Five things the President will not say tonight

In keeping with his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's exhortation to never let a serious crisis go to waste, tonight President Obama will speak in prime time from the Oval Office and try to convince the American people that the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster is definitive proof of the need for cap and trade,  climate change clean energy legislation.  Here are five things you won't hear him say:

1.  "Under my plan, electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket:"



2.  It's time to destroy the coal industry in the U.S. so we can buy coal from China.  Charles Krauthammer put it succinctly on Fox News:

He [Obama] wants to tax carbon, which means they want to include coal, of which we are the Saudi Arabia of the world, we do not import it. We have an abundance of it. And it's not going to help us on global warming. The Chinese have said they are going to be opening a new coal-fired plant every week for the next ten years, so it will be a transfer of wealth out of our treasury into China's. (emphasis mine)

3.  Implementation of a cap and trade system in the U.S. will have no meaningful effect on global greenhouse gas levels unless China follows suit.  Obama EPA administrator Lisa Jackson admitted as much in a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last summer.



4.  There is virtually no chance that the Chinese will follow the U.S. in implementing a cap and trade system.  From The Heritage Foundation:

It is unreasonable to expect the PRC to follow the U.S. on climate change. China has rejected American leadership on security issues in Iran and North Korea and on human rights matters in Sudan and Burma. In economics, the PRC's existing and anticipated coal dependence dwarfs America's, making a serious adjustment far more difficult.

Moreover, China does not compete in most goods and services with the U.S. but with other suppliers to the American market, such as Mexico. These nations'--not American--climate change restrictions are more pertinent to Beijing's decision making.[7] And the PRC has steadfastly avoided the Western European cap-and-trade experiment (wisely so, as the EU has failed to cut emissions while harming its economy). That China will follow an American lead in cutting greenhouse gases flies in the face of all available evidence.

5.  My cap and trade plan will create thousands of cushy government jobs, but its net effect will be to increase our nation's overall unemployment rate:

Cap and trade has macroeconomic effects that would do economic harm that no rebate check would cover. Higher prices lower consumer demand, and the lower demand prevents higher prices from completely offsetting production cost increases. As a result, businesses must make production cuts and reduce labor. The Congressional Budget Office recently affirmed that job losses from a slower economy would outweigh those created by clean energy investments: “Job losses in the industries that shrink would lower employment more than job gains in other industries would increase employment, thereby raising the overall unemployment rate.”

Legislation without representation: Murkowski resolution fails in Senate

By a 53-47 vote, the Senate defeated a resolution that would have effectively reversed the EPA's greenhouse gases endangerment finding.  From The Washington Times:

Environmentalists scored their first major Senate victory regarding climate change Thursday as Democrats gave a green light to the Environmental Protection Agency to impose strict new rules on greenhouse gas emissions.

Senators voted 53-47 to let the Obama administration proceed with its rules. But with all 41 Republicans and six Democrats voting to try to block the EPA, climate change remains a poisonous issue on Capitol Hill and the deeply divided tally likely heads off any chance the chamber could pass a broad climate policy this year.

Still, it's a high point for environmentalists, whose fortunes have improved dramatically since 1997, when the Senate voted 95-0 to tell President Clinton not to bother submitting the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty for ratification.

"Today, the Senate chose to move America forward, toward that clean energy economy - not backward to the same failed policies that have left our nation increasingly dependent on foreign oil," President Obama said, praising senators for giving his administration leeway to act.

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Putting aside my own considerable skepticism of the validity of the anthropogenic global warming premise on which all this insanity rests, this is a dangerous precedent for our republic.  If  Congress can abdicate its responsibility to govern on a matter with such grave consequences for the U.S. economy, and leave us all at the mercy of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, then what, pray tell, is next?

