Honduran 'Coup' Provides Glimpse of Consistency in Obama's Foreign Policy

From America's Right blog:
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Many say that the administration's approach to foreign policy is non-existent or, at best, inconsistent -- in reality, it's quite the opposite

Since the weekend, I've been following the ongoing political situation in Honduras with interest and curiosity. Reading that the United Nations adopted a resolution today mandating that all U.N. member states refuse to recognize any Honduran government other than that of the nation's ousted leader finally was enough for me.

As it turns out, the transition of political power in a small Central American nation has perhaps taught me more about our own president and his foreign policy--not to mention how that foreign policy is embraced by the rest of the world--than any other occurrence or set of events so far, and the way it has been handled by the rest of the world has sent chills up my spine -- quite different, I assure you, than a thrill up the leg.

So far, the goings-on in Honduras has been widely reported by pretty much everybody as a "coup" but, in reality, such a characterization could not be further from the truth. In fact, what we've seen in Tegucigalpa has been a nation upholding its constitution, peaceably taking action to maintain the rule of law. And it is that distinction which lends so much insight into our own president's designs, goals, aspirations and mere tendencies.

Like in the United States of America as it stands now, Honduras is a nation bound by a constitution. And, much like in America, a head of state in Honduras is bound by term limits, though in that country it constitutes a single, four-year term. For a better understanding of exactly what is going on in Honduras, I want to play a little "make-believe," venture a few steps into the realm of God-I-hope-not:

The year is 2016, four years after American President Barack Hussein Obama won a decisive re-election victory over the Republican Party's Colin Powell, a moderate candidate foisted upon the American political right by means of a constant bombardment of misinformation, specifically that the GOP could only see success by abandoning its conservative roots. The American economy is in shambles, but the state of crisis only leads the poor and politically ignorant to believe that government cures all, and that contrary to what Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned of back in January 2008, blind faith in the state's omnipotence is the only key to renewed prosperity.

As a result, Obama has pushed for a special vote intended to serve as a litmus test determining public support among the politically ignorant for the possible repeal of the 22nd Amendment, thus lifting the provision for term limits added to the U.S. Constitution in the wake of the exponential expansion of government during the four terms of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt and allowing Obama to serve as president in perpetuity. The proposed vote is met with opposition from concerned Americans on both sides of the political spectrum, and the twice democratically-elected president of the United States is forced out by judicial and legislative branch officials simply honoring their sworn obligation to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.

Almost instantaneously, people from across Europe--where Obama is loved second only to David Hasselhoff--and leftist leaders from across the globe denounce what they deem a "coup." Obama himself travels to New York City and addressed the United Nations; shortly thereafter, the world body adopts a resolution demanding that all 192 member nations refuse to recognize any government in the United States other than that led by Barack Hussein Obama.

Given the hypothetical, what business would the United Nations have in determining whether or not a sovereign nation upholds its Constitution? Yet, in the case of today's resolution, that's exactly what the United Nations is doing with regard to the situation in Honduras. That nation has a constitution, its people are looking to uphold it, and yet the rest of the world is siding with an ousted leader fraught with dictatorial aspirations.

And our president has joined dictators like Cuba's Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega in embraced him. Not only that, but the very same Barack Obama who, purportedly afraid to "meddle," waited for ten days before voicing support for those in Iran seeking freedom from a tyrannical regime--and waited days after that to rescind an invitation to celebrate July 4th with Iranian diplomats--almost immediately came to the aid of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, trying to stop the so-called "coup" and later denouncing the action as "illegal."

Here's the very same American president who, just six months before in his historic inaugural address, called upon the American people to "let it be said by our children's children that . . . we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations" and yet, instead of championing freedom, Barack Obama has done nothing but support dictatorships and tyranny, whether it be through his fervent protests in terms of those seeking to uphold their constitution in Honduras, or those laying their lives on the line for freedom in Iran.

