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
In a way, this decision is too bad. Basically it keeps New Yorkers and other eastern US liberal morons from freezing their bippies off in the dark. That would have served them right.
Still, this is a tempest in a teapot. The Clean Air Act gives no authority to the EPA to regulate CO2 emissions; any such authority stems from court orders and executive orders. After the elections of 2012, the executive orders will be terminated, Congress will amend the CAA to state specifically that CO2 is off limits, and the courts be damned. And perhaps, the EPA will suffer the massive retrenchment that it deserves.
Vote early and vote often!
MR:
Thanx for your typically baseless opinion. You’re wrong, as usual. Obviously you either haven’t been reading the citations provided, or cognitive dissonance causes you to reject out of hand facts which don’t fit your belief system. I suspect the latter. But it could be both.
This is hilarious. You tell someone else they’re mis-using the term strawman as you just created a straw man.
Let me recap for you.
Someone said that CO2 is beneficial.
You said no it isn’t, it’s harmful.
Someone else pointed out lots of links to research that said it is beneficial.
You then say, no, plants are not solely-dependent on CO2 concentration, so he’s wrong.
Except, no one made any such claim. No one said that plant growth is limited by CO2 concentration, simply that they benefit from a higher concentration. What you did was create a strawman right there, so you could knock it down. No one made the claim you spoke of, but you implied they did just so you could say they were wrong.
Hilarious.
jtom says:
June 24, 2011 at 6:16 pm
“Although I’ve seen that graph many times, it still leaves me edgy whenever I see it. The long term trend line for CO2 is obviously down.”
Don’t tell MR this, but the X-axis is in millions of years!
CodeTech says:
June 24, 2011 at 4:48 pm
“Every so often, a new form of entertainment appears at WUWT (and most blogs, for that matter), that I like to call the persistent troll (PT). ”
Oooh, oooh! Can I play the PT now? Please??
[ahem]
“OK, there…Smokey! You obviously don’t perceive the ridiculosity of your fetid arguments! I mean, the logic is inescapable…all plants needs CO2…we humans are pumping out too much CO2…so too many plants will live…and, errrr, thrive…but, uhhh, then they will eventually die! And that will be BAD…ergo…too much CO2 is bad…and 110% of the climate scientists agree with me, because if they don’t agree with you, they logically MUST agree with me. And by the way, you really ARE ignorant…don’t you know that the proper gender-neutral term today is “straw-person” NOT “straw-MAN”. Sheesh!”
\PT
If MR did some research he would be very surprised by some of the findings. It seems that added atmospheric CO2 can ameliorate conditions that would otherwise preclude plant growth. For instance, if conditions are to arid to grow a plant, it will grow if you increase the available water OR increase carbon dioxide; if the soil is too poor for plants, you can add nutrients OR carbon dioxide and the plants will flurish; too little sun, add light OR increase carbon dioxide; too cold, too hot, etc.
I found this to be a rather fascinating relationship between carbon dioxide and plant life. It really underscores the importance of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Passing this issue along to the EPA looks like a BAD idea to me. The EPA administration is basically appointed by the President! He has said that he intends to use the EPA’s regulatory powers to force through policies that he can’t get through the legislative channels. SCOTUS PILATE has just washed its hands of the issue of regulating CO2. And as for the hope of voting out Obama and his EPA thugs in 2012, that may be wishful thinking.
John B says: June 24, 2011 at 4:40 pm
“If a scientist submits a proposal for a research grant, it [the EPA] will not be funded unless it will conclude that CO2 is a problem.”
And how would they know the conclusion at the time of issuing the grant?
That’s something I am quite familiar with, as I have written many proposals to government agencies, and have a good win rate. The proposal *must* tell them what they want to hear or there is no chance of winning a contract. My experience is with NASA and DoD agencies, but the policies are quite the same.
It wuz BIG’AwLL wut dun kunSPEERaHSEEd muh SCOTUS!!!