Senate to vote on Obama's power grab

Tomorrow the Senate will vote on a resolution to stop an egregious power grab by the executive branch.  Chris Horner has been on the case at The Daily Caller and Big Government.  From the former:

On Thursday, the Senate will vote on S.J.Res.26, a resolution to block EPA from usurping powers never delegated to it by Congress. Failure means allowing EPA to go forward, apparently in flagrant violation of our constitutional traditions simply because too many in Congress desire, but can’t bear to take responsibility for, more of the Obama agenda.

EPA’s breathtaking Power Grab raises questions critical to our form of governance. The powers EPA has claimed for itself include staking out national policy on the contentious “climate” issue, and even amending the Clean Air Act on its own initiative and authority.

S.J.Res. 26 was originated by Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). It is co-sponsored by 40 others, mostly Republicans but including three Democrats (the math of which also tells you that three Republicans are not on board: Sens. Brown, Collins and Snowe). It seeks to exercise, for just the second time, the Congressional Review Act passed in 1996 as part of the “Contract with America”. That law allows legislators to check bureaucrats gone wild by vetoing a “major rule” within 60 days of an agency publishing it.

In this case, the rule is the Obama EPA’s effort to delegate to itself inherently legislative powers. These include Congress’s authority—wisely eschewed to date—to regulate carbon dioxide as a “pollutant” under the Clean Air Act, which would make EPA an economic regulatory agency despite having been caught as complicit in promoting scandalous “climate science” in the push to spectacularly expand its budget and powers.

When the White House dispatched EPA chief Lisa Jackson to the Huffington Post to slam Murkowski's resolution, Horner was quick to point out how the administration's justifications for relegating what should clearly be a legislative matter to an unelected body of bureaucrats, keep changing to suit the political flavor of the day.  From Big Government:

So. The White House sent EPA chief Lisa Jackson over to HuffPo to slam (smear?) the Murkowski resolution set to be voted on in the Senate on Thursday, which is designed to block a Power Grab by EPA and thereby to maintain our Constitution’s separation of powers.

The White House then followed this by threatening to veto the resolution if it passes.

In both cases, Team Obama tie S.J.Res. 26 to the Gulf oil spill and argue that, by blocking EPA’s claimed authority to regulate greenhouse gases, this exercise of the Congressional Review Act would cruelly block the administration’s diligent and dedicated campaign to reduce our dependence on oil and reduce the risk of such spills in the future.

Huh? Far from sounding familiar (at least, before this newest revision of the reasons for the “global warming” agenda was rolled out last week), this should sound somewhat newfangled.

In fact here we see that the “global warming” agenda — that had already morphed into a “climate change” agenda before it was an energy tax to create new jobs (because we all know that’s what tax increases do, silly) — is actually aimed at stopping oil spills. And we’ve always been at war with Eastasia, Winston.

What we have now is a pristine case study of there being no good reason for an agenda, as proved by the fact that the reason for the agenda (read: excuse) keeps changing.

In what was surely little more than an exercise in cynicism, I performed a quick search to see just how deeply embedded are these real reasons for what has for years been a “global warming” regulatory agenda. It turns out that EPA forgot to cite them as the reason for, or even related to, its “Endangerment Finding” (that the Murkowski Resolution would block).

OK. To be generous beyond a fault, let’s say they cited these real reasons one half of one time. In 52 deathless pages of background and “global warming” hysteria.

Go ahead. Perform a word-search yourself. You’ll see the following:

“warming” — 82 invocations

“temperature” — 117 invocations

“climate change” — 259 invocations

“dependence” (or “independence”; or “depend” in any relevant way) — 0

“spill” — 0

“drill” or “drilling” — 0

“oil” — 1 relevant usage, but which, well… refers to a different rulemaking altogether, as part of EPA’s lengthy discourse of the regulatory context (see very bottom of page 5 of 52).

“automobile” — see “oil”, above; the same discussion dragged “fuel economy” into the mix.

