If it does, the impacts on our lives, livelihoods, liberties and living standards will be enormous
Guest opinion by Paul Driessen
The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency. The case will determine how far EPA can extend its regulatory overreach, to control “climate changing” carbon dioxide from power plants and other facilities – by ignoring the Constitution’s “separation of powers” provisions, rewriting clear language in the Clean Air Act, and disregarding laws that require the agency to consider both the costs and benefits of its regulations and what it is regulating.
Put more bluntly, the Court will decide whether EPA may deceive the American people, by implementing regulations that have no basis in honest science and will be ruinous to our economy. It is the most important energy, economic and environmental case to come before the Court it in decades.
Suppose a used car dealership routinely rolled back speedometer mileage, deleted customer complaints from its website, posted fabricated compliments, and lied about defects and accidents, to sell more cars. Or a manufacturer misstated its sales and bottom line, failed to mention major safety violations and fines, and made false claims about new product lines, to attract investors and inflate stock prices?
Both would be indicted for fraud. Now apply the same standards to EPA, whose actions and regulations will affect far more people: virtually every family, facility, company and community in the United States. Jurors would likely rule that the agency is engaged in systematic deceit, dishonesty and fraud.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy insists there is “no more urgent threat to public health than climate change.” She is determined to impose President Obama’s anti-hydrocarbon agenda. “I just look at what the climate scientists tell me,” McCarthy told Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL). Translated, she means she talks only to those who advocate climate alarmism, and ignores all contrary scientists and evidence.
In fact, thousands of scientists and studies argue that there is no empirical, observational evidence to support any of her claims. Recent NOAA and NASA temperature data confirm that global warming ended in 1997 and continues today, even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase steadily, improving plant growth worldwide. Seas are rising at barely seven inches per century, and there is no evidence that recent weather events are any more frequent, intense or “dangerous” than what mankind has dealt with forever.
There is no convincing evidence that carbon dioxide emissions have replaced the powerful, complex, interrelated natural forces that have always driven climate and weather changes. No evidence supports the notion that slashing CO2 emissions and trashing our economy will “stabilize” global temperatures and climate variations, or that developing countries will stop pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
EPA brushes all this aside. The agency just assumes and asserts human causes and disastrous results, disregards any and all experts and evidence to the contrary, and ignores any and all costs imposed by its regulations.
It has also violated the Constitution, by rewriting specific Clean Air Act provisions that specify 250-ton-per-year emission limits, in sections that EPA is relying on for its climate rulemakings. To shut down coal-fired power plants, the agency illegally and arbitrarily raised the threshold to 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, and ignored the fact that in 692 bills Congress never contemplated applying these sections to greenhouse gases. Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, EPA will continue rewriting the law, gradually tightening its standards to control millions of natural gas generators, refineries, factories, paper mills, shopping malls, apartment and office buildings, hospitals, schools and even large homes.
EPA and other agencies have paid out billions in taxpayer dollars to finance and hype “research” making ludicrous claims that manmade global warming is hidden in really deep ocean waters or obscured by pine tree vapors; tens of thousands of offshore wind turbines could weaken hurricanes; and climate change will cause more rapes and murders. They have used “climate disruption” claims to justify giving eco-activist groups billions of taxpayer dollars to promote alarmist climate propaganda … spending tens of billions on crony-corporatist “green energy” and “climate resilience” programs … and forcing the United States and other nations to spend hundreds of billions on worthless climate change prevention capers.
EPA’s so-called “science” is intolerable “secret science.” The agency refuses to share it with outside experts or even members of Congress and businesses impacted by its regulations. The agency claims this taxpayer-funded information is somehow “proprietary,” even though it is being used to justify onerous regulations that dictate and impair our lives, livelihoods, liberties, living standards and life spans. EPA refuses to be transparent because it wants to prevent any examination of its internal machinations.
Just as bad, EPA routinely ignores its own scientific standards, and many climate reports it relies on come straight from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, as the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow observed in its amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court in this case, the IPCC has been caught red-handed presenting student papers, activist press releases and emailed conjecture as “peer-reviewed expert reports.” It has been caught deleting graphs that clearly show its computer models were worthless, and employing junk models like the one that generated Michael Mann’s infamous “hockey stick” to support assertions that it is 95% certain that humans are causing climate change chaos.