Of course, you know perfectly well, I said no such thing. You say CO2 benefits cannot possibly outweigh the harm. First, CO2 benefits are demonstrable, our very being is evidence. The harm is conjecture, existing only in incomplete modality. Empirical evidence that CO2 in a glass tube warms when irradiated with IR photons(of narrow bands), hardly constitutes evidence that it drives climate at all. All substances absorb and re-emit IR photons. It’s all about sensitivity, and that is hardly settled. Don’t even get me started on feed-backs.
You need to let go of ideology and agenda serving, arm waving, baby kissing science and re-evaluate (re-visit) the actual evidence and data. You are at the right blog for the “do over”. You will find no tombstones, nor death certificate, that declares “cause of death” as ACO2 or any other kind of CO2, for that mater. GK
MR applying your own logic to CO2 causing CAGW, one can equally conclude:
“For anyone to argue that CO2 in a controlled environment (computer model) is a proxy for all of the Earth’s temperature is ridiculously unscientific”
Either you must admit your own logic is faulty or you must accept that CAGW from CO2 is, by your own definition, ridiculously unscientific.
Great work Jerem RE Moderate Republican and strawmen. 🙂
There was a great interview with Freeman Dyson on Charlie Rose a couple years ago…it suddenly disappeared after about a week. I did save it before that.
I have not watched Charlie Rose since he danced on Michael Crighton’s grave by interviewing Al Gore [in which interview Rose disclosed that he and ‘Al’ had a joint business venture] on the 1st Anniversary of Crighton’s death.
Theo Goodwin says:
“Congress has total authority over EPA, including the authority to abolish it. So, EPA can rule whatever Barry and Lisa want but Congress can immediately change the law.”
I agree. All of the “authority” of the EPA is Congressional authority that Congress delegated to the EPA. In a previous USSC case the EPA asserted (with the weakest argument they could muster) they did not have the authority to regulate CO2 and the USSC ruled that Congress had given them the authority to regulate CO2 if they found it harmful. And making that determination was the job of the EPA.
So of course Congress can take it back the authority … hopefully they will.
“The Supreme Court can be no better than the “consensus” — they obviously are not questioning it seriously, or they wouldn’t have affirmed the EPA’s authority to regulate a natural gas — so of course they are incompetent.”
Nonsense. All they did in AEP v. Conn. was dismiss a nuisance lawsuit on grounds that EPA has jurisdiction over the issue, not individual states. That was a very predictable (and not at all alarming) result. That’s why the decision was unanimous.
What was NOT expected was the language the AEP decision included that acknowledged the scientific controversy over AGW.
Here’s why that matters a great deal:
1. In Mass. v. EPA, the court held that EPA did have legal authority to regulate GHG emissions, provided that EPA found that they posed a hazard to public health.
2. In its recent endangerment finding, EPA found that GHGs do pose such a threat. It then proposed a plethora of regulations to deal with the threat it identified.
3. Since then, many states have filed suits challenging the process by which the EPA’s GHG endangerment finding was reached (hasty, shoddy and half-baked, to put it mildly) and the scientific claims put forward by EPA in support of its finding (flimsy IPCC propaganda in many instances).
It is almost certain that one or more of the state lawsuits mentioned above will find its way to SCOTUS in the not-too-distant future. When that happens, I believe the court will overturn EPA’s finding and remand the matter to EPA with instructions to “do it over and do it right” the next time. Since I don’t believe that will be possible, the comments the justices offered about AGW in the AEP decision are very encouraging and give me comfort about how the court may rule in the state cases that will come before them in the next 1-2 years.
Moderate Republican wrote:
For anyone to argue that plants in a controlled environment are a proxy for all of the earth’s vegetation is ridiculously unscientific.
Perhaps a review of the Scientific Method is in order? You’ll find that controlled experiments are EXACTLY what the Scientific Method calls for. And taking the data from a single tree, or two sand bars and extrapolating over the entire world – without any means of a control or even accurate predictive validation – is, in fact, ridiculously unscientific.
