Ladies and gentlemen, I call your attention to the key passage in unrepentant Climate Change Republican John McCain’s Senate floor statement yesterday on cap-and-trade. Note well (hat tip: Edward John Craig/Planet Gore):

Let me say to my colleagues, I am proud of my record on climate change. I have been all over the world, and I have seen climate change. I know it is real, and I will be glad to continue this debate with my colleagues and people who do not agree with that. I believe climate change is real.

More than three months after the ClimateGate scandal broke and despite relentless new disclosures every week about the fraud, misconduct, and distortions that have served as the underpinnings of AGW theory, McCain still believes climate change “is real.”

He is “proud,” my friends, of his global warming tour and rigged Senate hearings, his flip-flops on offshore drilling, and his longtime cap-and-tax flirtations.

While even Democrat slow learners are beginning to push back against the EPA war on carbon, McCain is still siding with the cultists.

I repeat:

Attention, GOP: John McCain is the problem.

***

Commenter b-cat: “‘I have been all over the world, and I have seen climate change.‘ How is this possible? It is supposed to happen so slowly no one notices. It is akin to saying I have been all over the world, and I have seen evolution. We’re talking about small percentage points of a single degree over the course of a century.”

***

Update: Via Michael O’Brien of The Hill, here comes the Climate Change Republican Bobsy Twin…

Comprehensive climate change legislation can’t get the votes to pass in the Senate without a cap on carbon emissions, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Thursday.

Graham, one of the three Senate negotiators on a compromise climate bill, said that lawmakers could advance a cap on carbon emissions, but not the cap-and-trade system that’s been proposed in Congress and passed by the House.

“Cap and trade to regulate to regulate carbon is not going to work,” Graham said during an appearance on the Keith Larson radio show. “And at another time, I’ll tell you a way to price carbon that will create energy independence and a green economy: You can cap carbon without doing the cap and trade bill.”

***

Update: Brooke Buchanan from McCain’s office e-mails:

Saw your recent post on your blog and wanted to let you know the floor statement was dated wrong on the website and since been updated (see link below). Senator McCain actually gave the floor speech on March, 19 2009. I would appreciate updating your post to reflect.

http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressOffice.FloorStatements&ContentRecord_id=fc9fe108-cefb-5625-da0c-ae792f8ee497&Region_id=&Issue_id=

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

I called ClimateGate “the global warming scandal of the century” back on November 20. Deeper and deeper it goes. Over the weekend, University of East Anglia global warming cultist Phil Jones conceded that there has been no statistically significant warming over the last 15 years:

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.

The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Anthony Watts sums up the Jones Q&A:

Specifically, the Q-and-As confirm what many skeptics have long suspected:

* Neither the rate nor magnitude of recent warming is exceptional.
* There was no significant warming from 1998-2009. According to the IPCC we should have seen a global temperature increase of at least 0.2°C per decade.
* The IPCC models may have overestimated the climate sensitivity for greenhouse gases, underestimated natural variability, or both.
* This also suggests that there is a systematic upward bias in the impacts estimates based on these models just from this factor alone.
* The logic behind attribution of current warming to well-mixed man-made greenhouse gases is faulty.
* The science is not settled, however unsettling that might be.
* There is a tendency in the IPCC reports to leave out inconvenient findings, especially in the part(s) most likely to be read by policy makers.

The MSM persists in minimizing the systemic academic fraud perpetuated by the AGW cult. Here’s the Washington Post using the weasel term “missteps” to describe the lies and cover-ups:

With its 2007 report declaring that the “warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won a Nobel Prize — and a new degree of public trust in the controversial science of global warming.

But recent revelations about flaws in that seminal report, ranging from typos in key dates to sloppy sourcing, are undermining confidence not only in the panel’s work but also in projections about climate change. Scientists who have pointed out problems in the report say the panel’s methods and mistakes — including admitting Saturday that it had overstated how much of the Netherlands was below sea level — give doubters an opening.

It wasn’t the first one. There is still a scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change. But in the past year, a cache of stolen e-mails, revealing that prominent climate scientists sought to prevent the publication of works by their detractors, has sullied their image as impartial academics. The errors in the U.N. report — a document intended to be the last nail in the coffin of climate doubt — are a serious problem that could end up forcing environmentalists to focus more on the old question of proving that climate change is a threat, instead of the new question of how to stop it.

More on the latest embarrassment:

The U.N. panel of climate experts overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level, according to a preliminary report on Saturday, admitting yet another flaw after a row last month over Himalayan glacier melt. A background note by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said a 2007 report wrongly stated that 55 percent of the country was below sea level since the figure included areas above sea level, prone to flooding along rivers.

The United Nations has said errors in the 2007 report of about 3,000 pages do not affect the core conclusions that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, are warming the globe.

“The sea level statistic was used for background information only, and the updated information remains consistent with the overall conclusions,” the IPCC note dated February 12 said.

Skeptics say errors have exposed sloppiness and over-reliance on “grey literature” outside leading scientific journals.

“Skeptics say?” The mounting evidence and exposures say it all: The science is not settled. It has been warped, corrupted, and manipulated systemically. There needs to be a probe of the U.N. — and not by the U.N.:

The UN body that advises world leaders on climate change must investigate an apparent bias in its report that resulted in several exaggerations of the impact of global warming, according to its former chairman.