These computer models are built on unproven alarmist assumptions, have never been “validated” and are not merely “unverifiable.” They are flat-out contradicted by real-world evidence right outside the EPA windows, making their results worthless for sound, legitimate public policy. Any yet they drive policy.
In violation of federal laws and executive orders, EPA hypothesizes, concocts or exaggerates almost every conceivable carbon “cost” – to agriculture, forestry, water resources, coastal cities, human health and disease, ecosystems and wildlife. But it completely ignores even the most obvious and enormous benefits of using fossil fuels and emitting plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide: affordable heat and electricity, jobs, transportation, better crop growth and nutrition, and improved living standards, health and welfare.
In reality, hydrocarbon and carbon dioxide benefits outweigh their alleged costs by as much as 500 to 1! That means EPA’s “climate change mitigation” rules impose costs on society that exceed even EPA’s exaggerated regulatory benefits by as much as 500 to 1. The EPA “cure” is far worse than the “disease.”
And let’s not forget that one of Ms. McCarthy’s senior advisors devising the agency’s climate change policies and regulations was none other than John Beale – the guy who bilked us taxpayers out of $1 million in salary and travel expenses for his mythical second job as a CIA agent. To suppose his fraudulent actions did not extend to his official EPA duties defies belief. And yet EPA has apparently taken no steps to reexamine Beale’s analyses or conclusions.
EPA has done all of this knowingly, deliberately, with full knowledge of the grossly deficient foundations of its pseudo-science and policies – to drive an anti-hydrocarbon agenda, without regard for the consequences that agenda will inflict on millions of Americans and billions of people worldwide.
This goes beyond mere sloppiness or incompetence. It is dishonest. It violates the law. According to standards applicable to every citizen and business in the land, it is fraudulent. By controlling the energy that powers our homes, cars, businesses and nation, EPA’s carbon and carbon dioxide policies will control and impair our economy, wipe out tens of millions of jobs, and kill thousands of people – for little or no health or environmental benefits.
The real threat to public health and welfare is not climate change. It is EPA and what this rogue agency is doing in the name of preventing climate change. If the Supreme Court allows this, by giving carte blanche authority to EPA, the battle will rage on countless other fronts, because voters are sick and tired of being lied to, manipulated, defrauded, and forced to pay outrageous prices for oppressive regulations.
Democrats say they plan to use climate change to attack Republicans in 2014. I say, Bring it on!
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
KGB? No.
Marxist/socialist radicals? Yes.
I wouldn’t be concerned about the surreal court. What needs to happen is a Congress/President to scale back, defund or eliminate the nonsense.
Matthew Marler ” the law gives to EPA the authority to decide what is adequate, not to you or me.”
I believe you don’t completely understand the authority given to the EPA and the limitations that it is acting under. The EPA has to comply with legislative mandates. If you look who it has appointed and the work it turns out, it is clear that it is a politicized agency and that its “science” is second or third rate. Because of that anyone can legitimately challenge the EPA in court. (Not saying that they will win as the Supreme Court is currently constituted, but the Obama EPA’s politicization and poor science give anyone a legitimate challenge of what it does.)
Here is the legislative mandate as quoted from the syllabus of the Massachusetts case: ” a group of private organizations petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to begin regulating the emissions of four such gases, including carbon dioxide, under §202(a)(l) of the Clean Air Act, which requires that the EPA “shall by regulation prescribe . . . standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class … of new motor vehicles . . . which in [the EPA Administrator’s] judgment cause[s], or contrib-utefs] to, air pollution . . . reasonably . . . anticipated to endanger public health or welfare,” 42 U. S. C. §7521(a)(l). The Act defines “air pollutant” to include “any air pollution agent . . . , including any physical, chemical . . . substance . . . emitted into . . . the ambient air.” §7602(g). EPA ultimately denied the petition, reasoning that (1) the Act does not authorize it to issue mandatory regulations to address global climate change, and (2) even if it had the authority to set greenhouse gas emission standards, it would have been unwise to do so at that time…”
The EPA must make legitimate findings that CO2 endangers the public health or welfare. Relying on the IPCC, for example, is not adequate for that purpose. Additionally, in Massachusetts, the Court refused to defer to the Bush EPA. In this instance, the Court is equally authorized to refuse to defer to the Obama EPA.
