Hot Under the Collar - Attorneys General Sue Over Global Warming

Frontiers of Freedom / Junk Science ^ | 7/22/2004 | Christopher Horner

[daylate-dollarshort]

July 22, 2004

Hot Under the Collar
Christopher Horner

Attorneys General Sue, Yet Their States Aren’t Warming

On Wednesday attorneys general from eight states – all Northeastern Democrats and, surprise, California’s Bill Lockyer – filed suit against a select group of utilities for these electricity providers’ purported contribution to the “public nuisance” of global warming.

Led by the indomitable Eliot Spitzer (NY), the lawsuit does not seek damages, but a reduction of fossil-fuel emissions by the selected defendants to abate “global warming”. The money paragraph from the AGs’ complaint offers a terrifying parade of horribles, but is encapsulated by its opening:

Global warming already has begun to alter the climate of the United States. The threatened injuries to the plaintiffs and their citizens and residents from continued global warming include increased heat deaths due to intensified and prolonged heat waves.

This alarmism is indeed made up, but not by the AGs. Instead, the federal government and some of the defendants are actually the primary peddlers of this nonsense. Still, the plaintiff states’ own records plainly defeat the claims. Illustrating how the suit is nothing more than a political abuse of the judicial system is that no one will dare testify that any remedy may be declared against the defendants that would abate the alleged nuisance.

This is grandstanding, pure and simple. That many of these officials are involved in one way or another in John Kerry’s campaign also provides the whiff of a political favor being provided to the Democratic contender, gaining headlines for an issue with which the Bush administration is clearly uncomfortable.

The AGs’ sole support are two regrettable examples of the political opportunism of others. First, the AGs heavily rely upon the “National Assessment on Climate Change” and the “Climate Action Report 2002”. The former, released in November 2000, employs absurdly outlying computer models based on outlandish economic assumptions to predict disaster. It was the subject of challenges under the new Federal Data Quality Act, fought tooth-and-nail by this administration out of apparent fear of a very clever campaign by, yes, northeastern attorneys general and then-candidate Joseph Lieberman. This far-sighted group of pols warned that any resolution discrediting the abominable “science” would be proof of a sweetheart deal. The sound the administration hears is chickens returning to their roost.

The latter document is a recapitulation of the National Assessment and the United Nations’ own rather breathless document called the “IPCC report”. Amazingly, it was created and submitted by the Bush administration the UN as the U.S.’s “policies and positions” on climate change. Both missteps are typical Republican moves made in the vain hope that the greens will be nice if you tell them they’re right.

Of course, the federal government is not a defendant in this lawsuit (though these same parties did earlier sue the President for failing to act on precisely these presumably “soft” proclamations that fossil-fuel use is killing the planet). Regardless, the utility defendants are not without their own sins. Synergy, e.g., has in recent years cravenly prowled Capitol Hill in search of “greenhouse gas” rents under a Kyoto-style “cap-and-trade” scheme.

This would pay them for replacing their largely coal-burning fleet (average age: 40 years) with less GHG-intensive gas. They claim culpability and plead, in essence, “we must (be paid to) stop killing the planet!”

Not only is this nonsense, but it is foolish. Where the general counsels of such companies are when their colleagues pursue this strategy pioneered by Enron is anyone’s guess. In the face of such ersatz “admissions” and, many fear, capitulation in the AG litigation, they should expect enviro group and third-world lawsuits to follow under the still-kicking Alien Tort Claims Act. Those suits will seek real dollars.

Despite the hysterical certainty, however, one is hard pressed to figure out where the warming is happening. Consider each plaintiff state’s actual temperature trends, according to local measuring station records available at www.CO2Science.org.

New York: Spitzer’s office in Albany, be it from the inception of temperature records (1813) or the 20th century’s explosion in governmental buildings abetting the urban heat island, has experienced a drop in mean temperature of about one half of one degree F.

California: Temps for so-called hottest decade have actually dropped in, e.g., Berkeley, the hotbed of climate alarmism and AG Lockyer’s alma mater, over the so-called hottest decade.

Connecticut: The measuring station with state’s only relatively long-term records (1856), Groton, demonstrates a mild increase in mean temperature but, most telling to Blumenthal’s claims, manifests a clear cooling over the past twenty years when any supposed anthropogenic influence would have been (per Blumenthal) most pronounced.

New Jersey: Even given the post-war (1945 on) building boom, see, e.g., the Belvidere Bridge measuring station, which records a decline in mean temperature of just over 1 F.

Rhode Island: The state’s sole metropolis, Providence, shows a mild cooling over the same period despite its own post-war growth.

Vermont: Since records have been kept, the mean has not budged (44.4 F), in 175 years, in AG Sorrell’s Burlington.

Wisconsin: By Gosh, the Oshkosh measuring station, for example, clearly shows that the temperature at the beginning of the so-called hottest decade (1990) was slightly different than the end (2000)…slightly cooler, that is.

Iowa: A review of the state’s 23 measuring stations reveals absolutely no temperature trend, whatsoever, over the 100+ years that records have been kept; most are flat, though some do show a rather inconvenient cooling (e.g., Clarinda, Forest City).

The facts about global warming, even state-specific temperature trends, are readily available to anyone interested in discovering them. Lamentably, this does not include the grandstanding AGs.

