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Web Letter

You indicate that the EPA is doing an "end run around Congress." This is unacceptable. When it comes to cap & trade, the Constitution requires two-thirds of Congress to vote for a treaty. The votes are not there. They were not there when Clinton tried it. Congress represents the people. There are no end runs by bureaucrats or the president authorized by the Constitution. If the EPA decides to operate outside of constitutional authority, Congress should rein it in by, first, stripping it of its authority to intervene, and then punishing this out-of-control bureaucracy by stripping it of one-third of its budget. Congress should then invite the head of EPA to the Hill to apologize for the misbehaviour of the agency, and if the EPA Administrator does not support the action of Congress or fails to show, they should cut the budget by another one-third. We can't have the inmates running the institution.

Web Letter

Understanding the problem does not mean we have the best solution. Just because we love our children doesn't mean we make the best parents.

Are we destroying our Mother Earth? Yes. Do we need to do something about it? Yes.

I work in the trenches of business, where I get to deal with environmental/safety regulations all the time.

My input on this subject matter is that activists keep pushing for regulations with good intentions, but they have actually no real understanding of how those regulations actually work in the day-to-day life of a business. The regulators that write the laws also have little real understanding of the guts of the business they are regulating.

As a result we have mountains of poorly written, not-well-thought-out regulations that are a lot less effective than we realize and that create through the law of unintended consequences many other problems that were not considered.

The outcome is that tremendous financial and human capital and energy is being wasted and thus not available for our other needs.

There are many ways to improve this situation, here are two of them:

1) Activists and regulators need to talk to the people that will actually be implementing the regulations and not academics, politicians, consultants, upper management, lobbyists, etc.

2) We need to be able to learn from our mistake and make changes to the regulations over time by keeping what works and changing what doesn't. This is very rarely done.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows that it would be very difficult to verify any of the CRU's adjustments to the raw data.

The "independent" British panel, chaired by former Shell chairman, current carbon trade industrialist and avid CO₂AGW fearmongerer Lord Oxburgh, found that the CRU had failed to use the "best" and "most sophisticated" statistical methods in their adjustments to the raw data, use of proxy measurements, correction of hetroskedacity and composition of linear regressions. The panel also found that the Michael Mann/Stephen Jones hockey sticks were based on "improper" statistical methods.

Ultimately, the panel cleared the CRU of "malfeasance" because it did not find any clear evidence of "deliberate dishonesty." Obviously, the panel did not review the e-mails wherein CRU scientists conspired to delete data so as to avoid FOIA requests. Conveniently, a different panel was assigned that specific inquiry, and this third panel is not set to report for a few weeks still.

Obviously, since the panel found that the CRU failed to use the "best" statistical methods, and in some cases used "improper" methods, the question is whether the use of those methods can be shown to have no effect on the results.

But instead of answering that question, the "independent" panel simply found that "it was not clear" that the methods used "prejudiced the results."

This is very telling. Instead of making a finding that the methods used "did not prejudice the results," the panel made the finding that "it was not clear that the methods prejudiced the results" (Professor Hand). In other words, the panel wants to operate with the assumption that the CRU results are correct, and will only question that theory if "it is clear" that the methods were prejudicial. Obviously, honest science requires the presumption that shoddy statistical regressions based on adjusted data and proxy measurements must be proven to be true before they are accepted as true. So the panel's approach to the issue of whether shoddy statistical methods undermine the veracity of the CRU's results, was, unsurprisingly, antiscientific.

Of course, anyone who has been paying attention knows that it would be very difficult to verify any of the CRU's adjustments to the raw data, reliance on proxy measurements and corrections for hetroskedacity, because the CRU destroyed its raw data, and no other comprehensive database of global temperature measurements exist (JMA, NAOO and NASA all have partial databases, but are also fighting FOIA requests and otherwise resisting disclosure).

Ah, yes... the "illustrious" Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change...

Ah, yes... the "illustrious" Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change...you know, those folks who brought you the bogus alarmist report about melting Himalayan glaciers. Very trustworthy bunch, those IPCC folks.

And quoting George Will: "Disclosure of e-mails and documents from the Climate Research Unit in Britain--a collaborator with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--reveals some scientists' willingness to suppress or massage data and rig the peer review process and the publication of scholarly work" (emphasis added).

This hardly makes me want to love--or trust--the IPCC or those who shill for it.

And where is China on reducing emissions? And India? Why not advocate for them to lead the way, rather than advocating for us to lead the way, while strangling ourselves economically in the process and hamstringing our economy to where we're seriously disadvantaged? Is attacking America this way more of Christian Parenti's "world view"?

Finally, consider the Green Sahara:

Several factors led to the formation of the Green Sahara. The Sahara has been a desert for a very long time, but around 10,000 BCE, the Earth's orbit wobbled slightly, causing a shift in weather patterns. The monsoons which drench Southern Africa today shifted up, pouring water onto the Sahara, where it formed bodies of water. Plants settled in, taking advantage of the moist environment, and they were followed by animals and humans who established lively civilizations. When weather patterns shifted again, the Sahara returned to a desert state briefly before greening once more. Around 4,000 BCE, the Sahara became a desert once more, and it is now rapidly expanding, due to a variety of factors.

This is from National Geographic:

For much of the past 70,000 years, the Sahara has closely resembled the desert it is today. Some 12,000 years ago, however, a wobble in the Earth's axis and other factors caused Africa's seasonal monsoons to shift slightly north, bringing new rains to an area nearly the size of the contiguous United States. Lush watersheds stretched across the Sahara, from Egypt to Mauritania, drawing animal life and eventually people.

Where were the greenhouse gases then? Where were the polluting automobiles? Where were the factories? What human factors caused the Earth to wobble on its axis?

Take the following quote from Parenti and change three words. He writes: "But a dangerous assault on the agency is gathering momentum in Congress, corporate boardrooms, the media and the courts." Change "dangerous assault on" to "necessary defense against." Then it would be right.

A future based on wind, hydro, geo amd solar is a completely unrealistic fantasy.

A future based on wind, hydro, geo amd solar is a completely unrealistic fantasy. Reducing greenhouse gases would require a massive crash program in nuclear energy. You should be more protective of your own credibility than to fall flat so obviously. But that is obviously not within the oversight of the EPA.

This leaves aside the basic question that climate science has yet to determine: how much the greenhouse gasses actually contribute to supposed global warming. As more science becomes available, it looks less and less likely.

Environmentalism is a fraud.

Environmentalism is a fraud. The EPA is a front organization for the promotion of international totalitarian Marxism, part of an illegitimate government. Climate change is caused by changes in solar radiation. No evidence exists that it is related to gases or human activity. All of the so-called "scientists" promoting the propaganda of climate change are either government employees or getting money to push the propaganda. The AlGorian religion is based on superstition and massive fraud.