It is the root of Obama's selective action and inaction which is so telling, and which worries me. While conservative pundits everywhere are beginning to argue that the American foreign policy under Barack Obama is aimless, that it is non-existent, I find myself worried because I see its stark consistency.

For Obama, see, it's all about justice, and the resulting worldview has been bred into him from his beginnings, and reinforced by those in his inner circle. (After all, it's the concept of "justice" which made Michelle Obama so "proud of her country" for the first time after her husband began to gain popularity during last year's campaign.) Previously, I led myself to believe that our president's yearning for that nebulous goal of "justice" only affected his domestic policy -- I saw it as the reason for his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the seat on the U.S. Supreme Court vacated by Justice David Souter; I saw it as the inspiration for increased goverment control over the banks and automakers; I've seen it as the driving force behind the socialist aspects of the cap-and-trade legislation currently working its way through Congress. Yet striving for "justice," whatever that may be, greatly affects his approach to foreign policy as well.

Previously, I had dismissed Obama's approach to foreign policy as "detente-at-all-costs," an unintended homage to former President Jimmy "Dhimmi" Carter. But I don't think that's it. Detente, it seems, is just a desired side effect of Obama's justice-driven foreign policy. After all, it's that hope for his brand of "justice" which allows him to weigh in on where Jews can build homes in Jerusalem and embrace a wanna-be dictator in Honduras but not want to "meddle" with affairs in Iran.

The question, however, remains: what, exactly, is Barack Obama's definition of "justice?"

I don't know. But I'm starting to understand it. When he finally broke silence on the uprisings in Iran, President Obama never once spoke of the protests in terms of freedom, choosing instead to define them in terms of a frustrated people seeking "justice." And his statements on Iran, of course, come weeks after he spoke to the Muslim world in Cairo, delivering a speech during which he weighed the moral equivalency between Palestinians wandering the desert for six decades looking for a home and the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust.

Justice, to Barack Obama, seems to hinge upon government being the ultimate arbiter with regards to fundamental rights bequeathed upon an obedient people. The Palestinians had no such government to trade in fundamental rights, so such an absence of governance was a travesty on par with the death of six million Jews. With regard to Iran, Obama echoed the mainstream media's argument that the protests were about elections, not freedom. And with regard to the ongoing situation in Honduras, in the interest of "justice" of course Obama will side with Manuel Zelaya, as government knows what is best for the people, even if that means scrapping the constitution in order to provide that government in perpetuity.

That's why the so-called "coup" in Tegucigalpa shed so much light, at least for me, on Barack Obama's own tendencies. Conservatives often argue that liberals are unable, in terms of foreign policy, to discern between good and evil. When Barack Obama is concerned, however, it is becoming increasing obvious that the struggle is not so much between forces of good and evil as it is between liberty and tyranny. Sadly, that consistency I've found in Obama's foreign policy, the consistency so many conservative commentators seem to believe to be missing, is that he will always side with the latter.

Read more...

Sen. Inhofe Calls for Inquiry Into'Suppressed' Climate Change Report

Republicans are raising questions about why the EPA apparently dismissed an analyst's report questioning the science behind global warming.

By Judson Berger

FOXNews.com

Monday, June 29, 2009

EPA analyst Alan Carlin raised questions about the impact of global warming on areas like Greenland. Shown here is an iceberg off Ammassalik Island, Greenland. (AP Photo)

A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming.

The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin's report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined.

"He came out with the truth. They don't want the truth at the EPA," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a global warming skeptic, told FOX News, saying he's ordered an investigation. "We're going to expose it."

The controversy comes after the House of Representatives passed a landmark bill to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, one that Inhofe said will be "dead on arrival" in the Senate despite President Obama's energy adviser voicing confidence in the measure.

According to internal e-mails that have been made public by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Carlin's boss told him in March that his material would not be incorporated into a broader EPA finding and ordered Carlin to stop working on the climate change issue. The draft EPA finding released in April lists six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, that the EPA says threaten public health and welfare.