In an interview with The Times Robert Watson said that all the errors exposed so far in the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) resulted in overstatements of the severity of the problem.

Professor Watson, currently chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said that if the errors had just been innocent mistakes, as has been claimed by the current chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, some would probably have understated the impact of climate change.

The errors have emerged in the past month after simple checking of the sources cited by the 2,500 scientists who produced the report.

The report falsely claimed that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 when evidence suggests that they will survive for another 300 years. It also claimed that global warming could cut rain-fed North African crop production by up to 50 per cent by 2020. A senior IPCC contributor has since admitted that there is no evidence to support this claim.

The Dutch Government has asked the IPCC to correct its claim that more than half the Netherlands is below sea level. The environment ministry said that only 26 per cent of the country was below sea level.

Professor Watson, who served as chairman of the IPCC from 1997-2002, said: “The mistakes all appear to have gone in the direction of making it seem like climate change is more serious by overstating the impact. That is worrying. The IPCC needs to look at this trend in the errors and ask why it happened.”

And more: IPCC warnings about African crops also bogus.

Oh, and Donald Trump is right: Al Gore should return his Nobel Prize.

Eco-hysteria doesn’t deliver world peace. It threatens it.

The Massachusetts Miracle wasn’t just a wake-up call for Democrats. It was a wake-up call for Big Government Republicans, Business-As-Usual Republicans, McCain Republicans, and Climate Change Republicans. Lindsey Graham is all four, of course.

In October, he penned an enviro-nitwit op-ed with John Kerry signing on to the Democrats’ massive cap-and-tax plan.

He’s singing a different tune now:

Republicans, industry executives and some Democrats have already written cap and trade’s obituary, at least for this year. And even some of the system’s most ardent supporters now say they must scale back their ambitions and focus on job-creating energy projects and energy efficiency measures if they are to have any hope of dealing with climate change in this Congress.

“Realistically, the cap-and-trade bills in the House and the Senate are going nowhere,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who is trying to fashion a bipartisan package of climate and energy measures. “They’re not business-friendly enough, and they don’t lead to meaningful energy independence.”

Mr. Graham said the public was demanding that any energy legislation from Washington focus on creating jobs, whether by drilling for offshore oil or building wind turbines.

“What is dead is some massive cap-and-trade system that regulates carbon in a fashion that drives up energy costs,” he said.

No thanks to you, buddy.

***

Has Sen. Graham breathed a word about the ever-exploding ClimateGate scandal? One word? Ever?

The latest on the Himalayan debacle:

The head of a panel of United Nations climate scientists said Saturday he would not resign despite a recent admission that a panel report warning Himalayan glaciers could be gone by 2035 was hundreds of years off.

The claim, made in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s voluminous, Nobel-winning report, came in a paragraph with several errors. Data indicates the ice could melt by 2350. The assertion went virtually unnoticed until The Sunday Times said the projection seemed to be based on a news report.

The scientists are investigating how the forecast got into the report and apologized Thursday for the mistakes, adding that they were not intentional. But the errors have opened the door for attacks from climate change skeptics.

But Rajendra Pachauri, who heads the panel, said no action would be taken against the authors of the report and he would not resign.

“I have no intention of resigning from my position,” Pachauri said on Saturday, adding the errors were unintentional and not significant in comparison to the entire report. The mistakes also do not negate the fact that worldwide, glaciers are melting faster than ever, he said.

He added that such mistakes must be avoided because effective climate change policy depends on good, credible science. He said he is now working on the fifth IPCC assessment report dealing with sea level rise and ice sheets, oceans, clouds and carbon accounting. The report is expected by 2014.

Pew shows global warming is dead last among voters’ concerns.

New Yale and George Mason research shows similar results.

***

Flashback November 4, 2009 – Graham panders to the enviro-Leftists. “The green economy is coming.”

***

More flashbacks…

Ugh: McCain & Company melting on cap-and-tax By Michelle Malkin • October 8, 2009 10:41 AM

Beware the Climate Change Republicans By Michelle Malkin • September 21, 2009 12:14 PM

McCain on offshore drilling: For it before he was against it before he was for it again; Update: McCain’s astounding flip-flop on windfall profits tax, plus a new global warming alarmist ad By Michelle Malkin • June 16, 2008 04:28 PM

McCain’s “climate change” tour bypasses cooler heads By Michelle Malkin • May 12, 2008 10:43 AM

Digging deeper: The enviro-nitwit-ization of the GOP By Michelle Malkin • December 13, 2007 02:08 AM

1) First, watch the news report from Pennsylvania — where Mann is under investigation by Penn State:

Background from the Commonwealth Foundation. They’ve called for an independent investigation and expose Penn State’s conflicts of interests in the matter.

2) The Foundry flags Mann’s $514,000 stimulus windfall (via Mindy Belz at World Magazine).

3) The Philly Inquirer has a sympathetic profile of Mann. This American Thinker parody of Mann’s CYA is far more enlightening.

