, they underscore efforts administration critics are considering to head off or slow the EPA’s regulation.
Most damning of all is that fact that Dr. Fox’s cost analysis has been proven wrong on the very subject that the 10th Circuit was considering.
As I noted above, she performed as an “independent” consultant for EPA in New Mexico and North Dakota, in addition to Oklahoma. In New Mexico, state officials estimated that BART for the San Juan Generating Station would cost $730 million; Dr. Phyllis Fox claimed it cost $340 million. And based on this, EPA disapproved New Mexico’s plan and imposed a Regional Haze federal plan in its stead. PNM subsequently solicited bids to actually build the technology. The utility received two bids, and the cheapest was $750 million!
Long story short: Congress wanted States to call the shots on Regional Haze. EPA justified a disapproval of Oklahoma’s Regional Haze plan based on the work of a supposedly “independent” consultant, who, in fact, is biased. More to the point, this “independent” witness has been proven wrong in a parallel situation that, in a logical world, would undermine her credibility.
It was a close decision, with two judges siding against one. The dissenting judge, moreover, was forceful. So I’ve not lost all hope of successful appeal.
The US Solicitor General, Department of Justice, and EPA attorneys filed their petition to the US Supreme Court requesting that it deny the petition from the group in which SEPP participates asking for the court to review the decision by the US Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the EPA Endangerment Finding (EF) that greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), endanger public health or welfare.
As stated previously, the Court’s decision on whether or not to hear the case will be on legal grounds, not scientific grounds. Unable to link to the EPA petition at this time.
The House voted Thursday to block the Environmental Protection Agency from weighing the benefits of curbing carbon emissions when crafting major energy-related regulations.
Lawmakers voted 234-178 for Rep. Tim Murphy’s (R-Pa.) amendment to prevent EPA from factoring the “social cost of carbon” into rules unless a federal law is enacted that allows its consideration.
Fifteen Democrats voted with almost all Republicans for the amendment, while three Republicans opposed it.
The amendment was tacked onto GOP legislation that allows the Energy Department to veto EPA rules with $1 billion or more in costs if the department determines they would harm the economy.
The amendment vote was the latest scuffle over the recent White House increase in the social cost of carbon, a metric of estimated damages caused by heat-trapping emissions.
But Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, called the amendment an assault on efforts to address dangerous climate change.
“That is science denial at its worst,” Waxman said.
Murphy’s amendment is part of wider GOP criticism of the increased social cost of carbon estimate. Click here, here and here for more coverage.
The underlying bill is slated to clear the House Thursday afternoon but faces dim prospects in the Democrat-led Senate.
As the study of natural climate cycles seems to be beneath these “scientists”, perhaps I might offer my services. All the data is readily available from NOAA, so let’s start with precipitation.
The above plot suggests cycles of about 30 years in length, and this cycle, and its effects, are well known amongst scientists – the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO.
It is easy to see why Nebraska’s climatologists are so afraid to publish this sort of analysis, as it totally undermines their warnings of armageddon, at least on a local scale.
Check out the catch gif at bottom of page.
and South America (2007, 2010 and 2013).
But the world has NOT been “getting warmer, on average” this century (see page 17).
So recent cold spells cannot be “because of greenhouse-gas pollution”.
WASHINGTON (AP) — We’ve become weather wimps.
As the world warms, the United States is getting fewer bitter cold spells like the one that gripped much of the nation this week. So when a deep freeze strikes, scientists say, it seems more unprecedented than it really is.
>”As the world warms” – Huh? There it is again.
>”…seems more unprecedented than it really is” – Good grief!
At least 49 daily record lows were set across the country Tuesday morning, thanks to a fierce cold snap that’s bringing the coldest weather in decades to portions of the central, eastern and southern USA.
Bitterly cold air straight from the Arctic, courtesy of the polar vortex, will continue to shatter records through Tuesday and into early Wednesday before moderating temperatures return by Thursday and Friday.
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told a Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) committee hearing today that the president must have fabricated two oft-repeated climate claims.
“Both statements are false, and through letters to you, Ms. McCarthy, and on the record in this Committee, we’ve asked the EPA to provide us with the data backing up these two statements, the two statements made by the president, but they don’t have any data and referred us to the UN IPCC. And, their scientists, apparently, the EPA thought they were the source of this.
“Well, we went there and they had nothing to back it up, so apparently the president just made that up.
Steve Goddard claims 1deg.C warming per century trend has been added to US temperature record by NOAA. As Goddard says, FOIA time. Reminds me of a certain NZ data set.
