Free Republic

When the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing on the state of climate science on December 2, the Republicans were ready to focus it on the Climategate fraud scandal. And the first witness, President Obama’s science adviser, Dr. John P. Holdren, was ready to respond. Instead of summarizing his written testimony in his oral remarks, Holdren read a prepared statement on Climategate. He said that the controversy involved a “small group of scientists” and was primarily about one temperature dataset. He said that such controversies were not unusual in all branches of science and...

Science: For two years, our space agency has refused Freedom of Information requests on why it has repeatedly corrected its climate figures. A leading researcher threatens to sue to find more inconvenient truths. What's become known as "Climate-Gate" may be about to explode on this side of the pond as well. Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has threatened a lawsuit against NASA if by year-end the agency doesn't honor his FOI requests for information on how and why its climate numbers have been consistently adjusted for errors. "I assume that what is there is highly...

In the wake of the burgeoning Climategate fraud scandal, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) on December 2 filed an emergency petition demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency stop its plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, pending a complete investigation.

The fight over global warming science is about to cross the Atlantic with a U.S. researcher poised to sue NASA, demanding release of the same kind of climate data that has landed a leading British center in hot water over charges it skewed its data. Chris Horner... said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s. "I assume that what is there...

Climate scientists are refuting claims that raw data used in critical climate change reports has been destroyed, rendering the reports and policies based on those reports unreliable. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market advocacy group, is arguing that U.S. EPA's climate policies rely on raw data that have been destroyed and are therefore unreliable. The nonprofit group -- a staunch critic of U.S. EPA's efforts to regulate greenhouse gases -- petitioned the agency last week to reopen the public comment period on its proposed "endangerment finding" because the data set had been lost (E&ENews PM, Oct. 9). But climate scientists...

When I read the Washington Post’s disgraceful editorial the other day on the Climategate scandal, I thought of how far they have fallen since their big moment in the sun, Watergate. In those heady days, editor Ben Bradlee and a team of crack investigative reporters led by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein exposed the Watergate cover-up and brought down President Nixon. Of course, they were then on the side of the permanent Washington establishment, who loathed Nixon (as he loathed them), just as they are now on the side of the permanent Washington establishment, for whom global warming alarmism is...

Allen Barton interviews Myron Ebell (CEI.org) about the scandal sparked by e-mails indicating that the Climactic Research Unit (CRU), which warns of global warming, massaged data to fit its agenda.

Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies’ refusal — for nearly three years — to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding “Climategate” scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries’ freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. Numerous informed commenters had alleged such behavior for years, all...

Today, on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies' refusal - for nearly three years - to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding "ClimateGate" scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries' freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. Numerous informed commenters had alleged such...

Today, on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies' refusal - for nearly three years - to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding "ClimateGate" scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries' freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. Numerous informed commenters had alleged such...

I just wanted to remind everyone that Environmental Policy Expert Chris Horner will be speaking at UC Merced this Friday. There will be a Q & A session, so come with plenty of questions. In addition, if you own any of his books (The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming, Red Hot Lies) and would like them autographed, bring a copy with you. The event will take place in the Lakireddy Auditorium, with doors opening at 6 pm and the event starting at 6:15 pm. Refreshments will be provided and everyone is encouraged to attend. The event is FREE, so...

Control: The House and Senate climate bills contain a provision giving the president extraordinary powers in the event of a "climate emergency." As chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. If you thought the House health care bill that nobody read has hidden passages that threaten our freedoms and liberty, take a peak at the "trigger" placed in the byzantine innards of both the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill and the Kerry-Boxer bill just passed by Democrats out of Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee. As Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation points...

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, held hearings yesterday to look into fraudulent letters which were sent on behalf of the coal industry to several members of congress. The original hearing was to take place on October 15, but was postponed until yesterday morning. The committee lined up the following witnesses: Rep. Tom Periello (D-Va.) Mr. Jack Bonner, Bonner & Associates Mr. Steve Miller, President and CEO, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity Ms. Lisa M. Maatz, Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, American Association of University Women Mr. Hilary...

Denying Global Warming Allie Winegar Duzett, October 29, 2009 CNN and ABC would have you believe the debate on global warming is over; Dr. Richard S. Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology agrees. However, while the mainstream media shouts from the rooftop that global warming is manmade, Dr. Lindzen takes the opposite point of view: the debate is over, he says, but anthropogenic global warming (AGW) alarmists lost the argument. The science is here and it shows that humans do not affect climate in any meaningful way. When Dr. Lindzen is asked if he is a global warming skeptic,...