Who’s in the mood for some Dean Martin? The Copenhagen debacle has me singing, “Let It Snow:”

President Obama delivered a stinker of speech — yawn — panned by his former Euro-groupies whose Obama-philia has chilled considerably. Obama managed to cobble a “feeble” agreement that he is, of course, calling “unprecedented.”

Obama leaves the snow-covered Copenhagen summit just in time to catch the East Coast blizzard.

Gotta love the Gore Effect.

***

In more ClimateGate news, Patrick J. Michaels sheds additional light on the whitewashing of peer-review thuggery.

Hmmmm. Left-wing radical billionaire George Soros has injected himself into the Copenhagen climate change talks. He is riding to the “rescue” of negotiators at loggerheads over the pricetag of global regulatory intervention to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Look:

The $10 billion a year proposed by rich nations to help the poor adapt to climate change is “not sufficient” and the gap between what’s offered and what’s needed could wreck the Copenhagen climate conference, American billionaire George Soros said Thursday…

Soros, one in a line of international notables visiting the 192-nation Copenhagen meeting, told reporters he had developed a partial solution on funding. The investor-philanthropist suggested shifting some International Monetary Fund resources from providing liquidity to stressed global financial systems to a new mission of financing projects in developing countries for clean energy and adapting to climate change. About $100 billion in a one-time infusion could be generated, said Soros, a major supporter of causes in the developing world. But he acknowledged a major roadblock in Washington.

“It is possible to substantially increase the amount available to fight global warming in the developing world,” he said. “All that is lacking is the political will. Unfortunately the political will will be difficult to gather because of the mere fact that it requires congressional approval in the United States.” Soros said he had “informal discussions” with Obama administration officials and they recognized the difficulty of getting congressional approval. But he said the issue was too important to sweep aside.

Soros is crusading for expansion of “Special Drawing Rights” — a financial instrument that would essentially divert foreign aid to global warming special interests.

Soros said the $10 billion-a-year short-term plan is “more than nothing, but not much, it’s not sufficient.” He suggested climate financing be boosted with some $100 billion in Special Drawing Rights, the artificial “currency” of the International Monetary Fund, formulated as a basket of major currency values and held in reserve for lending in financial emergencies. In response to the recent global financial crisis, the IMF created more than $200 billion in new Special Drawing Rights. But Soros noted that the Obama administration had difficulty getting U.S. approval for that through Congress. He had found “quite widespread support” from other governments, but “other countries are reluctant to do something that is uncomfortable for the United States,” Soros said.

A key European negotiator was wary of Soros’ idea.

“We have to be very careful in the way we use the Special Drawing Rights,” said Artur Runge-Metzger of the European Commission.

Indeed. Soros has been lobbying for SDRs for years. Here’s a paper he wrote in 2002. He has a rather vested interest in the subject:

I am in the international assistance business. I give away nearly $500m a year. I am more aware than most people of the pitfalls. I have seen, particularly in the Balkans, how ineffective donor conferences are. The mechanism I am proposing is not perfect – nothing is – and it would not eliminate all of the shortcomings of international assistance, but it would be a great improvement over what we have now.

I propose that the IMF should set up an independent jury of eminent personalities- independent of the IMF and of the governments that appoint them. The jury would recommend which projects should qualify for donations; but the jury would not be in charge of actually allocating the funds; that function would remain with the donors. The donor countries would be presented with a menu from which they can choose and the menu would be properly prepared. A jury of eminent persons would take a personal interest in the quality of the projects they approve and there would be a separate body to audit and evaluate the projects so that the donors would have all the information they need to make their allocations. There would be a market-like interaction between donors and projects with checks and balances and quality control.

Reasons to worry? Let us count the ways:

In March, I remind you, Soros was slapped with a record fine in Hungary for illegal market manipulation.

In May, I remind you, Soros was fined by the state of California for failing to disclose a $350,000 campaign contribution funneled through one of his drug policy non-profits to an initiative intended to undermine the state’s 3 Strikes law.

There’s the Petrobras shadiness. And his boast of “having a very good crisis” this year after breaking the bank of England a decade ago.

We know Soros has the ear of the White House.

But who in Washington has their eyes on Soros and his scheming eco-redistributionists? Anyone?

Al Gore is on his ClimateGate whitewash mission — and, as usual, ManBearPig isn’t going to let inconvenient facts get in the way of his eco-crusade.

He talked with Slate magazine’s John Dickerson and repeatedly pooh-poohed the scandalous ClimateGate e-mails as “more than 10 years old,” “over 10-year-old e-mails,” and “an e-mail exchange more than 10 years ago.”

Er, the e-mails are from as recently as November 2009 — and as Anthony Watts documents and reminds folks on Planet Earth, “[a]nd there are dozens to hundreds more within the last month, the last year, and the last 10 years.”

Hey, Al Gore: You lie!

(Hat tip: Andrew Bolt)

***

Earlier today: Hey, EPA chief Lisa Jackson: You lie!

Add another global warming lie to the stinking green heap:

EPA chief Lisa Jackson has denied that the greenhouse gas endangerment finding had anything to do at all with the Copenhagan climate change conference. Nope, don’t question the timing of the EPA’s war on carbon. Pure coincidence.

Except…

Jackson herself said the exact opposite in a statement Tweeted by a Mother Jones environmental reporter, Kate Sheppard, on Monday.

