President Obama appears ready to bind the U.S. to the UN climate pact that was negotiated in Paris last year, and do so without submitting it to the Senate for ratification.
This is outrageous.
Both The Washington Times and The Blaze contacted CFACT’s Marc Morano for comment.
The Washington Times reports, “it would surprise no one if Mr. Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping were to announce the ratification of the sweeping climate change agreement before the Sunday opening of the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang.
“White House senior adviser Brian Deese said the president has the legal authority to ratify the accord without the two-thirds Senate vote required for treaties. He said the pact negotiated by 195 countries in December is merely an ‘executive agreement… The president will use his authority that has been used in dozens of executive agreements in the past to join and formally deposit our instrument of acceptance, and therefore put our country as a party to the Paris Agreement.’”
Article I, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution clearly states, “The president shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the senators present concur.”
The leaders of other nations, including the French hosts of the UN conference that put forth the climate agreement, have repeatedly stated their opinion that what they created is a binding treaty. This would subject it to Senate ratification, which the President knows he could not obtain.
Many observe that if the treaty is nonbinding a future administration can undo it.
However, if subsequent presidents continue the radical restructuring of the U.S. energy economy begun under Obama, it will be very difficult for a future president, with better understanding of energy and climate issues, to restart cold electricity plants or undo the web of subsidies currently being erected.
The Senate should closely study this UN pact, defend its constitutional prerogatives, and refuse to abide by or fund any provision of what is almost certainly a full-blown treaty.
Shame on the President for, once again, over-stepping his authority.
Because it is a blatantly illegal treaty, unapproved, actually not submitted to Congress to advise and consent, then any declared actions flowing from this bogus signing can and should be summarily ignored by any US citizen or company being told to comply. It’s not even civil disobedience since there is no law to comply with.
Check the constitution. Executive order is legal. It is just easier to overturn with a successive President.
Legal, may also be unlawful! Its the difference between Common Law and the Law of Commerce which is essentially Statute law.
Perhaps you meant legal may not be moral, which in this case I would disagree with, but at least you would make a little bit of sense. Legal can never be unlawful by definition. Commercial and Statute law are two aspects of one legal system.
They are not the same system at all. Ask a lawyer as I did. Common law is superior to Statute law which can be changed by Government act. Common Law may not be changed and originated with the Magna Carter.
I never said they were the same system, I only said they are under the same legal umbrella thus making the statement “Legal, may also be unlawful” nonsensical.
Using your argument black is also white with blind people, when sighted folk see it as incorrect.
Legal is Statute Law and introduced for contracts, the fact that misuse of commercial law to subvert the rights of citizens and subjects remains unlawful. Most of us have no contracts with the State quango that are limited companies.
What argument of mine says that in what way? Just so you know, I read your comment of “Legal, may also be unlawful” to a few people including law talking folks and they all saw the humor in it.
Then laugh by all means, but the laws have been perverted just as I described. Tony Blair enacted 1400 new ways to make UK subjects criminals by statute. This is a perversion of the laws of commerce.
I can agree with much here, but then it comes down to semantics and we may as well drop it. I still think you mean legal may not be moral nor just.
UNFCCC is not illegal and was ratified in 1992.
Best,
D
Seems appropriate if the majority of the Senate is denying the best science and are shown to be in the pockets of fossil fuel interests. Can’t have these foxes guarding the chicken coop can we?
The best Science? Consensus rather than argument? With Consensus there will be no progress as everything is already known and agreed.
Quite aware you are under the impression there is a scientific conspiracy afoot. That’s nuts. The consensus of climate scientists was reached with much argument. With consensus on general principals there can be progress in the details.
OK, lets assume for the sake of argument that C02 is a cause of climate warming (not change). I wrote lower down this page that the system of Carbon Credits fails to reduce C02 Globally and is counter productive, is this even sensible?
I would absolutely admit that the policy side for solutions is not my area of expertise, and I am more reduced to opinion here. My expertise is in the science of climatology. But I’ll give it a swing . . . I’m a fiscal conservative and believe that mitigation responds to future costs, while adaptation is dealing with present costs, and continued adaptation without mitigation will have procrastination costs that are economically unsound. The most common conservative solution I have heard is a gas tax that would allow market externalities back into the capital market system. That tax would be revenue dependent and varying details as to where the revenue would be spent (energy efficiency of the infrastructure, alternative energy R&D, etc.).
Your expertise in Climate is also opinion. You have absolutely no viable mechanism for C02 being a cause when its also its demonstrable effect.
That aside when carbon tax credits are having a counter effect, only a demented soul would argue for its continuance.
We went through the mechanics already and you just denied the science. I don’t want to have this dance with you again. Now tell me honestly, was there a correct answer in your mind for the question you proposed? Presume CO2 is a greenhouse gas Brin with an immediate sensitivity to doubling of 1.1C and feedbacks coming in for a total of about 3C, what would be your policy recommendations in that case?
