STOP THE PRESSES !

Sanity in the Main Stream Media

FROM- Examiner Editorial

Facts explode urban legends of the Left

Koch Industries is a privately held manufacturing and energy conglomerate with more than 70,000 employees and annual revenues of over$100 billion. Larry W. Smith/AP file
Liberals cannot seem to comprehend any policy issue without first identifying themselves as the good guys and somebody else as the bad guys who are to be demonized. In health care, the villains are the insurance companies; in finance, Goldman Sachs; and in energy and politics, it is the Koch brothers, Charles and David. The Kochs own and operate Koch Industries, a privately held manufacturing and energy conglomerate with more than 70,000 employees and revenues of more than $100 billion annually. The Kochs are also politically active libertarians and devoted advocates of free-market capitalism. In addition to providing seed money for the libertarian Cato Institute, they also helped found FreedomWorks, which has been credited with helping to organize Tea Party events. The Kochs also donate money to multiple candidates who oppose higher energy taxes and have spent millions of their own dollars lobbying against those policies in Congress.

But in recent days the Left has greatly exaggerated the Kochs' tactics and influence. The brain trust for the Obama White House, the Center for American Progress, appears to have made it their central mission to demonize the Kochs. Liberal mainstream media outlets like MSNBC have seconded that messaging, thus helping to put the brothers at the heart of a growing leftist urban legend. Reading CAP's blog, ThinkProgress, for example, one would think the Kochs single-handedly defeated Obama's cap-and-trade legislation.

Just this week, the Nation claimed to have exposed an effort by Koch Industries to practice "thought control" on their employees. What the Nation actually had was a benign packet of materials distributed by Koch Companies managers telling employees about state and federal candidates the company's political action committee was supporting (also included in the packet was a reprint of an article from this newspaper). The packet's cover letter explicitly stated: "Of course, deciding who to vote for is a decision that is yours and yours alone, based on factors important to you." The Nation left that part out. ThinkProgress falsely claimed the packet "instructed" employees how to vote.

The Koch legend is so powerful that conventional wisdom on the Left holds that the main reason environmentalists failed to pass cap and trade in the last Congress was they were outspent by the Kochs, with their sinister network of foundations and activist groups on the Right. But now comes an exhaustive new 84-page study by American University public policy communications scholar Matthew Nisbet that documents the false nature of such claims. According to Nisbet, nine liberal foundations spent at least $368 million promoting cap-and-trade-like policies between 2008 and 2010. In contrast, Koch-affiliated foundations spent only $31.3 million.

Unfortunately, instead of correcting the Left's false narratives, President Obama actively feeds them. The cross-country campaign kickoff that Obama is finishing up today was supposed to focus on his deficit reduction ideas. Instead, Obama quickly found out that voters want to talk about high gas prices. Unwilling to embrace the common-sense solution of increasing domestic energy supplies, Obama told a town hall in Reno, Nev., that Attorney General Eric Holder would investigate "the role of traders and speculators" in manipulating gas prices. Holder's "investigation" is pure political theater because, like the Koch brother legend, the idea that speculators cause high gas prices is a complete fiction. Speculators are betting prices will increase, but they don't have to force them upwards. Obama is taking care of that job for them.

After vote, Obama faces chilly road on climate

FROM-Washington Times

President Obama has already conceded that last week's midterm elections put an end for now to his "cap-and-trade" plan to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, but European officials fear the GOP gains mark the death knell for the broader campaign for a binding worldwide agreement this year to address climate change.

Mr. Obama told reporters that he has given up hope that Congress can approve his plan to establish a market to curb carbon emissions. Although he could try to impose restrictions through the Environmental Protection Agency, the process could be held up in courts for years. So the president has little good news to deliver to world leaders ahead of the next round of international climate talks later this month.

A top European climate official said binding international greenhouse gas targets are impossible without U.S. action on domestic caps, and that the talks, scheduled to take place in Cancun, Mexico, should focus on a voluntary framework instead.

"Forget the legal agreement — you can't get it. That's the reality," John Prescott, Council of Europe rapporteur on climate change issues, told BBC Radio 4's "Today" program. "The Americans can't deliver anyway, and if they tried to get something through Congress, they couldn't get it anyway.''

The Problem With Cap and Trade

FROM- The American Spectator

By C. Boyden Gray

The pending climate legislation that has spent so many months languishing in Congress was stripped of its initial momentum by the deep worldwide recession, the administration's failure in Copenhagen to get commitments from China sufficient to allay concerns about continued job migration from the U.S., the scandal over some of the science, and the struggle over health care reform. But the principal reasons for the demise -- the huge tax and trading boon to the banking industry in Wall Street and London -- deserve some further scrutiny.

The sponsors of so-called cap and trade legislation claimed that it was based on the hugely successful acid rain cap and trade program put into effect by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA). As will be discussed more fully below, this characterization is highly inaccurate, because the Waxman-Markey bill and Senate counterparts created a $3 trillion tax and commodities market where the CAAA had done nothing of the sort. This feature of the climate legislation hurt its electoral chances by allowing Republicans accurately to portray the bills as a huge tax while scaring off at least half a dozen centrist Democratic senators worried about having to contain another Wall Street derivatives meltdown because of the proposed pollutive materials commodities market.

