By now everybody knows that the national academies of science of the world's top countries, and various professional scientific associations, and in short all people with brains firmly believe that human emissions of carbon dioxide have been the primary driver of global warming/climate change for the past half century. But what most people don't know is that those organizations' official positions on the matter rarely reflect the considered opinions of their members. They tend to be adopted … [Read more...]
Has NOAA’s “Pausebuster” Been Busted?
“The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.”—Proverbs 18:17 Major news outlets and the climate change-focused blogosphere erupted over the last few days with the The Daily Mail’s publication February 4 of David Rose’s “Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data.” Rose reported serious data mishandling behind a study published in Science (Karl et al.) in 2015 by NOAA’s Tom Karl, Thomas … [Read more...]
EPW Chairman Introduces Cornwall Letter Supporting Pruitt EPA Nomination into Hearing Record
As I write, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt's confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee is in lunch recess. Shortly before recess, committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY) introduced the Cornwall Alliance's open letter supporting Pruitt into the record: I’d like to submit to the record as well, having heard that some of my Democratic colleagues have concerns that Attorney General Pruitt is not open to the finding of science, especially as it … [Read more...]
Global Warming: Policy Hoax versus Dodgy Science
By Dr. Roy Spencer In the early 1990s I was visiting the White House Science Advisor, Sir Prof. Dr. Robert Watson, who was pontificating on how we had successfully regulated Freon to solve the ozone depletion problem, and now the next goal was to regulate carbon dioxide, which at that time was believed to be the sole cause of global warming. I was a little amazed at this cart-before-the-horse approach. It really seemed to me that the policy goal was being set in stone, and now the … [Read more...]
What Would the Precautionary Principle Imply for Ethanol?
In 2007 Congress passed a law requiring the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to study and report every three years to Congress on the environmental impact of EPA’s ethanol mandate. And in the intervening nine years, EPA has complied with the law once—in 2011. Now it says it’ll be 2024 before it can manage it again. So by the time it should have filed five such reports and be working on its sixth, EPA expects to file its second. Meanwhile, multiple studies not done by EPA have … [Read more...]
Can We Defend Liberty against a Militarized EPA?
Did you know that the federal Environmental Protection Agency spends millions of dollars on guns, body armor, camouflage equipment, unmanned aircraft, amphibious assault ships, radar and night-vision gear, and other military-style weaponry and surveillance activities? You read that right—EPA, not the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines. Why? Because EPA regulations are so ubiquitous, so onerous, and so contrary to the spirit of our freedom-loving nation that ordinary Americans find … [Read more...]
Justice Antonin Scalia, 1936-2015
Justice Antonin Scalia, a champion of originalist Constitutional interpretation and one of the most brilliant justices in the history of the Supreme Court, died today. His strict adherence to the text of the Constitution made him the champion of every friend of liberty and the opponent of every attempt by government to exceed its Constitutional limits. One of his most recent opinions for the majority related to Cornwall Alliance's core concerns came in Michigan v. EPA last summer, in which the … [Read more...]
Leading Scientists Urge Greater Data Quality Accountability
Over 300 scientists, engineers, economists, and other scholars last week sent a letter to Congressman Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, in support of the Committee’s efforts to implement greater accountability for the scientific work of federal agencies involved in climate research, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Environmental Protection Agency … [Read more...]
Unelected, Unaccountable Greens Dictated Clean Power Plan to EPA
Emails obtained by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute under FOIA demonstrate that EPA almost certainly violated federal law by using private email to correspond with the Natural Resources Defense Council, correspondence in which NRDC essentially drafted critical parts of the "Clean Power Plan," or even, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, "the rule," not just critical parts. Imagine if some pro-coal organization(s) had done the same in the preparation of an EPA regulation. The Left … [Read more...]
One Small Step toward Reining in the EPA
A Cincinnati-based federal court recently put a hold on the federal EPA's controversial "Waters of the United States" rule that would have put farm ponds, drainage ditches, and similar waters, by no means navigable, under its rule, constituting a huge expansion of EPA authority at the expense of states' sovereignty and property owners' rights. As Larry Bell writes, Applying EPA’s interpretation, the agency defines waters of the United States so broadly that they could regulate virtually any wet … [Read more...]
