Global Warming

Cap and Trade...Round #1

            I saw Carol Browner defending the narrow Cap & Trade victory of the Administration. She deftly avoided all issues concerning policy decisions based on the science of global warning.  About all she would say is that the science is clear. However, in the interest of “fair and balanced”, take a gander at the following:

            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The report finds that EPA, by adopting the United Nations’ 2007 “Fourth Assessment” report, is relying on outdated research and is ignoring major new developments.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 hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense, and new findings that water vapor will moderate, rather than exacerbate, temperature. 

New data also indicate that ocean cycles are probably the most important single factor in explaining temperature fluctuations, though solar cycles may play a role as well, and that reliable satellite data undercut the likelihood of endangerment from greenhouse gases. All of this demonstrates EPA should independently analyze the science, rather than just adopt the conclusions of outside organizations. 

The released report is a draft version, prepared under EPA’s unusually short internal review schedule, and thus may contain inaccuracies which were corrected in the final report. 

“While we hoped that EPA would release the final report, we’re tired of waiting for this agency to become transparent, even though its Administrator has been talking transparency since she took office. So we are releasing a draft version of the report ourselves, today,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. 

            Soooooooooo…maybe the science is not as compelling as Czar Browner asserts. Or, maybe the EPA data is faulty which would be an “inconvenient truth”. Have I  heard that phrase elsewhere? Certainly, there is still much to be hashed out before a massive legislative remaking of our entire society and its energy use and production.