As criticism of the tax intensified over the course of the last year, climate bill sponsors responded by promising the return of the allowance revenues to taxpayers and by erecting a whole set of new financial protections parallel to the current financial reform effort. This triggered understandable skepticism -- since if the money were truly to be returned to its source there would be no point in collecting it in the first place. Moreover, there would also be no need for financial protections, unless there were something else going on. It's the "something else" that is really at the heart of the problem and that deserves further examination.

That "something else" has to do with the only true short-term beneficiaries of the whole exercise -- namely the bankers and traders of London and Wall Street who were ready to collect huge profits from trading carbon under the proposed legislation. The junior senator from New York put it best in an October 21, 2009, op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, where she said that as a result of the legislation, the "financial market [was] poised to deliver significant growth." She explained that the "carbon permits [under the climate bills] could quickly become the world's largest commodities market, growing to as much as $3 trillion by 2020," and that "New York's financial talent, expertise and institutions are uniquely suited" to run this new market.

Acknowledging the need to address the regulatory aspects of a new set of derivative trading, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand observed that "Congress should integrate carbon trading into comprehensive financial reform," but she cautioned that the derivatives contracts should be allowed to be customized and not forced to be standardized and thus made fully transparent in any new regulatory structure. Finally, she noted that it was essential to the "ultimate benefit for New York that the market for carbon-emission permits is internationally integrated."

London was equally enthusiastic. Carbon could become "one of the fastest-growing markets ever, with volumes comparable to credit derivatives inside of a decade," said the head of emissions trading at Merrill Lynch's offices in London. According to another promotional article, London already "trades more carbon than any other city in the world," thanks to the European Emissions Trading System (ETS) set up by the EU after the Kyoto Treaty. As a result of carbon trading requirements, said the article, "carbon emissions are bound to become the world's biggest market....this is a bull market and great to invest in."

The Times of London further quoted a leading London trader as saying that "Europe will be the centre of the global market as a result of taking the lead....London is the leading centre and will remain so for years to come. The preparation has taken place here, and other financial centres are not so advanced...."

It is entirely true that climate leadership originated in Europe, especially in the UK, where much of the scandal over possibly manipulated science has also been centered. Given this background, it is hard to believe that ordinary greed did not trigger the rush to create an unnecessary windfall for traders. But the resulting backlash against bankers who stood to profit from cap and trade could have been easily avoided by actually following the model the measure's advocates said they were copying.

As noted, the White House and the sponsors of the Waxman-Markey legislation passed last year prominently asserted that their proposals were based on the successful acid rain cap and trade program by the CAAA in 1990. But the acid rain reduction and other successes based on it did not involve the impossibly complicated $1 trillion auction/tax/allowance reallocation scheme that Waxman-Markey features, as a result of the political logrolling necessary to secure the close 219-212 House vote.

To the contrary, all previous cap and trade programs have been based on an annual reduction of allowances initially allocated on the basis of an average of previous emissions that were well documented -- a simple formula that has been totally abandoned by Waxman-Markey.

Moreover, no one ever accused the acid rain program (or any of the others) of giving away "free" allowances, despite the lack of an initial auction for the permits. There was in fact nothing "free" about any of it, because utilities had to start reducing their acid rain emissions from day one, ultimately having to spend billions ($6 billion in the case of Duke Energy alone) to meet the requirements. But without a huge float of auctioned allowances, there were no financial machinations, and with no revenues collected, no political fights over revenue distribution that have so poisoned the current climate debate.

The acid rain program was itself based in part on a similarly successful -- and auction -- free-trading system established in 1982 to accelerate the phase-out of lead in gasoline. The next pro-posal after the 1990 CAAA was RECLAIM, which was established in 1994 by California and which successfully initiated nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide trading within the state -- again without an auction.

Subsequently, the EPA established successful trading programs for nitrogen oxide in the eastern U.S. and later, during the George W. Bush administration, for sulfur oxide in the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) intended to achieve a further 70 percent reduction beyond the original 50 percent cut in the 1990 CAAA. There were no auctions for these successful programs. (The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit subsequently questioned the legality of the CAIR trading system, which is now being revised.)

Supporters of the carbon dioxide auction have frequently cited the European ETS as the real reason auctions are necessary. The first phase of the ETS did not use an auction and over-allocated the allowances, producing utility windfalls and carbon dioxide prices so low as to be meaningless. But the proximate reason for the problem was that there was no reliable baseline emissions data, as we have had for decades in the case of utilities here in the U.S.

The European Commission has corrected this mistake for the second (and successful) phase that is now in effect -- but without an auction, it must be quickly noted. There are proposals to launch a 60 percent auction for the third phase, but that auction would probably be discretionary with the member states, which may not impose them for many of the same reasons militating against an auction in the U.S.

