I’d ask EPA’s Lisa Jackson about the legality of “disappearing” the over $468,000 dollars in grants to Peter Gleick’s Pacific Institute from the EPA grants database, then putting them back, all without any public notice. Since 2007, Gleick’s PI has received over 1 million in taxpayer’s money. In 2007 they got $647,000 dollars in two grants from the EPA, which also “disappeared” this week. When an FOIA request was made to the EPA, they mysteriously returned.
Source: Junk Science
By Steve Milloy
March 2 should be a date that lives in infamy for the Obama Environmental Protection Agency.
That day will most likely be the last opportunity for congressional Republicans to apply meaningful pressure on EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson as she testifies before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the agency’s 2013 budget.
Over the past three years, the Obama EPA has conducted a scorched earth campaign against fossil fuel producers and users, especially the coal-fired power industry, with multibillion-dollar rules that provide no meaningful environmental or public-health benefits, like the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Mercury Air Toxics Standard (MATS).
The EPA will soon propose its greenhouse gas emission standards for power plants – rules that will attempt to make it financially impossible to construct new coal-fired power plants in the United States.
February 25, 2012
Obama Skins the Cat
By S. Fred Singer
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/02/obama_skins_the_cat.html
Much of White House policy is driven by pathological fear of global warming and the unreasonable compulsion to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a non-toxic natural constituent of the atmosphere and an absolute necessity for the survival of plants, animals, and humans. Never mind that there’s no significant evidence that any recent warming has been caused by CO2 increases — or indeed, that any such warming would endanger human health and welfare. In addition, it should be quite obvious that any attempt by the U.S. to reduce its emissions unilaterally is an exercise in futility and self-delusion: it would have little measurable impact on the ongoing rise of global atmospheric CO2 and would certainly not affect climate in any way.
But evidently, ideology trumps science, economics, and logic. Even common-sense considerations have not stopped President Obama from listening to his science adviser, Dr. John Holdren, one of the chief apostles of the global warming religion. Holdren is a former collaborator and associate of Stanford Prof. Paul Ehrlich, whose seminal book The Population Bomb, published some 40 years ago, preaches population control to achieve zero growth.
In this Malthusian spirit, we will shortly be “celebrating” the 40th anniversary of the publication of Limits to Growth, a book sponsored by the so-called Club of Rome, which — like Ehrlich’s — predicted all kinds of imminent disasters for the world’s population: famines, resource depletion, dying oceans, etc. In spite of complete failure to use sound science and economics, there are still many “believers” happily ensconced in the present administration. It is interesting to note that Limits to Growth did not concern itself in any way with global warming; climate disasters came along only since 1992, courtesy of the infamous Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, which also produced U.N. Agenda 21.
Gleick-o’-lys-is: n. The process by which a government uses a corrupt science-grant system to sweeten the pot in a high-stakes game of chicken with its political opponents.
According to a certain online encyclopedia, Gleickolysis is a definite sequence of reactions involving ten (or possibly as many as 15) intermediate compounds (one of the steps involves two intermediates). The intermediates provide entry points to Gleickolysis.
Please note it is possible that I have a few spelling errors in this comment. It has been known to happen.
RTF
March 2…. not a lot of time to build pressure but it could be effective, if we work together!
Here’s the url to find contact information for your US Representative.
http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
What should the key points of the communications (both phone and email) be?
1) Peter Gleick’s fraud, and the EPA’s attempt to hide their distribution of taxpayer dollars to him?
2) That EPA regulation of the unproven hypothesis that CO2 emissions have a significant effect on climate represents waste, fraud and abuse? Cease and desist?
3) That Hg emissions from coal fired power plants represent a lesser threat to human health than direct Hg contamination of our homes from broken CFL bulbs, now endemic across America?
4) That you expect personal and diligent action from your representative to cut funding to the EPA for any regulations, regulatory functions and personnel that would be used to support this continued waste, fraud, and abuse?
Remember, these communications need to be relatively brief, polite, and address one topic that is supported with a few ( 2 – 4) items. Any detailed data, analysis, or argumentation deemed important should only be referenced via a url link. Keep the communications ‘short, polite, and direct’.
In speaking with my Representatives at both State and Federal level, they tell me that multiple communications from a wide variety of constituents addressing a common topic in their own words have the greatest influence and impact.
I urge the WUWT community to take individual action on this before March 2. Call and email your representative to express you concerns and expectations directly. Ask like minded friends, family, and neighbors to do the same and provide them with a copy of your email and the representative’s contact information . As a diffuse but sizable cross section of America, we can magnify our individual contributions significantly …….if we work together.
MtK
Don’t forget Gleick and his Pacific Institute didn’t just get funding from the US EPA. Here’s a 2009 example:
http://www.pacinst.org/reports/sea_level_rise/report.pdf
With whoppers like this from the Abstract:
We estimate that a 1.4 meter sea‐level rise will accelerate erosion, resulting in a loss of 41 square miles (over 26,000 acres) of California’s coast by 2100.
