Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has just been subpoenaed, as part of Al Gore’s Climate Witch hunt. This is a move which so blatantly reeks of McCarthyite abuse of power, even some proponents of climate action are horrified at the attack on freedom which this subpoena represents.
The following is the statement of the Competitive Enterprise Institute;
CEI Fights Subpoena to Silence Debate on Climate Change
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) today denounced a subpoena from Attorney General Claude E. Walker of the U.S. Virgin Islands that attempts to unearth a decade of the organization’s materials and work on climate change policy. This is the latest effort in an intimidation campaign to criminalize speech and research on the climate debate, led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and former Vice President Al Gore.
“CEI will vigorously fight to quash this subpoena. It is an affront to our First Amendment rights of free speech and association for Attorney General Walker to bring such intimidating demands against a nonprofit group,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “If Walker and his allies succeed, the real victims will be all Americans, whose access to affordable energy will be hit by one costly regulation after another, while scientific and policy debates are wiped out one subpoena at a time.”
The subpoena requests a decade’s worth of communications, emails, statements, drafts, and other documents regarding CEI’s work on climate change and energy policy, including private donor information. It demands that CEI produce these materials from 20 years ago, from 1997-2007, by April 30, 2016.
On March 30, 2016, Attorney General Schneiderman, former Vice President Al Gore, and attorneys general from Massachusetts, Virginia, Connecticut, Maryland, Vermont, as well as Attorney General Walker, held a press conference in New York City to announce “an unprecedented coalition of top law enforcement officials committed to aggressively protecting and building upon the recent progress the United States has made in combating climate change.” Schneiderman said that the group, calling itself “AGs United for Clean Power,” will address climate change by threatening criminal investigations and charges against companies, policy organizations, scientists, and others who disagree with its members’ climate policy agenda.
CEI has long been a champion of sound climate change policy, and opposed previous attempts to use McCarthy-style tactics by officials aiming to limit discussions between nonprofit policy groups and the private sector regarding federal policies. CEI is being represented in this matter by attorneys Andrew M. Grossman and David B. Rivkin, Jr., who recently founded the Free Speech in Science Project to defend First Amendment rights against government abuses.
Source: https://cei.org/content/cei-fights-subpoena-silence-debate-climate-change
The text of the subpoena is here.
Here is a response from Bloomberg, which frequently takes a pro climate action position;
Subpoenaed Into Silence on Global Warming
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is getting subpoenaed by the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands to cough up its communications regarding climate change. The scope of the subpoena is quite broad, covering the period from 1997 to 2007, and includes, according to CEI, “a decade’s worth of communications, emails, statements, drafts, and other documents regarding CEI’s work on climate change and energy policy, including private donor information.”
My first reaction to this news was “Um, wut?” CEI has long denied humans’ role in global warming, and I have fairly substantial disagreements with CEI on the issue. However, when last I checked, it was not a criminal matter to disagree with me. It’s a pity, I grant you, but there it is; the law’s the law.
(I pause to note, in the interests of full disclosure, that before we met, my husband briefly worked for CEI as a junior employee. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.)
Speaking of the law, why on earth is CEI getting subpoenaed? The attorney general, Claude Earl Walker, explains: “We are committed to ensuring a fair and transparent market where consumers can make informed choices about what they buy and from whom. If ExxonMobil has tried to cloud their judgment, we are determined to hold the company accountable.”
That wasn’t much of an explanation. It doesn’t mention any law that ExxonMobil may have broken. It is also borderline delusional, if Walker believes that ExxonMobil’s statements or non-statements about climate change during the period 1997 to 2007 appreciably affected consumer propensity to stop at a Mobil station, rather than tootling down the road to Shell or Chevron, or giving up their car in favor of walking to work.
…
Prosecutors know the damage they can do even when they don’t have a leg to stand on. The threat of investigation can coerce settlements even in weak cases.
Read more: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-08/subpoenaed-into-silence-on-global-warming
In my opinion, this hysterical executive overreach will be the downfall of the climate alarmist movement in America, just as outrage at the excesses of the McCarthy era brought an end to that dark period of American history.
You don’t have to be a climate skeptic, to recognise that an attack on freedom of speech, in whatever guise, is an attack on everything which America stands for.
More than anything, this authoritarian, un-American attempt to silence dissent betrays the weakness of those perpetrating this attack on the CEI. In a Republic, people who have a compelling case to offer, don’t have to intimidate their political opponents into silence, to win the argument.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The word is lawfare, “…the illegitimate use of domestic or international law with the intention of damaging an opponent, winning a public relations victory, financially crippling an opponent, or tying up the opponent’s time so that they cannot pursue other ventures….”