An EPA official told FOXNews.com on Monday that Carlin, who is an economist -- not a scientist -- included "no original research" in his report. The official said that Carlin "has not been muzzled in the agency at all," but stressed that his report was entirely "unsolicited."

"It was something that he did on his own," the official said. "Though he was not qualified, his manager indulged him and allowed him on agency time to draft up ... a set of comments."

Despite the EPA official's remarks, Carlin told FOXNews.com on Monday that his boss, National Center for Environmental Economics Director Al McGartland, appeared to be pressured into reassigning him.

Carlin said he doesn't know whether the White House intervened to suppress his report but claimed it's clear "they would not be happy about it if they knew about it," and that McGartland seemed to be feeling pressure from somewhere up the chain of command.

Carlin said McGartland told him he had to pull him off the climate change issue.

"It was reassigning you or losing my job, and I didn't want to lose my job," Carlin said, paraphrasing what he claimed were McGartland's comments to him. "My inference (was) that he was receiving some sort of higher-level pressure."

Carlin said he personally does not think there is a need to regulate carbon dioxide, since "global temperatures are going down." He said his report expressed a "good bit of doubt" on the connection between the two.

Specifically, the report noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend over the past 11 years, that scientists do not necessarily believe that storms will become more frequent or more intense due to global warming, and that the theory that temperatures will cause Greenland ice to rapidly melt has been "greatly diminished."

Carlin, in a March 16 e-mail, argued that his comments are "valid, significant" and would be critical to the EPA finding.

McGartland, though, wrote back the next day saying he had decided not to forward his comments.

"The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision," he wrote, according to the e-mails released by CEI. "I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office."

He later wrote an e-mail urging Carlin to "move on to other issues and subjects."

"I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research, etc., at least until we see what EPA is going to do with climate," McGartland wrote.

The EPA said in a written statement that Carlin's opinions were in fact considered, and that he was not even part of the working group dealing with climate change in the first place.

"Claims that this individual's opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false. This administration and this EPA administrator are fully committed to openness, transparency and science-based decision making," the statement said. "The individual in question is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue. Nevertheless the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists, and information from that report was submitted by his manager to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding. In fact, some ideas from that document are included and addressed in the endangerment finding."

The e-mail exchanges and suggestions of political interference sparked a backlash from Republicans in Congress.

Reps. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., also wrote a letter last week to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson urging the agency to reopen its comment period on the finding. The EPA has since denied the request.

Citing the internal e-mails, the Republican congressmen wrote that the EPA was exhibiting an "agency culture set in a predetermined course."

"It documents at least one instance in which the public was denied access to significant scientific literature and raises substantial questions about what additional evidence may have been suppressed," they wrote.

In a written statement, Issa said the administration is "actively seeking to withhold new data in order to justify a political conclusion."

"I'm sure it was very inconvenient for the EPA to consider a study that contradicted the findings it wanted to reach," Sensenbrenner said in a statement, adding that the "repression" of Carlin's report casts doubt on the entire finding.

Carlin said he's concerned that he's seeing "science being decided at the presidential level."

"Now Mr. Obama is in effect directly or indirectly saying that CO2 causes global temperatures to rise and that we have to do something about it. ... That's normally a scientific judgment and he's in effect judging what the science says," he said. "We need to look at it harder."

The controversy is similar to one under the Bush administration -- only the administration was taking the opposite stance. In that case, scientist James Hansen claimed the administration was trying to keep him from speaking out and calling for reductions in greenhouse gases.

Darned Flat-Earther

From America's Right blog:

Consider me unsurprised. A political agency such as the EPA would suppress information that counters its own views and political perspective? Ohmigosh. What I did find incredible was the derision with which the EPA dismissed the report.

"It was something he did on his own," the EPA official told Fox News. "Though he was not qualified, the manager indulged him and allowed him on agency time to draft up . . . a set of comments."

Indulged him? How positively condescending.