Your attempt at Orwellian language twisting won’t fly here…
And since the justices of the supreme court know less about climate change and the debate about climate change than Anthony’s readers do this means what????
LazyTeenager says:
June 24, 2011 at 9:16 pm
And since the justices of the supreme court know less about climate change and the debate about climate change than Anthony’s readers do this means what????
—————————————————————————–
….. that your tribe has jumped the shark.
It means: It is way past your bedtime! Get your teddy bear and scoot! GK
Please read the opinion of the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in this matter (link attached). They uphold the legal obligation of the USEPA to regulate greenhouse gases, and all they are doing in this opinion is saying that the federal courts are not the proper venue for these regulatory arguments. I sense no support for CAGW skeptics here.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/10-174.pdf
A few folks are reading too much into this. Example follows …
You had two choices here, and I’ll use cleaned-up vernacular: (1) solid excrement, (2) liquid excrement. We got solid excrement but it is less painful than liquid excrement.
(2) Allowing progressive-liberal northeastern states, largely driven by green socialist activist groups and their tainted money from corrupt foundations and wealthy benefactors to attack companies and entire industries at the discretion of the court system and ignorant juries.
(1) Punting it back to the executive branch which at least has purse-strings leading back to the Congress, particularly the House of Representatives.
I would say that option (2) has been killing us for many years. The courts are packed with political *appointees*. And while there is theoretical oversight of the courts by the Congress, it is practically never exercised. Even John Marshall couldn’t dream of a day when the court system is the activist branch, and the choice of both first resort and last resort for every issue.
The House is political of course, but none are appointed and we get a shot every two years to (pardon the pun) clean house. So Option (1) is not perfect, but it is closer to being constitutional because there is no sane interpretation of the Constitution that places the judicial branch at the center of all things political.
From an Anti-Socialist, Pro-Individual Liberty and Freedom point of view, I have to see this as an OK result. As some others have mentioned, we shoehorn all this nonsense into an identifiable agency like EPA, and then shut that sucker down. Defund it and lock the doors. While this may sound unrealistic today, only a few more economic shocks will start a clamor for dramatic federal cuts, and there are alphabet agencies galore in line for the chopping block. We need to make sure that all the AGW science fiction peddlers are in one of those agencies.
Finally, a useful clue to me is anything that brings in lots of Trolls, whining like little children, and making absolute fools of themselves (multiple cases here), is a good thing. Normally this time of year they would be exploiting the warming summer weather with their annual scare stories but have been sidetracked big-time by recent events. And there is so much more to come. Just wait for the minimum sea-ice extent to pass by in September when they will then begin their seemingly endless fall-winter-spring depression once again!
Can’t one just ignore the EPA, and the EPA will just do something like this:
“EPA Drastically Cuts Cellulosic Ethanol Requirement in Fuel for 2012”
“The fuel hasn’t been made in significant enough quantities to meet that goal and the EPA is now proposing a cut back on the goal.”
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=21974
Just finished reading the Opinion and all the above. B-737 has the take closest to mine. The Court inferred that EPA actions have to reflect a common good or gain; lack of EPA balance can be appealed.
Anyone fancy annoying the alarmists that run Wikipedia by suggesting that the supreme court is a reliable source?
We all know the answer: the only reliable source is the 73 scientists who form the ‘overwhelming consensus’ who seem to extremely close … so close one couldn’t tell them apart from those who spend an awful lot of time editing Wikipedia
Rattus Norvegicus
The history of the acts as shown on EPA site
http://www.epa.gov/air/caa/peg/understand.html
The idea of a pollutant has been extended by the courts away from an earlier common sense idea. How would you feel if smoking were regulated by EPA as a court decided cigarette smoke was a pollutant. You would not argue that smoke was good for you and the people around you. You would argue elected representatives need to authorize the role change as cigarette smoke is not in the scope intended when the acts were examined.
Congress can limit or extend the EPA role, but has not so the status quo should apply.