JD
A court that rules in favor of Obamacare by finding that it is a “tax” can’t be trusted to rule rationally on any issue. Expect the worst, and don’t expect our completely dysfunctional Congress to ride to the rescue.
Dr Abdussamatov of the Pulkovo Observatory in St Petersburg, Russia, states that total solar irradiance is the driving factor in climate change, not CO2, and that we’re in for an extended period of low solar activity.
According Andusamatov 2014 is the year a new “LITTLE Ice Age” begins: http://iceagenow.info/2014/03/video-ice-age-2014/
Are we getting a new president anytime soon? NOT gonna happen.
johanna says: @ur momisugly March 3, 2014 at 7:52 pm
A slight diversion, but hopefully relevant….
How does the US Constitution enable the legislature to delegate its lawmaking power to unelected bodies?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually the Constitution DOES NOT allow anyone but the legislature make laws. However the Supreme Court ‘Reinterpreted’ the Constitution After FDR’s New Deal created a lot of Bureacracy.
Unfortunately most laws are a bit broad and therefore give bureaucrats a lot of latitude to ‘Make Laws’
To give you an idea of how the control has passed from Congress to the Administration this is the 2013 Federal Register. The small stack on top [outlined in red] is the laws passed by Congress.
IMAGE
“It is a story that flummoxed investigators – how a highly paid climate-change expert at the Environmental Protection Agency managed to defraud the government of nearly $1m, by pretending for a decade to be an undercover CIA agent.
John Beale, 65, is to undergo sentencing in a DC federal court on Wednesday, after pleading guilty to defrauding the government of $900,000 in salary and other benefits. Beale, who used his ruse to disappear for months at a time, has agreed to pay some $1.3m in restitution. He faces up to three years in jail.
The scandal could rebound against the current administrator of the EPA, Gina McCarthy, and her efforts to carry out President Barack Obama’s climate-change agenda. Last week, an official investigation found that she knew of the fraud for more than a year. Other officials who worked with Beale at the agency are under investigation and in a report last week, the EPA inspector general said senior agency officials had “enabled” Beale by failing to challenge any of his stories or expense claims amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.”
“Beale, who worked on landmark legislation of the Clean Air Act, remains well-connected in Washington, and a number of former colleagues were reluctant to comment on his case. “
JD Ohio: I believe you don’t completely understand the authority given to the EPA and the limitations that it is acting under.
That’s for sure.
The EPA must make legitimate findings that CO2 endangers the public health or welfare. Relying on the IPCC, for example, is not adequate for that purpose.
I think that you missed the point of my question or comment: Who other than the EPA has the legal authority to decide what is adequate? Clearly that is not you or I. I don’t think the court can rule that, despite the extensive work done by the EPA to review the science, the EPA simply did not consult enough scientists who were skeptical. If I am wrong, I am clearly missing something important in the law.
more soylent green! at 6:21 am
In reality, we have a Imperious President who ignores the law, rewrites the law and chooses which laws to enforce and which laws to ignore. We also have a split Congress with each house controlled by different parties, making legislation difficult to pass (not necessarily a bad thing, btw) and a President who categorically will not sign a bill, any bill, which limits the power of the state.
All that is true. But some crucial facts need to be added.
There are times, particularly 2009-2010, 1975-1978, mid 1930’s when one party controls all three branches of government. Then constitutional checks and balances disappear. Blatantly unconstitutional laws get passed and signed.
