ipcc2014As 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 carlin3June 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.”

He observes that many Democrats are inclined to along with contrived alarmism due to fear of being attacked by peers as “anti-environmental.”
Meanwhile they ignore the inconvenient fact that virtually none of the hypothetical climate model predictions used to support that scary hype have proven to comport with anything even close to reality.

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.

Altogether, that latest Republican sweep now provides opportunities for the U.S. Congress and state legislatures to put the kibosh on Obama EPA’s use of the Clean Air Act to end-run their constitutional authorities.

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.

A major EPA regulatory showdown is already shaping involving many upcoming state level refusals to implement regulatory “Clean Power Plan” options aimed at shutting down coal plants. States that refuse to either adopt plans from a menu they provide or have EPA dictate plans for them do so at risk of having their Federal transportation funds pulled.

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.

Swowtill 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