It says here: “California’s general coastline is 840 miles long.”
41mi^2 / 840 mi * 5280ft/mi = 258 feet. By 2100 the California coastline will have moved inland about 258 feet on average? Call the press, a whole lot of celebrities have to move out of their houses soon. Plus there should be a moratorium on building all beachfront homes.
Look at the financing of this opus:
How much did Gleick and associates trouser for this repackaged hokum? And where do you find the information on all the funding sent to them from these fine institutions? Better hurry up and find it too, before it gets “disappeared” for good.
BTW, how much of the funding of these fine California Institutions originated with the US federal government? Did the US EPA give them any of the money that got shipped to Gleick and associates, perhaps earmarked for a report on the impacts of sea level rise on the California coast?
Mac writes, “…. not a lot of time to build pressure but it could be effective, if we work together!
[. . .]
“Call and email your representative to express you concerns and expectations directly. Ask like minded friends, family, and neighbors to do the same [. . . .]”
Would this be a good time for to point out that there is absolutely nothing constitutional about the grant system that is under discussion? It is completely, utterly illegal under U.S. law. Constitution of the U.S., Article I, Section 8.
Presumably there are people who believe that these environmental research grants are authorized by the commerce clause, which simply authorizes the U.S. government to “regulate commerce among the several States”.
Such a belief is as nonsensical as Gleick’s belief in his own moral superiority. This moment may constitute a crucial opportunity to inform U.S. legislators of that fact.
RTF
“The real problem is that subjective research is being promoted and controlled by several layers of political appointees in agencies that are supposed to be doing objective research.”
Exactly. And this is being done all over the world on many fronts. That is to say cAGW is not the only topic politicized but it is the most important (to me anyway) at this point in time.
Correction to my quote:
“regulate commerce among the several States” shoud be “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States”.
Clarification of my argument:
The Tenth Amendment says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Article I, Section 8 also confers the power to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers”.
A law, to be consistent with this clause, must be both necessary and proper for the stated purpose — not just one or the other.
So for scientific research to be permitted to the U.S. government for the purpose of formulating commerce regulations, the research must be necessary “for carrying into Execution” the power of regulating international or interstate commerce.
So the relevant question is quite a simple one: Is scientific research necessary for carrying into execution that power?
If “yes”, then U.S. government funding of the research is constitutional. If “no” … if the act of regulating the commerce, in some way, in any way … not necessarily in a way that one would think proper … is possible without first doing any scientific research, then U.S. government funding of the research is unconstitutional and the U.S. government may not fund it.
The answer to the question is clearly “no”. The regulation activity is possible without recourse to scientific research, and even more so without recourse to research that the U.S. has funded.
For those who still can’t see why, please note the language says ‘necessary and proper’, not ‘necessary ‘or proper’. This fact implies that there is a difference between the two qualities, such that a proposed federal law can be one but not the other for the purpose of evaluating Section 8. Therefore, if a bill would enable regulations of the said commerce that are considered more proper than those that are enabled without the bill, that fact alone cannot satisfy the requirement of necessity, i.e. the requirement that the bill be necessary for carrying into execution the power to regulate the said commerce. In other words, regulation activity under Section 8 does not necessarily have to be “proper” in order to meet the requirement of “necessity”. If “properness” were a subset of “necessity”, then there would be no need to include the words “and proper”. Therefore, the fact that they are included must be construed to mean that their inclusion was intended to change the meaning of the section from what it would mean without them.
If the people believe that such a limitation is against the public interest due to being too restrictive, then fine — but they’ve got to amend the Constitution to make it so. They don’t have the right or power to just go out and get a court to agree with them, and then run with that. I’m sorry if the following upsets people, but … courts simply do not have that power to just “declare” that something is constitutional just because it is in the public interest. That is the philosophy of communism, and it is what has gotten us into this mess of environmental tyrrany that we are in now. No exceptions can be accepted, because to accept any opens the door to having all the rest shoved onto us at gunpoint, without any due process of law.
RTF
I’m sorry, “subset” in the above should be “superset”.
RTF
Never mind what these people say, keep your eye on what they do.
We will know what the Republican Party is made of by the way they stop the EPA from their attack on carbon, to the EPA the number is evidently C666.
The Republicans might look into the psychiatric condition affecting legal circumstances in how to deal with the EPA on carbon.
Many thanks to Sen Inhofe.
“If greenhouse gases are a pollution problem, there should be legislation requiring catalytic converters on all greenhouses.”
Ahhhh. Geez Mary and Joseph,Ed. Please do not be giving these commisars any ideas!!! The price of freshveggies is bad enough all ready.
This may be apocryphal so don’t take it too seriously.
Apparently, after Manchester united built their new “Old Trafford” stadium, they discovered that the grass was going brown. Turned out that the grass was “eating” all the CO2 in the stadium & they had to make vents in the walls to allow better circulation.
DaveE.
