GlobalWarming.org

The New Yorker’s humorist Andy Borowitz has penned a pugilistic piece of satire, about all the people who’ve been punched out because they remarked in public that the freezing cold temperatures currently gripping much of the nation are incongruent with global warming. Hilarious! Read the short, smug note here.

Presumably, Borowitz’s antipathy for “deniers” in this instance is based on their having mistaken weather for climate. Indeed, it’s a common error. Consider, for example:

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John McLaughlin, the eponymous host of the wonderful roundtable show The McLaughlin Group, gave global warming alarmism both barrels during last week’s broadcast, much to the delight of this regular viewer. The occasion was the 32nd annual McLaughlin Group year-end awards, 2013, part one.

The first salvo came during a segment given to the “most original thinker award of 2013.” The American Conservative’s Pat Buchanan gave this to Peter Higgs; Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift awarded Jeff Bezos; U.S. World & Report’s Mort Zuckerman recognized Pope Francis; and the Chicago Sun Times’s Clarence Page identified Google’s driver-free cars as the recipient of his most original thinker award of 2013. Finally it was John McLaughlin’s turn, and here’s what he said:

The most original thinker is Michael Fumento, an investigative writer and attorney living in Colombia. Fumento has painstakingly documented the unfulfilled and erroneous predictions of climate-change computer models. Now a growing list of scientists reject the so-called consensus that manmade climate change is real. Fumento’s patient debunking of the prevailing orthodoxy makes him the most original thinker of 2013.

Presumably, McLaughlin based this award on Fumento’s recent NY Post op-ed, Global Warming Proof Is Evaporating.

The second shot came shortly thereafter, during the “enough already award for 2013” segment. Buchanan chose Alec Baldwin; Clift went with the Tea Party; Zuckerman identified the Kardashian brood; and Page selected Anthony Weiner. On his turn, McLaughlin said,

The enough, already award goes to global warming, the theory that now masquerades under the pseudonym of climate change. Even its most honest supporters now admit that there has been no increase in the earth’s surface temperatures for 15 years. It’s time to admit the theory is flawed.

Hear, hear!

Watch the whole video below.

Today marks three months and ten days since EPA transmitted the proposed Carbon Pollution Standard, a regulation that would effectively ban coal-fired power plants, to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review. The unusual delay suggests that EPA’s signature climate policy is enduring the bureaucratic equivalent of a spanking. And if OIRA indeed is taking EPA to the woodshed over the agency’s flawed Carbon Pollution Standard, there’s a distinct possibility that the rule might change significantly when it is (finally) published in the Federal Register.

OIRA was created by the Congress with the enactment of the Paperwork Reduction Act in 1980. At the time, the American public was wary of intrusive government regulations. This widespread sentiment (best captured by pop culture in the form of Walter Peck, pictured left) was in part a natural reaction to stagflation, but a decade’s experience of the Great Society getting mugged by reality also played a big role. In this political context, OIRA’s broad mandate was help alleviate the paperwork burdens imposed by the federal regulatory state on American businesses and private individuals.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan substantially increased OIRA’s authority with the promulgation of Executive Order 12291, which required that federal agencies submit their proposed and final regulations to OIRA for review. Thus, OIRA became a primary means by which the President could affect regulatory policy. President Clinton updated the terms of OIRA’s regulatory review in 1993 with the issuance of Executive Order 12866. The two Orders did not engender materially different procedures.

The exact authority exerted by OIRA’s regulatory review is somewhat murky. OIRA’s mandate, according to its authorizing executive order, is to review “significant” agency regulations, in order to ensure that they are consistent with the “applicable law” and “the President’s priorities.” The Office’s power is limited to returning flawed regulations to agencies, which must then reformulate the measures, presumably to better comport with “applicable law” and “the President’s priorities.” Yet Congress usually delegates regulatory authority to specific agencies, not to a certain agency AND the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. A Congressional delegation of rule-making authority is not akin to a “plus one” party invitation that affords the White House the opportunity to add a second rule-maker to an existing regulatory regime. It follows that if OIRA’s input were to alter the substance of a regulation, which it almost certainly does, such influence would likely be an impermissible encroachment on the exclusive regulatory power delegated to the agency in question. Nonetheless, the legal authority of OIRA’s regulatory reviews remains unclear, due to the simple fact that OIRA’s input is shrouded in secrecy. Rare is the instance when OIRA’s draft comments during regulatory review are leaked to the public. Even in the case when OIRA’s input becomes public knowledge, it’s still extremely difficult, if not impossible, to prove that OIRA’s unduly influenced the rule. (A regulatory agency must be afforded the discretion to speak for itself, so as long as the agency head does what the White House asks, there’s no way to prove that OIRA was the cause of any aspect of a final rule).

Putting aside for a moment OIRA’s utter lack of transparency, there is ample reason to believe that OIRA is scrutinizing EPA’s proposed Carbon Pollution Standard.

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Regardless the ongoing environmental impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear event in March 2011, which no doubt remain significant, the forced evacuation of more than a hundred thousand people in the region proximate to the power plant was an unmitigated disaster. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, there are a possible 194 excess cancers among the Fukushima population, while 1,600 persons died from the forced evacuation. That’s a terrible cost benefit ratio.

In fact, this was a policy mistake; only by government design were 130,000 people moved from their homes. To be sure, these measures were taken in the grip of hysteria. But that’s the point: hysteria seemingly always carries the day when it comes to policies that pertain to nuclear radiation, not just in Japan, but everywhere.  According to Reason’s Jon Utley, “Irrational fear of radiation permeates Washington’s civil defense and nuclear regulatory guidelines.”

Utley recently wrote an informative post about the extent to which unfounded alarmism permeates U.S. nuclear policy. In it, he elaborates on the costs of this misplaced fear. He also identifies environmentalist special interests as a key conduit through which is disseminated misinformation about the dangers of radiation. Of course, it will come as no shock to readers of this blog that green groups manufacture alarm as a means of expanding their own influence (See: Warming, Global). Read Utley’s entire, excellent post here.

President Barack Obama on 10th December named John Podesta as counselor to the president.  Podesta has reportedly agreed to help the President in his time of troubles for a year.  The White House announced that Podesta would advise the President on a range of issues, but specifically mentioned climate and energy.

Podesta was a co-chair of the Obama-Biden transition team in 2009 and has been an unofficial but highly influential outside adviser to the Obama Administration for the past five years.  In 2003, he founded and became president of the Center for American Progress, the leftist think tank and advocacy organization that provided much of the ammunition to oppose the policies of the George W. Bush Administration.  CAP continues as a major influence on the Democratic Party in Congress and on the Obama Administration.  This fall Podesta announced that he was founding the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, which will promote share-the-wealth and other class warfare policies.

Podesta served as deputy White House chief of staff and then chief of staff from 1998 to 2001 in the Clinton Administration.  Before joining the Clinton White House, Podesta was one of then-Senator Tom Daschle’s closest advisers and served in several high level committee and leadership staff positions in the Senate.   Podesta is from Chicago.  Although I don’t know whether Podesta has ever been active in Chicago politics, he knows how politics is played in Chicago.  He is extremely able, politically shrewd, and tough.

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