Back when the United States had a constitution one of the sections was worded thus:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. “
This is the same CEI that uses FOIA as a means to obtain subpoenas to harass people for their emails and other communications. There’s a saying “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”.
CEI had better take this opportunity to take the offense, and have a few smoking gun questions to expose this fraud. Real science only needs 1 experiment to reject the Null/Status quo.
1) Expose the fraud of temperature “adjustments.” Demonstrate how data over time has been manipulated, so there is no reliable data source to use to reach a valid conclusion.
2) Apply the scientific method to the ice core data to prove that the temperature variation over the past 150 years is well within the norm of the Holocene. Also point out that all ice core data show a Medieval, Roman, Minoan Warming Periods, and a Little Ice Age. The Hockeystick erases the MWP and LIA.
3) Ask why all other temperature reconstructions, like the one used in the 1990 IPCC report were rejected once the unreproducible Hockeystick was introduced.
4) Ask for the Hockeystick to be reproduced in an Open Source Manner. Request that transparency be demanded in the next temperature reconstruction. Demand an open source temperature reconstruction to prove your innocence.
5) Demand an open source climate model to prove your innocence.
6) All the IPCC models have failed. Their failure proves your skepticism is justified. The IPCC model failures prove the IPCC is the one misleading the public.
7) The oceans are warming, demand an experiment that proves the IR trapped by CO2, between 13 and 18µ can warm water. A simple IR light shining 13 and 18µ at 1.3W/M^2 should make the point.
8) Ask how glaciers, 5,000 feet above the freeze line can melt due to CO2.
9) How can the marginal changes in CO2 cause such “extreme” weather events? The marginal impact to the energy budget due to small changes in CO2 are negligible.
10) You can fry an egg in a pan in death valley. How is that due to CO2? If it were due to CO2 you would be able to fry an egg in the shade of a tree. You can’t. Visible light, not IR is causing the warming.
11) How can CO2 ever cause a record daytime temperature? That is due to incoming visible light, not IR.
12) If CO2 was the cause, climate with only CO2 and no H2O would show a narrowing between Daytime and Nighttime temperatures. The Deserts and Antarctica so no trend, in fact, Antarctica has been slightly cooling over the past 50 years.
Just hand the jury each a bowl of soup at room temperature. Have them all blow their highly enriched CO2 exhale on it until it’s temperature is raised by 33C. Keep replacing exhausted jurors until you deplete the jury pool.
Unless the soup boils, AGW is proven false.
Nobody has ever argued that CO2 can create heat.
Your analogy is so flawed that you should be embarrassed by it.
Its simpler than that – this is based on the EPA endangerment finding, without that there is essentially no case to answer. However the EPA DID NOT address the implications of low CO2 which is an existential threat – That is if the EPA finding led to the invention of a planetary CO2 scrubber which was deployed under EPA Authority and drove CO2 Below 200 PPM all of humanity would DIE.
This failure to address the essential trace gas status amounts to a default on the governments role to protect it’s citizens. Now if You acknowledge that CO2 too high is a threat and too low is also a threat then the EPA would have to define an OPTIMAL CO2 target. This is not what the finding does, so the EPA has put the population of the USA (actually, of the world) at risk of LOW CO2 which is unconstitutional threat to life, liberty and justice. A Finding based on this argument would send the EPA back to the drawing board potentially with a republican president to deal with. This is the tactic I would use a constitutional challenge on the endangerment findings lack of completeness.
This documentary exposes many examples of the tactics used by the totalitarian leftists. They are truly shameful.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o
What would happen if CEI ignores the subpoena?
“Silence before the law implies consent”. If they don’t contest it there will be a default judgement against them and then the AG will attempt to enforce the order by having folks with guns show up to cart stuff away.
Which is also so American. CEI clerks surely need to be shot dead if they fail to hand over all their ‘base’.
It is a gross and flagrant abuse of power, meant to intimidate, sow fear, and to silence.
And I never thought I would say it, but it is precisely this sort of thing which would allow me, a once-straight-ticket Democrat to vote for Trump should he become the Rep. nominee.
As will I. Trump or cruz. As for this lawsuit, bring it on
The common factor with advocates of climate change is not the details of how much change is taking place, but the solution they demand. While their models have widely varying projections, the policy goals all share the common goal: to suppress the use of energy in general and energy usage by the US in particular. The issue of “climate change” is far more about reducing liberty and prosperity than it is about protecting our biosphere.