Back in 2010, Glenn Beck nailed it when he said that the Democratic controlled Congress was purposely making themselves and future Congresses irrelevant by transferring power from the Legislative to the Executive branches and independent Agencies. Congress passed Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, in a 2200 page bill that authorized the Sec. of HHS to create Quagmire of New Unconstitutional Obamacare Agencies (the org chart is a hoot!) and the “anti-constitutional” Independent Patient Advisory Board (IPAB),
In the same session, Congress passed Dodd-Frank (or FrankenDodd), including “reckless delegation of authority” [nationalreview.com] to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) with an unconstitutional source of funding, authority, and ability to punish.
The system of federal court review is far too slow to be any practical impediment. Even getting into court is a trick; one must be able to show harm, not just the potential for harm. The constitutionality of the IPAB cannot challenged until its rules have harmed someone — and it hasn’t been formed yet! Even when you get to SCOTUS, they have shown little gumption to rein in unconstitutional delegation of authority since 1935 when FDR threatened to “pack the court” (see nationalreview link above).
Dear Mr. Marler,
You regularly demonstrate an admirable devotion to precision and accuracy and to the citing of verified science information on WUWT. I feel certain that you generally do not approach ANY subject matter in a slipshod manner. Thus, I think, that you (and others, here) may not realize that in the law, there is as often as much precision and accuracy (in the meaning and interpretation of statutes — in case law, mainly) as in science. For example, re: statements such as, “I don’t thing the court can…,” you would not stand for such vagueness in a science discussion. Citing the statutes and the case law (or at least a Restatement or law review article author’s analysis) that supports your belief that the EPA has essentially carte blanche authority to determine what the best science is will make your legal argument much stronger. Legal research and analysis is a much more careful topic than many scientists realize, I think… .
My comments have certainly not been examples of thorough legal research, but, you might find my first one (which I don’t think you saw) helpful (esp. at item 3):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/03/will-the-supreme-court-permit-epa-climate-decisions-to-stand/#comment-1581784
Hoping that this will spur you to delve more deeply into what the law is and to become as careful a legal scholar as you are a scientist,
Your WUWT ally for truth,
Janice
At 11:08am:
“… asoften as…”“… I don’t
thingthink… ”Thank you, dear Mod… . Sorry for the bother. J.
bobl at 1:39 am
For example there is media about Obama choosing not to enforce legislation passed by the parliament. How is it that he can do that, how is it that the parliament has no power to direct the President to enforce the rules that the people’s representatives enacted? Here the responsible minister could be censured by the parliament, why can’t the US parliament likewise censure the President?
If the President violates his oath of office or commits “high crimes and misdemeanors against the State“, the House must draw up the Articles of Impeachment (the Indictment), and be tried in the Senate. Of the many flaws in our Constitution is one where one Party controls the Presidency and either the House or the Senate. In this circumstance, a significant fraction on the Presidents own party must vote against him. It is not an impossible burden (see Nixon, 1974), but a conflict of interest none-the-less.
Another flaw is that the Attorney General can show undue loyalty to Party and his boss. Short of impeachment, there is no remedy other than election.
The one saving grace in the US Constitution is that theoretically, the entire House can change parties every two years instead of subject to snap elections called at the advantage of the Prime Minister within an interminable 5 year period. But elections or impeachment only work if there be a forceful and organized opposition.
Will Rogers: “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.” – (early 1930s) Times change.
One note of hope–remember Sackett vs. EPA, where the U.S. Supreme Court slapped down the EPA unanimously. Also, I believe the EPA has had at least 2 unanimous rulings against in front of the Supreme Court in the last 3 years. It’s possible that the Supreme Court may have recognized the signs of an out-of-control regulatory agency.
Thank you for that note of encouragement to brighten a rather gray, gloomy, thread, Chris R..
===========================================================
The Constitution is sometimes referred to as “a living document”. It’s not. It’s set in stone. It has provisions within itself to change what is chiseled, but what is chiseled is set in stone. It is called a “living document” by those who don’t like what it says. They look for ways to get around it.
An analogy. (A little silly maybe but bear with me.)
Lets say that soccer is a new game. Lots of people are playing it but it has no written rules. A group gets together and writes down the rules. One rule is that only the goalie can touch the ball with his hands. Fine. One team doesn’t like that rule. The coach scrutinizes the rules and notices that they never say how many goalies a team can have so adds “/goalie” to the name of each position.
