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May 19, 2013
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Republicans Make War on the EnvironmentPosted on Apr 16, 2011
The U.S. is caught up in three wars, a budget crisis and high unemployment. So what are Republican politicians working on? Cutting long-standing environmental regulations and shifting the burden of oversight from the federal to the state level. —JCL
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By samosamo, April 17, 2011 at 4:18 pm Link to this comment
****************
Report thisGeez, NCEE is nothing but another Orwellian department much
like the Ministry of Truth.
By John M, April 17, 2011 at 1:59 pm Link to this comment
Inside the National Center for Environmental
Economics, analysts scurried to finish the vital
technical support document to fulfill President
Obama’s most draconian campaign pledge: “Implement an
economywide cap-and-trade program to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.”
The NCEE was ready to cement the case for the
Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment
finding,” the official declaration that carbon
dioxide from burning fossil fuels poses a threat to
human health and welfare. Thousands of government
careers, academic contracts, and Big Green grants
hung in the balance, and EPA Administrator Lisa
Jackson needed to release it within days.
But senior research analyst Alan Carlin, Ph.D., a 38-
year EPA veteran never known as an ideologue,
submitted his unlikely critique that the agency’s
case was full of predetermined, politically mandated,
cherry-picked scientific garbage.
Carlin criticized as many details as possible in the
four days before the finding’s release: EPA had
relied on outdated research and ignored major new
developments, including declines in global
temperatures, projections that hurricanes won’t get
worse, and findings that ocean cycles best explain
temperature fluctuations.
“I did the reasonable thing,” said Carlin. “I applied
the scientific method to every study used in EPA’s
technical support document,” as you’d expect from a
man with a physics degree from CalTech and a Ph.D. in
economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Alarmingly, he found more computerized guesswork and
editing by advocates than observable results. Carlin
urgently requested that his report be forwarded
immediately to top decision makers.
The director refused. In an email to Carlin, he said,
“The administrator and the administration has decided
to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do
not help the legal or policy case for this decision.”
Imperiling his career, Carlin explained that he knew
where his duty lay concerning scientific truth and
the administration, and got these appalling replies:
“I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on
climate change,” and, “Do not have any direct
communication with anyone outside of NCEE on
endangerment. There should be no meetings, emails,
written statements, phone calls etc.”
The message: Dr. Carlin, hush your mouth. EPA
Administrator Jackson and President Obama have made
up their minds. Don’t bother them with facts. And
don’t you dare tell the American public. Hush!
An outraged source in EPA who was not Carlin passed
the whistleblower documents and emails to Sam Kazman,
general counsel of Competitive Enterprise Institute,
a Washington free-market think tank.
Kazman was astounded by the “Hush” emails, accepted
the case, and began a successful campaign to make the
suppression of Carlin’s report a cause celebre. A few
days later, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill
barely passed the Democrat-held House and the Senate
warily let the measure die.
But EPA released its endangerment finding, which
immediately faced an appeals court challenge.
As Obama’s much-touted “science-based policy” rotted
into “policy-based science,” Big Green sycophants
praised the administration in a quarter-page
Washington Post ad.
And so we got Hushgate. That was two years ago. Two
weeks ago, Carlin’s report, updated, expanded, and
peer-reviewed, was published in the respected
International Journal of Environmental Research and
Public Health.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011
Report this/04/ron-arnold-suppressed-epa-hushgate-climate-
report-returns-snag-co2-regula
By John M, April 17, 2011 at 1:30 pm Link to this comment
yeah and it’s because of the all knowing idiots in
Report thisWashington that my toilet not flush on the first try -
wipe out manufacturing jobs in Virginia by banning
normal light bulbs. And decided CO2 is pollution but
still allow millions of tons of CO2 to be used by the
beverage industry. And my state has grandma use 6
gallons of water rinsing out a jelly jar to be recycled
when it’s made of glass and we all know that’s made
from sand and you know how scarce sand is…......Oh and don’t forget the special truck that has to come around to pick up the melted sand .....
By John M, April 17, 2011 at 1:28 pm Link to this comment
yeah and it’s because of the all knowing idiots in
Report thisWashington that my toilet not flush on the first try -
wipe out manufacturing jobs in Virginia by banning
normal light bulbs. And decided CO2 is pollution but
still allow millions of tons of CO2 to be used by the
beverage industry. And my state has grandma use 6
gallons of water rinsing out a jelly jar to be recycled
when it’s made of glass and we all know that’s made
from sand and you know how scarce sand is…......
By felicity, April 17, 2011 at 12:12 pm Link to this comment
“...opening three million acres of the North Woods
for development…” And that ‘development’ would be?
Some mega-rich nabob has his eye on turning a 100,000
acre tract of it into a third vacation home, maybe?
And, it’s rumored that
Report thisenvironmentalists/environmentalism is a Communist
plot so…Communist plot? These guys really suffer
from severe, are plagued with phobia - irrational
fear, aversion, dislike of someone or something. Or
maybe they figure that if they tag something
“Communist” everyone will be on their side? Or maybe
they’re just plug nuts.
By samosamo, April 16, 2011 at 11:57 pm Link to this comment
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Can’t tell which neocon think tank this one came out of but it
sure is a neocon boomerang tactic where the epa comes under
state purview so when a new state epa decides to act on some
criminal environmental issue, all the corporations have to do
is go to their well lobbied(bribed) federal judges or the even
more bought up and out, scotus to get any decisions or
injunctions overturned.
There is so much these neocon think tanks, now serving tea
Report thison regular basis, turn out that isn’t really unheard of, it is that
there are so many ways to turn the screw that the people find
they should have been looking there when they were actually
looking here kind of thing.
By TDoff, April 16, 2011 at 4:15 pm Link to this comment
Geez, genus republicanus is not only genetically burdened with malfunctioning digestive tracts that emit copious amounts of methane gases from both ends, but now they are planning to purposely further degrade the environment?
Report this