As fewer and fewer of the public buy into the climate-crisis hoax, more and more are realizing the costly influences upon their lives and futures. Leading surveys indicate that “climate change” ranks at or near the bottom of concerns Americans really care about, and that nearly half polled are skeptical or unsure that it poses any significant threat.
Many distrust alarmist reports put out by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A 2014 Bloomberg survey found that 43% of respondents agreed with the statement, “I think scientists manipulate their findings for political reasons.”
This overall division breaks down along political partisan lines. According to a 2013 Pew poll, only 22% of self-identified Republicans regard climate change as a major threat, compared with 55% of self-identified Democrats.
As reformed Sierra Club activist and senior EPA analyst Alan Carlin discusses in his new book, Environmentalism Gone Mad (see my June 22 column), “Environmental [and climate] protection has gone from a bi-partisan effort in the U.S. to a liberal Democratic cause, and more recently to a far-left Democratic cause.”
Make no mistake — all of this climate alarm-premised CO2 emission regulatory stuff is very much about politics. Witness for example the big anti-fossil energy Clinton-Gore Administration push for BTU tax legislation.
Perhaps also remember the repercussions when that agenda provoked strong resistance from traditionally liberal interest groups including the agricultural sector, building trade unions, and social service organizations representing poor clients who rely upon affordable gasoline and heating fuel.
That “teachable moment” occurred in 1994 when a “Republican Revolution” took control of the House for the first time in decades. Fast forward now to another fateful lesson following Democrat-controlled House passage of a Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill promoted by the Obama Administration when Republicans recaptured the House in the 2010 mid-term elections.
And while the later 2014 Republican Senate win was likely more about the lagging U.S. economy, Obamacare, Mideast turmoil and other factors, those mid-terms also witnessed Republicans gaining two seats in governors’ races, giving them control of 31 governorships and 68 state legislative chambers . . . the largest Republican majority of state legislatures since 1928.
That’s beginning to happen. On June 24 the House easily passed a “Just Say No” bill which will delay EPA’s new draconian rulings on power plant emissions while also enabling states to opt out of adopting EPA-mandated regulatory plans which will harm electricity rates, reliability or important economic sectors.
Governors and lawmakers from Texas, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and several other states are likely to join in opposition and challenge that threat.
Implementation of a “Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny” (REINS) bill which the Republican-dominated House passed in 2013 will require full Congressional approval of any executive branch regulations costing $100 million or more.
Still another House-approved “Secret Science Reform Act” introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith would prohibit EPA from proposing, finalizing, or disseminating regulations or assessments based upon science that is not transparent or not reproducible. Sen. John Barrasso has sponsored the same bill which has been sent to the Senate floor.
There can be little lingering doubt that runaway EPA regulation poses a big 2016 Democrat vulnerability, and they know it.
After all, evidence reveals that even Mother Nature sides with Republicans. Satellite records show that global mean temperatures have been flat over the past 18 years and counting despite the much-ballyhooed rising atmospheric CO2 levels.
There are, however, critical climate-related issues that all responsible voters truly should be alarmed about.
Scariest of all is that urgent power and fuel production essential to energize the world’s greatest free market economic and job opportunities are being held captive by propaganda premised upon politically corrupted, agenda-driven climate data, a rapidly failing scientific charade paid for with $39 billion of taxpayer charity over a nearly two-decade flat temperature period.
A version of this article also appears at: http://www.newsmax.com/LarryBell/climate-global-warming-lamar/2015/06/29/id/652618/#ixzz3eWNUsCjr
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” — Thomas Jefferson
As fewer and fewer intellectually serious Republicans can be found to write for CFACT, the usual content providers must venture ever further from the facts: Mr. Bell’s effort to evade the continuity of AGW evident in the ( conspicuously) elevated temperatures of the last two decades the recent scientific literature reports would do credit to a professional statistician– which is exactly what he has pulled out of his hat.
While CFACT fiddles, the NAS is burning to appoint as its next president the current President of the AAAS, with long term effects that might be likened to appointing Naomi Klein to the Supreme Court.