A reaction from Pat Michaels follows. From the NYT article: Obama Pursuing Climate Accord in Lieu of Treaty
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress.
In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world’s largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution. But under the Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.
To sidestep that requirement, President Obama’s climate negotiators are devising what they call a “politically binding” deal that would “name and shame” countries into cutting their emissions. The deal is likely to face strong objections from Republicans on Capitol Hill and from poor countries around the world, but negotiators say it may be the only realistic path.
“If you want a deal that includes all the major emitters, including the U.S., you cannot realistically pursue a legally binding treaty at this time,” said Paul Bledsoe, a top climate change official in the Clinton administration who works closely with the Obama White House on international climate change policy.
Lawmakers in both parties on Capitol Hill say there is no chance that the currently gridlocked Senate will ratify a climate change treaty in the near future, especially in a political environment where many Republican lawmakers remain skeptical of the established science of human-caused global warming.
Read full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/us/politics/obama-pursuing-climate-accord-in-lieu-of-treaty.html?_r=0
Former Virgina State Climatologist and Cato Institute Director of the Center for the Study of Science Dr. Pat Michaels reacts:
When it comes to climate change, President Obama surely thinks he is king, subject to absolutely no advice and consent from our elected representatives.
The President clearly believes that a 2007 Supreme Court decision on greenhouse gases empowers him to completely bypass the Senate, including signing on to what is clearly a new United Nations treaty effectively limiting our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, without the necessary two-thirds vote required by the Constitution. And, while the nations of the world will clearly ignore such a treaty, he will impose whatever regulations he sees fit without approval of Congress. Sweeping regulation without legislative representation borders on tyranny, and it is doubtful that what he is proposing will ever stand a court challenge.
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In this case that would be Emperor Obama.
And mann is he naked.
John, Mann and The King have a lot in common. They are never wrong it seems.
Let him freeze this coming winter. Turn electricity off in the White House.
Right! Isn’t the White House supplied by coal-burning power plants? Shut them down during winter and let him feel the pain. EPA regs, you know.
Problem is, if you turn off the electricity to the White House over the winter, it’s only the support staff that will suffer…O will just visit the old homestead, in Hiwaii…
Clinton did it with Sustainable Development in the 1990’s
Ouch.
Honestly, let him do it; I would love for him to. He is playing to the left-wing voters, and just as the Republicans have lost while pandering to the “Moral Majority”, the Dems will lose playing to the Watermelons. Not to mention that this is something the judicial branch would love to jump all over.
This may sting now, but trust me, this will be a loser for them in the long run. He is forgetting that Americans do not like answering to an international authority, especially if they haven’t been asked first. If the frequently egalitarian Australians can kick the Carbon Tax, I have no doubt we can do likewise. He is testing the public and will lose on this.
I agree his hubris is setting him up for nemesis. But there’s more to this than meets the eye, I suspect. Remember that it was Green party votes that cost Gore the election in 2000. If the Green party ran again, it might have the same effect. Greens were frustrated by Obama’s relative inaction on this matter during his first term and a bit thereafter. They might have gone to bigshots in the Democratic party and threatened to run again unless Obama got serious about the issue.
Would anyone have standing to bring a court challenge? If Congress can’t sue (we’ll see how that works out eventually), and it’s a separation of powers type of case, is there actually any remedy?
Since this effort is being made entirely in the political sphere, there’s no constitutional issue to be raised. He’s saying that he’ll sign onto an international agreement basically as an individual and then try to use moral suasion to secure the necessary domestic legislation. At the point he tries to secure domestic compliance is where the separation of powers issues are likely to rise from the depths, especially if he tries to use the EPA to enforce the international limits. That would seem to be a clear case of usurping the treaty provisions of the US constitution.
It is in the constitution. Impeachment. That is the recourse. But democrats are slavish to party loyalty. So nothing will come of it.
Why, oh why? CO2 is our friend, it helps stabilize our climate and ecosystem.
What then is this “Carbon Pollution”?
A sinister, evil collusion?
CO2, it is clean,
Makes for growth, makes it green,
A transfer of wealth, a solution.
http://lenbilen.com/2014/02/22/co2-the-life-giving-gas-not-carbon-pollution-a-limerick-and-explanation/
test reply
2nd test reply
cuz that’s the way it works
Dang! I like that 3D box in your new blockquotes!
How does it do it? Is the 3D effect of the box part of a background image with the quotation mark?
Zombie – it’s handled in CSS with a function
Are you limiting the number of nested replies, Anthony? And when there are many replies to replies, how will the reader know which reply was meant for which comment (eg: at Jo’s blog the nested comments are numbered and sub-numbered)?
Screenshot on the iCab browser of an iPhone:
http://s22.postimg.org/uj84yottd/image.jpg
The paragraphs are too skinny!
I think Jo’s numbering arrangement is helpful.
Final test – only to original comment, not to successive….
Is it 2016 yet?
This sounds like an alternative ending for the movie “Blazing Saddles”.