Here’s the Tweet:

Paging Joe Wilson to the Copenhagen summit!

Eco-czars of the Obama administration, activate!

Form of…a corrupted “scientific” finding on greenhouse gas “public endangerment.”

Timed for maximum impact on the Copenhagen global warming treaty talks, the Obama EPA is set to announce that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, paving the way for the green bureaucrats to radically regulate emissions.

Keeping an open mind about dissenting researchers? Listening to input from the Hill? Screw them:

The Obama administration is pressing for a new law that would establish a cap-and-trade system to curb emissions from power plants and scores of other sources. But the administration has also warned that it plans to move ahead with EPA rules absent a final bill. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is urging GOP colleagues to back an emissions bill in part because Congress, not EPA, should decide the contours of a national emissions program. The so-called endangerment finding stems from a major 2007 Supreme Court decision that enables EPA to limit the emissions if it finds that greenhouses gases are indeed a danger. The agency issued a preliminary finding in April.

The EPA announcement could also give U.S. negotiators more leverage at the international climate talks in Copenhagen that begin today, demonstrating domestic action even though Congress has not completed a final bill to curb emissions.

Although EPA chief Lisa Jackson will make the announcement this afternoon, the edict has global warming zealot and Obama energy czar/chief ClimateGate denier Carol “Put nothing in writing…ever” Browner’s fingerprints all over it.

Take a moment to refresh your memories on how Obama’s enviro-ministers have dealt with inside watchdogs on the endangerment issue. It’s the same way the ClimateGate cabal has dealt with its critics: By attempting to squash them. From my June 26 column:

The free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington (where I served as a journalism fellow in 1995) obtained a set of internal e-mails exposing Team Obama’s willful and reckless disregard for data that undermine the illusion of “consensus.” In March, Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, asked agency officials to distribute his analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases. EPA has proposed a public health “endangerment finding” covering CO2 and five other gases that would trigger costly, extensive new regulations of motor vehicles. The open comment period on the ruling ended this week. But Carlin’s study didn’t fit the blame-human-activity narrative, so it didn’t make the cut.

On March 12, Carlin’s director, Al McGartland, forbade him from having “any direct communication” with anyone outside his office about his study. “There should be no meetings, emails, written statements, phone calls, etc.” On March 16, Carlin urged his superiors to forward his work to EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, which runs the agency’s climate change program. A day later, McGartland dismissed Carlin and showed his true, politicized colors:

“The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision… I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.”

Contrary comments, in other words, would interfere with the “process” of ramming the EPA’s endangerment finding through. Truth-in-science took a backseat to protecting eco-bureaucrats from “a very negative impact.”

In another follow-up e-mail, McGartland warned Carlin to drop the subject altogether: “With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate.”

But, of course, the e-mails show that EPA had already predetermined what it was going to do – “move forward on endangerment.” Which underscores the fact that the open public comment period was all for show. In her message to the public about the radical greenhouse gas rules, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson requested “comment on the data on which the proposed findings are based, the methodology used in obtaining and analyzing the data, and the major legal interpretations and policy considerations underlying the proposed findings.” Ms. Jackson, meet Mr. Carlin.

The EPA now justifies the suppression of the study because economist Carlin (a 35-year veteran of the agency who also holds a B.S. in physics) “is an individual who is not a scientist.” Neither is Al Gore. Nor is environmental czar Carol Browner. Nor is cap-and-trade shepherd Nancy Pelosi. Carlin’s analysis incorporated peer-reviewed studies and, as he informed his colleagues, “significant new research” related to the proposed endangerment finding. According to those who have seen his study, it spotlights EPA’s reliance on out-of-date research, uncritical recycling of United Nations data, and omission of new developments, including a continued decline in global temperatures and a new consensus that future hurricane behavior won’t be different than in the past.

But the message from his superiors was clear: La-la-la, we can’t hear you.

In April, President Obama declared that “the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.” Another day, another broken promise.

Philip Klein has more on the EPA bureaucrats expanding their power under the guise of saving the planet:

Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, made these intentions clear in her opening memo to employees in January 2009. “EPA will stand ready to help Congress craft strong, science-based climate legislation that fulfills the vision of the President,” she wrote, adding, “As Congress does its work, we will move ahead to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision recognizing EPA’s obligation to address climate change under the Clean Air Act.”

The Supreme Court decision Jackson referred to is Massachusetts v. EPA. Decided in 2007, the Court ruled that, pending a finding of “endangerment,” the EPA was required to regulate greenhouse gases in new vehicles. Obama appointed the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the suit, Lisa Heinzerling, to be senior policy counsel on climate change at the EPA, a position that does not require confirmation. In her speeches and academic writings, Heinzerling has advocated an unabashedly activist role for the federal government in regulating carbon emissions….

Heinzerling has gone so far as to argue that since global warming kills people, a failure to address it is tantamount to somebody not acting on prior knowledge that a homicide is going to take place.

