GWPF | 29 April 2015
Republican Senators Weigh How To Undercut Obama’s Climate Strategy
A Senate committee voted Tuesday to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from using ‘secret science’ to back its regulations. The vote in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee came after the GOP-controlled House repeatedly approved the bill. It previous was stalled in the Democratic-majority Senate. Under the measure, which President Obama has threatened to veto if the Senate passes it, the EPA would only be allowed to use scientific studies whose detailed results are posted publicly online. –Timothy Cama, The Hill, 28 April 2015
1) U.S. Senators Vote To Block EPA’s Use Of ‘Secret Science’ – The Hill, 28 April 2015
2) Republican Senators Weigh How To Undercut Obama’s Climate Strategy – The Wall Street Journal, 27 April 2015
3) Shrewd Move: India Pledges To Voluntarily Reduce CO2 Intensity Of GDP (Again) – Press Trust of India, 29 April 2015
4) India Cancels Registration Of 9,000 Foreign-Funded NGOs – Hindustan Times, 28 April 2015
5) Peter Foster: Red-Green Alliance Captures The Vatican – Financial Post, 29 April 2015
6) Newsweek Disgracefully Links the Mt Everest Tragedy to Rising CO2 – Watts Up With That, 29 April 2015
7) Jean-Pascal van Ypersele: The Green Activist Who Wants To Run The IPCC – No Frakking Consensus, 28 April 2015
President Barack Obama and Congress are headed for another power clash on the international stage, as key Senate Republicans challenge his efforts to forge a global pact on climate change. The White House considers the agreement with nearly 200 nations a historic opportunity to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions world-wide. But some GOP senators view it as executive overreach, and they are quietly considering ways to warn other countries that the president doesn’t speak for them and may not be able to deliver on his promises to slash emissions. –Colleen McCain Nelson, The Wall Street Journal, 27 April 2015
India has voluntarily announced efforts to reduce emission intensity by 20-25 per cent by 2020 from the 2005 level without reckoning the emissions from agriculture sector, Lok Sabha was informed today. Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said during Question Hour that though India was a party to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, it did not have legally binding green house gas (GHG) emission reduction commitments. —Press Trust of India, 29 April 2015
India has pledged to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 20 – 25% in 2020 compared to 2005 levels. This target does not cover emissions from the agricultural sector. India proposed the target during the Copenhagen negotiations and submitted it to the Copenhagen Accord on 30 January 2010. —Climate Action Tracker
The Modi government has cancelled the registration of nearly 9,000 foreign-funded NGOs that failed to file their annual returns. The order, quietly issued on April 6, came days before the Centre’s effort to tighten the grip on prominent NGOs that receive foreign funds like Greenpeace India and the Ford Foundation. The security establishment has been advocating a hard line on foreign-funded NGOs for years. But it was only after a change of regime at the Centre that the home ministry started the groundwork for the crackdown. –Aloke Tikku, Hindustan Times, 28 April 2015
With news that Pope Francis will release a document articulating the importance of addressing climate change, a document that will be paired with a three-month-long campaign for individual parishes per the Times and a speech to Congress that is likely to broach the subject — can Pope Francis actually change Americans’ minds? We’re skeptics. Attitudes on global warming have been fairly flat for decades now, with those considering it a subject for worry comprising just over half of the population and those not worried at all slowly gaining in number. –Philip Bump, The Washington Post, 28 April 2015
There was no discussion at this week’s Vatican “conference” en route to Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change. What’s to discuss? Anybody who disagrees is an apostate, destined for damnation. The important point is to stop them bringing climate hell to earth. The event – along with an accompanying statement — confirmed that the Vatican has become an arm of the godless United Nations, and an unabashed shill for its murky Sustainable Development Goals. The Vatican’s climate change statement peddles eco-liberation theology based on the tedious demonization of markets and capitalism. –Peter Foster, Financial Post, 29 April 2015
Its hard to tell if we are witnessing mass climate hysteria, or just loathsome fear mongering to promote a political agenda, but it is oh so predictable, and oh so sickening. Every weather event and every tragedy is now due rising CO2. To paraphrase Dr. Viner, “natural storms and earthquakes are now just a thing of the past”. With the help of a few alarmist scientists, the media bombards us with the meme that “Everything is caused by rising CO2.” Today the Seth Bornstein prize for yellow climate journalism goes to Newsweek. –Jim Steele, Watts Up With That, 29 April 2015
Jean-Pascale van Ypersele, a Belgian activist scientist who is seeking leadership of the UN climate panel, approaches climate change not as a dispassionate scholar, but as a committed environmental activist. He is an honourary member of that granddaddy of green groups, the Club of Rome. He has accepted financing from Greenpeace and produced a report for that organization at the very same time he was serving as an IPCC official. This is outrageous behaviour. If a judge in a murder trial were writing reports for the prosecutor’s office, no one would believe for a second that he was impartial. He’d be dismissed. –Donna Laframboise, No Frakking Consensus, 28 April 2015
1) U.S. Senators Vote To Block EPA’s Use Of ‘Secret Science’
The Hill, 28 April 2015
Timothy Cama
A Senate committee voted Tuesday to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from using ‘secret science’ to back its regulations.