RSS does not show the NCDC discontinuity, and NCDC is diverging from RSS at almost 1C/century….
Bottom line is that the NCDC US temperature record is completely broken, and meaningless.
WUWT has been granted exclusive first access to this new legal document [comment from Francis J. Menton, Jr. Attorney at Law] challenging the EPA’s proposed use of calculations on SCC.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Aiming at the heart of President Barack Obama’s strategy for fighting climate change, the Republican-controlled House voted Thursday to block the administration’s plan to limit carbon pollution from new power plants.
The bill targets Obama’s proposal for the Environmental Protection Agency to set the first national limits on heat-trapping carbon pollution from future power plants. It’s part of the GOP’s election-year strategy to fight back against what Republicans call a ‘‘war on coal’’ by the Obama administration.
The bill passed by a 229-183 vote. Ten Democrats, mostly from coal-producing states or the South, joined Republicans in support of it. Three Republicans opposed the bill.
A similar measure is pending in the Senate but faces a more difficult path.
It was lost among the week’s more dramatic news in Ukraine and Lois Lerner’s continued refusal to tell America and a congressional committee what she knows about the IRS scandal, but U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan landed a devastating blow against greenmail. That’s what can happen when Big Green environmental activists and class-action lawyers combine forces to use the federal court system to shake down corporate defendants for billions of dollars, usually via out-of-court settlements. Kaplan’s ruling concerned Big Oil giant Chevron on one side and New York trial lawyer Steve Donziger on the other.
The Colorado firm Kaplan mentioned is Stratus Consulting, which since 2009 has received more than $180 million via 1,308 federal contracts including 811 through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Issue: Whether EPA permissibly determined that its regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles triggered permitting requirements under the Clean Air Act for stationary sources that emit greenhouse gases.
May 23 2013	Brief amici curiae of Scientists filed.
In court papers, the EPA said upwind states can be significant contributors to pollution problems in downwind locations, citing New Haven, Conn., where the agency said 93% of the ozone pollution comes from out-of-state emissions.
“Required to balance the possibilities of under-control and over-control, EPA must have leeway in fulfilling its statutory mandate,” Justice Ginsburg wrote. She added that if a state concludes it has been forced to reduce emissions below the relevant threshold, it could file a narrower lawsuit based on a particular grievance instead of seeking wholesale invalidation of the EPA’s effort.
Justice Antonin Scalia signaled strong disagreement with the ruling by reading parts of his dissent from the bench, saying EPA hadn’t followed the approach set forth by Congress. “Today’s decision feeds the uncontrolled growth of the administrative state at the expense of government by the people,” he said. Justice Clarence Thomas joined Justice Scalia in dissent.
Written by Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller on May 06 2014.
House adviser John Podesta told reporters Monday afternoon that Congress could not derail the Obama administration’s efforts to unilaterally enact policies to fight global warming.
In 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency began classifying greenhouse gases as pollutants and regulating their emissions. That meant that normal economic activities—tilling a small farm, running a local store—that produced normal amounts of the naturally occurring vapor became potentially subject to EPA standards and, for those that exceeded the limits, crushing fines of up to $37,500 per day.
The EPA’s authority to regulate emissions, though, rests on shaky legal and environmental grounds. A small nonprofit of indomitable determination, the Institute for Trade, Standards, and Sustainable Development (ITSSD) has set itself the task of finding out whether the EPA has been telling the truth. NAS, as an academic organization that seeks to promote rigorous science and open debate, and as an interested observer of the way the EPA’s findings become the basis for college campus sustainability initiatives, has a stake in promoting accountability and transparency. EPA pronouncements find their way into campus offices of sustainability, greenhouse gas reduction plans, and sustainability tracking sheets. If ITSSD’s investigations discredit the EPA’s pronouncements, colleges and university should guard the integrity of their environmental commitments and verify the EPA’s findings before acting on them.
Holding: The Clean Air Act neither compels nor permits the Environmental Protection Agency to adopt an interpretation of the Clean Air Act requiring a stationary source of pollution to obtain a “Prevention of Significant Deterioration” or Title V permit on the sole basis of its potential greenhouse-gas emission. However, EPA reasonably interpreted the Clean Air Act to require sources that would need permits based on their emission of chemical pollutants to comply with “best available control technology” for greenhouse gases.
Alito, joined by Thomas, wrote a second concurring/dissenting opinion, arguing that the EPA should not be able to regulate the larger sources of greenhouse emissions either using those regulations: “The Clean Air Act was developed for use in regulating the emission of conventional pollutants and is simply not suited for use with respect to greenhouse gases.” He cited two scenarios of incompatibility between greenhouses gases and normal pollutants, which caused the EPA to eventually either declare that officials may disregard some provisions in the Act, or give authorities “a great deal of discretion”.