“Knowledge that death and suffering will result from our actions leads uncontroversially to a moral obligation to change our behavior,” Heinzerling wrote in a 2008 article for the Georgetown Law Journal. “In the United States, knowing killing is condemned in the criminal laws of all 50 states, in modern regulatory laws at the federal level, and in civil jury awards in tort cases. These laws embody a moral commitment against knowing killing that, in traditional criminal contexts, is uncontroversial. It should be no more controversial when it occurs on a global scale.”

Jackson is set to speak in Copenhagen.

I call to your attention GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe’s warning when the EPA took its first steps on this finding:

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said today that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed endangerment finding will unleash a torrent of regulations that will destroy jobs, harm consumers, and extend the agency’s reach into every corner of American life. Despite enormous expense and hardship for the American economy, these regulations will have virtually no effect on climate change.

“Today’s action by the EPA is the beginning of a regulatory barrage that will destroy jobs, raise energy prices for consumers, and undermine America’s global competitiveness,” Senator Inhofe said. “It now appears EPA’s regulatory reach will find its way into schools, hospitals, assisted living facilities, and just about any activity that meets minimum thresholds in the Clean Air Act. Rep. John Dingell was right: the endangerment finding will produce a ‘glorious mess.’

“It’s worth noting that the solution to this ‘glorious mess’ is not for Congress to pass cap-and-trade legislation, which replaces one very bad approach with another. Congress should pass a simple, narrowly-targeted bill that stops EPA in its tracks.”

Endangering Farmers, the Elderly, and Construction Workers: Once EPA makes a finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare under the Clean Air Act, who, specifically, would be affected? As EPA’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) makes clear, an endangerment finding would lead to regulations covering nearly every facet of the American economy. In reading through comments filed in the regulatory docket, one is struck by how broadly the Clean Air Act would apply once an endangerment finding is made-especially to sources that have hitherto never come under the ambit of the Act. EPA received thousands of public comments from various industries and groups that expressed concern and outright opposition-on issues of cost, competitiveness, jobs, and administrative complexity-to greenhouse gas regulation under the CAA.

AN “HISTORIC” DAY: EPA’s finding is indeed historic news, for the simple fact that it will enlarge EPA’s regulatory reach to an unprecedented degree, extending it into every corner of the US economy, causing enormous economic damage. According to Peter Glaser, a national legal expert on the Clean Air Act, an endangerment finding will lead to new EPA regulations covering virtually everything, including “office buildings, apartment buildings, warehouse and storage buildings, educational buildings, health care buildings such as hospitals and assisted living facilities, hotels, restaurants, religious worship buildings, public assembly buildings, supermarkets, retail malls, agricultural facilities…and many others.” An array of new development projects could be delayed, perhaps for several years, causing “an economic train wreck.” This conclusion was supported recently by the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, which found that EPA’s new carbon regulations would destroy over 800,000 jobs and result in a cumulative GDP loss of $7 trillion by 2029.

Risky Legal Schemes: “…hospitals, schools, farms, commercial buildings, and a host of other small sources emit more than 250 tons per year of CO2-a limit expressly mentioned in the statute-they will be required, once an endangerment finding is made and CO2 becomes a regulated pollutant, to obtain costly, burdensome pre-construction permits for their activities…Further, Glaser notes that “the statutory language is mandatory and does not leave any room for EPA to exercise discretion or create exceptions.” In short, unless Congress exempts them, there’s no way out for schools, assisted living facilities, and thousands upon thousands of small businesses.”

I declare the Obama eco-appartchiks a public danger whose regulatory emissions must be contained.

***

Side note: My views on the Obama green power grab and the global warming mob have been clear and unchanged from day one. Some folks have asked about the ad that is appearing on the site today. I obviously do not agree with the advertiser’s support for the Copenhagen treaty.

Make sure you keep this list of 56 newspapers handy when looking for thorough, fair coverage of the ClimateChange scandal.

These are 56 newspapers that you cannot trust on the issue:

Today, the eco-herd of papers published a collective editorial whipping up hysteria over the issue in the face of massive data manipulation, suppression, and bullying of dissenters.

Someone should translate the phrase “Hide the Decline” in all the 20-plus languages editorial has been printed in and stamp it across their front pages:

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

…The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based…

…Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of “exported emissions” so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than “old Europe”, must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

No amount of evidence will dent the cult’s belief in AGW and the need for what the collectivist editorialists call transformative “social justice.”

We’ve heard apocalyptic threats against “doing nothing” before. Let’s remember how the Chicken Little story ends.

The chill wind of ClimateGate has blown over Al Gore’s $1,200-per handshake lecture at Copenhagen. He has canceled the hot-air hoedown.

ClimateDepot dubbed the crumbling global warming conference next week “Nopenhagen.”

Blow, winds of change, blow:

Former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday abruptly canceled a Dec. 16 personal appearance that was to be staged during the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which begins next week.

As described in The Washington TImes’ Inside the Beltway column Tuesday, the multi-media public event to promote Mr. Gore’s new book “Our Choice” included $1,209 VIP tickets that granted the holder a photo opportunity with Mr. Gore and a “light snack.”

Berlingkse Media, a Danish group coordinating ticket sales and publicity for the event, said that “great annoyance” was a factor in the cancellation, along with unforeseen changes in Gore’s program for the climate summit. The decision affected 3,000 ticket holders.