Thanks, I needed that today
Obama’s next heist on the American People is “Climate Change” caused by his fruitless works of GeoEngineering technology and Weather Wars .
So it’s not really a treaty. It’s more like an aspirational wish list.
If your aspiration is to be cold and hungry while sitting in the dark.
Bammy is legacy shopping, but not to worry; everything King Bammy touches turns into lead.
In his mind it is only one step away from turning it into gold.
That don’t smell like lead to me.
I think someone is talking about adult bovine, oh never mind.
It’s time for the gutless skeptics who turn color when the left-wing political ID of the climate change movement is mentioned to grow a spine. Babbling about spaghetti charts and “it’s about science” is going to land you and your children in an Obama reeducation camp. It’s a terror act but it is clarifying.
Peter,
If you think even winning the “science” debate on this singular topic is going to stop a 50 year trend of redefining science for a political propaganda and social control purpose through largely leftist academics and education enclaves you are seriously deluded. Delingpole and Morano have the tone of the issue correct, Anthony Watts contributes but often hedges the core reality of climate agenda motives.
I weary of the science “Vestal Virgins” on either side of course, they’re more successful for climate totalitarians since academia is another left-wing enclave like media (therefore having the most air time, authority based on numbers and the podium) but the would-be skeptic replacement models just aren’t in touch with reality. There is never going to be a “proof” either way and we now live in society that will take the word of “experts” if it fits their political outlook. If science dominated none of this would ever have happened. I’m not going to reject one set of robes and political mysticism for an alternative group of claiming chastity for “science”. Really?…..Spare me. Tactically, this has been a losing plan for 50 years. Billions absconded, massive political force garnered while the entire debate was forced on the terms climate statist’s demanded.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/08/27/Obama-the-Al-Capone-of-Climate-Change-launches-his-next-assault-on-democracy-the-Constitution-and-the-US-economy
Where does your “duty” lie Peter?
Are we witnessing the end of the American Republic?
Or just the end of the Constitution as the basic law of the United States?
Or the final stage of the metamorphosis of the American presidency into the Imperial Presidency?
Or the next impeachment?
NOT gonna happen. Not that it shouldn’t mind you, but it won’t happen. Can you imagine what would happen if Republicans — the “old white man’s party” proceeds with impeaching the first black president?
Yea, and Tim Scott, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz are the biggest caspers among them!
The irony (of many) is that changing the Senate will only make the world and our declining democracy even more precarious. Just as George Bush passed massive appeasing legislation such as No-Child, Free Medicare Drugs and increased domestic pork spending. The new Senate will elevate climate RINO’s like McCain and Graham and actually will promote more of the same deal making. Sadly, Greenshirt policy is always triangulated which means the stake will not be driven into the heart of climate fraud policy for one thing.
Truthfully, we never recovered from the FDR excesses and the WW2 central planning culture. Individual rights for most just are a secondary consideration in this global order. Climate totalitarianism is just a symptom of the broader decline. The Federal Reserve, global fiat monetary management, U.N. internationalism were much earlier designs of democratic decline. All fruit of the same poisoned tree as climate authoritarianism.
The sworn duty of the President of the United States is to uphold the Constitution. There is no greater responsibility. The President has no responsibility to save the world. That is nowhere in his duties. His responsibility starts and ends with “We the People of the United States,” Impeachment is the legally required remedy for a President that is unwilling to uphold the US Constitution.
TO IMPEACH MUST WIN SENATE 2014
Impeachment will never happen… at least, conviction and removal from office won’t happen. The House might impeach the president but it would be pretty meaningless without the Senate to remove him. There is no way, barring the miraculous, republicans will win enough seats in the Senate to remove the President from office.
It would have to be miraculous. The republicans would need to pick up 22 seats. There are only 20 democrat seats up for election this year.
Impeachment would be political disaster for the GOP, even if the IRS emails were recovered with a direct link to Whitehouse orchestration and cheer-leading. Even if Benghazi is directly linked to covert terrorist funding. Even if gun running to drug cartels were shipped with the WH UPS account numbers.
This is a post normal world you’re living in. 1950’s morality isn’t the way and you have to consider who controls most of the media operatives. This was all true in 1974 as well, it wouldn’t have happened to a democrat then or now.
Winning the Senate could be a disaster for the “stupid party” that fully deserves that label.
Impeachment is not worth the problems this would cause throughout the U.S.
Two more years of this seems like a long time right now but best in the end, IMO.
AW wrote: Why, oh why? CO2 is our friend, it helps stabilize our climate and ecosystem.
What then is this “Carbon Pollution”?
cuz that’s the way it works
————-
… and it feeds tasty plants like hops and barley, that even tastier beverages. Beverages that have neat liitle gas bubbles, that fizz out, and then go on to fertilize more hops and keep us warm and sane.
CO2 is our Friend.
you cannot realistically pursue a legally binding treaty at this time
===============
correction: you cannot legally pursue a binding treaty at this time
Greenhouse gas reduction is looking more and more like the unilateral disarmament of the 21st century, only it’s our economy instead of national defense that’s at risk.