A less-noted consequence of climate change, which also underscores the need to act, is its impact on the federal budget. Climate change, if left unaddressed, will both weaken economic growth and impose additional direct budgetary costs on the federal government. As a result, climate change poses an increasing threat to the federal government’s already challenging long-term fiscal outlook.
Democratic claims that “extreme weather” was becoming more common as carbon dioxide levels increase have been disputed by scientists who say the data tells a different story.
But Democrats have not relented in their push to convince the public that extreme weather will continue to get worse.
WASHINGTON — Twelve states filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration on Friday seeking to block an Environmental Protection Agency proposal to regulate coal-fired power plants in an effort to stem climate change.
The suit was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The other plaintiffs are Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming.
One of the leading leftwing environmentalists last week described the hundreds of thousands of Americans who may lose their jobs due to the Obama administration’s new anti-carbon regulations as “collateral damage” in the fight against global warming. The offensive comments were issued by William S. Becker, the head of the Climate Action Project, a well-funded environmental group.
The “let them eat cake” attitude may strike readers as unbelievably offensive and cavalier. Imagine the outcry if a Republican referred to middle class job losers as acceptable “collateral damage.” The story would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country and if Mr. Becker were the head of an industry group he would almost surely be facing intense pressure to resign. But Mr. Becker is at least giving an honest assessment of the negative impact of the radical anti-carbon lobby’s crusade on middle class families.
The job losses in the coal mining, oil and drilling, construction and trucking industries are acceptable to the left climate change zealots, especially if it means the U.S. will take a mostly symbolic step to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. One study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce finds that the new EPA regulations will destroy 200,000 mostly blue collar energy jobs, reduce the U.S. GDP by about $50 billion a year and cost families thousands of dollars over the next decade in higher energy costs. The workers who will be harmed live in places like Wheeling, West Virginia and Bakersfield, California and hundreds of energy industry towns in between.
Will voters in these areas tolerate these disruptions to their lives? Will they accept that they are”colletaral damage” to the radical green movement? We will see.
Stephen Moore is a Fox News contributor. He serves as chief economist at the Heritage Foundation.
When we speak about environmental justice, the term usually refers to the people of the world who are being hit hardest by climate change, but who are least responsible for it and least able to cope. They are the people of poor nations who bear no responsibility for the carbon in the atmosphere today, but who are suffering the heaviest consequences of global warming. We in the industrial world are enjoying the comforts and conveniences of fossil fuels while billions in the world are suffering the damages.
Similarly, there are issues of economic justice that seem as threatening to coal families as flooding is in Bangladesh or famine is to families in Sudan. It is not the fault of generations of soft-rock miners that the coal they provided turns out to be damaging us in ways we are just beginning to see. Yet they will suffer some of the greatest economic impact as the nation’s coal use declines.
While it is ridiculous to accuse President Obama of warring against coal, it is fair to ask what his climate action plan can do to ensure that America’s transition to clean energy is compassionate and just.
The plan President Obama announced a year ago contains several directives designed to help communities hit hardest by the physical impacts of climate change. In a sentence in the middle of Page 13, he directs that “through annual federal agency Environmental Justice Progress Reports, the Administration will continue to identify innovative ways to help our most vulnerable communities prepare for and recover from the impacts of climate change.” On Page 14 he directs that “federal agencies will report on the impacts of climate change on other key sectors and strategies to address them, with priority efforts focusing on health, transportation, food supplies, oceans, and coastal communities”.
However, there is nothing explicit in the plan to mitigate or adapt to the economic disruption the clean energy transition will cause for coal- and oil-country families. We know that economic disruptions are part of progress. They are the collateral damage of every evolutionary step in technology or the economy.
On his blog this morning, Roger Pielke Jr. at the University of Colorado, a respected climate scientist, reveals that he was one of seven academics being being investigated by Rep. Raul Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Natural Resources. Grijalva wants to know all university financial disclosure policies that are applicable to Pielke, detailed information about any sources of external funding and grants he may have received, as well as any communications related to external funding. He also wants copies of any speeches and testimony before lawmakers Pielke has delivered, as well as salary and travel expense information.
Here’s the letter from Rep. Raul Grijalva (Comrade-Ariz.) to the president of MIT [hotlink].
Check out Rep. Grijalva’s background with the Communist Party USA [hotlink].
