What better endorsement could skeptics ask for? – Anthony
by Lawrence Solomon in the Financial Post
The justices of the United States Supreme Court this week became the world’s most august global warming sceptics. Not by virtue of their legal reasoning – the global warming case they decided turned on a technical legal issue — but in their surprising commentary. Global warming is by no means a settled issue, they made clear, suggesting it would be foolhardy to assume it was.
“The court, we caution, endorses no particular view of the complicated issues related to carbon-dioxide emissions and climate change,” reads the 8-0 decision, delivered by the court’s acclaimed liberal, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The court decision noted that the Environmental Protection Agency itself had “Acknowledg[ed] that not all scientists agreed on the causes and consequences of the rise in global temperatures,” before suggesting readers consult “views opposing” the conventional wisdom. Specifically, the justices’ recommended reading was a superb profile of Princeton’s Freeman Dyson, perhaps America’s most respected scientist, written in the New York Times Magazine, March 29, 2009.
Freeman, an unabashed skeptic, believes that carbon dioxide, rather than being harmful, is both necessary and desirable, arguing that “increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
Somewhat in the same vein, Justice Ginsburg notes carbon dioxide is necessary and ubiquitous, and thus shouldn’t be the target of indiscriminate attacks. “After all, we each emit carbon dioxide merely by breathing,” she notes, repeating a point that Dyson couldn’t have said better himself.
To see exactly what the Supreme Court said in its remarkable American Electric Power v. Connecticut decision, click here.
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers.
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See also:
Freeman Dyson: speaking out on “global warming”
Freeman Dyson on Heretical Thoughts and Climate Change
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As I stated before.
From the Court
Indeed, this prescribed order of decision making the first decider under the Act is the expert administrative agency, the second, federal judges is yet another reason to resist setting emissions standards by judicial decree under federal tort law. The appropriate amount of regulation in any particular greenhouse gas-producing sector cannot be prescribed in a vacuum: as with other questions of national or international policy, informed assessment if competing interests is required. Along with the environmental benefit potentially achievable, our Nation’s energy needs and the possibility of economic disruption must weigh in the balance.
The Clean Air Act entrusts such complex balancing to EPA in the first instance, in combination with state regulators. Each “standard of performance” EPA sets must “take into account the cost of achieving [emissions] reduction and any non air quality health and environmental impact and energy requirements.”</b?
Then see the Climate and Energy post & Assessment of the Obama Administration’s Cost-Benefit Analysis of Clean Air Act Regulations By David Montgomery and Anne Smith, NERA Economic Consulting, Jun 14, 2011
http://www.ntu.org/news-and-issues/energy-env…
Need to force the EPA to prove their cost analysis.
They also noted that, should the EPA decide at the conclusion of their ruling that CO2 was not a danger, the plaintiffs still could not fall back on federal common law. That avenue no longer exists now that the EPA has been assigned responsibility for deciding the issue.
Also, the Court didn’t sidestep the issue. They made it clear that there’s an established procedure in place: the EPA issues a ruling; someone won’t like it; it gets appealed and ends up before the court system … again. If, as seems likely, the EPA rules to tightly control CO2 and they ignore evidence submitted to it that the problem’s overblown, the EPA’s decision can be appealed on the basis that they ignored dissenting evidence. It is of such issues that teams of lawyers are kept employed.
This is a bit of a walk back. Having given the EPA the authority to regulate CO2 , they have observed that the EPA now has the authority to destroy America. The EPA can not only prohibit exhausts, but can mandate results. Such as prohibiting forestry, planting certain crops, subdivisions, roads,, etc. Insanity.
Of course, even if the EPA does, somehow, “regulate” our CO2 emissions, it will have a nearly zero impact on global warming and the meaningless “global mean temperature” metric, unless, of course, the EPA’s reach extends to China, India, Russia, …
However, CO2 regulation will nevertheless have a significant impact… ON JOBS. Particularly, it will impact the jobs of people the CAGW extremists don’t like, such as oil workers, miners, farmers, truckers, power plant workers…meanwhile, government climate industry jobs will grow and thrive (just look who got the “stimulus” money).