Personally, I don't care whether or not the EPA official who penned the suppressed report was a scientist, an economist or the guy who changes the urinal cakes in the agency's building. If the report contains facts, ran afoul of the "consensus" touted by the president and greenies everywhere, and was suppressed -- I'm crying foul.

We're about to pass legislation that will unreasonably ruin the American economy, perhaps the most harmful bill ever proposed in the 233-year history of our nation, based completely on a farcical theory founded on junk science. We need all of the information, not simply the information permitted us by those who buy into the global socialism underpinnings of the climate change issue.

An Open Letter to the President

Sunday, June 28, 2009
From America's Right blog

Dear President Obama:

I watched your address to the nation today. The one you made yesterday morning, one day after the House of Representatives passed the 1,500-page Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade bill without reading it, and after adding 300 pages just hours before. You looked great, and your charm showed through. You always do, and it always does. In fact, I dare say I'd like you -- if it weren't for your policies.

I'm sorry, Mr. President. There is "no longer a debate about whether carbon pollution is placing our planet in jeopardy?" It's happening? Really? Why then, Mr. President, is Mars warming while we're stuck in a 10-plus year-long cooling trend? I haven't seen any little green men driving Hummers. The cool photos sent back to Earth from the Red Planet sure haven't shown any coal plants, or industry, or anything else your people claim to be driving global warming here at home. Could it be, Mr. President, that mankind and whatever pollution we're emitting has much less to do with climate change than other natural forces? Perhaps we should look at the sun when talking about global temperatures, no?

Here are some other questions I'd really like you and your kind--your "kind" being socialist, globalist progressives hell bent on destroying American exceptionalism any way you can (with climate change being a convenient vehicle for that goal)--to answer before you go and ruin the American economy:

• Considering that a single volcanic eruption releases several times the amount of carbon dioxide than the entire human race releases in an entire year, how has the world survived countless such eruptions throughout the planet's 4.5 billion year history?
• Termites release ten times more carbon dioxide than every single man, woman, child, factory and automobile in the entire world. How is it that mankind's carbon emission is the determining factor on how quickly the planet is destroyed? Shouldn't your farcical energy bill focus on termites? After all, they also eat wood, and environmentalists absolutely love wood . . .
• Scientists are absolutely incapable of predicting the weather a week out with any significant accuracy. Why should we believe them capable of putting together accurate models looking forward by a century, or even a decade? If Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz here in Philadelphia says it's going to be 86 degrees here tomorrow and it turns out to be 91 degrees, why trust a liberal idealogue masquerading as a scientist to predict global temperatures in 2050 to within six-tenths of a degree?
• In that same line of thinking -- why do existing climate models completely fail to predict the known past? In other words, if the same models used by your so-called experts don't work to predict known conditions, why should we bank our economy on those models and experts now?
• Staying in the past, why did the planet cool between 1940 and 1975, even though human carbon dioxide emissions were sky high? Could it be that human carbon emissions and global temperature have absolutely nothing to do with each other?
• Why don't we see, in core samples, actual empirical evidence over a broad span of time--not 100 year segments here or there--that carbon dioxide levels drive temperature? Why don't we see corresponding increases in such samples at the time of major volcanic activity?
• The planet's climate has always changed -- why are we so willing to destroy the economy (or even take the risk in doing so) in order to fight a natural cyclical process?

With all due respect, Mr. President, the debate is far from over. Yes, I absolutely, positively believe that we should be responsible stewards of our planet; but believing that, after 4.5 billion years of plate-shifting and ice ages and asteroid strikes and a climate that has ranged from incredibly hot to unbelievably cold, we suddenly are endangering Mother Earth because of our industrial activities and internal combustion engines is more than ridiculous -- it's unfathomably arrogant.

And yet arrogance seems to be a hallmark of your presidency and your administration, Mr. President. You travel around apologizing to the world for America, when it is our economy that drives the globe, when it has been our brave men and women who have liberated it. You believe that your meaningless and empty words, authored by someone else and read from a TelePrompTer, can somehow change the ideological struggle between Islam and the West overnight, taking credit even for the uprising in Iran. As much as I like you on a personal level--and I do--as president of the United States your arrogance is matched only by your popularity among the politically ignorant. Combine yours with the arrogance inherent among the cult-like believers in detrimental climate change, and I fear for our world.

