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Friday, December 3, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Improving the Service of the Federal Bureaucracy, Global Warming, Climategate, Commitment to Oklahoma, Environmental Accomplishments , National Security and Energy Independence
BOSTON -- The Obama administration is committed to an "aggressive environmental agenda" that goes beyond what was achieved during the past four decades, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said today during a speech at Harvard University.
Jackson spoke during a conference that featured appearances by several leading lights of the environmental movement, including EPA's first administrator, Bill Ruckelshaus, and former Vice President Al Gore, who spoke to agency officials during an invitation-only luncheon.
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Friday, December 3, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Climategate, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
Unable to make the Americans for Prosperity event last night in Cancun, Mexico because of votes in Washington, Senator Inhofe sent along the following video in which he tells AFP, "The fact is, nothing is going to happen in Cancun this year and everyone knows it. I couldn't be happier and poor Al Gore couldn't be more upset: it has been widely reported that he is 'depressed' about Cancun."
The AFP event from Cancun was broadcast to more than twenty states. Click here to learn more.
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Thursday, December 2, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Climategate, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
Top-ranking Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee have asked Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to freeze all future requests for climate-related spending, saying that it is inappropriate to transfer money to developing nations while the U.S. economy is struggling.
The letter -- signed by Sens. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, David Vitter of Louisiana, George Voinovich of Ohio and John Barrasso of Wyoming -- warns U.S. negotiators not to give away too much during the U.N. climate conference that is under way in Cancun, Mexico.
"We simply cannot afford any massive spending programs with such debt owed by America's future generations," it says.
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Thursday, December 2, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Climategate
Leave it to navel-gazing so-called climate journalists to get to the bottom of the aftermath of ClimateGate.
The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media asked - what did the 'climate journalism community' learn over the 12 months stemming from the controversy, or as it prefaced, 'pseudo-controversies,' specifically the 'cherry-picked' and 'hacked' emails that came out of ClimateGate.
Some of the journalist's surveyed by Yale Forum dismissed ClimateGate altogether. However, one of those journalists surveyed offered a surprising claim. Eric Pooley, a writer for Bloomberg BusinessWeek, said ClimateGate did have a lasting impact on moving the ball away from what many alarmists would like to see.
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Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Climategate, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
CANCUN, Mexico - U.S. negotiators came into the U.N. global warming summit with a weak hand but a bold move: a pledge that Congress and the president will enact climate change legislation well before the decade is through.
It's a promise that the rest of the world has seen the United States make-and break-time and again. At the 1997 Kyoto summit, then-Vice President Al Gore made the same pledge-even as the Senate passed a resolution refusing to ratify the Kyoto treaty. At last year's summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, President Obama declared that the United States would lead the way in forging a treaty to replace Kyoto, starting with action at home. But even with a Democratic Congress, the climate bill went down in flames. And now, with a new Republican House, action on climate-and, very likely, on major clean energy initiatives-seems doomed for at least two years.
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Monday, November 29, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Climategate, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
For eight years, the world waited for a U.S. president to help stop global warming and save the planet.
So far, Barack Obama hasn't lived up to the expectations.
Cap-and-trade legislation Obama promised two years ago on the campaign trail is dead and buried, and his administration is attempting to regulate carbon dioxide emissions and cover billions of dollars in pledges without majority support in Congress.
Internationally, heading into the United Nations-led climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, next week, prospects for a multitrillion-dollar transoceanic carbon market are in tatters and a new binding treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol remains years away.
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Monday, November 22, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Climategate, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis, National Security and Energy Independence, Get the Facts on Energy & Gas Prices
Roll Call: Inhofe Is Happy to Stand Apart - "He's not seen as a rebel around here by any means ... but he's an independent thinker," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said of the Oklahoma Republican. Inhofe, 76, is comfortable being a contrarian. In an interview last week, he recalled a time when one of his grandchildren "came up to me and said, ‘Pop-I, Why do you always do things that nobody else does?' ... and I said, ‘because nobody else does.'" ..."This earmark debate is a great example" of Inhofe's indifference to public opinion or peer pressure, Graham added. ... Inhofe's colleagues said he is motivated by principles, not politics: "He's very passionate and he can be as partisan as the best of them. But deep down, he wants to help people," a second Republican Senator said ...While most Members look to avoid intraparty confrontation, Inhofe appears to welcome it, taking pride in often being the most hated man in the room.
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Monday, November 22, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Improving the Service of the Federal Bureaucracy, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Climategate, Commitment to Oklahoma, National Infrastructure and Public Works Accomplishments, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis, National Security and Energy Independence, Get the Facts on Energy & Gas Prices
In an era of change, Sen. James Inhofe is unapologetic about standing his ground.
"He's not seen as a rebel around here by any means ... but he's an independent thinker," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said of the Oklahoma Republican.
Inhofe, 76, is comfortable being a contrarian. In an interview last week, he recalled a time when one of his grandchildren "came up to me and said, ‘Pop-I, Why do you always do things that nobody else does?' ... and I said, ‘because nobody else does.'"
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Monday, October 25, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Climategate, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
For some, global warming is the sinister cause of every problem plaguing the world-even the conflict between India and Pakistan.
This misapprehension has apparently taken hold of Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to Bob Woodward's new book, Obama's Wars, Holbrooke believes there is a "global warming dimension" of the India-Pakistan conflict. "In one discussion about the tensions between Pakistan and India," Woodward wrote, "Holbrooke introduced a new angle. 'There's a global-warming dimension of this struggle, Mr. President,' he said." Woodward wrote that Holbrooke's "words baffled many in the room." It's not hard to see why.
"‘There are tens of thousands of Indian and Pakistani troops encamped on the glaciers in the Himalayas that feed the rivers into Pakistan and India,' [Holbrooke] said. ‘Their encampments are melting the glaciers very quickly. There's a chance that river valleys in Pakistan and perhaps even India could be flooded.'
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Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Associated issues: Global Warming, Climategate
By way of preamble, let me remind you where I stand on climate change. I think climate science points to a risk that the world needs to take seriously. I think energy policy should be intelligently directed towards mitigating this risk. I am for a carbon tax. I also believe that the Climategate emails revealed, to an extent that surprised even me (and I am difficult to surprise), an ethos of suffocating groupthink and intellectual corruption. The scandal attracted enormous attention in the US, and support for a new energy policy has fallen. In sum, the scientists concerned brought their own discipline into disrepute, and set back the prospects for a better energy policy.
I had hoped, not very confidently, that the various Climategate inquiries would be severe. This would have been a first step towards restoring confidence in the scientific consensus. But no, the reports make things worse. At best they are mealy-mouthed apologies; at worst they are patently incompetent and even wilfully wrong. The climate-science establishment, of which these inquiries have chosen to make themselves a part, seems entirely incapable of understanding, let alone repairing, the harm it has done to its own cause.
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