April 1 — Four Republican senators are seeking additional information from the Environmental Protection Agency on the science linking climate change to drought, hurricanes and increased temperatures, including an analysis of climate change modeling results.
In an April 1 letter, Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) asked EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to defend recent statements that there have been more frequent and more intense hurricanes and droughts and detail whether climate models have accurately predicted temperature increases.
The questions stem from a March 4 hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the EPA’s fiscal year 2016 budget request.
During that hearing, Republican members of the committee asked McCarthy several questions about climate change, including a line of questioning from Sessions on increasing global soil moisture, fewer major hurricanes in recent years and other data points that he suggested don’t support the existence of climate change.
In the letter, the senators said that none of the “clear and straightforward” questions on climate science asked during the hearing were directly answered by McCarthy. The senators asked McCarthy to provide data and analysis comparing Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate models with actual global average temperatures.
“Given that the Administration’s proposal to fundamentally change the nature of domestic energy generation is based on the apparent need to avoid `devastating’ climate impacts to the United States and the planet, it is imperative that the agency be candid and forthright in assessing the reality of this projection,” the senators said.
The letter requested that the EPA respond no later than April 21.
At the March budget hearing, Sessions asked McCarthy to cite specific evidence that climate change modeling has proven to be correct. After McCarthy asked Sessions to clarify which models he was referring to, Sessions said it was “stunning” that the head of the EPA doesn’t know about climate modeling.
In the letter, Sessions and the other senators requested that McCarthy provide an EPA-produced chart comparing the actual global average temperature increases with the predictions derived from IPCC climate models.
Additionally, the senators asked the EPA to detail the steps the agency has taken to review the accuracy of climate projections and how much of the EPA’s fiscal 2016 budget request of $8.6 billion would be allocated to monitoring the accuracy of climate projections.
April 1 — Heh! Impeccable timing.
Sessions, Inhofe, Wicker and Barrasso poking a bit of borax the way of McCarthy and the EPA. May as well have some fun at their expense, imagine the wriggling and squirming going on there.
Do you agree or disagree with the IPCC’s conclusion? Please provide all data, analyses, and other evidence that you reviewed and relied on to reach your conclusion.
Do you agree or disagree with the IPCC assessments regarding data sets on global tropical cyclone frequency and trends in annual tropical storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes in the North Atlantic basin?
You replied that you could not “answer that question specifically,” but later committed to submitting written information explaining whether you believe the models have been proven correct and whether temperatures have increased less than projected or more than projected.
Please provide data and analyses showing actual global average temperatures since 1979 versus IPCC predictions, including an EPA-produced chart comparing actual global average temperature increases since 1979 (when satellite temperature data became available) versus the latest IPCC predictions. Please also provide your conclusion on whether IPCC climate models have proven correct.
2. What portion of EPA’s budget request for FY 2016 is dedicated to monitoring and verifying the accuracy of the agency’s climate projections?
It is deeply gratifying that somebody backing the alarmist side is being asked questions like these in a forum which requires them to make answers that will be scrutinised. Who would have thought that the seminal debate on climate science might take place on a political stage? Thank God for even the similitude of democracy. I should raise your comments to a post, but when? Family calls again today, so I’ll see.
Yes, heed the call. Climate can do whatever it pleases in the meantime, as it always has.
I am writing you as chairs of the Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and of the Committee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard. I am an independent researcher who studies global warming and climate change, and I am probably best known for my articles at the science weblog WattsUpWithThat, where I would be considered an investigative reporter.
# Why are taxpayers funding climate model-based research when those models are not simulating Earth’s climate?
# Why are taxpayers funding climate model-based research when each new generation of climate models provides the same basic answers?
# Redundancy: why are taxpayers funding 5 climate models in the U.S.?
# Why aren’t climate models providing the answers we need?
Example: Why didn’t the consensus of regional climate models predict the timing, extent and duration of the Californian drought?
I have discussed and provided support for those concerns in the following.
Note: I began this letter a couple of months ago, back when it was announced that you would be chairs of those committees. Two of you are now running for President. Even with that in mind, I hope that you and your staffs will consider these questions.
# The D.C. Circuit heard oral arguments challenging EPA regulating CO2.
# In the consolidated cases, 15 states and the nation’s largest privately owned coal producer raised the first of many legal objections against the rule.
# The president’s 2016 budget requests $52 million to hire lawyers to defend the rule.
Written by Richard O. Faulk, The Hill on 24 April 2015.