Cshorey I think you are intelligent but I’m as unable as you, to convince me that your position is the correct one.
This has to be my fault for not explaining it properly! or possibly you?
The absorption and re-emmission of energy as a delaying action is unconvincing to me. We talk of 400 parts per million , and man a small man made percentage of this being the reason we buy carbon credits which are counter productive. Seems the logic of a mad house.
I am very much in favour of conservation and reuse of all energy, to this end I have spent my own time, effort and money on various projects. The usually fall down after its discovered that green bore hole pumps are too tight a fit in the hole or some other detail outside of my control.
And I find intelligence in you as well, which is the main reason I keep up with you on these threads and drop many other useless conversations. You and I can continue to go back and forth if you wish. You can try to explain your point to me better, but what I just saw was argument from incredulity. You can’t believe a trace gas can have any effect significant enough for our contributions to make any difference. This has been gone through in our science with a fine toothed comb. The change in climate comes from the change in greenhouse concentration, not it’s initial point. If all greenhouse gases are stable, they can’t be the cause of any climate change. But here we see us going from 280ppm to 400ppm in about 200 years, a blink in geologic time. We also have to take in the other increasing greenhouse gasses to get the full effect, but CO2 is the lions share of initial warming change, which then gets all those feedbacks. It would be nice if the negative feedbacks outpaced the positive feedbacks, but that is not what a deep investigation of our world is coming out with. So I don’t find your argument from incredulity convincing.
The fact remains Co2 does not store any energy, at best it only delays radiation departure very slightly. I fail to see this as the viable case for warming by C02.
The models fall over not showing anything like the doomsday forecasts of a few years ago.
I suppose I doubt this unbiased science that you hold in reverence. I really see CO2 as beneficial to agriculture which gives the negative feedback for stability. The phenomena of Heating first and CO2 rising afterwards seems to have been shown in the ice core samples. This is a stumbling block, it should have been first if it was the driver.
I just don’t see how I can support this theory although a great many do.
And no worthy climate scientist would ever say that CO2 stores energy for any length of time. What we do emphasize is that it changes the directionality of that energy flow. Without an absorbing molecule in the way, IR from the Earth’s surface only has one direction to go, up and out to space. But if there is an absorbing molecule, it grabs the photon, turns it into kinetic vibrational energy, which then gets re-emitted as a photon again, but now this photon could be traveling in ANY direction. What used to be straight up and out to space is now statistically half back toward the ground. The ground, water, vegetation, etc can then absorb that energy again and cause the overall average kinetic energy of ground based and lower troposphere molecules to increase, i.e. the temperature goes up.
Accepting this explanation I would expect any locally C02 enriched area to display enhanced temperatures. Here in Sicily this is not borne out. The Summer is closing now and it’s been a comfortable time with temperatures lower than Malta a short distance away. We do have more greenery and superior fruit and veg though, Perhaps research into Etna should be done and C02 levels tested in several locations and seasons, also the anabatic wind patterns.
The fact that heating oceans releases C02. Shows it to be an effect. If it is also to be a cause we have a runaway situation with positive feedback causing evermore stored C02 being released? This would be unsustainable. What has changed for a minor thermal counter vector to take over? A minor slowing of heat loss seems improbable. We are looking a a pendulum swing decaying and it is starting to increase. Lubricating the pivot can not Change the dynamics by enough and the longer the swing the energy required increases on a log scale further increasing the neg feedback.
He’s not bypassing the Senate. The Senate ratified the treaty COP21 was negotiated under already.
In 1992.
Best,
D
When bids are rigged, your people suffer. When cronyism reigns, your people suffer .
When transparency takes a backseat to backroom deals, your people suffer. They
suffer in loss of faith. They suffer in higher taxes. .
~Southern District U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
yes true, corruption is the greatest temptation next to sex, and easily perverted one way or the other by political chancers.
Lets assume Climate change has been affected by man! We would then require lowering our CO2 emissions and employ taxation to this end.
Carbon credits are currently bought from low carbon economies, also uplifting them. Is this entirely laudable? Perhaps not, as the citizens use this windfall to buy scooters and cars adding to man made C02! In effect they have now become C02 producers, our taxes raised have been ineffective and not reducing Global emissions. The Planet will continue to warm.
Should we instead send researchers to Africa and learn how they have lived without being C02 producers?
If the real aim is spreading the wealth around and equalising the Global populations we need to agree the most beneficial way forward not waste resources as we do currently.
Now lets see some green comments on raising efficiency and reducing the present wastage. Are we all ready to embrace the new life challenges or has it all been ideology driven without thought. Carbon Taxes are seen to be entirely counter productive in C02 reduction.