Or.
The teams get together and choose a pool of refs. There is one team, call them “The Freedoms”, that always seems to win so most of the teams vote to select refs that hate that team.
During a game against The Freedoms, one of the other team’s players hits the ball with his hand. The refs don’t call it. They say the rules say a player that is not the goalie can’t hit the ball with his hand but that guy only hit it with his fingers.
Thanks Gail, but the explanation you provided seems to focus on process and publication, not the root of the power. If Stephen’s cite is correct, what happened in 1946 was that the legislature (for reasons that are difficult to comprehend) handed over the power to approve regulations to the Executive.
To suggest that it was beyond the wit and capacity of the legislature to publish something like the Federal Register seems hard to believe. I would guess (based on many years of studying politics) that a short-sighted and partisan legislature saw it as a way of doubling their chances – rather than halving them – of controlling the legislative process.
Janice Moore, thank you for your kind remarks.
About this: For example, re: statements such as, “I don’t thing the court can…,” you would not stand for such vagueness in a science discussion. Citing the statutes and the case law (or at least a Restatement or law review article author’s analysis) that supports your belief that the EPA has essentially carte blanche authority to determine what the best science is will make your legal argument much stronger.
I was hoping that someone who knew more than I would be able to prove me wrong. The farthest I got on my own was to read the briefs, that are available by following the link to SCOTUSblog, and the links that are available there. I haven’t read them all yet. So part of what I seek by posting here I got in that case: better information than what I started with. If the Court decides this case 5-4, then I doubt that my independent study and mastery be that useful.
The law gives the EPA the authority to decide which scientists to consult and what weight to give to the scientists whom they consult. (Who decides what is the most important component in governance.) I don’t think this is exactly equivalent to “carte blanche”, but if they conducted “extensive” reviews and cited their sources, and especially if a lot of those sources were academic scientists, then it would be hard to show that they had not carried out their duty in accordance with the law.
The best hope for my evaluation of the risks of CO2 to prevail in this case comes, I think (sorry), from the admission by EPA, quoted by Stephen Rasey, that they had to break the law in order to devise regulations that were not absurd. Surely (?) regulations that are in direct violation of the law that authorizes them can’t stand. If there is some interpretation of the actual text of the law that permits such a practice (this is a paraphrase of a widely cited quote from Chief Justice Roberts), then … who knows.
In the Raiche case (a medical marijuana case), Justice Thomas wrote that the interpretation of the statute provided by the majority led to absurdities, which he listed. He was in the minority. I expect the Court to rule that, if the law here at issue created absurdities, then it is up to the Congress to fix the law, not up to the court. The Court can only rule for the plaintiffs, on this interpretation, if the regulations created illegalities (e.g. documentable “disparate impacts” on Whites and Blacks, or on majority White and majority Black states.)
Dear Mr. Marler,
What a pleasant surprise to have you respond to me. Of course, discussing this topic in a non-technical (legal research and analysis – wise) way is perfectly legitimate. I should have added a line about that. I think you understood me in the essentials of what I was trying to say.
This is not a law site. It is a science site. While a scientific discussion here will be expected to be done in a technically rigorous, scientific, manner, that should not be expected with non-science topics. I guess, being a non-scientist who knows a little about the law, I wanted to tell the scientists who are casually discussing a legal issue in a non-lawyerly manner, that there IS a correct approach to legal analysis.
I wanted people to know that, just as in science, there is a well-established, precisely defined, many-detailed, method for precise and accurate legal research and analysis, that it is not at all a guessing game based on surface-level reading, and that it is, for the most part, not being followed here. Maybe, I just wanted to, for once, get a little respect for a field that, largely due to its simply being unknown to them, is regularly handled sloppily (as to reasoning properly) and even cavalierly (not you, Mr. Marler) by commenters on WUWT.
(that the practitioners of law are dissed is understandable, given how many accurate observations of bad behavior exist in that set…. that data is not the mode, though, I think…)
In closing, I’ll remind myself, once again(!), here that: THIS IS A SCIENCE SITE!