It turns out that at the time, in promoting the “Finding” that the Murkowski resolution seeks to block, the administration actually forgot to make what are now apparently its marquee arguments for the thing. At least, to listen to their keening in opposition to the measure.

Zing!

Headfake on offshore drilling

Today the Obama administration will announce an apparent reversal in its stance on offshore oil and gas drilling.  From The Wall Street Journal:

The Obama administration will propose allowing offshore oil and natural-gas exploration and development in a large swath of the eastern Gulf of Mexico, after months of criticism from Republicans who have made expanded offshore drilling a political rallying cry.

In addition, the administration plans to announce new steps to determine how much oil and natural gas is buried off the coasts of Middle and Southern Atlantic states, where oil-reserve estimates are decades out of date.

At the same time, Mr. Obama's plan wouldn't allow new oil and gas development off the coasts of Northern Atlantic states or California, whose political leaders have long opposed offshore drilling. The administration will call off a plan drafted by the administration of former President George W. Bush that would have given oil companies access to Alaska's Bristol Bay, an area teeming with wild sockeye salmon and many commercial fishing interests concerned about the impact of drilling on their livelihoods.

The media is casting this move as a compromise to big oil and domestic "drill baby drill" advocates.  However, skepticism abounds.

Commenter stopevhillary, at Lucianne.com notes:

Didn't Obama yank drilling rights to leases already explored? (which means co's paid for the priveledge of exploring w/o any hope of drilling)

How can any company do business in the age of Obama Bait and Switch?

Another veteran Ldotter, Photoonist, remarks:

According to an article from the other day this administration has increased the fees per well and drill site which is making such ventures increasingly uneconomical. Typical for he First Marxist who previously promised to make the cost of energy skyrocket.

Photoonist is correct.  In a speech earlier this month, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar defended his plan to increase the fees on oil and gas drilling operations:

During Wednesday's hearing, Salazar also defended the administration's plans to impose new fees on drilling leases and increase royalty rates for companies that produce oil and natural gas from public lands.

The administration's budget proposal includes:

• • A new $4-per-acre fee on nonproducing oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters.

• • A new inspection fee for onshore oil and gas drilling that the administration estimates would bring in $10 million in the 2011 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

• • Raising existing inspection fees for offshore oil and gas drilling to raise an estimated $20 million in fiscal 2011.

• • Continuing a 1-year-old $6,500 fee for processing drilling permits, expected to bring in $45.5 million in the next fiscal year.

The administration is also considering an increase in the 12.5 percent royalty rate charged for oil and natural gas produced on federal lands, which dates back to 1920 and is far lower than what some states charge. Texas, for instance, collects a royalty rate of 22.5 percent.

Salazar said the proposals were prompted by the need to raise money to pare the deficit in a “tough budget.”

Noting Exxon Mobil Corp.'s record-breaking 2008 $45  billion profit, Salazar said: “I don't think that frankly any of these fees that we are talking about here are going to put anybody out of business.”

“These fees will be part of doing business, but it's not going to have a negative effect” preventing companies from going forward with development, Salazar said.

“We are not — as some people have claimed — taxing the oil and gas industry to death,” he said.

Several oil patch senators said they were concerned that a related administration plan to get rid of tax incentives long used by the oil and gas industry to defray the high capital costs of drilling would curb domestic production.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., called the budget plan a collection of “draconian taxes on the oil and gas industry.”

Joe Weisenthall at the Business Insider asserts that the President's move is a pure political gambit:

Ok, so the Obama administration is going to allow some offshore drilling.

The surprise decision is being couched in language about creating jobs and reducing dependence on foreign oil.

Yeah yeah.

The real story is that Cap & Trade is back on the table, as Ken Salazar is stating on CNBC right now.

Obama gives a gift to oil drillers, and in exchange he gets the equivalent of an energy tax (though not actually an energy tax) with some corporate support.

Actually, cap & trade has already enjoyed significant corporate support from the likes of Goldman Sachs (GS) and GE (GE), which are eager to make a market in carbon offsets. Now, presumably, we'll see more corporate support.