It’s up to the States to fight back. If it doesn’t pass Congress, it’s not a Law; therefore not illegal to disregard. Congress is worse than worthless. Businesses may also disregard anything not passed thru Congress. The States are the only line of defense left…after that, the only option left is offense.
Apocalyptic, yes. When restraint is no longer a virtue, the burden becomes much to bear. Viva La Constitution!!
As long as there is no shortage of lawyers, given our strict liability laws, tort can do all the EPA is supposed to do, and then there will be no threat of the adverse actions they so often take. Eliminate the EPA.
From John Kettlewell on February 26, 2012 at 12:22 am:
This is just nonsense. Congress passes laws that authorize the creating of regulations, thus the authority of the regulations starts with Congress. An exception is Executive Orders from the President, which may be nullified by Congressional action, when Congress fails to act then they have de facto authorized the E.O. by their inaction.
Although regulations made up by judges to “comply with the spirit and purpose of” the Constitution and/or existing laws is a dark grey area that should not be tolerated.
Okay, now that part is far from being nonsense. 🙂
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
Congress passes laws that authorize the creating of regulations, thus the authority of the regulations starts with Congress.
Beg to differ. There is nothing in the constitution that even suggests that legislative power may be passed along to some other body. The fact that federal courts from Marshall on have approved such arrangements is not disputed. What is disputed is that the original writers foresaw or would have approved such a possibility. What is indisputable is that the result has been a ‘bureaucracy’ in the strict sense of the word: rule by untouchable administrators in the executive branch who are untouchable by the people.
Article I
Section 1. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
@ur momisugly juanslayton re February 26, 2012 at 6:50 pm:
Thus comes the dance between legislative and executive. Legislative says there will be a tax. Executive makes up the forms, rules, and the underlying bureaucratic structure to collect the tax. Legislative says This shall be done, it’s left to executive to figure out how to do it.
So if legislative passes a law that says something shall be regulated, and executive issues the regulations it determines are needed to accomplish the regulating, everything is fine and constitutionally legal. One branch makes the laws, another executes them. If it is felt that the executive branch is improperly executing, there are two major checks and balances against it. There is legal action through the judicial branch, and/or the legislative branch can pass a law more closely specifying how the executing shall be done.
The legislative branch is not passing their power to some other body. It’s just not micro-managing what the executive branch does to carry out the will of the legislature.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
Heh, heh… We could have what Jack Benny’s Rochester used to call a ‘real roundtable discussion’ on this subject. I have no trouble with your examples as they apply to an administration’s internal activities. The taxing agency creates the forms and sets the procedures by which the public complies with the law. No problem. The problem comes when the agency sets rules for the public that are unrelated to its interaction with the agency itself.
Example: The EPA decides what chemicals will be considered harmful, what industries that use those chemicals will be regulated, what the regulations (extensive and expensive) will be, and what penalties for non-compliance will apply. The EPA creates rules that have the force of law, thus usurping the legislative branch, then hands down penalties, further usurping the judicial.
I’m not suggesting for a minute that Congress is competent to come up with the standards that the EPA is tasked to create. What I am suggesting is that any rule making that applies with the force of law to the public should go back to Congress for approval or disapproval. That would be ‘consistent with’ (hate that phrase) the constitution. It would have the added benefit that an ideologically motivated finding on CO2 could be corrected by another body that, while openly political, is at least accountable to the citizenry.
We agree in our assessment of Congress.
: >)
Gentlemen, you are both expending enormous verbiage on a very simple question, without directly addressing the question. That question is: what is a law?
I was deliberately vague on that question in my post that started this, because I didn’t want to get into it. I thought that it was much more important for readers to see, in as brief a presentation as possible, why the research in question was unconstitutional.
Respectly, your debate over the definition of a law, while interesting and somewhat relevant, is likely to cause those who have less familiarity with the Constitution to stop thinking about what I wanted them to think about.
To those who agree with Juan, I suggest that it is extremely unlikely that you will get any member of Congress (besides, possibly, the one member that we are all probably familiar with) to agree that written, non-statutory “regulations”, as that term is defined by Congress, are unconstitutional.
May I humbly suggest that the important point to be drawn at this juncture is that I have presented an airtight argument that the scientific research is unconstitutional, even if it were done directly by Congress itself. And thus far, no one has even bothered to try to refute it, let alone succeeded. The argument has legs. When it has come up before in courts, I believe that their only recourse has been to ignore the argument and resort to ex-cathedra declarations. When such happens, that should tell you that you have hit pay dirt. But you’re going to need Congress on board if you want justice. And Congress is not going to listen if the message is that regulations are unconstitutional. Pick your fights. Pick your fights, my friends.
RTF
Hmmmm, with all the projected lives saved, and ticnohrbis sufferers diminished, it makes me wonder how they came to those conclusions. Pretty much just like they projected all those jobs saved. It was all smoke and mirrors and I believe this is more of the same type of hoax. They can’t really tell the truth about it because the plan is to destroy jobs and energy or tax it to death same thing.