Recently, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals heard one of the strangest cases ever argued in a federal appellate court – a seemingly esoteric controversy that, in any other context, might be relegated to obscurity. But since winning this case is the linchpin President Obama needs to win the “War Against Coal,” the EPA has staked everything on pulling an oversized rabbit out of a very small hat.
Cue State of West Virginia v. EPA and Murray Energy v. EPA, two joined cases comprising the first challenge to the president’s recent efforts to cement his climate change legacy. Fifteen states, along with select coal companies, have sued for an “extraordinary writ” to prevent the EPA from promulgating new carbon regulations set to be finalized this summer.
This legal imbroglio began with the president’s desire to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from coal-fired electrical power plants. CO2 is the principal “greenhouse gas” blamed for global warming. As such, it is now the focus of the most aggressive EPA action under the Clean Air Act since its passage decades ago.
Last year, as part of the president’s proposed Clean Power Plan, the EPA began drafting rules expected to force states to curb emissions within a year – an onerous burden, as the states involved in Thursday’s challenge will likely agree. But it is also dubious from a federalism standpoint. The EPA claims the right to regulate emission concentrations “beyond the fence line” – without restricting its inquiries to amounts actually emitted from power plants. Thus, its authority would extend beyond power generators to consider dispatch and retail demand, areas historically regulated by the states, and not the federal government.
Beyond this unprecedented regulatory preemption of state authority lies an even greater and more dangerous overreach. The EPA’s argument confidently hinges on convincing the courts that the Clean Air Act doesn’t mean what it says. By its plain language, the bill prohibits the EPA from regulating the power plants from which these emissions derive. Moreover, coal plants are already addressed under an entirely different section of the bill than the one EPA insists justifies its new powers.
Under a less ambitious administration, that would be the end of the controversy. Instead, the EPA identified one of the most unusual Congressional oversights in American history to prove its position.
As the result of a “drafting error,” Congress actually passed two versions of the provision at issue, 111(d) – one which prohibits the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases from coal-fired power plants, and one which permits such regulation. The prohibitive version was published in the United States Code, while the permissive one was printed elsewhere. With a regulatory “sleight of hand,” the EPA now claims its right to a “deferential” interpretation of the Clean Air Act, and argues that the more permissive section should be applied.
If the EPA’s argument prevails, the consequences cannot be overstated. In spite of a lack of clear statutory authorization, this unelected body could take complete command of energy production and the manner by which it is used throughout the United States. Major components of our economy that have never before been affected by EPA regulation or the Clean Air Act may be subjected to its regulatory authority.
At least the Affordable Care Act was passed by Congress. Here, this vast new scheme has sprung full-grown from the president’s imagination.
Fortunately, the D.C. Circuit, and ultimately the Supreme Court, can still prevent this imperial power grab. Less than a year ago, in reviewing the scope of the EPA’s regulatory capabilities on greenhouse gases, the High Court expressed a “measure of skepticism” when the EPA discovered an “unheralded power to regulate” a “significant portion of the American economy.” The Court warned that it “expect[s] Congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of ‘vast economic and political significance.’” To say the least, Congress has not done so here.
Obama, through his EPA, is acting beyond the scope of his authority – a persistent symptom that threatens the Constitutional separation and balance of powers that has protected our liberties since our Republic was founded. It is time, indeed past time, for our nation’s courts to pay heed and, echoing Chief Justice Marshall, once again stress “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Such a rebuke will remind the President that, despite his immense power, he cannot govern our democracy with imaginative strokes of his pen.
Faulk is a trial, appellate, energy and environmental lawyer. He is senior director for Energy, Natural Resources and the Environment for the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University School of Law and a partner with Hollingsworth, LLP, in Washington, DC.
President Barack Obama suffers a defeat in the courts.
The US Supreme Court on Monday blocked one of the Obama administration’s most ambitious environmental initiatives: an Environmental Protection Agency regulation meant to limit emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from coal-fired power plants.
Industry groups and some 20 states had challenged the EPA’s decision to regulate the emissions, saying the agency had failed to take into account the punishing costs its rule would impose.
The Clean Air Act required the regulation to be “appropriate and necessary.” The challengers said the agency had run afoul of that law by deciding to regulate the emissions without first undertaking a cost-benefit analysis.
The decision, Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 14-46, does not strike down the rule, but it means the EPA will have to review and rewrite it, taking costs into consideration. Industries will be expected to comply with the current rule until a revised one is issued.
Written by Thomas Richard, Examiner.com on 29 June 2015.
# Last week, the Obama administration transferred $500 million in U.S. funds to the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund.
# Congress never authorized the Green Climate Fund or any appropriations to it.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.