Finally Barbarian Heretic at Lucianne sums it up nicely:

Be suspicious of this tactic:

-Admin announces 'opening up' to exploration.

-While levying costly fees and restrictions

-One year from now, Obama points finger at Big Oil for not acting on his generous offer.

This is triangulation, nothing more. Obama is preparing to move to the center to win re-election after he gets creamed in mid-terms...

More junk climate science at the IPCC

Just hours before the State of the Union address in which President Obama implored congress to pass a comprehensive energy and climate bill, yet another blow was delivered to the battered credibility of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  From Fox News:

A United Nations report on climate change that has been lambasted for its faulty research is under new attack for yet another instance of what its critics say is sloppy science -- adding to a growing scandal that has undermined the credibility of scientists and policymakers who back the U.N.'s findings about global warming.

In the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), issued in 2007 by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientists wrote that 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest in South America was endangered by global warming.

But that assertion was discredited this week when it emerged that the findings were based on numbers from a study by the World Wildlife Federation that had nothing to do with the issue of global warming -- and that was written by a freelance journalist and green activist.

A blog skeptical of global warming, EUReferendum, uncovered the WWF association. Taken together with Climategate and the Himalayan melting glacier fabrication, I think that's three strikes for the IPCC, and by extension, cap and trade.

Meet Steve McIntyre, Toronto retiree and Al Gore's worst nightmare

As the Climategate scandal gains some traction in the world press, it is important to keep the pressure on our elected representatives to get to the bottom of it.  The hard-earned money of taxpayers has been used to fund climate research for decades.  The Courier Mail (Australia) reported in June of 2007:

In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than $US50 billion ($60 billion) on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one.

That was back when billions still meant something. The truth is, these sunk costs will seem inconsequential when compared to the crippling economic costs of cap and trade.

If you really want to understand the global warming debate, I continue to recommend Ian Plimer's book, Heaven and Earth: Global Warming the Missing Science.  But I must warn you:  it is a heavy read and not intended for the casually interested.  But is is chock full of historical climate information and political context that should give pause to scientist and non-scientist alike.
For those of you that don't have time or motivation to read Plimer's book, let me suggest this short article by Richard Foot that appears today in the Star Phoenix (Canada).  It's entitled 'M and M' stick in craw of climate-change crew.  M and M are Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick.  Here's an introductory excerpt:

Steve McIntyre, 62, is a Toronto retiree. He plays squash, dabbles with numbers and insists he never set out to stir up any trouble.



So why does his name appear again and again - in the most unflattering ways - in hundreds of e-mails written by the world's most influential climate change scientists, that were mysteriously taken from a computer in Britain last month and published on the Internet?


In these private messages, McIntyre is called everything from a "bozo" and a "moron" to a "playground bully."


"In my opinion," said one e-mail written by Benjamin Santer, a senior climatologist with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, "Stephen McIntyre is the self-appointed Joe McCarthy of climate science."


The "climategate" e-mails have sparked a scandal - just ahead of next week's global warming summit in Copenhagen - for suggesting climatologists may have manipulated data to exaggerate the threat of global warming and conspired to keep contrary points of view out of the scientific journals.


But the e-mails are also conspicuous for their repeated, nasty references to two Canadians - McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick - who have become a serious thorn in the side of climatologists and others who say the planet is under serious threat from man-made global warming.


Although little-known in Canada, McIntyre and McKitrick - or M and M as they're called in climate change circles - have since 2003 put forward evidence of faulty calculations in some of the key scientific studies behind the reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.


Their work has drawn the attention of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Wall Street Journal, which last month called them "the climate change gang's most dangerous apostates."

If you want to see these emails for yourself, you can find them here.  The content is indexed and searchable and reveals interesting tidbits like this one from Penn State climate superstar, Michael Mann:

Yep, what was written below is all me, but it was purely on background, please don't quote anything I said or attribute to me w/out checking specifically--thanks.


