by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent
20 November 2009 @ 6:38 pm
What made the ACORN-exposing work of James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles so sensational was that they successfully infiltrated the habitats of the subjects they investigated, and observed their routine behaviors. They didn’t have to coerce or pressure the ACORN office workers to say or do things they did not want to do. It wasn’t “60 Minutes,” but it reflected the new paradigm under cable TV news and Web rules. James and Hannah were like computer hackers walking in the front door and literally being given what they wanted.
So now an actual hacker — or an insider — has exposed something similar in the global warming activism realm: scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (regarded as Britain’s top authority) caught…
by William Yeatman
20 November 2009 @ 6:14 pm
Announcements
The Competitive Enterprise Institute this week launched a new video campaign to persuade Al Gore to accept Lord Monckton’s challenge for a debate on climate change. CEI is offering Mr. Gore big bucks to debate!
The Cornwall Alliance and the Heritage Foundation are holding a joint event, “Leading Evangelical Scholars Warn That…
by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent
18 November 2009 @ 3:41 pm
Why anyone other than pro-death, Marxist radicals give any favorable attention to anything that comes out of the United Nations — whether research, policy or anything else — is a mystery to me. Nevertheless because they have the attention of the major media, they must be watched.
Obviously those interested in the Cooler Heads Coalition are focused on the pro-government, anti-freedom and anti-energy agenda-driven UN IPCC. The U.N. Population Fund, which today released a report titled “The State of the World Population 2009,” is another you should be wary of. This political body finds that “women bear the disproportionate burden of climate change, but have so far been largely overlooked in the debate about how to address problems of rising seas, droughts,…
by Fred L Smith
18 November 2009 @ 3:07 pm
Senator Gillibrand’ wrote an op ed for the Wall Street Journal last month that understates the gains a cap-and-trade climate policy could yield New York city. She does mention the massive increase in future trading that would result from rationing carbon fuel use. She also correctly points out that forcing carbon constraint contracts into the Procrustean Bed of exchange trades would limit the creativity the gnomes of Wall Street could bring this market socialist enterprise. Were Enron’s Ken Lay still with us, he couldn’t have made the case better. Those aimed at reducing Americans to 1890 energy levels will themselves greatly profit from energy poverty.
However, Senator Gillibrand might have made several additional points. Now that Enron has gone away, New York…
by Fran Smith
18 November 2009 @ 1:29 pm
Thomas L. Friedman’s op-ed in the NYT today could have been written by Paul Krugman. And that’s not a compliment.
Friedman, like Krugman, waxes hysterical about those who are opposing the cap-and-trade energy bill - those “deniers.” And, also like Krugman, he sets up those opponents as straw men that he can readily knock down. In today’s article, Friedman worries about U.S. dependence on foreign oil supplied by ”petro-dictators” and he fears ever-rising prices for increasingly scarce fossil fuels.
So either the opponents of a serious energy/climate bill with a price on carbon don’t care about our being addicted to oil and dependent on petro-dictators forever or they really believe that we will not be adding 2.5 billion more people who want to…
by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent
17 November 2009 @ 1:00 pm
Willie Soon and David Legates, both respected members of the American Geophysical Union, tell the story of how their planned session to discuss scientific papers that consider the many contributing factors to climate variability was a “go,” until suddenly it wasn’t:
We developed this session to honor the great tradition of science and scientific inquiry, as exemplified by Galileo when, 400 years ago this year, he first pointed his telescope at the Earth’s moon and at the moons of Jupiter, analyzed his findings, and subsequently challenged the orthodoxy of a geocentric universe. Our proposed session was accepted by the AGU.
In response to its acceptance, we were joined by a highly distinguished list of scientists – which included members of the National Academy…
by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent
17 November 2009 @ 12:56 pm
The Center for American Progress is criticizing Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota (Hat tip: Tom Nelson) for his apparent flip-flop on anthropogenic causes of global warming, according to The Economist, which reported:
He recently explained that the earth might be warming, but that it is unclear “to what extent that is the result of natural causes.”
Hard to blame CAP, considering this is the kind of thing Pawlenty, a likely GOP presidential candidate, was saying two years ago:
Our global climate is warming, at least in part due to the energy sources we use. We cannot solve it by ourselves, but we need to lead and do our part. We also need to push for an effective national and international effort.
And only last…
by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent
13 November 2009 @ 6:29 pm
Conflict of interest, public disclosure and government ethics are usually one of the few issues where conservatives like myself can “kumbaya” with the mostly left-leaning opinion editors at major metropolitan newspapers, but a situation today raised by the Denver Post is one in which they’re right, but don’t go nearly far enough.
The Post’s editorial board today praises a move by Alice Madden, a cabinet-level adviser (think “czar”) on global warming policy for Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, to give up a $3,000 monthly stipend she receives from the liberal Center for American Progress. This followed a Post editorial on Wednesday which chastened Madden for accepting the supplemental cash due to a perceived conflict of interest.
We think state Climate Change Coordinator Alice Madden has crossed that…
by Fran Smith
13 November 2009 @ 2:24 pm
Oh dear! Staunch trade proponent Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute is in bed with radical trade opponent Lori Wallach of Public Citizen in a joint op-ed in the Washington Post today. It seems Bergsten thinks there’s no chance of a legislative cap on CO2 emissions unless the U.S. does something to address the competitiveness issues, and he’s against “border tax adjustments” because of its potentially devastating effect on the world trading system.
That’s the good part. The bad part is that both he and Wallach want to combine the two issues - global warming and trade - and deal with them together. That was a recommendation that the Peterson Institute for International Economics made in a study earlier this year. What…
by Chris Horner
13 November 2009 @ 12:39 pm
The Chamber of Commerce recently bowed to pressure from big member companies which have crafted schemes to pick your pocket under cap-and-trade, and cravenly pleaded for some form of global warming legislation. It defended this with the argument distilled as “we merely restated our position. A different way.” So it is with Congress, in a fashion, with its controversial Sec. 707 identically stuck in both the Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer bills.
Some on Team Liberty insist there’s nothing to see here, because you’ll notice that the language says the President “shall” exercise “existing statutory authority”. QED. My former CEI colleague Jonathan Adler adopts Ed Morrissey’s position posted on Hot Air, phrasing it on Volokh:
“The above provision grants no new powers to the federal government,…
by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent
12 November 2009 @ 7:09 pm
That’s what the Beacon Hill Institute attempts in an economic impact study of the recommendations produced last year by Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle’s Task Force on Global Warming. Unlike similar exercises in other states, where in most cases the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Center for Climate Strategies controlled outcomes but at least delivered some economic assumptions that BHI could chew on, the TFGW chose not to fantasize. Instead the Wisconsin panel decided to punt on the costs of most of their carbon-capping recommendations, with statements like “to be determined” or “costs were not estimated for this policy.”
Kind of surprising considering that the TFGW, instead of hiring CCS, chose the more prestigious and better-financed World Resources Institute as their management team. With an enormous research staff at…
by Chris Horner
12 November 2009 @ 12:28 pm
So, now that we’ve opened this can, just how sweeping is the “global warming” bills’ curiously identical Sec. 707?
At risk of getting into a peeing match which my time budget may not allow me to finish, I believe that the dispute between Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air and the folks at the Washington Examiner joining Sen. David Vitter (and, by implication, I suppose me) is not necessary but worth resolving. Caution: it is also for the legislatively inclined or otherwise the pointy-headed. But, since I arguably joined the fray on Big Government on Tuesday, here goes.
At issue is a provision buried in both the Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer “global warming” bills.
I had to leave for a few hours after starting my comment…
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