Posted on 12/08/2009 3:43:32 PM PST by 2nd amendment mama
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday announced its “endangerment finding” declaring that carbon dioxide, the very substance we humans exhale, is a danger to public health. That this was done just before the president departed to attend the Copenhagen global warming summit is, presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs assured us yesterday, completely coincidental.
The Obama administration would like to to ignore the doctored “science” backing up anthropogenic global warming claims to discount the manipulated data exposed by Climategate documents. Public confidence in the claims of the top climate scientists in the world has been shattered by the details of the 61 MB of e-mails revealed by a computer hacker who may actually be a whistleblower.
The e-mails showed data manipulations to support the idea of global warming even over the last decade, when temperatures have actually cooled.
The London Telegraph newspaper calls Climategate the greatest scandal of the century. The British weather service is taking the fraud charges very seriously. They’ve announced a full review of 160 years of temperature data used by the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and the CRU’s findings. They estimate the audit will take approximately three years.
Recent revelations of NASA stonewalling for over two years the Freedom of Information Act requests surrounding their own temperature data manipulation has raised the stakes. The Warmers are sitting atop a powder keg about to explode in the United States and the clock is ticking.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, warned yesterday of efforts to speed up the process now that the science has come into serious question.
“When the scientists whose work is the bedrock for our global warming policy use words like ‘travesty’ and ‘trick’ to describe their actions, and banter about how they’ll blackball professional journals and delete evidence, it’s time to slow down and consider what we’re doing, not sound the charge,” Barton said. “Regrettably, good sense got run over today when EPA hit the gas instead of tapping the brakes.”
“Today’s EPA action mimics the emails in one respect: It demonstrates that public relations priorities rather than straightforward science are driving U.S. policymaking on global warming,” Barton said. “Everybody also understands that the endangerment finding also is supposed to prod Congress into resuscitating cap-and-trade legislation that is dying from overexposure to public scrutiny.”
“Unfortunately, the administration’s response to the e-mails is the same as it’s been to most other evidence that its climate policy might be on the wrong track: Nothing to see here, move along, move along,” Barton added.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform pointed out that earlier this year, the EPA was guilty of its own Climategate-style actions, stifling dissent within the EPA itself.
“It’s unsurprising and disappointing that the EPA has decided to push though the Endangerment finding based purely on political calculations and not based on science,” Issa said. “Earlier this year, EPA set up internal barriers to stifle dissent and is now ignoring serious accusations to the science upon which the endangerment finding is based.”
“In the face of new questions surrounding the accuracy of the IPCC Report, one key question that remains unanswered is whether EPA has actually conducted a legitimate investigation of the emails,” Issa said. “EPA’s decision to move forward without an investigation is undermined by the decisions of the IPCC, Hadley CRU, the MET office, and Penn State to conduct their own investigations of the very serious questions raised by Climategate.”
Rep. Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, questioned the timing of the EPA announcement coinciding with the opening of the UN conference in Copenhagen where the UN seeks commitments for billions of dollars of America’s wealth from the Obama administration to redistribute.
“The American people deserve to know whether the president is going to enter the United States into a so-called ‘political agreement’ on cap and trade when the Constitution reserves to the Senate the power to ratify legally binding treaties,” Pence said. “The president must clarify statements made by officials within his administration that suggest they will attempt an end-run around the Constitution in the name of global cap and trade.”
“The president must also address how reducing carbon emissions will affect our struggling small businesses, manufacturers and farmers,” Pence said. “Further, developing countries have pledged to protect their growing economies from international carbon caps. Why are we placing American workers and businesses at a competitive disadvantage? I strongly urge the president to address these concerns before he flies to Copenhagen and commits our nation to a devastating cap and tax agreement.”
Tiahrt: Airbus Budgets for Bribery
Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) sat down recently with HUMAN EVENTS to discuss unfair competition practices built into the bidding process at the Department of Defense. American companies are undercut in competition with Europeans because the Pentagon waives anti-corruption and audit regulations in deference to foreign companies like European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company/Airbus which is bidding to replace America’s aging tanker fleet.
“In order to compete worldwide we need to have an honest and open playing field in the marketplace,” Tiahrt said. “So we have imposed on American companies certain things to make sure that there is a fair and open competition. We call it the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It says, for instance, that if Boeing is going to sell a plane, for example, to the Kuwaiti government, we can’t promise them anything more than what is given out commonly like [an ink] pen.”
“If you go to open source information worldwide, agents for the Airbus company have openly said that yes we do use bribery, in fact we budget for it,” Tiahrt added. “One or two percent of their budget is going to be used for bribes.”
And that filters down into the cost of the Airbus tanker that would be paid for by taxpayers.
“The Pentagon through the federal Defense Acquisition Regulations -- this is written by them -- they waive not only Foreign Corrupt Practices Act but the International Trafficking Arms Regulations, the Buy American Act and the Federal Cost Accounting Standards,” Tiahrt said. “These are expensive things to incorporate for American companies, but we waive them for our competitors.”
House Likely to Propose a “Minibus” and CR This Week
The House is back and looking for ways to push unpopular “must pass” legislation through the Senate this year as the Senate wrestles with their version of the government takeover of health care. One of the biggest problems is the seven appropriations bills still outstanding for the year that run out of funding December 18.
Democrats want another stimulus bill that will include an unemployment “fix” they have to re-do because the first one didn’t write the checks they intended for it to write the first time they passed an unemployment package.
Democrats want a financial services regulation bill that establishes a permanent TARP slush fund. They also seek to pay for another stimulus with the original TARP monies returned to the fund by banks.
Sources on the Hill said Democrats would likely attach highly unpopular legislation like a new stimulus and doc fix to “must pass” appropriations bills this week and next in two omnibus or “minibus” measures. Doc fix failed to pass the Senate as a standalone bill last month when Democrats carved it out of the health care legislation in an attempt to further mask the full cost of their health care bill. Failure to pass doc fix, which costs a quarter trillion dollars, would result in a 21 percent cut to Medicare payments beginning in January.
Once source told HUMAN EVENTS, “We are expecting them to try to pass an omnibus bill this week that includes Milcon/VA, Commerce-State-Justice, Financial Services, Labor-HHS-Education, State Foreign Ops, T-HUD, and possibly a short-term CR that would keep the government operating until December 23; and then next week do a Defense/Debt Limit/“stimulus” bill that includes unemployment and other economic-related spending paid for with TARP money that was borrowed from our children and grandchildren. This could all fall apart on them at any time, however.”
Stay tuned.
Oh damn...now every co2 emitting soda and beer will get hit with another tax.
Thank you. Know there are two kinds.
So does every multi-national - they just don't talk about it.
NOAA/GHCN also needs to be audited for temperature-data fudging.
Not to mention it Promotes Plant Growth so we all dont starve to death
:-)
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