Free Republic

Climate Change: As scientists confirm the earth has not warmed at all in the past decade, others wonder how this could be and what it means for Copenhagen. Maybe Al Gore can Photoshop something before December. It will be a very cold winter of discontent for the warm-mongers. The climate show-and-tell in Copenhagen next month will be nothing more than a meaningless carbon-emitting jaunt, unable to decide just whom to blame or how to divvy up the profitable spoils of climate change hysteria. The collapse of the talks coupled with the decision by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to put...

Control: The House and Senate climate bills contain a provision giving the president extraordinary powers in the event of a "climate emergency." As chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. If you thought the House health care bill that nobody read has hidden passages that threaten our freedoms and liberty, take a peak at the "trigger" placed in the byzantine innards of both the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill and the Kerry-Boxer bill just passed by Democrats out of Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee. As Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation points...

Warming: After stifling a report questioning the science behind climate change, the EPA is censoring two of its lawyers for saying the proposed solutions are also problematical. The debate isn't over. It's being suppressed. In the proud tradition of EPA whistle-blower Alan Carlin, whose leaked study blew the lid off the EPA's hyped and flawed science behind climate change, two EPA lawyers, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, have produced a Web video titled "A Huge Mistake." In it they say cap-and-trade in general and the Waxman-Markey bill in particular are the wrong answers anyway. Williams and Zabel do not deny...

Four Republican Senators — South Carolina’s Lindsay Graham, New Hampshire’s Judd Gregg and Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson today, asking her to provide critical data requested by Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) during Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearings on climate change Oct. 27.

Junk Science: The oracle of climate disaster has a new book out on global warming that should be on the fiction list. He asks us to commit economic suicide while he rakes in millions from his green investments. 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," Al Gore's sequel to his 2006 tome "An Inconvenient Truth," came out Tuesday. Printed on recycled paper using low-VOC (volatile organic compound) ink, it will undoubtedly be a best-seller and on the desk of every attendee at next month's climate change conference in Copenhagen. In a press release announcing the book, the Oscar-...

Junk Science: The oracle of climate disaster has a new book out on global warming that should be on the fiction list. He asks us to commit economic suicide while he rakes in millions from his green investments. 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," Al Gore's sequel to his 2006 tome "An Inconvenient Truth," came out Tuesday. Printed on recycled paper using low-VOC (volatile organic compound) ink, it will undoubtedly be a best-seller and on the desk of every attendee at next month's climate change conference in Copenhagen. In a press release announcing the book, the Oscar-...

Cap and Trade will be a disaster for what is left of manufacturing in this country. Right now, the Rust Belt is just rusty. With Cap and Trade, the rust will inevitably turn into dust. And, for what? Because some politically-driven environmentalists have trumped up a phony belief that mankind is completely killing the planet?

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, held hearings yesterday to look into fraudulent letters which were sent on behalf of the coal industry to several members of congress. The original hearing was to take place on October 15, but was postponed until yesterday morning. The committee lined up the following witnesses: Rep. Tom Periello (D-Va.) Mr. Jack Bonner, Bonner & Associates Mr. Steve Miller, President and CEO, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity Ms. Lisa M. Maatz, Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, American Association of University Women Mr. Hilary...

A controversial provision of climate-change legislation currently moving through Congress will raise the cost of fuel for U.S. businesses and consumers by $3.6 trillion from 2015 to 2050, and raise diesel fuel prices by $1.4 trillion during that span, according to a report issued Oct. 21 by two Senate Republicans. The report, from Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and Christopher S. (Kit) Bond (R-Mo.), said the provision, known as "cap and trade," will increase the cost of motor fuels by 24 cents a gallon by 2020 and by 95 cents per gallon by 2050. The estimates were derived by multiplying...

Dear Friends,             Gene Malvino is a very unusual person.  He is a retired college professor who actually believes in the free enterprise system, and the values that made America great.  He has continued to work tirelessly to bring out the truth of those issues that are important to us as a nation.              The attached letter appeared in the Coeur d’Alene Press on Friday, October 23.  This is the original, unedited version. I trust you will find it instructional.             Jim Hollingsworth Gene J. Malvino If the readers of this newspaper believe that the much discussed and debated Obamacare...

There's something the Democratic lawmakers who are pushing cap-and-trade legislation don't want the public to know. The controversial climate-change legislation winding its way through Congress will impose a massive new national gas tax on the American people. We discovered this by analyzing what the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill would do to gas prices and what Americans spend on gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. We found that cap-and-trade legislation will levy a $3.6 trillion gas-tax increase that will impact every American and important segments of our economy. Americans travel more than 200 million vehicle miles each month, and annually we spend nearly...