###

Christopher C. Horner serves as Counsel to the Cooler Heads Coalition and a Senior Fellow at CEI. In the former capacity, he oversees petitions and litigation on topics including the National Assessment on Climate Change, Freedom of Information Act, data access and quality laws, plus other projects, agency statutory compliance, and other legal matters involving environment and energy issues, international environmental treaties, and climate policy.

[daylate-dollarshort]

This will be interesting....

[RightWhale]

Does junk science have standing in the courts? John Edwards thinks so.

[AFPhys]

They are going to have a very tough sell ...

Look at this article: Hotter-burning sun warming the planet

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1174567/posts

"The sun is burning hotter than usual, offering a possible explanation for global warming that needs to be weighed when
proceeding with expensive efforts to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, Swiss and German scientists say.

"The sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures," said Sami
Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who
led the research.

"The sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively
recently — in the last 100 to 150 years," Mr. Solanski said."

---

This "it's all our fault" is going to be a real tough sell now...

[big'ol_freeper]

Wonder if we could bring a counter-suit against them for wasting taxpayer dollars?

[freekitty]

Another shot from Edwards.

[Straight Vermonter]

From Steve Milloy at junkscience.com

About 95 percent of the greenhouse effect (search) — the atmospheric warming due to the trapping of solar energy that makes life possible on Earth — is due to water vapor, 99.999 percent of which is of natural origin.

The other 5 percent of the greenhouse effect is due to carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other miscellaneous gases.

Although carbon dioxide is the most dominant of these gases by volume, comprising about 99.4 percent, the other gases trap more heat. So the contribution of carbon dioxide to the 5 percent of the greenhouse effect not due to water vapor is much less than 99.4 percent — it's about 72 percent.

Carbon dioxide, therefore, is responsible for roughly 3.6 percent of the greenhouse effect (5 percent, representing the percentage of the greenhouse effect not due to water vapor, multiplied by 72 percent, representing the percentage of that 5 percent due to carbon dioxide).

But carbon dioxide is produced both naturally and by humans. About 97 percent of atmospheric carbon dioxide is natural, in fact. Only about 3 percent is from human activity.

That means that only about 0.11 percent of the greenhouse effect (that is, 3 percent of 3.6 percent) is due to human releases of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Put another way, about 99.89 percent of the greenhouse effect has nothing to do with carbon-dioxide emissions from human activity.

Factoring in the other greenhouse gases, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is about 0.3 percent. In other words, about 99.7 percent of the greenhouse effect is due entirely to nature.

[Jeff Gordon]

The socialist governors did not have a great deal of success going after Microsoft. Now they are trying slap down capitalism in another way.

I live in California. I can tell your is as much of a socialist if no more so than Ralph Nader. This guy has almost succeded socialized California into a mirror image of France.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

If they cut power to these states, would the reduction
in "global warming" make them happy?

Let the bast@rds freeze in the dark.

[taxcontrol]

You know, if I was on the board for these utilities, my first reaction would be to shut down and close the power production facilities. I would provide a few day's notice and then shut down those power plants due to pending legislation.

[TheDon]

Mother Nature should have never allowed the oxygen breathers to exist. Earth was so much nicer with the miles thick ice from pole to pole. Sure volcanos warmed things up a bit every few million years, but so what.

[Tench_Coxe]

What would be even more interesting, if possible, would be a statement from the companies being sued that said something like:

" We agree with the august and wise pronouncement of the attourneys general. Therefore, we are shutting down all power generating facilities in the states affected, i.e., those from which we are being sued, until such a time as we can fully comply with their demands.
We suggest that soon to be former users of electrical power from our companies invest in a fine electrical power generator, candles, and portable water filters. Also, we suggest that people invest in firearms in urban areas, since communications for emergency services may be affected in our temporary ten year shutdown.
Have a nice day. "

[Maceman]

The Republicans ought to publicize this heavily and hang it around Edwards' neck like a stone. He is the poster child for this kind of thing.

[upchuck]

Here's an article about this that was posted yesterday. It sort of takes the other side:

States, NYC Sue Energy Companies Over 'Global Warming'.

And my comment from that thread:

I suggest these companies buy full page ads in the newspapers of the areas they serve on Wed, 9/1; Thu, 9/2 and Fri, 9/3. These ads would say something similar to:

In conjunction with the National Labor Day Holiday (Mon 9/6/2004), and in a sincere effort to help stave off Global Warming, our company is going to sacrifice one day's worth of profit. On Monday, 9/6/2001 at 12:00:01am will be shutting down all of our electric power plants. The plants will restart at 11:59:59pm, Monday, 9/6/2004.

We hope our customers appreciate our honest effort at reducing harmful emissions and the onslaught on Global Warming. We trust everyone will join us and enjoy the Electric Power Holiday!

Dare ya!

[Waco]

All mammals emit CO². These clowns should charged with super, grand fraud and sent to prison.

[AFPhys]

That Malloy analysis is something I've not seen so clearly laid out before. Thanks so much for that post.

He made one slight omission that would have clarified the political situation even better for people. That would have been one more small paragraph regarding the percentage of "greenhouse gas" that would be eliminated by embarking on the trillion-dollar Kyoto fraud and other such initiatives.
.