And that’s wonderful. I’m blessed to be here.
#(:))
Ah, well. Even if no one reads this, it helped me to write that.
Looking forward to reading more of your thoughtful, well-informed, intelligent, comments!
Sincerely yours,
Janice
P.S. And maybe…. after a couple of days of having most of my posts here (and my personal correspondence elsewhere) ignored (proven by the commenters below those posts who would not have made the mistakes they did had they read what I wrote (not relevant here, but I just had a whole string of them on the guacamole thread confusing irrigation issue with air temperature))… I was just feeling a bit small. It’s nothing personal, but, it just gets to me once in awhile. LOL, ALL of us experience this on WUWT — MOST of us are ignored MOST of the time. That’s just life on WUWT — best site on the web!!
@ur momisugly Janice Moore:
Bah! You’re not ignored! The Mods love ya!
7;->
And you’re correct, the research in science is rigorous here (a guy could learn a lot here…). But funny, a bunch of science wonks don’t have the same depth of resources in case law…!
I’ve had some small training in Law (I was a US Navy Legal Officer for my command. Not a lawyer, but not all commands were large enough for a JAG Officer, i.e., an actual Lawyer, under the definitions of the Manual for Courts Martial, but still had legal issues which had to be dealt with—not all were disciplinary; I was the Notary Public for the command, for example—and of course, while in training for that collateral duty, we were force-fed a lot of other law for performing investigations, etc. Military’s legal system is a bit different from what most folks are used to…), and it made me curious, and so I’ve read a great deal. I’ve been a supporter of Cato.org for some years, and have helped fund a number of Amicus briefs, one or two for successful cases seen before SCOTUS. Having read a number of those briefs, I understand what you mean; it seems like every phrase, and certainly every argument, is supported by citations to many decisions in case law.
I agree with you completely that “I think the court will…” is of little value. Better to be able to cite decisions which identify a trend to be able to say, “based on the precedents set in these decisions, it’s likely that..”
Unfortunately, I must claim mea culpa in that I can speak from various analyses I’ve read, legal opinions or opinions of legal scholars which I’ve read, which is, I think, vaguely better than a simple, “I think…” But no, it’s not robust. As a Navy Legal Officer, I could build a case against offenders, and in certain situations, act in the role of what would be analgous to the prosecutor. I could never act as a defense attorney; only one trained as a lawyer and who met the requirements of such under the Manual for Courts-Martial could act in that capacity; so I’m familiar with building cases and supporting charges with specifics, the same way that in Amicus Curarae writs of a Certiorari I have read they are built, phrase after phrase, supported by case after case, point by point.
Funny this should all come up. In addition to my tribulations thus far this year, I just received a summons for Jury Duty for the County Circuit Court…! I’m curious to find out if I’m the kind of person they want as a juror, or the kind they really don’t. I guess it all depends on perspective…
Was in a hurry (was it last night? Gah! They all blend together!) yesterday, and din’t mean to be rude or abrupt…thank you for your kind words. It’s been a year already. Good news, however! I almost lost my precious American Foxhound, Merci, to a malignant Mast Cell Tumor. I’m a hypochondriac with my puppies, though, and when I found what I thought was just another sebacious cyst, I didn’t hesitate—even though I’d just had her at the Vet the previous fortnight for yet another I’d found—and glad i did not: it turned out to be malignant cancer, as I’ve said. And in such a difficult spot that my own Vet, a wonderful doctor, referred me to a specialist, because she feared that due to the location, reconstruction would be required. As it happens, it was not, but then I sat on pins and needles for two weeks waiting for the Pathology report to find out what the Grade of the tumor was and if we’d need more treatment (and if it was radiation…game over. Can’t afford that, or the time off—three days a week for 6 weeks??). Great news: we got it fast, we got it clean, with good margins and no cancer found in the tissue surrounding the mass, no further treatment required.
But that was the best (and the worst) of my year so far. The rest was almost as bad—I’m trying to get it all outta the way so the rest of the year is unencumbered, doncha know!
Still, not to be rude. I hope I din’t offend?