Re, your point at the end--you've taken the words out of my mouth. Skepticism is essential
for the functioning of science. It yields an erratic path towards eventual truth. But
legitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in
particular the peer review process. A necessary though not in general sufficient condition
for taking a scientific criticism seriously is that it has passed through the legitimate
scientific peer review process. those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside
of this system are not to be trusted.

And this

if McIntyre had a legitimate point, he would submit a comment to the journal in
question. of course, the last time he tried that (w/ our '98 article in Nature), his
comment was rejected. For all of the noise and bluster about the Steig et al Antarctic
warming, its now nearing a year and nothing has been submitted. So more likely he won't
submit for peer-reviewed scrutiny, or if it does get his criticism "published" it will
be in the discredited contrarian home journal "Energy and Environment". I'm sure you
are aware that McIntyre and his ilk realize they no longer need to get their crap
published in legitimate journals. All they have to do is put it up on their blog, and
the contrarian noise machine kicks into gear, pretty soon Druge, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn
Beck and their ilk (in this case, The Telegraph were already on it this morning) are
parroting the claims. And based on what? some guy w/ no credentials, dubious connections
with the energy industry, and who hasn't submitted his claims to the scrutiny of peer
review.


Fortunately, the prestige press doesn't fall for this sort of stuff, right?

Prestige press?  Like the one that has been protecting your rear end since these emails were leaked 16 days ago?  The content and tone of these emails reveal an arrogant, self-important cabal of elitists who pay cheap lip service to legitimate scientific skepticism, then do everything in their power to denigrate, delay and destroy anyone who approaches them wth dissent.

I would encourage you to browse through the emails and see what I mean. And while Barbara Boxer is crying foul about the illegal theft of these emails, and threatening to launch a criminal probe, remember this:  All this information was subject to Freedom of Information Act disclosure in the United States or the United Kingdom and had been requested (some of it for years) by multiple parties.  These "prestige" scientists did everything they could to frustrate and forestall anyone with the temerity to ask to see their raw data, up to and including destroying data and deleting incriminating emails.....that's data collected (or made up) with taxpayer money.

And speaking of Senator (Ma'am) Boxer, remember how quick she was to pounce on the "high crimes and misdemeanors" of the NSA wiretap program after it was illegally leaked to the New York Times in 2005 in a possible violation of the Espionage Act?  I guess the definition of what is or is not legal depends on the outcome you want.

Climategate updates from both sides of the pond

In a post last week, I directed your attention to James Delingpole at the Telegraph (UK), for some of the most cogent, up-to-date coverage of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit fraud.  He's at it again today with a must read column, Climategate: it's all unravelling now.  He summarizes the latest developments in brilliant form.  I have reproduced the first two here.

So many new developments: which story do we pick? Maybe best to summarise, instead. After all, it’s not like you’re going to find much of this reported in the MSM.
1. Australia’s Senate rejects Emissions Trading Scheme for a second time. Or: so turkeys don’t vote Christmas. Expect to see a lot more of this: politicians starting to become aware their party’s position on AGW is completely out of kilter with the public mood and economic reality. Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme – what Andrew Bolt calls “a $114 billion green tax on everything” – would have wreaked havoc on the coal-dependent Australian economy. That’s why several opposition Liberal frontbenchers resigned rather than vote with the Government on ETS; why Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull lost his job; and why the Senate voted down the ETS.

2. Danes caught fiddling their carbon credits. (Hat tip: Philip Stott) Carbon trading is the Emperor’s New Clothes of international finance. It was invented by none other than Ken Lay, whose Enron would currently be one of the prime beneficiaries in the global alternative energy market, if it hadn’t been shown to be (nearly) as fraudulent as the current AGW scam. It is a licence to fleece, cheat and rob. Still, jolly embarrassing for the Danes to get caught red handed, what with their hosting a conference shortly in which the world’s leaders will try, straight-faced, to persuade us that carbon emissions trading is the only viable way of defeating ManBearPig.