Smokey says:
June 24, 2011 at 9:52 am
The hockey team has sole authority to decide who is and who isn’t a “climate scientist”.
The argument that “After all, we each emit carbon dioxide merely by breathing,” has, I suggest, zero value for the purpose for which it is quoted. We also, all of us, emit small amounts of hydrogen sulfide which as is fairly well known is, molecule for molecule, rather more toxic than hydrogen cyanide. Of course carbon dioxide is a carbon source for plants and this (among others) is a solid rejoinder to those nuts who call CO2, a pollutant.
Moderate Republican says:
June 24, 2011 at 8:04 am
What the court said is that the EPA has jurisdiction here – not that they don’t believe this isn’t an issue.
“Belief” shouldn’t even come into play (that’s a matter for the faithful). Believe what you want – just don’t impose your beliefs on me.
“EPA concluded that “compelling” evidence supported the “attribution of observed climate change to anthropogenic” emissions of greenhouse gases”
Uh.. just because the court acknowledged something the EPA thought, doesn’t mean the court agreed. You’re clutching at straws.. that aren’t there.
Dave N says @ur momisugly June 24, 2011 at 10:53 am “You’re clutching at straws.. that aren’t there.”
You mean like trying to paint this decision as somehow a rejection of climate science? Yeah, I’d agree that trying to do that is clutching as straws.
vigilantfish says:
June 24, 2011 at 9:00 am
The humility expressed by the Supreme Court in the remarks you quoted is extremely clear. I hope that the CAGW folks, and scientists generally, can learn this lesson in humility.
What do Al Gore and his minions fail to understand about “No federal judge shall hold that ‘The science is settled’?” Time will tell.
Until mainstream scientists embrace the scientific method, their opinions can hardly be called scientific.
Moderate Republican says:
June 24, 2011 at 8:04 am
No, they said that EPA has jurisdiction and that no federal judge should hold that the science is settled. Federal Judges take note of statements like that. In case you are not American, permit me to explain that the SCOTUS just put federal judges on notice that a ruling that the science is settled will be overturned by at least eight SCOTUS justices. What will Al Gore do?
No really, how is the court agreeing that the EPA concluded something an endorsement of said EPA conclusion. Please explain this.
Rattus Norvegicus says:
June 24, 2011 at 9:39 am
OMG, federal judges have just been put on notice that a ruling that implies that the science is settled will be overturned by at least eight members of the SCOTUS.
Of such rulings comes the threat of citizen revolt. It may be a slow process because voting is a slow immutable process. Change in government policies come form the vote, the best and last resort of a civilization.
I fear that the alarmists will only use this to accuse “Big Oil” of having bought influence in the Supreme Court.
This is a BIG loss for the watermelons. It takes away their ability to harrass any company they didn’t like for emitting GHGs. However, the companies can still sue the EPA.
I see a lot of spin, but the bottom line is … this a big win for the truth.
DD More says:
June 24, 2011 at 10:18 am
http://www.ntu.org/news-and-issues/energy-env…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The correct link is
http://www.ntu.org/news-and-issues/energy-environment/
There is a tendency to read into USSC decisions an opinion concerning the facts of a case. In this instance an opinion on AGW. However, the court mostly ignores such facts; it is focused on the law.
In this case AGW skeptics (power companies) and mainstream AGW believers (EPA) were on the same side … that a 3rd party (states and NYC) could not force the EPA to take a specific action (issue regulation) in what they deemed a timely manner. The ruling was not so much against extreme AGW believers (the states and NYC) as against the process they wanted to impose on another AGW believer (the EPA).