The law doesn’t give the EPA authority to to decide what the allowable limits for the pollutants are. The limits are specified in the statute. The EPA wants to use different limits for CO2. Kennedy asked for an example where an agency has been allowed to enforce limits that differ from explicit statutory limits, and the solicitor general couldn’t provide even one. This is far from a typical case of Chevron deference, where courts won’t second-guess agency decisions that reasonably interpret a statute. Numerical limits can’t reasonably be interpreted to mean vastly different limits of the EPA’s own choosing. I doubt if even most of the court liberals would rule in the government’s favor if the issue were about something less political than greenhouse gasses. I’m almost certain Kennedy wouldn’t.
Dear Pat Dolan,
No, no, you did not offend me in the least. LOL, yes, the Mods, at least, (poor guys!) read all I write. Heh. SO GLAD that Merci is healthy. Your little girl. I have a 95 lb. Riley boy (German Shepherd). Sometimes, when I’m holding him in my arms, I think ahead (he’s 8) and even though its years away, my heart grows heavy with the knowledge that all dogs are short-timers.
I WANTED to serve on a jury (I had the time when I was called), but was dismissed. If you want to be on the jury, don’t say you were essentially a J.A.G.. LOL, lawyers tend to drag the jury over to their way of looking at the case, so, other lawyers get rid of them. Defense attorneys don’t like engineers or other highly rational thinkers, either… . Hm. I just wonder why not? lol
Thank you for all that very well-informed empathy about legal scholarship. Much appreciated.
Well, I’ve already used up all my off-topic cards tonight, I think, so I’ll wrap this up. I sure hope you are soon looking at that health issue in the rear-view mirror (and, soon after that, that it’s lost to sight, far, far behind you).
Take good care of a fine warrior for truth,
Janice
(withprayers)
(I hope the Mods are dog lovers?)
Merci will be 6 in June. Einstein, my little Aussie boy (adopted him while i was living in Canberra; Jack Russell/Miniature Fox Terrier cross, and all of 18 lbs…) just turned 13 (!!), and Cassie, my baby, a rescue from a Kennel in Mobile, Alabama, just turned a year old (and 8 whole lbs!!). Pixel, my feral cat—truly feral… I din’t adopt him. It’s more that he moved in, looked around and said, “Nice place you got here. I think I’ll stay. Oh, and you get to feed me.” Anyway, Pixel will be 4 in March…
House ain’t a home without critters!
Be well, Janice—
p@ur momisugly
MJW: The limits are specified in the statute.
Odd that isn’t mentioned in the briefs, but if so it certainly simplifies things.
Janice Moore: What a pleasant surprise to have you respond to me. Of course, discussing this topic in a non-technical (legal research and analysis – wise) way is perfectly legitimate. I should have added a line about that. I think you understood me in the essentials of what I was trying to say.
You wrote good comments.
This is more my metier’: http://www.springer.com/?SGWID=0-102-24-0-0&searchType=EASY_CDA&queryText=kass%2C+eden%2C+brown&x=3&y=1
I had the privilege of reading a pre-publication pdf, and the authors let me proof read it and suggest a few rewordings. To learn neuronal modeling, modeling of biological processes and circadian rhythms I expanded from statistics into non-linear differential equations and chaos. So I was prepared, at least a little, when I decided to start studying the CO2 hypothesis in more detail. Well, as to the legal system, I claim to have learned almost all I know from “Law and Order”, but I have the basic civics (“The Federalist Papers”), and I occasionally read the briefs and decisions on prominent cases (the Raiche case, New London vs that “little old lady”, Bush v. Gore.) Plus I served on a Federal Grand Jury.
Right now I am betting on a 5-4 decision, but (here it comes!) I don’t think it can be reliably predicted. I look forward to reading the decision on this one, and I am sure there will be at least 1 dissent worth reading.
@ur momisugly Pat — thanks for sharing. Dogs are the best!
@ur momisugly Matthew Marler — Yes, I am impressed (smile). You have a fine mind, Mr. Marler. Glad you share it with us, here on WUWT. And, thanks for the gracious compliment.