“We have had a clear-cut agreement, and it is unusual with great disappointment that we have to announce that Al Gore cancels. We had a huge expectation for the event. … We do not yet know the detailed reasons for the cancellation,” said Lisbeth Knudsen, CEO of Berlingske Media, in a statement posted by the company.

The ClimateDepot,com, an online news aggregator that track global warming news reports, referred to the situation as “Nopenhagen”, and evidence that popular momentum for the Copenhagen conference “is fading.”

Nazis!!!!

***

ClimateGate: The Next Frontier…hits NASA.

Another gargantuan reason, in the wake of ClimateGate, to call the whole damned thing off:

When an estimated 16,500 delegates, activists and reporters descend upon Copenhagen Monday for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, a lot of hot air will follow.

The U.N. estimates the 12-day conference will create 40,584 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, roughly the same amount as the carbon emissions of Morocco in 2006.

Those greenhouse gas emissions are comprised of two parts: international travel and local emissions from hotels and transportation venues. Organizers will also reportedly lay 900 kilometers of computer cable and 50,000 square miles of carpet, along with more than 200,000 meals to be served and 200,000 cups of coffee.

The conference will leave an enormous carbon footprint, says Patrick Michaels, senior fellow for environmental studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington.

“It will be huge,” Michaels said of the environmental toll. “Where is video conferencing when we need it? An equally important question is what will be accomplished here?”

Approximately 140 aircraft carrying world leaders, heads of state and VIPs will land in Copenhagen, the U.N. estimates — although 95 percent of departures from Copenhagen Airport will be “green departures,” which allow airplanes to climb continuously to their optimal operating level, enabling them to reach planned routes sooner than usual. The result, according to the U.N., is saved time, fuel and carbon emissions.

But Michaels wonders why attendees, particularly those in Europe, can’t ride the rails into Copenhagen.

“That’s the way I get to New York,” Michaels said. “There’s nothing new here. There’s always been a lot of hypocrisy amongst the climate change political community.

“Prince Charles goes around the world in a private jet, telling everyone else they need to ration their carbon dioxide. Please.”

Herb London, president of the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank, acknowledged the “level of hypocrisy” regarding the conference and its emissions, but he said living in modernity mandates some sort of measurable carbon footprint. The question, he said, is if the carbon footprint left behind is desirable and efficient.

“It is ironic that you’ll have all these pronouncements made and very little action,” London told FoxNews.com. “What are [China and India] going to do? So what are we talking about here?”

Via FoxNews.com.

My syndicated column today looks at the global warming cultists in the Obama administration who are working overtime to paper over the ClimateGate scandal. Yesterday, Phil Jones, the head of the U.K.’s Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia stepped aside while the university investigates. Penn State prof Michael Mann, purveyor of the infamous hockey stick graph of spiking global temperatures peddled by Al Gore, is also under investigation. GOP Sen. James Inhofe, vigilant watchdog over global warming shenanigans, wants Babs Boxer to investigate. As Obama heads to Copenhagen to crusade for massive interventions to stop global warming, a new Harris Poll shows a significant shift in public opinion away from the cult of climate change. Jonah Goldberg dissects the groupthink that has gripped the global warming industry and its media enablers. Ed Driscoll takes you on a tour through global warming evolution in six and a half minutes. Well now: “Moderate” (liberal) GOP candidates/lawmakers led by GOP cap-and-tax 8′er Mark Kirk are running as fast as they can from the global warming hot mess.

Hide the decline, hide the decline…

Oh, and just a reminder:

Former Vice President Al Gore had four White House meetings in April. The records suggest these were not social calls for Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work to curb global warming. Two of the meetings were with John Holdren, Obama’s top science and technology adviser.

***

All the president’s ClimateGate deniers
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

“The science is settled,” we’ve been told for decades by zealous proponents of man-made global warming hysteria. Thanks to an earth-shaking hacking scandal across the pond, we now have mountains of documents from the world’s leading global warming advocacy center that show the science is about as settled as a southeast Asian tsunami. You won’t be surprised by the Obama administration’s response to ClimateGate.

With pursed lips and closed eyes and ears, the White House is clinging to the old eco-mantra: The science is settled.

Never mind all the devastating new information about data manipulation, intimidation, and cult-like cover-ups to “hide the decline” in global temperatures over the last half-century, they say. The science is settled.

Never mind what The Atlantic’s Clive Crook, after wading through the climate science email files of the U.K.’s Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, called the overpowering “stink of intellectual corruption” — combined with mafia-like suppression of dissent, suppression of evidence and methods, and “plain statistical incompetence” exposed by the document trove. The science is settled.

Never mind the expedient disappearance of mounds of raw weather station data that dissenting scientists were seeking through freedom of information requests from the Climatic Research Unit. The science is settled.

In March, President Obama made a grandiose show of putting “science” above “politics” when lifting the ban on government-funded human embryonic stem cell research. “Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it’s also about protecting free and open inquiry,” he said during the signing ceremony. “It’s about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient — especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda — and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”

Yet, the pro-sound science president has surrounded himself with radical ClimateGate deniers who have spent their entire professional careers “settling” man-made global warming disaster science through fear-mongering, intimidation, and ridicule of opponents.