"Benefit" is not the correct word, as Cap and Trade will not be a net benefit to any state, being a direct tax on productivity and business in the name of warding off the scam of man-made global warming. That being said, the Waxman-Baucus Bill, Waxman (D-MA) and Baucus (D-CA), will aid special interests in Massachusetts and California more than it will special interests from other states. A little noticed Environmental Protection Agency analysis shows that the pending climate-change bill in Congress would particularly benefit the states represented by its primary authors. The analysis, obtained by The Washington Times, shows...

Politics: Move over, John McCain and Olympia Snowe. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is fast becoming the Democrats' favorite Republican as he partners with John Kerry to push cap-and-trade through the Senate. Earlier this year, eight Republican congressmen made it possible for Waxman-Markey, the 1,400-page job- and economy-killing cap-and-trade legislation, to barely pass the House of Representatives. At the time it seemed dead on arrival in the Senate if it was brought up there this year. Once again, as with their medical plan, the Democrats seek to better the odds by putting a GOP hood ornament on a Democratic clunker....

Executive Summary The massive energy-regulating bill (H.R. 2454) the House of Representatives passed in June 2009 is now before the Senate. Though the cap-and trade program has received most of the media and public attention surrounding Waxman-Markey, the rest of the bill (at least 628 pages) could create economic harm just as great as cap-and-trade. Without cap-and-trade, H.R. 2454 might still be the most far-reaching, counterproductive package of new taxes, transfers and obstacles to economic growth and liberty ever assembled in one bill. The bill affects so many facets of energy and the economy that simply summarizing its major provisions...

Public Discourse: Our energy secretary applauds and encourages companies to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its position on climate change. Should any Cabinet secretary, with the powers of government behind him, be threatening U.S. companies? Part of the climate-change mantra is that the debate is over and the science is settled. Just to make sure, environmental groups have sought to pressure businesses to go green or at least keep silent. Now it would appear the whole weight of the federal government is being thrown behind this campaign to coerce and silence real and potential opposition. On Thursday, Steven...

Don’t let the hype about “green jobs” fool you. The global warming bill approved earlier this year by the House of Representatives would destroy far more jobs than it could ever possibly create. Proponents of the bill’s effort to reduce carbon emissions by imposing an enormously expensive cap-and-trade system are finding it a tough sell. The American people simply aren’t buying the idea that global warming is a dire crisis that justifies a blank-check response. Reality is just not cooperating with doom-and-gloom global warming predictions. No warming has occurred for the last decade. And now the recession has heightened concerns...

For anyone who missed it, we witnessed in recent weeks one of the broadest misuses of congressional power in recent history. Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and his colleague Bart Stupak are openly engaged in a campaign of harassment and intimidation against 52 of America's largest health insurance providers. They seek nothing less than to silence all voices opposed to their government-run health care proposals. Just days after AHIP (America's Health Insurance Plans), the industry trade group for American health insurers, sent Waxman a letter voicing opposition to many components of his proposed health...

When Big Business tells the federal government "yes, tax us more please," you can be pretty confident something shady is going on, and that the consumer will not be the beneficiary of it. In this case it's ownership of major energy providers backing the Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade bill, the proposal that would effectively cap American productivity by trading on fear of global warming. In the past few weeks both Exelon, the nation's largest gas and electric utility, and PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric) have backed out of the Chamber of Commerce over the business lobby's refusal to bend over...

This is an excerpt from a recently obtained internal E mail written by a gleeful GE executive. “On climate change we were able to work closely with key authors of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill, recently passed by the House of Representatives. If this bill is enacted into law it would benefit many GE businesses.” “…benefit many GE businesses” becomes clearer by following the paper trail of “donations” from GEPAC the lobbying arm of General Electric Corporation. GE/Democrat pay to play scheme Last year most of GEPAC’s contributions went to Democrats. This year almost all of its cash bought...

Now that the Senate has returned from its August recess, its members have many issues with which to contend. Although health care reform has received much of the attention in recent weeks, another bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454) or more widely known as Waxman-Markey or “cap & trade,” is equally deserving of scrutiny. This is because most major economic impact studies demonstrate that the “cap & trade” scheme proposed in the Waxman-Markey bill will create massive consumer costs with undefined environmental benefits. In June, the Waxman-Markey bill narrowly passed the U.S. House 219-212...

In their global warming bill, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) have delivered to Congress an incomplete script. It’s like “Hamlet” without the prince. The 821-page aggregation of environmentalist dreams, rhetoric and directives would mandate grants and demonstration projects galore, and set up targets right and left. It would even grant a few unrelated favors, such as authority for cities to set their own mileage standards for taxicabs. (That the bill wouldn’t solve the cabbies’ basic problem of having to buy and insure new hybrids seems not to bother the senators.) The cap-and-trade scheme by which large emitters...