Wouldn't it be ironic, sir, if the very same efforts which on their face claim to be done in the best interests of the planet actually end up destroying it? What of the hundreds of millions of people teetering on the edge of death from famine and disease, propped up only by a robust American economy and the generosity of a capable American people? What of the hundreds of millions of people whose only line of defense against ruthless oppression is our strong military, funding by a strong American economy, manned by a capable American people?

Yet your actions, and the actions of those in your party, are directly threatening the very heart of American exceptionalism. You claim that there is no contradiction between investing in clean energy and economic growth, yet study after study shows otherwise, that this legislation rooted so shamelessly in the expansion of political power will result in disaster for American business and industry and unsustainable, increased costs on American people from coast to coast. This legislation, and indeed your presidency as a whole, has been built on a web of lies on everything from transparency to policy and everywhere in between, and the price for those lies will be paid by an increasingly burdened American people. My three-year-old child, and her children after her, will be paying for your inexperience, ignorance, arrogance and malfeasance.

You acknowledge that "dependence on foreign oil is endangering our security" as if you've done anything at all to guide our nation to true energy independence. In reality, looking at energy independence in terms of the national security it provides, this horrific legislation is little more than the latest salvo in your ongoing war against the safety and security of America and the American people you are charged with protecting, be it the way you've handled our detainees, the way your party has disheartened our intelligence community, or the way your detente-at-all-costs approach to foreign policy has emboldened enemies of the United States of America and everything for which She stands.

If you truly wanted to become energy independent, if you truly wanted to facilitate economic growth, you would invest in the American people and the resources America is blessed to sit upon. You would create hundreds of thousands of jobs by drilling for oil off our coasts and on the northern plain of Alaska, and by increasing efforts to explore our vast oil shale deposits located under your hated flyover states. Knowing that the United States of America is essentially the Saudi Arabia of coal, you would pave the way for clean coal and expansion of the coal industry rather than overtly working to destroy it. You would build nuclear plants. But this disastrous piece of legislation is no more about clean energy or the environment as your stimulus package was about stimulating the economy -- it's about advancing your collectivist agenda, it's about expanding the size and scope and influence of the federal government, it's about trampling the values and principles upon which this nation was founded, and it's about taking what you view as an unfairly powerful and successful America down a peg or two relative to Europe and the rest of the slowly developing world.

The problem, Mr. President, is that--for now, at least--you're getting away with it. An obedient media and ignorant people are lost in your smile and ample charm. An embittered Democrat Party is making the most of what I promise will be an extremely short time in power. And a global community jealous of our freedom and our prosperity is clamoring for one of their own, a true Citizen of the World, to reduce America from the world's only superpower to a beholden nation which relies upon everyone else for energy, for goods and, soon, for food. And you're taking them up on it, quicker than any of us could have imagined.

Right now, when perhaps the greatest possible question is asked of those who believe wholeheartedly in the danger of climate change--what, pray tell, is the appropriate temperature for planet Earth?--the answer may very well be: "Whatever our Dear Leader says it should be." But it won't be for long. 2010 is right around the corner, 2012 is not far behind, and we're waking up. America is waking up, Mr. President, and I take comfort in knowing you'll be on the speaking circuit and measuring the drapes for your presidential library in no time.

Warmest Regards,

Jeff Schreiber
America's Right

Cap and trade vote today, complete with AP spin

Update: 300-page, last-minute amendment; Update: Greenpeace opposes

posted at 8:46 am on June 26, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
From Hot Air Blog

In pre-Norman England, King Canute once had his bearers carry him to the sea, where he ordered the ocean to recede. Often this story is told to indict Canute for having delusions of grandeur, but historians usually agree that Canute intended to teach a lesson to his court, whose profuse flattery had annoyed the king to distraction. Why does Canute come to mind today? For some reason, I thought of it when I read the AP’s lead to their coverage of the cap-and-trade bill coming to the House floor for a vote:

A handful of undecided Democrats hold the key to whether the House will confront global warming and begin a shift away from fossil fuels to cleaner sources of energy.