*Science czar John Holdren, who will testify on Capitol Hill this week at a hearing on ClimateGate, infamously hyped weather catastrophes and demographic disasters in the 1970s with his population control freak pals Paul and Anne Ehrlich. He made a public bet against free-market economist Julian Simon predicting dire shortages of five natural resources as a result of feared overconsumption. He lost on all counts. No matter.

Holdren’s failure didn’t stop him from writing forcefully about mass sterilization and forced abortion “solutions” to a fizzling, sizzling, overpopulated planet. And it didn’t stop him from making a living making more dire predictions. In 1986, Ehrlich credited Holdren with forecasting that “carbon-dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020.” He went on to Harvard and the White House. On the David Letterman show earlier this year, Holdren fretted that his son “might not see snow!”

Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball notes that Holdren turned up in the ClimateGate files belittling the work of astrophysicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division. Holdren put “Harvard” in sneer quotes when mocking a research paper Baliunas and Soon published in 2003 showing that “the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.” First, deny. Next, deride.

*Energy Secretary Steven Chu picked derision as his weapon earlier this year when peddling the Obama administration’s greenhouse-gas emission policy. “The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,” the Wall Street Journal quoted Chu. He dismissed dissent by asserting “there’s very little debate” about the impact of “green energy” policy on the economy.

There’s “very little debate,” of course, because dissenters get crushed.

*The Obama team’s chief eco-dissent-crusher is climate czar Carol Browner.

As I’ve reported and reminded over the years, she oversaw the destruction of Environmental Protection Agency computer files in brazen violation of a federal judge’s order requiring the agency to preserve its records during the Clinton years.

Over the past year, the EPA has stifled the dissent of Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, who questioned the administration’s reliance on outdated research on the health effects of greenhouse gases – and also sought to yank a YouTube video created by EPA lawyers Allan Zabel and Laurie Williams that is critical of cap-and-trade. Browner reportedly threatened auto execs in July by telling them to “put nothing in writing…ever” about their negotiations with her.

And she is now leading the “science is settled” stonewalling in the wake of ClimateGate. “I’m sticking with the 2,500 scientists,” she said. These people have been studying this issue for a very long time and agree this problem is real.” Book-cookers are good at making it seem so.

In any case, last year, more than 31,000 scientists — – including 9,021 PhDs — signed a petition sponsored by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine rejecting claims of human-caused global warming.

But hey, who’s counting? The science is settled.

***

Australia rejects a massive cap-and-tax bill.

Richard Lindzen: No, the science isn’t settled.

Paul Driessen: Time to cancel Copenhagen.

Ron Bailey on the scientific tragedy of ClimateGate:

How can the world of climate science recover? First, carry out independent investigations of the activities of the researchers involved. Pennsylvania State University has announced that it will investigate the activities of researcher Michael Mann who worked closely with the CRU and several times expressed in the leaked emails his desire to stifle the scientific work of researchers with whom he disagreed. In Britain, Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, has called for an independent investigation of the CRU. Tireless journalistic global warming scold George Monbiot has declared, “It’s no use pretending this isn’t a major blow…. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign.”

“Document dump” is the operative word of the month, isn’t it?

We had another holiday weekend document dump of visitor logs from the White House, which included these trips:

Former Vice President Al Gore had four White House meetings in April. The records suggest these were not social calls for Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work to curb global warming. Two of the meetings were with John Holdren, Obama’s top science and technology adviser.

Holdren, of course, is the population control freak/global warming zealout/science czar — who, as I noted last week, is smack dab in the middle of the ClimateGate scandal.

Speaking of which, the research institution at the center of ClimateGate admitted its own document dump over the weekend:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

And to round out document-dump-a-palooza, here’s the latest on the massive ACORN docdump.

Viva transparency!

***

More:

*Paul Mirengoff at Power Line: The Obama-Holder Justice Department turns a blind eye to ACORN . More here.

Well now: ACORN and NBC collaborated together on an undercover sting project.

See my “ACORN Watch: A ’sting’-ing indictment of media hypocrisy” for more on NBC hypocrisy and the old media protection racket.

*There is now a searchable ClimateGate database here.

*White House press secretary Robert Gibbs — echoing data destruction expert/energy czar Carol Browner — says ClimateGate has no bearing on Obama’s push for massive global warming taxes/intervention. The science is “settled.”

Yeah, who cares about the global warming scandal of the century?

An Obama science policy flashback from March 2009:

But let’s be clear: Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it’s also about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient — especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda — and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.

Words, just words.

***

The Atlantic’s Clive Crook blasts ClimateGate corruption:

In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back.

The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And, as Christopher Booker argues, this scandal is not at the margins of the politicised IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] process. It is not tangential to the policy prescriptions emanating from what David Henderson called the environmental policy milieu [subscription required]. It goes to the core of that process.

One theme, in addition to those already mentioned about the suppression of dissent, the suppression of data and methods, and the suppression of the unvarnished truth, comes through especially strongly: plain statistical incompetence. This is something that Henderson’s study raised, and it was also emphasised in the Wegman report on the Hockey Stick, and in other independent studies of the Hockey Stick controversy. Of course it is also an ongoing issue in Steve McIntyre’s campaign to get hold of data and methods. Nonetheless I had given it insufficient weight. Climate scientists lean very heavily on statistical methods, but they are not necessarily statisticians. Some of the correspondents in these emails appear to be out of their depth. This would explain their anxiety about having statisticians, rather than their climate-science buddies, crawl over their work.