It's an excellent article with lots of great links.  Read the whole thing.  (For those of you who don't watch South Park or have teenagers, you can catch up on ManBearPig here.)

Permit me to add a couple of developments from this side of the pond:

1.  From the Penn State Daily Collegian:

Penn State is conducting an inquiry into the controversy surrounding a Penn State professor whose illegally leaked e-mails have sparked an international debate over whether he and his colleagues distorted data on global warming.

The inquiry will determine if further investigation is warranted, a university spokeswoman said Sunday.

On Nov. 21, hundreds of e-mails sent between colleagues at England's University of East Anglia were illegally obtained from a server at the university's climate change research center and posted online. One of the researchers in-volved is Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann.

The e-mails appeared to indicate that the director of the research unit in question -- Phil Jones -- contacted his colleagues to request they delete certain exchanges.

Skeptics of climate change are calling the ongoing investigation "Climategate" and allege the leaked e-mails suggest the researchers -- including Mann -- had fabricated or manipulated data on global warming.

Penn State said in a statement last week that it did not want to speculate as to the meaning or intent of any of the leaked e-mails in question.

The university will look into the issues at hand, spokeswoman Lisa Powers said, and determine from whatever information is uncovered if further investigation is required.

In this particular situation, a Penn State committee will review every e-mail in question -- a total of about 300 messages, Powers wrote in an e-mail.

This process could take "quite some time," Powers wrote.

2. Senator Inhofe (R-OK) requests hearings on Climategate:

Sen. James M. Inhofe ( R-Okla. ), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, sent a letter today to EPW Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer ( D-Calif. ) requesting hearings on the recent disclosure of emails between some of the world’s most preeminent climatologists—emails that reveal apparent attempts to manipulate data, vilify scientists with opposing viewpoints, and circumvent information disclosure laws.

“The emails reveal possible deceitful manipulation of important data and research used by the US Global Change Research Program and the IPCC,” Inhofe wrote. “For instance, one scientist wrote of a ‘trick’ he employed to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperature trends, as well as discussed attempts to ‘redefine what the peer-review literature is’ to prevent papers raising questions about anthropogenic global warming from appearing in IPCC reports.”

This controversy “could have far-reaching policy implications,” Inhofe continued, “affecting everything from ( to name a few ) cap-and-trade legislation, state and regional climate change programs,” and “the Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202( a ) of the Clean Air Act’…” These policies “will have enormous economic impacts, not least the EPA’s proposed endangerment finding, which, when finalized, will lead to a torrent of new federal regulations that will destroy thousands of jobs and make electricity and gasoline more expensive for consumers and small businesses.”

3. MIT meteorology professor Richard S. Lindzen gives his opinion on Climategate in the Wall Street Journal piece, The Climate Science Isn't Settled, stating in part:

Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.

4.  Two key Obama administration officials were grilled this morning at the House of Representatives Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming hearing:

Two key Obama Administration scientists were grilled this morning about Climategate at a hearing of the House of Representatives Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming this morning. The hearing, originally meant to be a review of climate science before Copenhagen, got personal. The hearing suggests that the release of some 1000 e-mails among scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) could have long-lasting political implications, as political foes of greenhouse gas controls are citing them as evidence that the science behind the campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is rigged.

Ranking member James Sensenbrenner (R–WI) led the assault, attacking John Holdren, the president's science adviser. Sensenbrenner, a former chair of the House Science committee, quoted an e-mail from 2003 in which Holdren called scientists Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas "amateurs" at interpreting climate data and said that their findings are "flawed."

"How can you be objective on this?" said Sensenbrenner, pointing to the exchange. Holdren said he had come to his views by careful analysis, and his only "bias" was that he had read the Soon and Baliunas paper and found its findings wanting.