This was supposed to be the cleanest congress and the most transparent administration in history. The Democrats promised that. By now you may have realized this is an empty promise. This whole cap and tax plan being pushed by the President and written by Congressman Waxman is being ghost written by lobbyists. That promise that then President-Elect Obama made at the beginning of his administration that their would be no lobbyist influence on his presidency was just a "Media Moment. But the use of lobbyists in preparing the cap and tax plan goes right at the heart of government "corruption"...

Why So Harsh? by: Brittany Fortier, September 30, 2009 At a time when the United States needs to focus on economic growth, “cap-and-trade” legislation proposed by Congressional Democrats has the potential to stifle job creation and unduly burden American businesses. A panel hosted by the Cato Institute discussed these issues at a Capitol Hill briefing on September 10, 2009. Sallie James, a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute and author of the paper “A Harsh Climate For Trade: How Climate Change Proposals Threaten Global Commerce,” discussed the trade provisions of the Waxman-Markey bill that was passed by the House...

Climate: As alternate-energy champ Spain's green economy slides into recession, a German professor says if American "climate illiterates" don't follow, the Copenhagen climate conference will fail. And the bad news is? King Canute, the Viking king of England, Norway and Denmark, was the legendary king whose sycophantic followers praised his power and wisdom. As the story goes, he once stood on the shore and commanded the waves to halt. Rather than exercising his ego, he in fact was giving his followers a lesson in reality — the power of man over nature is finite and inconsequential. In December, the world's...

Cap & Trade-off by: Allie Winegar Duzett, September 29, 2009 Sallie James of the Cato Institute’s Center for Trade Policy Studies examines climate change’s effect on international trade in her recent article, A Harsh Climate for Trade: How Climate Change Proposals Threaten Global Commerce. The article was published in the Center for Trade Policy Studies newsletter on September 9, 2009. James makes the point clear in her article that if climate change is indeed anthropogenic (a man-made phenomenon), then it is an international problem, and United States environmental policy cannot make a difference. She points out that “U.S. [greenhouse gas]...

<p>Global Warming: President Obama warns of planetary doom at the U.N. if we fail to pass cap-and-trade legislation. Meanwhile, a former warm-monger predicts decades of cooling as the sun stays nearly "spotless."</p> <p>The president had hoped to address Tuesday's United Nations climate change summit in New York with a finished cap-and-trade bill. Failing that, he hoped he'd at least have a version of the Waxman-Markey bill that has passed the House on his desk before the Copenhagen talks in December to cobble together a follow-up to the failed Kyoto Protocol.</p>

Global Warming: President Obama warns of planetary doom at the U.N. if we fail to pass cap-and-trade legislation. Meanwhile, a former warm-monger predicts decades of cooling as the sun stays nearly "spotless."The president had hoped to address Tuesday's United Nations climate change summit in New York with a finished cap-and-trade bill. Failing that, he hoped he'd at least have a version of the Waxman-Markey bill that has passed the House on his desk before the Copenhagen talks in December to cobble together a follow-up to the failed Kyoto Protocol. Not only did that not happen in the cool summer of...

The CBO has issued a new report [.pdf] that summarizes the economic effects of greenhouse-gas legislation, relying on previously published analyses. The report shows just how weak the case for the proposed cap-and-trade plan really is. In fact, the CBO demonstrates that the theoretical benefits of Waxman-Markey to the United States fall far short of its costs. Even more surprising, the CBO report reveals (without trumpeting the result, of course) that the costs borne by the U.S. may exceed the benefits to the entire world. This should be surprising indeed to the casual observer who thought there was a “clear...

The second big bill before Congress is also in difficulties. New York & Houston. Compared with the argy-bargy over health-care reform, this summer’s public conversation about controlling carbon emissions has been a model of restraint. In August, a Zogby poll commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation found that 71% of likely voters in America support the Waxman-Markey bill, a proposal to create a cap-and-trade mechanism for carbon dioxide that cleared the House of Representatives in June. But the bill still faces an uphill climb in the Senate, which resumed work on September 8th.

Green Jobs Czar Van Jones' resignation over the Labor Day weekend occurred amidst controversy about his actions and statements prior to taking a post in President Barack Obama's White House. What has not been covered was his current role in the administration and the policy he was hired to implement. The goal of substituting "green jobs" for conventional work in American industry is as problematical as any of the Marxist delusions that Jones embraced as a radical activist in 1990s. There are reasons that Al Gore is a fan of Jones' work as an environmentalist. Of all the allegations made...