The vote in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee came after the GOP-controlled House repeatedly approved the bill. It previous was stalled in the Democratic-majority Senate.
Under the measure, which President Obama has threatened to veto if the Senate passes it, the EPA would only be allowed to use scientific studies whose detailed results are posted publicly online.
“EPA has a long history of relying on science that was not created by the agency itself. This often means that the science is not available to the public, and therefore cannot be reproduced and verified,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the bill’s sponsor, said at a committee hearing.
“What this bill is trying to accomplish is to make sure that we strengthen the scientific information the EPA uses to make regulations, guidance and assessments,” he continued.
But Democrats said the bill would unnecessary cut in half the studies that the EPA can use, because research is often uses proprietary, health-related or otherwise restricted data.
“This bill would force them to use whatever science was available after legal challenges generate from the broad language of this legislation,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)
2) Republican Senators Weigh How To Undercut Obama’s Climate Strategy
The Wall Street Journal, 27 April 2015
Colleen McCain Nelson
Republican senators view global deal to reduce emissions as executive overreach
President Barack Obama and Congress are headed for another power clash on the international stage, as key Senate Republicans challenge his efforts to forge a global pact on climate change.
The White House considers the agreement with nearly 200 nations a historic opportunity to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions world-wide. But some GOP senators view it as executive overreach, and they are quietly considering ways to warn other countries that the president doesn’t speak for them and may not be able to deliver on his promises to slash emissions.
The strategy has a familiar ring. Last month, 47 Republican senators signed a letter telling Iran’s leaders that the next president could revoke any nuclear agreement and that Congress could modify it at any time. Some Senate Republicans say they want to send a similar message to the countries negotiating an agreement that would rein in greenhouse-gas emissions.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said in a recent interview that a bipartisan pact giving Congress a bigger role in reviewing a final Iran deal could serve as a precedent when Republicans chart a climate-change strategy.
The GOP effort to throw up a roadblock comes as the president pursues a lasting legacy on climate change through the international accord. It also reignites a debate about balance of powers, with the executive and legislative branches clashing over the limits of the president’s authority.
Administration officials have signaled optimism in recent weeks that climate talks are on track, with countries working toward completing a deal in December in Paris. They have expressed confidence that laws already on the books will allow them to move ahead with a plan submitted to the United Nations to cut greenhouse gases in the U.S. by nearly 30% by 2025 based on 2005 emission levels.
A central component of the president’s climate plan is a contentious Environmental Protection Agencyproposal to cut carbon emissions from U.S. power plants that is being challenged in court. Mr. McConnell, who argues the power-plant regulations hurt the coal industry in states including his, last month warned other countries to “proceed with caution before entering into a binding, unattainable deal.” He argues that the U.S. is unlikely to meet the targets even if the EPA rule is upheld.
Administration officials say they are confident the EPA is on firm legal footing, adding that similar regulations have been challenged repeatedly and usually have been upheld. They also argue that they can seal the international agreement using existing authority.
“We’re operating in a space where we feel comfortable that we have the authority that we need to galvanize global momentum on this issue,” said Brian Deese, a senior adviser to the president. “We’re focused on trying to reach an agreement that is durable and will be good for the United States, and we’re comfortable that we can accomplish that with the authority that we have.”
Mr. Obama said last week that he had committed the U.S. to leading the world in combating the threat of climate change.
Senate Republicans, though, question the president’s plan to curb carbon emissions and the impact it would have on the U.S. economy.
Sen. James Inhofe (R., Okla.) said Mr. Obama’s unilateral pursuit of the climate accord exceeds the scope of president’s power. Mr. Inhofe, the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, plans to hold a hearing this summer focused on the Senate’s advice-and-consent process and its possible application in international climate negotiations.
Additionally, Mr. Inhofe said the Iran letter, which was penned by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), could be a useful model to send a message about the climate agreement.
“The Tom Cotton letter was an educational effort,” Mr. Inhofe said in an interview. Other countries think “if the president of the United States says something, it’s just automatic…His letter was over there saying, ‘the president says he can do this; he can’t do this.’ ”
Mr. Obama decried as inappropriately partisan both the letter from 47 Republican senators and Mr. McConnell’s warning to the world about the U.S. government’s ability to fulfill a climate-change pledge.