I have to agree with Wall Street Journal blogger, Russell Gold,

Who stole the emails is an ongoing mystery and whether they paint a picture of scientific malfeasance or just good old-fashioned venting is a matter of heated debate. This much is known: the debate over global warming is now not a scientific disagreement or even a political debate. It’s all-out ideological warfare.

Final nail in the coffin of "anthropogenic global warming"

Some of the very best commentary about the recent damning document leak from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit comes (rightly so) from James Delingpole, hailing from our ally and the homeland of our forefathers and ancestors, the United Kingdom:

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka CRU) and released 61 megabytes of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

In case you aren't fluent in the British vernacular, the term boffin is not, actually, an insult.  It refers to a scientific expert.  So the author gives them the benefit of the doubt right up until the moment that he skewers them on a spit for their overt skulduggery (another quite English word which I love!).

If your mind is open to facts and reality, read the whole thing.

If not, go ahead and put your signature on the scientifically baseless suicide pact of anthropogenic global warming.

Senator James Inhofe  (R-Oklahoma), in remarks to Barbara Boxer last week,  said it best:



Put a fork in it.  God willing, it's done.  Get a life.

Copenhagen climate punt

Last month, I told you that the Copenhagen Climate conference scheduled for December was starting to collapse.  Well, you can stick a fork in it.  From the New York Times:

President Obama and other world leaders have decided to put off the difficult task of reaching a climate changeagreement at a global climate conference scheduled for next month, agreeing instead to make it the mission of the Copenhagen conference to reach a less specific “politically binding” agreement that would punt the most difficult issues into the future.

At a hastily arranged breakfast on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting on Sunday morning, the leaders, including Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark and the chairman of the climate conference, agreed that in order to salvage Copenhagen they would have to push a fully binding legal agreement down the road, possibly to a second summit meeting in Mexico City later on.

“There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen, which starts in 22 days,” said Michael Froman, the deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs. “I don’t think the negotiations have proceeded in such a way that any of the leaders thought it was likely that we were going to achieve a final agreement in Copenhagen, and yet thought that it was important that Copenhagen be an important step forward, including with operational impact.”

Predictably, the Times blames the Senate for its failure to move forward with Cap and Trade legislation.

Among the chief barriers to a comprehensive deal in Copenhagen was Congress’s inability to enact climate and energy legislation that sets binding targets on greenhouse gases in the United States. Without such a commitment, other nations are loath to make their own pledges.

Well thank God for the GOP Senators (minus Lindsey Kerry Graham) and moderate Democrats for putting the brakes on this economic suicide pact. Pray they can keep their resolve.

Obama's War on Coal

During the presidential campaign, Senator Obama bragged to the San Francisco Chronicle that anyone planning to build a coal burning power plant in the United States during his administration would go bankrupt. But you wouldn't find that quote in the Chronicle.  Thankfully someone leaked the audio.  Remember this?




And what about the admission that electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket under his plan?



Well last month, true to his word, and without waiting for cap and trade legislation, the Obama EPA put the breaks on 79 applications for surface coal mining in four states.  Via AP:

President Barack Obama's administration put the brakes on 79 applications for surface coal mining permits in four states Wednesday, saying they would violate the Clean Water Act.

The action is the administration's latest attempt to curb environmental damage from a highly efficient but damaging mining practice known as mountaintop removal. Each permit likely would cause significant damage to water quality and the environment, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement.

And last week, the EPA went even further, announcing plans to revoke a permit for the Spruce No. 1 Mine in West Virginia - a move that has caused anxiety among coal-state Democrats about the future of the industry under the Obama administration.  The people of West Virginia probably saw this coming, because John McCain carried the state in the 2008 election, but the governor seemed quite surprised:

Although his favored cap-and-trade bill hasn't yet been passed, West Virginia's Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin III, who supported Mr. Obama's candidacy, called the EPA moves part of a stealth campaign to stifle the industry.