On November 20th, Environmental Policy Expert Chris Horner will discuss climate change at University of California, Merced. The event will start at 6pm and be located at the school's Lakireddy Auditorium. ***THIS EVENT IS FREE AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS ARE ENCOURAGED TO ATTEND. PARKING IS FREE IN THE LAKE LOTS AFTER 6PM*** For more information visit http://tinyurl.com/ChrisHornerUCM or send an e-mail to collegerepublicans@ucmerced.edu. Here is Mr. Horner's Bio: Christopher C. Horner serves as a Senior Fellow at CEI. As an attorney in Washington, DC Horner has represented CEI as well as scientists and Members of the U.S. House and Senate on...

Public Discourse: Our energy secretary applauds and encourages companies to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its position on climate change. Should any Cabinet secretary, with the powers of government behind him, be threatening U.S. companies? Part of the climate-change mantra is that the debate is over and the science is settled. Just to make sure, environmental groups have sought to pressure businesses to go green or at least keep silent. Now it would appear the whole weight of the federal government is being thrown behind this campaign to coerce and silence real and potential opposition. On Thursday, Steven...

Govt-Funded Research Unit Destroyed Original Climate Data CEI Petitions EPA to Reopen Global Warming Rulemaking Washington, D.C., October 6, 2009―In the wake of a revelation by a key research institution that it destroyed its original climate data, the Competitive Enterprise Institute petitioned EPA to reopen a major global warming proceeding. In mid-August the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) disclosed that it had destroyed the raw data for its global surface temperature data set because of an alleged lack of storage space. The CRU data have been the basis for several of the major international studies that claim...

Well, the admissions just keep on coming. In the UK, lead canary for all things “climate change” — for example, polls show a majority of their public now see the agenda as just a new excuse for the state to extract more wealth from its citizens — we have a paper by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research saying the agenda demands “reducing the size of the economy through a ‘planned recession’”, in the words of the Daily Telegraph. Tyndall is an activist consortium of British academic institutions known for carrying the banner on the “climate” agenda. The Telegraph...

A libertarian non-profit organization in Washington today announced it was filing suit against the Obama administration for failing to adequately disclose global warming documents. As we reported two weeks ago the Competitive Enterprise Institute deemed inadequate the Treasury Department's response to a Freedom of Information Act request for documents on cap-and-trade. Months after the FOIA request, Treasury responded by giving CEI five documents and emails, when the group had expected 50. "Your response fails any reasonable test for compliance with FOIA and constitutes an effective denial of our request," CEI's Christopher Horner stated in the notice of appeal filed with...

Supporters of the administration’s plans for cap-and-trade have argued that the costs would be minimal for American households, as low as $175 per household per year, as the White House proclaimed an incomplete analysis from the CBO. A new study shows that the actual costs per household are ten times that number, almost $150 per month, once cap-and-trade gets implemented. What right-wing organization created that analysis? The Treasury Department: The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about...

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent. A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 Make 'em Feel the Heat   [Iain Murray] President Reagan said, "When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat." Washington is now completely in the dark — so a new group called Freedom Action is here to help you put the heat on.  Believing in nothing more than individual rights, free markets and limited government, Freedom Action is a new grassroots activist social network aimed at putting government back inside its constitutional limits.Every group has to start somewhere, and Freedom Action's first campaign is about Carbongate — the EPA's internal suppression...

Book Review: The environmental movement has cultivated a warm and fuzzy public image, but behind the smiley-face rhetoric of "sustainability" and "conservation" lies a dark agenda. The Greens aim to regulate your behavior, downsize your lifestyle, and invade the most intimate aspects of your personal life. In this stunning exposé, Steve Milloy unveils the authoritarian impulse underlying the Green crusade. Whether they're demanding that you turn down your thermostat, stop driving your car, or engage in some other senseless act of self-denial, the Greens are envisioning a grim future for you marked by endless privation. Steve Milloy is the founder...

Junk Science: The EPA may be considering closing the watchdog office that exposed the flimsy evidence of man-caused warming. So much for the administration's promise to "restore science to its rightful place."Recently we commented on the plight of Dr. Allen Carlin, the EPA senior research analyst at the National Center for Environmental Economics who dared to say, in essence, that emperor Al Gore and his environmental sycophants at the Environmental Protection Agency wore no clothes. The EPA had been working on an "endangerment finding" that would say carbon dioxide, rather than being the basis for all life on earth, was...

American idealism is infectious. I’m as cynical about my own country’s political system as the next world-weary Brit. But, whenever I go to Washington, I give in to that guileless enthusiasm which foreigners so often dismiss as naïveté. Like the James Stewart character in Mr Smith goes to Washington, I goggle reverently at the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, the Battle Hymn of the Republic swelling in my mind. As regular readers will know, Thomas Jefferson is one of my heroes: he kept alive in North America a strain of British liberty that has all but perished from the mother country....

