Cooler Heads Digest 30 April 2010

In the News

The World Rethinks Climate Legislation
Tom Switzer, Wall Street Journal, 30 April 2010

When White House Correspondents Go Green, Follow the Money
Richard Morrison, GlobalWarming.org, 30 April 2010

Hockey Stick YouTube Satire Provokes Lawsuit Threat
Ronald Bailey, Reason, 30 April 2010

Drill, Barry, Drill
Andrew Cline, American Spectator, 30 April 2010

Earthquakes, Global Warming, and Bad Journalism
Michael Rielly, Discovery News, 30 April 2010

Obama Green Team Member Cathy Zoi: Climate Profiteer?
Chris Horner, Men’s News Daily, 27 April 2010

Latest Global Warming “Oops” Moment
Mark Landsbaum, Orange Punch, 27 April 2010

20 Years of Media Advocacy, Not Journalism, on Climate
Rich Noyes, Wall Street Journal, 23 April 2010

News You Can Use

Gore Hijinks

In “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore warned that unabated global warming would inundate America’s coast line with sea level rise. Evidently, Gore doesn’t believe his own alarmism, because this week he bought a $9 million, sea-side mansion in Montecito, California. His newest palatial estate comes with 5 bedrooms, 6 fireplaces, and 9 bathrooms.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Senate Situation Unclear

Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) promised last week that this time they really were going to unveil at least the draft text of their energy-rationing bill on Monday.  Then last Saturday Graham pulled the plug in a letter to Majority Leader Harry “Just Call Me Toast” Reid (D-Nev.). It appears that Graham is starting to feel exposed politically as the left’s favorite Republican.  He’s been working with the Democrats on immigration reform and on closing the prison camp for terrorists at Guantanamo as well as energy rationing.  So he said that he was picking up his marbles and going home because Reid had announced that immigration reform would be taken up next before K-G-L’s don’t-call-it-cap-and-trade bill.

Kerry then flew back to Washington and began trying to put the Terrific Trio back on track.  Reid appeared to reverse course and said that the anti-energy bill would come before immigration because the anti-energy bill was ready. This is odd because the bill seems far from being in finished form and Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) appears to have made more progress in a couple days putting together an immigration bill than K, G, and L have in six months.  There have been several conflicting statements this week and many news stories on what happened and what’s happening.  I’ve read most of them, and I have only a foggy picture of what happened and no idea what’s going to happen next.  Suffice it say that the K-G-L bill’s prospects for achieving sixty votes on the Senate floor are close to nil.

Nonetheless, Senator Graham continues to be the favorite of the mainstream media.  I wrote about this in early March.  This week Morton Kondracke wrote a fawning article in Roll Call (subscription required, but available here), “Will GOP Follow Graham Model-or Die?”  And David Brooks and Gail Collins published an interview on the New York Times web site titled, “Senator Lindsey Graham, Our Hero.”

Around the World

Myron Ebell

Australia

Australia’s Labour Government have decided to delay any further attempt to pass cap-and-trade legislation until 2012-13. This news should shake up the forces of darkness in the European Union, the Obama Administration, and the Congress.  Here is an informal comment from Ray Evans of the Lavoiser Group, which is a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition:

“It has, of course, been a happy week. The statement by our glorious leader [Prime Minister Kevin Rudd] that the CPRS [Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme] Bill would be put on hold until 2012 has reverberated through the commentariat.  My favourite piece was by Olga Galacho in the Herald-Sun. Olga has been the thermomaniacs’ most fervent spokeswoman, and to read of her sense of betrayal and loss was deeply satisfying.

But no victories are permanent….  As before, it will be the Opposition, led by Tony Abbott, which will decide what happens next….  The most serious problem that we who live south of the old Brisbane line face in the next few years is the prospect of electricity shortages and rationing. The electricity grid which supplies everyone who lives south of that famous line will be running short of base load power within 3 to 5 years. We desperately need a new 5,000 MW coal-fired power station and the only way in which a private investor is going to commit $10 billions to building such a project is for the Commonwealth Govt. to provide a bankable indemnity against any carbon taxes that a future government may decide to impose.

Climategate Update

On April 23, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s office sent the University of Virginia a request seeking  documents relating to the publicly-funded research of former UVA (and now Penn State) Assistant Professor Michael Mann, the creator of the discredited “hockey stick” global temperature reconstruction. From 1999 to 2005, Mann received nearly half a million dollars from the Virginia taxpayers for climate research. If Cuccinelli determines that Mann manipulated data, then he could seek the return of all the research money, legal fees, and trebled damages.

Two weeks ago, the Cooler Heads Digest noted a report from NoConsensus.org that awarded an “F” to 21 (of 44) chapters in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Nobel-Prize winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The UNFCCC received the failing grade for citing peer reviewed research less than 60% of the time. Now, No Consensus is organizing a citizen review of the remaining chapters. To learn more and contribute, visit NoConsensus.org.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.