I’m also surprised by the IPCC’s response. Amid the self-justification, I had hoped for a word of apology, or even of censure. (George Monbiot called for Phil Jones to resign, for crying out loud.) At any rate I had expected no more than ordinary evasion. The declaration from Rajendra Pachauri that the emails confirm all is as it should be is stunning. Science at its best. Science as it should be. Good lord. This is pure George Orwell. And these guys call the other side “deniers”.

Ah, science czar John Holdren.

He’s been hyping climate change catastrophe since the 1970s, has been a master of stonewalling critics of his population control zealotry, and knows how to hide behind friendly water-carriers in the media.

So, you won’t be surprised to learn he is smack dab in the middle of the exploding ClimateGate scandal.

Dr. Tim Ball and Judi McLeod at Canadian Free Press shine the light (hat tip: @crabbycon) :

Obama Science Czar John Holdren is directly involved in CRU’s unfolding Climategate scandal. In fact, according to files released by a CEU hacker or whistleblower, Holdren is involved in what Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball terms “a truculent and nasty manner that provides a brief demonstration of his lack of understanding, commitment on faith and willingness to ridicule and bully people”.

…“There is a multitude of small but frightening stories in the massive files,” Ball writes. “For example I’ve known solar physicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon for a long time. I’ve published articles with Willie and enjoyed extensive communication. I was on advisory committees with them when Sallie suddenly and politely withdrew from the fray. I don’t know if the following events were contributing factors but it is likely.

“Baliunas and Soon were authors of excellent work confirming the existence of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from a multitude of sources. Their work challenged attempts to get rid of the MWP because it contradicted the claim by the proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Several scientists challenged the claim that the latter part of the 20th century was the warmest ever. They knew the claim was false, many warmer periods occurred in the past. Michael Mann ‘got rid’ of the MWP with his production of the hockey stick, but Soon and Baliunas were problematic. What better than have a powerful academic destroy their credibility for you? Sadly, there are always people who will do the dirty work.”

Indeed, Holdren’s emails show how sincere scientists would be made into raw “entertainment”.

How the deed was done

“A perfect person and opportunity appeared. On 16th October 2003 Michael Mann, infamous for his lead in the ‘hockey stick’ that dominated the 2001 IPCC Report, sent an email to people involved in the CRU scandal;

Dear All,

Thought you would be interested in this exchange, which John Holdren of Harvard has been kind enough to pass along…” At the time Holdren was Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy & Director, Program in Science, Technology, & Public Policy, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is now Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology—informally known as the United States Science Czar.

In an email on October16, 2003 from John Holdren to Michael Mann and Tom Wigley we are told:

“I’m forwarding for your entertainment an exchange that followed from my being quoted in the Harvard Crimson to the effect that you and your colleagues are right and my “Harvard” colleagues Soon and Baliunas are wrong about what the evidence shows concerning surface temperatures over the past millennium. The cover note to faculty and postdocs in a regular Wednesday breakfast discussion group on environmental science and public policy in Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences is more or less self-explanatory.”

The Wednesday Breakfast Group

“This is what Holdren sent to the Wednesday Breakfast group.

“I append here an e-mail correspondence I have engaged in over the past few days trying to educate a Soon/Baliunas supporter who originally wrote to me asking how I could think that Soon and Baliunas are wrong and Mann et al. are right (a view attributed to me, correctly, in the Harvard Crimson). This individual apparently runs a web site on which he had been touting the Soon/Baliunas position.”

“The exchange Holdren refers to is a challenge by Nick Schulz editor of Tech Central Station (TCS). On August 9, 2003 Schulz wrote;

“In a recent Crimson story on the work of Soon and Baliunas, who have written for my website techcentralstation.com, you are quoted as saying: My impression is that the critics are right. It s unfortunate that so much attention is paid to a flawed analysis, but that’s what happens when something happens to support the political climate in Washington. Do you feel the same way about the work of Mann et. al.? If not why not?”

“Holdren provides lengthy responses on October 13, 14, and 16 but comments fail to answer Schulz’s questions. After the first response Schulz replies, “I guess my problem concerns what lawyers call the burden of proof. The burden weighs heavily, much more heavily, given the claims on Mann et.al. than it does on Soon/Baliunas. Would you agree?” Of course, Holdren doesn’t agree. He replies, “But, in practice, burden of proof is an evolving thing-it evolves as the amount of evidence relevant to a particular proposition grows.” No it doesn’t evolve; it is either on one side or the other. This argument is in line with what has happened with AGW. He then demonstrates his lack of understanding of science and climate science by opting for Mann and his hockey stick over Soon and Baliunas. His entire defense and position devolves to a political position. His attempt to belittle Soon and Baliunas in front of colleagues is a measure of the man’s blindness and political opportunism that pervades everything he says or does…

Like I said last week: The Chicago Way is the Global Warming Mob Way.

Fraudulent bully birds of a feather flock together.