How many times have you been told that the debate on the science of climate change is “over”? Probably almost as many times as Al Gore has traveled in private jets and limousines to urge audiences to repent of their fuelish ways. Although tirelessly intoned by politicians, major media, advocacy groups, academics, and even some Kyoto critics, the “debate is over” mantra is just plain false. The core issues of climate-change attribution, climate sensitivity, and even anthropogenic detection remain very much in play.DetectionThe world has warmed overall during the past 130 years, as evidenced by melting glaciers, longer growing seasons, and both proxy and instrumental data. However, the main era of “anthropogenic” global...

Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute told an audience of coal industry members that Waxman-Markey will wreck their industry and the economy.The health care reform bill and the cap-and-trade bill now working their way through the Congress are the most dangerous legislative measures in memory. Alone, either of them spells big trouble, together, they spell catastrophe. Read the rest at Annuit Coeptis

The media portrays climate scientists as having delivered a final verdict on global warming... They haven't... There remain some holdouts who say this consensus is little more than conformity to a politically correct idea. Perhaps even more surprising is that a few of these global-warming skeptics are actually respected... No matter where you stand on this debate, you should know who the major skeptics are and what they think.

Requests US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to Do More Honest Job Than EPA In Assessing New Climate Research

On June 28, 2009, the House of Representatives, by a narrow margin (219-212), passed the Waxman-Markey bill. The so-called “cap and trade” bill has been sold as a system for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the struggle against global warming. There’s a full-court press on the U.S. Senate to pass its version of “cap and trade”...The Obama administration’s EPA sees the increasing evidence against global warming as a threat to their agenda and has taken desperate measures. About a week before the House vote on “cap and trade,” the Washington, D.C.-based Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released some EPA e-mails, demonstrating...

Here's what I wrote in last year's column titled "Global Warming Rope-a-Dope" (12/24/2008): "Once laws are written, they are very difficult, if not impossible, to repeal. If a time would ever come when the permafrost returns to northern U.S., as far south as New Jersey as it once did, it's not inconceivable that Congress, caught in the grip of the global warming zealots, would keep all the laws on the books they wrote in the name of fighting global warming. Personally, I would not put it past them to write more." On June 28, 2009, the House of Representatives, by...

As research for an upcoming column on the many drawbacks of the cap-and-trade bill now before the Senate, I spent some time speaking with Christopher C. Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Horner is author of "Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed." Our discussion went on at some length and Horner made many excellent points about the hype over the threat of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. That discussion can go on forever and I can't include much of it here. But I will point to an interesting little item that's...

John Hinderaker of Poweline has alerted everyone to the release of the suppressed EPA Carlin/Davidson report along with incriminating emails by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.  President Obama and his administration have again been appropriately exposed. Obama’s intent can no longer be in question, and his deceptive activities are instructive as to the role the United Nations will play in his plan to address the use of American wealth.Because the American news media has not properly and openly questioned Susan Rice about her deliberations with the IPCC, nor the U.S. intentions concerning proposed international “monies” related to CO2, you are obliged...

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has obtained an EPA study of the “endangerment” to human well-being ostensibly caused by carbon dioxide emissions, together with a set of EPA emails indicating that the study, which concludes that carbon dioxide is not a significant cause of climate change, was suppressed by the EPA for political reasons.

I have spent most of the morning reading the report on GHG’s written by Mr. Carlin and Mr. Davidson of the EPA. http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/DOC062509-004.pdf

My syndicated column below slams the EPA for suppressing inconvenient truths about Obama’s politicized global warming agenda. As I blogged early Wednesday afternoon, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released e-mails detailing how eco-bureaucrats stifled a senior researcher who challenged the agency’s reliance on outdated data to support its greenhouse gas “public endangerment” finding. Breaking late tonight, CEI has released the draft version of the censored study that the EPA doesn’t want you to see. You can read the entire 98-page document here. Here is the preface, which begins, “We have become increasingly concerned that EPA and many other agencies and countries...

Washington, D.C., June 26, 2009—The Competitive Enterprise Institute is today making public an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide. The report finds that EPA, by adopting the United Nations’ 2007 “Fourth Assessment” report, is relying on outdated research and is ignoring major new developments. Those developments include a continued decline in global temperatures, a new consensus that future...