🙂 Tell that to ISIS and its associated felons.
I agree with fredberple
on a more realistic point to this thread.
If the executive branch tries to impose an anti-carbon rule from a Paris Accord by regulation, any injured party has immediate grounds to seek emergency injunctive relief from a federal court. Not having obtained a 2/3 Senate ratification will result in granting said injunction.
You forgot that that Chief Justice Rodgers told the Solicitor General that if Obama would quit denying Obamacare was a tax and admit it is a tax, then it would be legal. The Obama Administration said it was a tax and then John Roberts voted with the leftists and Obamacare became a tax law and legal. He is as much in Obama’s back pocket as is Speaker of the House John Boehner. With Obama’s control of the Speaker and the Chief Justice and Harry Reid, no impeachment, cutting off funds, or anything else will happen. Sad for our country, but Obama will stay and prevail.
“Who is CJ Rogers?”
He meant Roberts.
There’s another problem with declaring ObamaCare a tax. By the constitution ALL tax legislation must originate in the House. ObamaCare originated in the Senate.
MarkW,
Actually, the Senate took an unrelated House bill on some obscure tax and subsidy and “amended” it by replacing the 2 or three pages of text with the 2000 pages of the ACA. So “technically” it originated in the House. It is still a pile of stuff which comes from the south end of a north bound bull, but the “origination clause” challenge won’t work.
You forgot the most important word, “IF”.
If a judge would even hear the complain.
If a judge would rule according to the law.
If Mr. Obama would bother to obey the Judge’s ruling according to the law.
President Obama surely thinks he is king
=============
No, he sees himself as the Messiah, the Savior. The False Hope and Change.
Mencken called it “the messianic delusion.” It’s fairly common.
Watch for a global Carbon Tax administered by the UN. Now there’s a nice little earner.
There already is a UN controled “climate fund” worth $100b of which until recently, 10% of the Australian “price on carbon” contributed.
When the Great Deceiver loses popular support he will attempt to rule by decree. 7 years he will be on the world stage and then disappears. pg
Rallying cry for the 2016 elections, thinks it will play well, the dems can run on their concern for the climate etc etc…all about 2016, nothing more
Yes, it’s about 2016–to ensure that the Green Party doesn’t run a candidate and split the leftist vote, as happened in 2000.
John piccirilli
August 26, 2014 at 8:38 pm
Is it 2016 yet?
We will probably get a choice between the Climate Change Party and the Prohibition Party. I don’t think I’d care to party with either.
p.g.sharrow August 26, 2014 at 9:29 pm
When the Great Deceiver loses popular support he will attempt to rule by decree. 7 years he will be on the world stage and then disappears. pg
>>>>>>>>>>>.
Beware. Obama is by world politics standards a young man. He is unlikely to fade away. Consider for example that at some point Ban Ki Moon will retire or otherwise be replaced. Obama has plenty of places he could show up in and continue to blunder from one international crisis to the other, seemingly oblivious to his own failures.
I do not make prophecy, I report it.
Just buy popcorn and see if it is truth or speculation. 😉 pg
David: We (in the UK) said much the same about Blair. Fortunately it has not (yet) come to pass and the longer it takes the more the scales are falling from the eyes of his disciples. One can but hope that Obama will just fade away.
Under the by-laws of the UN, no one from one of nations with permanent seats on the security council can be Secretary General.
Then again, we’ve already discovered that rules don’t apply to Obama.
The UN can have him.
anthony, Be careful not to alennate yourself by taking a political position in a scientific debate.
Hans Erren:
You have to take a position when the President is an idiot when it comes to climate/weather. Do you agree that CO2 is pollution?? The President does.
Is it a political position to note that the president is breaking the law?
I believe Anthony is taking a political position, based on science, in a political debate that is not based on science.
Seems appropriate to me.
The climate debate has little to do with science. Our imperial president understands that – so too should we all.
This move is what happens when the part of our nation’s founding documents that begin with “We the people…” are ignored.
That’s exactly correct dp, it’s time to throw over the nerd “it’s only/mostly a science dispute” that many skeptics religiously adhere to. It’s always been clueless but at a moment like this it’s very clear. They’re like the Roman Legion commanders shouting forward into the valley at Cannae. There’s a 50 year track record of losing ground by discounting political motives that actual drive the climate agenda.
I refer to them as the Science Vestals, they have the potential to completely fail. The debate is too important to look at these people as leaders which they aren’t.
Hans,
Exactly the delusional mantra of “it’s about science” that is completely false in regard to the climate war. The minute you accept this premise the high ground of the battle goes to the establishment which in this case is left-wing media and academia supporting its government counterparts.
Like many lukewarmer skeptics Anthony fears the label often at the expense of the truth. AGW is a left-wing greenshirt movement at the core. Without that reality in the discussion there is no truth regarding “facts”.
More truth, less worrying about politically correct protocols.
Hans,
What is the scientific debate you refer to? A story on POTUS planning on signing a UN agreement is purely political, regardless of the subject matter.