“That’s not how we’re supposed to run foreign policy, regardless of who’s president or secretary of state,” Mr. Obama said during a news conference earlier this month.
Todd Stern, the special envoy for climate change at the State Department, said other countries have raised questions during climate negotiations about Republican opposition to Mr. Obama’s plan for cutting emissions, but he said international partners can be confident that the U.S. will honor its commitment.
3) Shrewd Move: India Pledges To Voluntarily Reduce CO2 Intensity Of GDP (Again)
Press Trust of India, 29 April 2015
India has voluntarily announced efforts to reduce emission intensity by 20-25 per cent by 2020 from the 2005 level without reckoning the emissions from agriculture sector, Lok Sabha was informed today.
Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said during Question Hour that though India was a party to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, it did not have legally binding green house gas (GHG) emission reduction commitments.
“However Government has voluntarily announced to reduce emission intensity of Gross Domestic Product by 20-25 per cent by 2020 from the 2005 level,” he said.
The government is implementing the National Solar Mission, National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency, National Mission on Sustainable Habitat and Green India Mission under the National Action Plan on Climate change, which are aimed at addressing mitigation of GHG emissions, he said.
Editor’s Note: India’s renewed pledge to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 20 – 25% in 2020 compared to 2005 levels is more than 5 years old and was originally submitted to the Copenhagen Accord on 30 January 2010.
4) India Cancels Registration Of 9,000 Foreign-Funded NGOs
Hindustan Times, 28 April 2015
Aloke Tikku
The Modi government has cancelled the registration of nearly 9,000 foreign-funded NGOs that failed to file their annual returns.
In an order, the home ministry said the registration of 8,975 NGOs that had neither filed their annual returns for three years (beginning 2009) nor given any explanation for the delay, stood cancelled with immediate effect. The ministry also directed the district magistrate concerned to “manage the assets” of these NGOs in any manner “considered necessary and in public interest”.
The order, quietly issued on April 6, came days before the Centre’s effort to tighten the grip on prominent NGOs that receive foreign funds like Greenpeace India and the Ford Foundation.
The security establishment has been advocating a hard line on foreign-funded NGOs for years. But it was only after a change of regime at the Centre that the home ministry started the groundwork for the crackdown.
5) Peter Foster: Red-Green Alliance Captures The Vatican
Financial Post, 29 April 2015
The Vatican’s climate change statement peddles eco-liberation theology based on the tedious demonization of markets and capitalism.
The event – along with an accompanying statement — confirmed that the Vatican has become an arm of the godless United Nations, and an unabashed shill for its murky Sustainable Development Goals.
The encyclical is due to land in September to rally climate True Believers ahead of the U.N.’s giant policy shindig in Paris.
This week’s statement, from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PAS/PASS), continued the wildly alarmist tone of the longer document they issued last year. It confirms that Vatican not merely has slim or no grasp of economics or history, but is on its knees before tried-and-failed collectivist policies, and committed to a crusade against rich nations.
According to the statement — Climate Change and the Common Good: A Statement Of The Problem And The Demand For Transformative Solutions – ‘The move to a sustainable world will not be cost-free for all: the options we face are not ‘win-win’… We should be prepared to accept a reallocation of the benefits and burdens that accompany humanity’s activities both within nations and between nations.’
And you thought you only had to worry about the depredations of Kathleen Wynne or Thomas Mulcair.
The statement peddles eco-liberation theology based on the tedious demonization of markets and capitalism. It claims that “Market forces alone, bereft of ethical values, cannot solve the intertwined crises of poverty, exclusion, and the environment.” But market forces are never “left alone.” Moreover, history tells us that those countries where market forces are allowed to work under secure rights of property are the ones which tend to be most ethical and charitable.
The statement makes no mention of the terrible earthquake in Nepal and the fact that all the relief funds are coming from the very developed countries that are said to be fecklessly causing climate catastrophe. It is pervaded by the collectivist ethic of the left and its urge to rationalize power under the guise of “Doing Good,” a motive as deep-seatedly corrupt as that of sexual lust lurking behind the mask of religiosity.
Like the document produced by the PAS/PASS last year, this one reads like any UN report, except for the alleged role of religion in creating a new “moral revolution.” It condemns all the old socialist targets of consumption and inequality and “business as usual,” and demonizes fossil fuels, while painting loaves-and-fishes projections of new wonder low-carbon technologies.
The most revolutionary part as far as the Catholic Church is concerned is that it appears to support population control, an obsession of the left which has traditionally not been high on the list of Vatican priorities. But then perhaps that’s meant to come about through more capacity building around the rhythm method.