Climate Change: A suppressed EPA study says old U.N. data ignore the decline in global temperatures and other inconvenient truths. Was the report kept under wraps to influence the vote on the cap-and-trade bill?This was supposed to be the most transparent administration ever. Yet as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on the Waxman-Markey bill, the largest tax increase in U.S. history on 100% of Americans, an attempt was made to suppress a study shredding supporters' arguments. On Friday, the day of the vote, the Competitive Enterprise Institute said it was releasing "an internal study on climate science which...

The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages. ----snip------- Carlin's report listed a number of recent developments he said the EPA did not consider, including that global temperatures have declined for 11 years; that new research predicts Atlantic hurricanes will be unaffected; that there's "little evidence" that Greenland is shedding ice at expected levels; and that solar radiation has the largest single effect on the earth's temperature.

By Richard Morrison Washington, D.C., June 26, 2009—The Competitive Enterprise Institute is today making public an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide. The report finds that EPA, by adopting the United Nations’ 2007 “Fourth Assessment” report, is relying on outdated research and is ignoring major new developments. Those developments include a continued decline in global temperatures, a new...

Climate Change: A suppressed EPA study says old U.N. data ignore the decline in global temperatures and other inconvenient truths. Was the report kept under wraps to influence the vote on the cap-and-trade bill? This was supposed to be the most transparent administration ever. Yet as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on the Waxman-Markey bill, the largest tax increase in U.S. history on 100% of Americans, an attempt was made to suppress a study shredding supporters' arguments.

Related story: Source inside EPA confirms claims of science being ignored, suppressed, by top EPA management by Richard Morrison, Competitive Enterprise Institute Washington, D.C., June 26, 2009—The Competitive Enterprise Institute is today making public an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide. The report finds that EPA, by adopting the United Nations’ 2007 “Fourth Assessment” report, is relying on...

Washington, D.C., June 26, 2009—The Competitive Enterprise Institute is today making public an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide. The report finds that EPA, by adopting the United Nations’ 2007 “Fourth Assessment” report, is relying on outdated research and is ignoring major new developments. Those developments include a continued decline in global temperatures, a new consensus that future...

THE Obama administra tion doesn't want to hear inconvenient truths about global warming. And it doesn't want you to hear them, either. As House Democrats rush to pass a $4 trillion, thousand-page "cap and trade" bill that no one has read, environmental bureaucrats are stifling voices that threaten their political agenda. The free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington has 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...

"CEI Releases Global Warming Study Censored by EPA Public Shouldn’t Be Kept in the Dark by an Agency Supposedly Committed to Transparency" by Richard Morrison June 25, 2009 Washington, D.C., June 26, 2009—The Competitive Enterprise Institute is today making public an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.

Washington, D.C., June 26, 2009—The Competitive Enterprise Institute is today making public an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide. The report finds that EPA, by adopting the United Nations’ 2007 “Fourth Assessment” report, is relying on outdated research and is ignoring major new developments. Those developments include a continued decline in global temperatures, a new consensus that future...

Environmental Protection Agency officials have silenced one of their own senior researchers after the 38-year employee issued an internal critique of the EPA's climate change position. Alan Carlin, senior operations research analyst at the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics, or NCEE, submitted his research on the agency's greenhouse gases endangerment findings and offered a fundamental critique on the EPA's approach to combating CO2 emissions. But officials refused to share his conclusion in an open internal discussion, claiming his research would have "a very negative impact on our office." His study was barred from circulation within the EPA and was...

Scientific findings at odds with the Obama Administration’s views on carbon dioxide and climate change are being suppressed as a result of political pressure, officials at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) charge. “This suppression of valid science for political reasons is beyond belief,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “EPA’s conduct is even more outlandish because it flies in the face of the president’s widely-touted claim that ‘the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.’” The agency has never made the study public or included it in official reference materials, according to CEI. As part of...

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has obtained internal EPA e-mails that show the agency willfully and recklessly disregarded scientific data that undermined the bureaucracy’s global warming zealotry. This information is especially relevant as Congress rushes to pass the cap-and-trade nightmare on Friday. -----snip---- The email notes the quantity of peer-reviewed references in the study, and defends its inclusion of new research as well. It states Mr. Carlin’s view that “the critical attribute of good science is its correspondence to observable data rather than where it appears in the technical literature.” It goes on to point out that the new studies “explain...

The president of the Czech Republic electrified the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) dinner last year with his warnings of how political and government leaders are using the hoax of man-made global warming to usher in a new form of communism. Vaclav Havel released a book through CEI, Blue Planet in Green Shackles, which said that modern-day environmentalists were being guided by the same mentality of social control that characterized the communist ideology. This year's dinner featured a dynamic address from John Allison, chairman of the BB&T Corporation, who said that it will be difficult for America to come back from...