As near as I can tell there’s a federal law that states that if the costs are significant for gathering the records requested in a subpoena then the entity requesting the records has to bear the costs. A subpoena is not ‘free’. I know this from personal experience. Let the good people of the Virgin Islands (not the most well-to-do place on this earth) bear the full costs of their politically motivated AG and see how well they like his throwing away of their money.
Those people will never know it was spent that way. Politicians will see to that! How to you think they keep getting elected?
[SNIP Agreed, way off topic as well. Anthony]
[Going to leave this one in the queue. Don’t think we should open this very emotional, very political, very religious, very righteous/wrongous subject at all here. .mod]
Sorry, but you must admit that the hypocrisy is of biblical proportions. My point was that the denier approach can be applied from both sides of the political spectrum, but the political right doesn’t. I’ve always maintained that the political right has to stop playing defense and take the offense. Fight them using the tactics that they us on the right. They rely on Alynsky tactics, and playing fair is never a consideration of the political left. My example was to highlight that the right can make the denier claims, and have the facts and truth on their side. Unfortunately, as demonstrated, even on like minded sites, the comments will get moderated.
[No, I don’t agree with your position on this comment at all. Abortion won’t be discussed here. it’s off-topic, and irrelevant to the issue – my house, my policy. -Anthony]
CO2islife has made many contributions here. I am much more interested in what he has to say, than what makes some backwoods college dropout upset due to his past as a preacher.
You need to stop trying to play ”my house” then ”biggest public forum on climate in the world.”
You’re a hypocrite. Furthermore a lot of these problems stem directly from your constant fence jumping as faux hero and Beverly Hillbillies class ‘home visit’ sponsor.
Nobody can stand you Watts you personally drive the skeptical movement to this. You’re the biggest voice skeptics have, yes?
That means you’re their leader. Instead you act like a pedantic little bitch.
I’ll never say another good word about you.
[I was a preacher? News to me! My goodness, what a childish response, say whatever you want, it means nothing since you are using a fake name and a fake email address, making comments from a proxy to hide your identity.
IP: 185.17.184.228
Decimal: 3104946404
Hostname: tor-exit-node.xzyqvk.co.uk
ASN: 60781
ISP: LeaseWeb Netherlands B.V.
Organization: LeaseWeb Netherlands B.V.
Services: Confirmed proxy server
Tor exit node
Recently reported forum spam source.
Gotta love moral lectures from a person too cowardly to put their real name behind their words, who is sockpuppeting under other names here. Please feel free to be as upset as you wish.- Anthony]
co2islife wrote: “They rely on Alynsky tactics, and playing fair is never a consideration of the political left.”
The Left thinks it and only it, has the moral high ground. The Left thinks their politial opponents have no moral standing at all. They look at the political opposition as unthinking, animalistic, tribal, neanderthals who cannot be allowed to come to power.
If you see your political opponents as being utterly dispicable, then anything is legitmate, in your mind, in order to defeat them, including illegal, and violent activity. That’s the way the Left sees the Right.
If it were a choice between electing an “honest” politican or electing a serial killer, the choice is obvious: You will do everything in your power to see that the serial killer is not elected. Who would want that kind of moral degenerate running their lives?
The Left looks at the Right as serial killers. They have no compunction about going against the Right with any tactic that will work, no matter what it is, or how immoral it is. The ends justify the means, they say to themselves.
This election season the American Left is just getting wound up. Their insanity and delusion will be on full display, along with their penchant for violence and for shutting up the politican opposition.
The American Left is turning into a bunch of fascists.
It’s going to be interesting.
Where can I donate to CEI. I want on that list of donors
https://cei.org/content/cei-fights-subpoena-silence-debate-climate-change
Please don’t take this in offense. I congratulate your attitude. But, I find it interesting that you use a ‘handle’ for your comments on this website but want your full name in front of an AG’s snake-like face. Again, I mean no offense. I used a ‘handle’ for years here. I just pointed this out in a spirit of levity. Best wishes.
By the esy the ag ealker is a former epa lawyer, surprise,surprise
I just went to the CEI website and made a donation!! I’d encourage all of you to do the same as one donation of $20 doesn’t amount to much but a THOUSAND donations of $20 is much better. We must put our money where out mouth is people. Sitting on the sideline isn’t going to stop it!
Donate to CEI here:
https://cei.org/content/cei-fights-subpoena-silence-debate-climate-change
I just went to the CEI website and made a monthly recurring monthly donation!
This is going to be a long drawn out fight.
I hope the “warmest” understand the law is a double edge sword.
I hope the CEI tell Gore and his running dogs to “Foxtrot Oscar”.