It calls, again, not for a New Socialist Man but a New Vatican Man whose attitude towards Nature has been “reoriented” in a more collectivist direction. Faith, hope and charity are transformed into ideology, sustainability and forced redistribution. Godliness is now to be replaced by “deep de-carbonization.”
The document deals with the main, and growing, problem of official climate science — the failure of official models to predict the “pause” or “hiatus” of warming over the past eighteen years – by ignoring it. It’s idea of science is to peddle large, scary, perspective-free numbers such as “1000 billion tons of carbon dioxide.”
On the policy front, it claims “Adequate technological solutions and policy options have been clearly prescribed in numerous reports and need no extended repetition here.”
Trust us, we’ve got God on our side.
Gross Domestic Product inevitably comes in for excommunication. It claims that fossil fuel exploitation has “taken a huge toll on human wellbeing.” Slim mention is made of their enormous benefits.
It peddles the insupportable claim that the world’s poor are somehow that way because capitalist nations have taken more than their “fair share,” but what poor people suffer from is lack of capitalism, not an excess of it. They lack it is because they live under corrupt governments whose leaders, particularly in South America, are likely to sport rosaries.
The statement is at its most posturingly outrageous when it suggest that “we” must give up “the greedy behavior that was so necessary for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to survive and instead become truly social beings, living together in comfort and sustainably.”
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6) Newsweek Disgracefully Links the Mt Everest Tragedy to Rising CO2
Watts Up With That, 29 April 2015
Jim Steele
Its hard to tell if we are witnessing mass climate hysteria, or just loathsome fear mongering to promote a political agenda, but it is oh so predictable, and oh so sickening. Every weather event and every tragedy is now due rising CO2.
To paraphrase Dr. Viner, “natural storms and earthquakes are now just a thing of the past”. With the help of a few alarmist scientists, the media bombards us with the meme that “Everything is caused by rising CO2.” Today the Seth Bornstein prize for yellow climate journalism goes to Newsweek.
Last August they tried to infect our psyche’s suggesting the horrific Ebola outbreak was a function of rising CO2 writing, “Ebola and Climate Change: Are Humans Responsible for the Severity of the Current Outbreak?”
This March they hawked the notion that the brutalities of the War in Syria are due to global warming firing off that “Climate Change Helped Create Conditions for War in Syria, Study Suggests.”
Now with tragic deaths from the earthquake-caused avalanche in Nepal, not even the ground we walk on is safe from the devastating effects of climate change, as Newsweek blathers “More Fatal Earthquakes to Come, Warn Climate Change Scientists”
“Climate change may play a critical role in triggering certain faults in certain places where they could kill a hell of a lot of people,” says Professor McGuire. Some of his colleagues suspect the process may already have started. “
http://www.newsweek.com/nepal-earthquake-could-have-been-manmade-disaster-climate-change-brings-326017.html
7) Jean-Pascal van Ypersele: The Green Activist Who Wants To Run The IPCC
No Frakking Consensus, 28 April 2015
Donna Laframboise
A Belgian activist scientist seeking leadership of the UN climate panel flies to Pakistan – and is fawned over by the media.
Jean-Pascale van Ypersele (courtesy of Wikipedia; click for original)
An article published yesterday in a Pakistan financial newspaper is a good example of the wretched state of climate change journalism. Since 2002, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele has been an official with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Now keen to become its next chairman, he flew to Islamabad earlier this month “to gain support for his candidature.”
His visit included a meeting with Pakistan’s foreign affairs ministry and an interview (I use that term loosely) with an unidentified journalist employed by the Business Recorder. Unfortunately, no serious journalism took place. The account published by the newspaper makes the occasion sound like a tea party in which pals sat around and mutually decried the stupidity of the rest of humanity.
Van Ypersele approaches climate change not as a dispassionate scholar, but as a committed environmental activist. He is an honourary member of that granddaddy of green groups, the Club of Rome. Recently, I wrote about how he accepted financing from Greenpeace and produced a report for that organization at the very same time he was serving as an IPCC official. This is outrageous behaviour. If a judge in a murder trial were writing reports for the prosecutor’s office, no one would believe for a second that he was impartial. He’d be dismissed. […]
Worst of all, however, is van Ypersele’s towering self-regard. Somehow, this physicist imagines he is invested with moral authority – that it’s his job to scold the rest of us. Our civilization, our economic system, our political leaders are all wrong. We suffer from a “mindset problem.” Changes in “human behaviour” are required. The world needs to be re-designed according to his specifications.
There are many labels one might attach to such thinking. Megalomania. Religious zeal. Messianic delusion. But at the end of the day, what’s clear is that Van Ypersele is just another green activist.
Who thinks he should be running the world’s most important climate change body.