"Right now, my belief is that they're trying to kill off surface mining through regulation what they cannot get done through legislation," Mr. Manchin told MetroNews Talkline, a West Virginia call-in radio program, earlier this month. In West Virginia, 23 permits are being held up, with other affected states being Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.

Senator Rockefeller (D-WV) doesn't like it either:

But Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia Democrat, who also backed the Obama presidential bid, is outraged that the EPA is revoking a permit in his state. "I am angry with the EPA's announcement that they will use veto power to revoke the authorized Spruce Mine permit in Logan," he said. "It is wrong and unfair for the EPA to change the rules for a permit that is already active."

And this from the West Virginia Register-Herald:

Coal is under attack by the Obama administration. And now, even those who supported the Obama-Biden ticket in 2008 have come to that realization.

In this case, I guess Obama meant exactly what he said.  Unfortunately nobody was listening.

Obama's new world order

According to Christopher Monckton, a former major policy advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, our President is on the path to creating a new world government.  From Jeffrey Kuhner at the Washington Times:

Global-warming alarmists are using the myth of climate change to impose an embryonic socialist world government. Following the collapse of communism, the West's progressive elites desperately searched for a viable ideological alternative. They found it in environmentalism.

Although the Green movement wraps itself in the flag of empirical science, it represents the very opposite: a dogma that provides meaning and purpose to its rabid followers. The ideology justifies massive tax increases and government control of the economy; it seeks to cripple free enterprise and curtail market-driven growth. Many of today's Greens are yesterday's Reds.

Global warming is the greatest fraud of our time. The overwhelming scientific evidence shows that, rather than getting hotter, the Earth's temperatures are cooling. Increasing numbers of leading scientists are challenging the flawed computer models used by eco-alarmists.

The climate treaty still has to be negotiated, and many countries, such as India, China and Canada are clearly not on board (see my previous post, Copenhagen climate consortium collapse).  More from Mr. Kuhner:

Yet the draft version is clear about the treaty's essential elements.

It calls for a massive transfer of wealth from the developed world to the developing world. The United States would be forced to spend billions of dollars a year in foreign aid to pay for a so-called "climate debt" - a provision to punish wealthy countries for having historically emitted large amounts of CO2, while compensating poor ones for not contributing to greenhouse gases.

This massive redistribution of national wealth is not the worst of it.  Continuing from the article,

Moreover, Mr. Monckton points out that, in paragraph 38, Annex 1, the Copenhagen draft calls for a U.N.-created "government" responsible for taxation, enforcement and redistribution. In other words, the draft treaty explicitly demands that the world body erect an international mechanism with the power to impose emission-reduction targets for each country, determine acceptable levels of CO2 and levy global taxes.

The United States would lose control over its environmental policy. Also, it would sign its death warrant as a functioning democracy, enabling the United Nations to administer a fledgling world government possessing the authority to regulate and tax the American economy. The treaty is a sword aimed at the heart of our national sovereignty.

If Mr. Obama signs the Copenhagen treaty, he "will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your prosperity away forever," Mr. Monckton recently told an audience in Minnesota. "I read that treaty and what it says is this: that a world government is going to be created."

Read the entire article.

Our constitution requires approval by 67 votes in the Senate, but Lord Monckton fears that Obama will try to circumvent this.  Given the recent push for health insurance mandates, the takeover of major segments of the automobile and banking industries, and the dissolution of secured bondholders' rights,  I'm not sure his fears are without merit.

You can see Lord Monckton's speech to the Minnesota Free Market Intitute below:



 
More from Michelle Malkin here.

Read the transcript and hear the audio of Glenn Beck's recent interview with Lord Monckton here.

If my memory serves, I believe Monckton will be on the Glenn Beck show on Fox News Channel Monday (10/26) at 5PM.  Don't miss it.