Free Republic

The state of Texas and a coalition of free-market and global warming skeptic groups are asking a federal appeals court today to review U.S. EPA's finding that greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare.Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples announced that the state is filing a petition (pdf) with the U.S. Court of Appeals challenging EPA's endangerment finding."Texas is aggressively seeking its future in alternative energy through incentives and innovation, not mandates and overreaching regulation," Perry said in a statement. "The EPA's misguided plan paints a big target on the backs...

The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies, Christopher Booker and Richard North write. No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007. Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former...

Over at ICECAP.us Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo has posted an item on a “Russian Bombshell” highly relevant to the ClimateGate scandal. The Russian media first posted the story and now some Brits are loving it. The long and the short of it is best summarized by the Telegraph’s James Dellingpole: “What the Russians are suggesting here, in other words, is that the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a crock.” That is, we have yet further evidence that the data is being cooked to make the long-running claim of an increase in global...

Lee Dorin and Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute do some "man on the street" type interviews of environmentalists on the subject of the Climategate e-mails.

Climategate may be just the tip of the global-warming iceberg according to the Washington, D.C.-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, which says the next weather-science scandal may erupt right here in the United States. For nearly three years CEI, a free-market, public-interest organization, has pursued a series of Freedom of Information Act Requests intended to force NASA's climate-science division to hand over e-mails it says could reflect the same sort of pro-warming bias seen in the recent e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of East Anglia University. One reason NASA's unresponsiveness is drawing attention: For years, the CRU stonewalled a request...

Junk Science: The Environmental Protection Agency's sneak attack on the U.S. economy and our freedoms, curiously timed for the opening day of the Copenhagen climate charade, won't go unchallenged. Nor should it. The EPA's finding that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant explains why the administration wasn't too concerned over possible failure at Copenhagen. This was their Plan B. The finding is an environmental Sword of Damocles held over the head of the U.S. with a warning that if cap-and-trade legislation such as Waxman-Markey or Kerry-Boxer is not signed into law, the full regulatory fury of an unelected bureaucracy will...

There are so many deep flaws in the "Endangerment Ruling" announced Monday by President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency that it is quite possible the worst of them will escape notice. After all, it's hard to top the drama of the millions of lost jobs and the crippling energy crisis that will result if the agency begins regulating greenhouse gases -- mainly CO2. The agency unilaterally awarded itself authority to do just that with the ruling. But even worse will be the terrible damage this ruling will inflict upon one of the most basic of American constitutional pillars, the separation of...

Junk Science: The Environmental Protection Agency's sneak attack on the U.S. economy and our freedoms, curiously timed for the opening day of the Copenhagen climate charade, won't go unchallenged. Nor should it. (snip) EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, in a conversation with Sen. James Inhofe, ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has in effect admitted the finding was based on the junk science and data manipulation practiced at Britain's East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU). "She told me that EPA accepted those findings without any serious independent analysis to see whether they were true," Inhofe said. Dr....

As activists from groups as wide-ranging as the Girl Scouts and the World Council on Churches converge on the climate change conference in Copenhagen, some critics say it's turning into a "circus" sideshow, with 20,000 attendees creating an international echo chamber of climate piety. Apart from the main proceedings, there are 254 side events, 231 exhibits and more than 200 press conferences already on the schedule — meaning there are about 700 extra events keyed up for the 12-day conference. "These circuses get bigger and bigger," said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise...

The Environmental Protection Agency today finalized its finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare and therefore must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. CEI announced that it will file suit in federal court to overturn the endangerment finding on the grounds that EPA has ignored major scientific issues, including those raised recently in the Climategate fraud scandal. “EPA is clinging for dear life to the notion that the global climate models are holding up,” said Sam Kazman, CEI General Counsel. “In reality, those models are about to sink under the growing weight of evidence that they...

When the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing on the state of climate science on December 2, the Republicans were ready to focus it on the Climategate fraud scandal. And the first witness, President Obama’s science adviser, Dr. John P. Holdren, was ready to respond. Instead of summarizing his written testimony in his oral remarks, Holdren read a prepared statement on Climategate. He said that the controversy involved a “small group of scientists” and was primarily about one temperature dataset. He said that such controversies were not unusual in all branches of science and...

Science: For two years, our space agency has refused Freedom of Information requests on why it has repeatedly corrected its climate figures. A leading researcher threatens to sue to find more inconvenient truths. What's become known as "Climate-Gate" may be about to explode on this side of the pond as well. Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has threatened a lawsuit against NASA if by year-end the agency doesn't honor his FOI requests for information on how and why its climate numbers have been consistently adjusted for errors. "I assume that what is there is highly...

In the wake of the burgeoning Climategate fraud scandal, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) on December 2 filed an emergency petition demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency stop its plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, pending a complete investigation.

The fight over global warming science is about to cross the Atlantic with a U.S. researcher poised to sue NASA, demanding release of the same kind of climate data that has landed a leading British center in hot water over charges it skewed its data. Chris Horner... said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s. "I assume that what is there...

Climate scientists are refuting claims that raw data used in critical climate change reports has been destroyed, rendering the reports and policies based on those reports unreliable. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market advocacy group, is arguing that U.S. EPA's climate policies rely on raw data that have been destroyed and are therefore unreliable. The nonprofit group -- a staunch critic of U.S. EPA's efforts to regulate greenhouse gases -- petitioned the agency last week to reopen the public comment period on its proposed "endangerment finding" because the data set had been lost (E&ENews PM, Oct. 9). But climate scientists...

When I read the Washington Post’s disgraceful editorial the other day on the Climategate scandal, I thought of how far they have fallen since their big moment in the sun, Watergate. In those heady days, editor Ben Bradlee and a team of crack investigative reporters led by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein exposed the Watergate cover-up and brought down President Nixon. Of course, they were then on the side of the permanent Washington establishment, who loathed Nixon (as he loathed them), just as they are now on the side of the permanent Washington establishment, for whom global warming alarmism is...

Allen Barton interviews Myron Ebell (CEI.org) about the scandal sparked by e-mails indicating that the Climactic Research Unit (CRU), which warns of global warming, massaged data to fit its agenda.

Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies’ refusal — for nearly three years — to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding “Climategate” scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries’ freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. Numerous informed commenters had alleged such behavior for years, all...

Today, on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies' refusal - for nearly three years - to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding "ClimateGate" scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries' freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. Numerous informed commenters had alleged such...

Today, on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies' refusal - for nearly three years - to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding "ClimateGate" scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries' freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. Numerous informed commenters had alleged such...