The Heritage Foundation is making available a state-by-state analysis of climate legislation impact. Opponents have long argued that enacting the Waxman-Markey energy bill could cost Americans thousands of dollars per year in the form of higher energy costs. Under the bill, Congress would establish a system to cap and then trade carbon emissions from energy companies and businesses. Sometimes referred to as "carbon cap-and-tax," opponents claim that the so-called carbon tax levied on businesses under the bill will be passed off to consumers. Jack Spencer with The Heritage Foundation says his organization has taken the bill and has done a...

Climate Change: A team of international scientists has finally figured out why sunspots have a dramatic effect on the weather. It shows the folly of fearing the SUV while dismissing that thermonuclear furnace in the sky.Mankind once worshiped the sun. Now the world studiously ignores it as nations prepare to hammer out a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, in Copenhagen in December. Something is indeed rotten in Denmark. Our own government is committed to fighting climate change whether it be though Son of Kyoto or our own growth-capping, job-killing cap-and-trade legislation known as Waxman-Markey. Despite...

Barack Obama said the Waxman-Markey carbon tax would help create "green energy" jobs in the U.S. He is now using taxpayer dollars to fund jobs in Spain.Barack Obama sold the Waxman-Markey "American Clean Energy and Security Act" to Congress and the American people by saying that investment in so-called "green energy" would create millions of high-wage American manufacturing jobs. We received an E-mail from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (nonpartisan professional organization) that exposed Barack Obama as a blatant prevaricator who is shamelessly using our tax dollars to create jobs not in the United States but in foreign countries. We...

Energy Policy: A new study shows that Waxman-Markey will increase prices at the pump, deepen our dependence on foreign oil and shred our ability to turn crude into gasoline. Even fuel-efficient cars will still need fuel.Oil may bubble up out of the ground, but gasoline does not. It's made in those ugly little NIMBY places called refineries we are loath to build anymore because we're too busy trying to save the Earth rather than our economy and American jobs. When Hurricane Katrina shut down 20% of our refining capacity in a single day and raised gas prices in a single...

We have three new charts at top of our home page, www.c3headlines.com, for those interested in the "global warming" nonsense and the danger of 'Cap & Trade.' Chart 1: Climate model reveals that 'C&T' will do nothing for climate. Literally, zilch, nada,..... Chart 2: Look at how much Washington D.C. metro area has warmed versus surrounding states - global warming by pontificating 'hot air'. Chart 3: If we replaced all U.S. fossil fuel power plants with solar and/or wind, how much land would be needed? Hint - it's huge. How much land for nuclear? Very little in comparison. Go nukes!...

PHOENIX -- An Arizona man has devised a clever way to protest the highly controversial Cap and Trade bill that threatens our economy and which would significantly raise the cost of living for Americans. He literally let the air out of the balloon in explaining his plan to The Arizona Conservative. Nick Fletcher, who created the unique protest, said: "In March, I heard about the upcoming TEA parties," Fletcher recalls. "It seemed to me the TEA parties were missing something. I asked myself: what new tax threatens all of us ? Answer: The Cap & Trade tax on carbon dioxide...

<p>According to Bloomberg, four DEMOCRATIC Senators have publicly come out against cap and trade.</p>

Global Warming: Four Democratic senators suggest it would be smart to drop cap-and-trade legislation this year. The Australian Senate has rejected that country's cap-and-trade bill. This is news we like to hear.Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota believe a less-ambitious bill should be split from the cap-and-trade legislation. Combining mandates to use more renewable energy with cap-and-trade is "too big of a lift," Lincoln has concluded. The alternative explanation: The four have seen how voters are reacting to the Democrats' plan to force an unwanted health care policy...

Economists Behind Original Concept Question the System's Large-Scale Usefulness, and Recommend Emissions Taxes Instead In the 1960s, a University of Wisconsin graduate student named Thomas Crocker came up with a novel solution for environmental problems: cap emissions of pollutants and then let firms trade permits that allow them to pollute within those limits. When he was a graduate student in the 1960s working to reduce pollutants, Thomas Crocker devised a cap-and-trade system similar to one being considered in Congress. Now legislation using cap-and-trade to limit greenhouse gases is working its way through Congress and could become the law of the...

Cap-And-Trade: The administration likes to defend bad policies with analogies to the post office. New studies from a business group and the administration itself confirm that cap-and-trade belongs in the dead-letter bin.Along with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Rep. Ed Markey likens the cost of the Waxman-Markey cap-and trade bill to "about a postage stamp a day," based on estimates made by the Congressional Budget Office and the EPA. But as we and others have shown, they arrive at this magical number in part by ignoring the hit on gross domestic product and employment that will occur. As Garret Vaughan, economist...