Well, that’s not biased coverage at all, is it? “Whether the House will confront global warming” implies that all debate has ceased on the subject, while in truth it has intensified. Kim Strassel notes the increasing skepticism in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country’s weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. — 13 times the number who authored the U.N.’s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world’s first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak “frankly” of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming “the worst scientific scandal in history.” Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the “new religion.” A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists’ open letter.)

The collapse of the “consensus” has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth’s temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Of course, the AP reports on this as part of its coverage, too. This comes in paragarph … er … oh, wait, it doesn’t appear at all. The AP does report on opposition to the bill on its fiscal insanity, but waters that down considerably:

Everyone agrees that under this “cap-and-trade” system the cost of energy is expected to increase as electricity producers and industrial plants pay for increased efficiency, move toward greater use of renewable energy, pay for ways to capture carbon emissions or purchase pollution allowances.

They disagree, however, on how much of the added cost would be passed onto consumers. Democrats argue that much of the cost increase could be offset by other provisions in the bill.

All of the increase will get passed to consumers. Democrats hope to buffer that through targeted subsidies, but the AP neglects to mention that mechanism — because that money also comes from consumers. Business costs always get passed to the purchaser in the form of higher prices, and anyone who argues that they don’t either have no understanding of business and pricing or has a desire to sell snake oil to the gullible.

Cap-and-trade is a tax, one imposed through an artificial scarcity model onto an industry that drives the economy. The AP reports the CBO and EPA cost estimates without mentioning that those predictions only cover the actual mechanical costs of cap-and-trade. They do not predict the economic impact on American families from the loss of economic power as energy becomes more scarce and expensive. This bill will lose the US 2.5% of its GDP each and every year in the years after the first decade of implementation.

King Canute knew better than to believe his advisers when they told him that he was powerful enough to affect ocean levels. Unfortunately, this administration and the Democratic Party don’t have the sense Canute did.

Call your Representative today to tell them not to strangle the American economy. Michelle has the numbers and names to call.

Update: Before today, the bill ran a little over 1,000 pages. Early this morning, Waxman dropped a 300-page amendment into it. Be sure to ask your Representatives if they plan to read either of these before voting on the bill. (via Mary Katharine Ham)

Update II: Greenpeace has come out in opposition to Waxman-Markey, too. However, conservatives should temper their enthusiasm:

“Since the Waxman-Markey bill left the Energy and Commerce committee, yet another fleet of industry lobbysists has weakened the bill even more, and further widened the gap between what Waxman-Markey does and what science demands. As a result, Greenpeace opposes this bill in its current form. We are calling upon Congress to vote against this bill unless substantial measures are taken to strengthen it. Despite President Obama’s assurance that he would enact strong, science-based legislation, we are now watching him put his full support behind a bill that chooses politics over science, elevates industry interests over national interest, and shows the significant limitations of what this Congress believes is possible.

“As it comes to the floor, the Waxman-Markey bill sets emission reduction targets far lower than science demands, then undermines even those targets with massive offsets. The giveaways and preferences in the bill will actually spur a new generation of nuclear and coal-fired power plants to the detriment of real energy solutions. To support such a bill is to abandon the real leadership that is called for at this pivotal moment in history. We simply no longer have the time for legislation this weak. “

In other words, Greenpeace is angry that it doesn’t get more confiscatory and economically suicidal. It makes Waxman-Markey look moderate, which is a bigger problem than a boon for conservatives.

The Climate Change Climate Change

The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere.

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL - The Wall Street Journal

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

Associated Press

Steve Fielding

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

The rise in skepticism also came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected like Mr. Obama on promises to combat global warming, was attempting his own emissions-reduction scheme. His administration was forced to delay the implementation of the program until at least 2011, just to get the legislation through Australia's House. The Senate was not so easily swayed.

Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute's annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn't.

This week Mr. Fielding issued a statement: He would not be voting for the bill. He would not risk job losses on "unconvincing green science." The bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter.

Republicans in the U.S. have, in recent years, turned ever more to the cost arguments against climate legislation. That's made sense in light of the economic crisis. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi fails to push through her bill, it will be because rural and Blue Dog Democrats fret about the economic ramifications. Yet if the rest of the world is any indication, now might be the time for U.S. politicians to re-engage on the science. One thing for sure: They won't be alone.

Waxman-Markey Bill Is An Energy Tax That Doesn’t Work

From The Heritage Foundation:

Later today, the House of Representatives is slated to vote on the most convoluted attempt at economic central-planning this nation has ever attempted: cap and trade. The 1,200-plus page Waxman-Markey climate change legislation is nothing more than an energy tax in disguise that by 2035 will raise:

• Gasoline prices by 58 percent
• Natural gas prices by 55 percent
• Home heating oil by 56 percent
• Worst of all, electricity prices by 90 percent




Although proponents of the bill are pointing to grossly underestimated and incorrect costs, the reality is when all the tax impacts have been added up, the average per-family-of-four costs rise by $2,979 per year. In the year 2035 alone, the cost is $4,609. And the costs per family for the whole energy tax aggregated from 2012 to 2035 are $71,493.

But on second thought, cap and trade is much more than that.

It Kills Jobs: Over the 2012-2035 timeline, job losses average over 1.1 million. By 2035, a projected 2.5 million jobs are lost below the baseline (without a cap and trade bill). Particularly hit hard are sectors of the economy that are very energy-intensive: Manufacturers, farmers, construction, machinery, electrical equipment and appliances, transportation, textiles, paper products, chemicals, plastics and rubbers, and retail trade would face staggering employment losses as a result of Waxman-Markey. It’s worth noting the job losses come after accounting for the green jobs policymakers are so adamant about creating. But don’t worry because the architects of the bill built in unemployment insurance; too bad it will only help 1.5% of those losing their jobs from the bill.

It Destroys Our Economy: Just about everything we do and produce uses energy. As energy prices increase, those costs will be passed onto the consumer and reflected in the higher prices we pay for products. Higher energy prices will cause reduced income, less production and an economy that falls way short of its potential. The average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) lost is $393 billion, hitting a high of $662 billion in 2035. From 2012-2035, the accumulated GDP lost is $9.4 trillion. The negative economic impacts accumulate, and the national debt is no exception. The increase in family-of-four debt, solely because of Waxman-Markey, hits an almost unbelievable $114,915 by 2035.

It Provides Red Meat for Lobbyists: Businesses, knowing very well this would impose a severe cost on their bottom line, sent their lobbyists to Washington to protect them. And it worked. Most of the allowances (the right to emit carbon dioxide) have been promised to industry, meaning less money will be rebated back to the consumer. Free allowances do not lower the costs of Waxman-Markey; they just shift them around. In other words, every day Americans are going to be footing the bill. Although the government awarded handouts to businesses, the carbon dioxide reduction targets are still there, and the way they will be met is by raising the price of energy and thereby inflicting more economic pain. Prices have to go up enough to force people to use less energy, and so if anyone is bought off with free allowances, the costs for everyone else are that much higher.

There’s one thing the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill doesn’t do: Work. All of the above-mentioned costs accrue in the first 25 years of a 90-year program that, as calculated by climatologists, will lower temperatures by only hundredths of a degree Celsius in 2050 and no more than two-tenths of a degree Celsius at the end of the century. In the name of saving the planet for future generations, Waxman-Markey does not sound like a great deal: Millions of lost jobs, trillions of lost income, 50-90 percent higher energy prices, and stunning increases in the national debt, all for undetectable changes in world temperature. Who’s buying that?