As in previous decisions the USSC made it clear that the logical (and legal) fact-finder was not the courts but the one designated by Congress for such issues… the EPA. People often say the USSC previously ruled CO2 contributed to GW and required the EPA to regulate it. They did not. What they ruled was the EPA was responsible for determining the facts of the issue and based on these facts making necessary regulations (if any). In other words, the EPA had authority in this area. The current ruling mostly affirms that position.
Smokey says@ur momisugly June 22, 2011 at 6:53 am “And increased CO2 is not only completely harmless, it is a net benefit to the biosphere. ”
Respectfully, anyone making an assertion like the above is most certainly not qualified to deride “mainstream science:.
Lawrence Solomon’s spin on the decision by the supreme court is mind blowing. Serisouly, Everyone take the time to read the decision. It is pretty obvious from ACTUALLY reading the decision that the Court agrees that greenhouse gas emissions are dangerous and the EPA is able to regulate them. Any other interpretation is absolute nonsense.
it’s too much work for me to spin this decision into anything positive.
they grant and affirm that co2 is a pollutant and that the epa must must therefore regulate it.
they further endorse the notion of ‘greenhouse gas’ and do not question the catastrophic claims.
they further identify themselves as ‘NOT FINDERS OF FACT’.
well, none of that lot are finders of fact – they are all engaged evasion of facts. not the government nor the supreme court need any steenkeen facts.
and there are no pleasant facts to be found in that decision.
there is no cause for any parade.
this is not a feast of reason.
we are just going to get screwed and the witchdoctors will merely belabor the tactics.
Will The Supreme Court be on the Black List now? Will they get tatoo’s?
Y’all ain’t seein’ the sublime beauty before ye: commies of all colors attached their full fleet of limousines to a dog star that is suddenly flickering ‘stead o’ burnin’ bright.
Which of you are on the trail of Net news sites, half of which allow public comments? For the first and perhaps last time in human history, everybody can step up to the plate with a their own free printing press, so I suggest a new hobby: Google (“News”) for Global Warming each day and say to you distant neighbors, that Chicken Little is a b*tch, that Emperor’s require clothes, and that seven nines do not equal seventy nine.
-=NikFromNYC=- Ph.D. in Carbon Chemistry (Columbia/Harvard)
P.S. my CNC router towers o’er my old Italian bed in which I sat every Friday, an hour or four at a time, becoming World War Two, as I peered down a mile of Broadway USA from floor five: father fixed aircraft instruments in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska in the Pacific theatre. Those flyboys weren’t coming back if the glowing dials didn’t spin right. On -=Nik’s=- Island of the Atlantic, this Isle of Man, even my Upper West Side neighbors adopt “kid caught with hand in cookie jar” bad doggie looks when Global Warming (R.I.P.) embarrassingly slips through their stupid sister’s lips. Global Warming is the Stuxnex virus, a meme set free, devilish by decree, which is now stripping cockroaches of their ladybug paintjobs. Hurray, I say!
P.S.S. Here is the mandatory Nietzsche quote that expresses my repeated first impression of the grandfatherly folk that spook skeptic sites instead of venture forth to spread good news views in comments of Net news:
“The Hammer Speaks:
Why so hard?” the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. “After all, are we not close kin?”
Why so soft? O my brothers, thus I ask you: are you not after all my brothers?
Why so soft, so pliant and yielding? Why is there so much denial, self-denial, in your hearts? So little destiny in your eyes?
And if you do not want to be destinies and inexorable ones, how can you one day triumph with me?
And if your hardness does not wish to flash and cut through, how can you one day create with me?
For all creators are hard. And it must seem blessedness to you to impress your hand on millennia as on wax.
Blessedness to write on the will of millennia as on bronze — harder than bronze, nobler than bronze. Only the noblest is altogether hard.
This new tablet, O my brothers, I place over you: Become hard!”
Moderate Republican says:
June 24, 2011 at 11:03 am
Speaking of grasping at straws, that a nice strawman there.
Nobody has ever said or even implied that this ruling means the courts are rejecting climate science.