Add another climate bill cost estimate to the growing pile. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) released a study Wednesday that found under a high-cost scenario the House global warming bill could reduce economic growth by 2.4 percent and cost 2 million jobs by 2030. Environmentalists were quick to criticize the study for underselling the development of climate friendly sources of power and not releasing other assumptions NAM and ACCF fed into the computer model to get their economic forecast, which takes more of a glass-half-empty view than recent governmental reports. But...

Testimony beforeThe House and Senate Western CaucusJuly 30, 2009My name is Ben Lieberman. I am the Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. The views I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation.I would like to thank the House and Senate Western Caucus for the privilege of participating in today's hearing. I'll be discussing the costs of the cap-and-trade approach to addressing global warming and The Heritage Foundation's economic analysis of...

The waiting game is finally over. On July 9, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced that she would run for re-election as Attorney General, and would not run for the Senate seat previously held by Barack Obama and being vacated by his placeholder successor, Roland Burris. Businessman and RFK son Chris Kennedy has chosen not to run for Senate, though he may seek the Governor’s mansion.

He is one of the most liberal members of the United States House of Representatives. He is a staunch defender of abortion rights and he recently voted for the largest tax increase in American history--Cap and Trade. Who am I talking about? U.S. Representative Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois' 10th Congressional District. Earlier this month, Kirk threw his hat into the ring, seeking the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in 2010. Oh, and one more thing...Kirk will never win the seat currently held by Roland Burris who was appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill the office vacated by...

How much will an American family pay to avoid catastrophic global warming via the House-passed Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill?Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., likens the cost to "about a postage stamp a day," based on estimates made by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the U.S. Environmental Agency (EPA). Usually, however, goals that strain credulity also strain finances. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important greenhouse gas emitted by humans. Relative to 2005, Waxman-Markey seeks a 17% cut in CO2 emissions by 2020 and an astounding 83% by 2050, driving U.S. per capita CO2 emission levels below those of George Washington's first...

An Analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 by David Kreutzer, Ph.D., Karen Campbell, Ph.D., William W. Beach, Ben Lieberman and Nicolas Loris Center for Data Analysis Report #09-04 After a truncated debate and last-minute changes, the House of Representatives narrowly passed climate-change legislation on June 26, 2009, designed by Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA). The 1,427-page bill would restrict greenhouse gas emissions from industry, mainly carbon dioxide from the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas.Since energy is the lifeblood of the American economy, 85 percent of which comes from CO2-emitting fossil fuels,...

Opponents of the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade� bill would do well to invoke recent scientific studies that show global surface temperatures have not increased since 1998, contrary to what climate models have predicted. U.S. policymakers who cite “consensus� on man-made global warming as justification for anti-emission regulations are relying upon outdated and misleading material  from the United Nations that deliberately omits the influence of natural forces, according to climate skeptics. In fact, a growing body of evidence now points to the emergence of another cooling cycle that could persist for decades. Dr. Don Easterbrook, a geologist and professor emeritus at...

The climate change and energy bill passed by the House in June will bring somewhat higher energy prices for businesses and households and slow economic growth slightly by 2020, according to a draft report from the Energy Information Administration, a research arm of the Energy Department. The new report, which is scheduled to be released soon, looked at the legislation sponsored by Democratic Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey Jr. of Massachusetts. It found that the bill’s provisions would cause electricity rates to rise 3-4 percent and gasoline prices to rise 23 cents a gallon by...

The price of coal and efforts to control its emissions keep energy costs spiraling higher. American Electric Power, parent of Appalachian Power Co., reports that it is "the largest purchaser of coal in the Western Hemisphere." For Appalachian, coal-fired power plants generate about 98 percent of the electricity it delivers to customers in a territory that includes portions of Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee. For AEP companywide, coal fuels about 70 percent of power generation. And all that coal, an increasingly controversial fuel, helps explain the upward spiral of Appalachian's costs for complying with environmental regulations. Appalachian and AEP report...

Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens’s last minute opposition to the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, announced just prior to the House of Representatives’ vote, was reminiscent of Senator John Kerry’s infamous statement “I voted for it before I voted against it.” While Kerry’s embarrassing comment only hurt his presidential prospects, Owens’s promotion of global warming legislation has far-reaching consequences: the potential to cause irreparable harm to his company, customers, employees and our economy. After years of supporting a national law to limit carbon dioxide emissions through participation in the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) – a lobbying coalition pushing cap-and-trade legislation –...