So, this is a fishing expedition to uncover evidence that Exxon gained from false pretense in that it didn’t represent its products and actions as contributing to climate change. Legally the representation would have to relate to a material past or existing fact not a theory, prediction, projection, hypothesis, or speculation. A representation concerning a future state of facts or merely an expression of opinion is not sufficient. Almost all human activities could be said to contribute to climate change (hardly a fact), are farmers being similarly persecuted? Would Virgin Islanders have bought those Bananas if they knew their production and transportation had contributed to climate change? Investigate and punish Chiquita, NOW!
It’s like I’m living in a surreal nightmare inspired by 1984.
or Kafka
As a retired police officer two questions come to mind.
1) Who was the judge who signed the subpoena.
2) What legal precedent and law was the subpoena based on.
Had I submitted a request for a subpoena to obtain records this broad and without any causal link clearly defined, I would have been laughed out of the court and then sanctioned for an attempted abuse of power. This would have ended my career as a deputy and an investigator.
The judge who signed this document and the lawyer who presented it should be disbarred. This is a flagrant abuse of judicial process. If Gore is involved, you can bet they went judge shopping.
I think CEI should file for an injunction in federal court.. Citing lack of relevance and abuse of powers. Stop this BS cold!
I’ve been expecting it. The environmental fascists/commies/dictator wannabes/idiots(But don’t think they aren’t smart. I use idiot in the sense of what they are doing to everyone else.) have long used legal actions to accomplish what they can’t with facts, laws, or public opinion.
It all starts at the top. How does a POTUS sponsor something like this in a free country?
Please spare us the “he had nothing to do with it” nonsense.
https://www.barackobama.com/news/climate-denier-tournament/
Censorship through legal intimidation. The totalitarian element in climate alarmism rears its ugly head….something every freedom-loving individual in all nations where human rights are respected should comdemn.
The reference to McCarthyism is well placed. America has a long history of this sort of thing. Our republic has never been perfect, and far from it. We’re still susceptible to lies and superstition, blind nationalism and patriotism, consensus and mob rules. I go back to what I’ve always said about “Global Warming,” it will put a major hurt on science once the hysteria subsides and everyone realizes the planet is doing just fine and simply going through it’s normal healthy stages and change. Since “98%” of scientists have endorsed global warming, then 98% of science will be proven wrong. People will scoff for many years because of that. And I’m not the only one who’s said this.
‘97%’ not 98- don’t give them one more than they claim and they shouldn’t Ever get away with the claim.
It is worse than McCarthyism in at least three respects.
Communism was a real threat to the United States for many years, particularly in the couple of decades following World War 2. The Soviet Union used the information from spies to build their own atomic bomb, shifting the balance of power and making a nuclear arms race inevitable.
The Soviets were aggressive in their expansionism – for instance in the blockade of Berlin, and the takeover of Eastern Europe. There was a real fear of a new nuclear war. There is no established big threat from global warming. Indeed the strength of the evidence for human-caused global warming is inversely related to the size of the threat.
The third is that the threat of nuclear war could be counter-balanced. Although a frightening scenario to live under, the cold war policy of mutually assured destruction kept the peace for over 40 years. US policy on curbing emissions is ineffectual in the context of global GHG emissions. Whatever the policy countries do, global emissions will go on rising for decades as China, India, other Asian countries and then African countries grow their emissions.
McCarthy underestimated the number of Communist subversion agents in the US. If people had listened to him, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.
Rogerthesurf. Not only is this like the Chinese government of Mao Tse Tung in the so-called “great leap forward” in 1958 – 1961, but in that period, people who tried to report that there were food shortages, or who moved to neighbouring areas to find food were called “deniers”. They were denying the famine (or the lack thereof according to the government) which is estimated to have killed 50 million people.
I believe in Climate Change. It goes up. It goes down. Warm is good and has allowed humans to successfully build a modern world and has allowed flora and fauna to expand around the globe. Cold is bad and will tear down both flora and fauna as well as the modern world, taking no mind as to who believed in AGW and who believed in natural drivers.
When do I report for jail and when do I get my free speech muzzle? Just wanna be prepared and ready when they knock on my door.
it is truly disturbing what’s going on and I hope you are correct that the Climate Alarmists’ radical agenda will be the death of it. I’m not sure, as it’s become a religion for many people. Oh and we actually have a sitting U.S. Senator (Sheldon Whitehouse) who wants to use RICO laws to prosecute those on the “wrong” side of the debate.
CEI to AG: “We’ll see your request for our emails and raise you Michael Mann’s.”