To be sure, the Waxman-Markey legislation tries to avoid the trillion-dollar tax implications of a 100 percent auction by temporarily seeking to provide "free" allowances to coal and natural gas customers. But these allowances will have to be auctioned to the emitters anyway, and there is no guarantee that the proceeds will actually get into the hands of those who have to pay the tax.

Over time, in any event, the system would revert to a 100 percent auction to provide trillions of dollars in revenues for unrelated budget proposals (and triggering protectionist import tariffs to curb trade with nations that have not imposed the same tax). One can understand the desire for deficit-reduction revenues. But they should not come out of a climate change program, which will be costly even without auctions and the success of which depends on the cap reduction level, not on the revenues collected. (Indeed, one group that has pushed for an auction, U.S. Climate Action Partnership, stresses that emission reductions under cap and trade are the same whether an auction is used or not.)

The superior efficiency of emission trading markets has been demonstrated over and over again. But the efficient reduction of carbon emissions need not depend on the levy of a huge tax or the establishment of the biggest commodities market ever created, and benefits of the trading should go to the public, not Wall Street or London.





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Editorial: Climate splitting Democrats

FROM- OC Register

Senate Republicans fell short Thursday, 47-53, of overturning the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gases, but exposed a significant split among Democrats that may bode ill for passage this year of comprehensive energy and climate-change legislation.


As the Washington Post reported, the contentious vote "suggested the Senate is far from decided on whether to put a price on the industrial emissions that stem from everyday activities such as lighting a home or driving a car."

A bill by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, sought to overturn the EPA's administrative finding last year that declared greenhouse gases dangerous and assumed authority to regulate them.


We, like Ms. Murkowski, regard the EPA's administrative intrusion of applying the Clean Air Act to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to be a monumental over-reach. The law never was intended to regulate CO2. The EPA's power grab circumvents legislature authority, while centralizing economic decisions affecting a wide spectrum of industries under the administration's control.

The division in Democratic ranks was epitomized by liberal senator and global warming true-believer Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, who agreed with Republican Murkowski. "I have long maintained that the Congress – not the unelected EPA – must decide major economic and energy policy," Mr. Rockefeller said. "EPA regulation will have an enormous impact on the economic security of West Virginia and our energy future."

Senators' votes could have far-reaching political significance in this election year, putting lawmakers on the record in the climate-change debate. President Barack Obama had threatened a veto. Nevertheless, forcing the issue "exposed frays among Democrats," reports ABC News.

"To a certain extent, the vote on the Murkowski resolution is something of a preliminary test of how a climate bill will fare in the Senate, but the message is murky," ABC News quoted Michael B. Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.

Those opposing EPA regulatory power over ubiquitous greenhouse gases properly argue that controlling those emissions effectively creates a new energy tax and kills jobs.

The debate featured its share of cheap, election-year theatrics. California's Sen. Barbara Boxer, facing a serious challenge in November from Republican nominee Carly Fiorina, brought props to make her case for EPA control, including large photos of oil-soaked birds in the Gulf of Mexico, which she contended are a consequence of reliance on carbon-emitting fuels.

Of course, that's like pointing to a traffic accident and demanding the banishment of cars and trucks.

The ranking environmental committee Republican, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., was closer to the truth when he argued "global warming is the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people. ... [T]here's no relationship between this [EPA disapproval resolution] and the oil spill."



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Viva La France

France abandons plans to introduce carbon fuel tax over competition fears

FROM-Daily Mail

France today abandoned all plans to introduce a carbon fuel tax aimed at combating global warming.

The policy u-turn will be viewed as a huge disappointment to the green lobby around the world.
Many had hoped that if a major western economy like France took the lead in taxing harmful emissions, then other countries would follow suit.
But the scrapping of the tax plan was announced by Prime Minister Francois Fillon who said it could only be introduced across Europe so as to 'avoid harming the competitiveness of French companies'.
He told a meeting of MPs in Parliament that the priority for the country was getting its stagnating economy working again following the international financial crisis.
Last year President Nicolas Sarkozy said a tax on the use of oil, gas and coal would make his country one of the greenest in the world.
It was provisionally set at pounds 15 per per tonne of emitted carbon dioxide (CO2), and would apply to homes as well as businesses.
Mr Sarkozy said money from the new tax - which would amount to some pounds 4billion a year - would be spent on green initiatives.
But there was stiff opposition from across the political spectrum, with critics saying the tax was just a ploy to boost ailing state finances.
In polls, two-thirds of French voters said they were opposed to the new levy, fearing they would struggle to pay higher bills. The government was forced to amend its proposals after they were rejected by the high court in December.
The court ruled then that too many exemptions created inequalities and unfairly placed the burden of cuts on a minority of consumers.
Its ruling prompted the government to respond with fresh safeguards for businesses, but now it was has been scrapped altogether.
The climbdown comes during a disastrous period for Mr Sarkozy and his ruling UMP party, who have just been roundly beaten by the Socialist opposition in regional elections.

Mr Fillon told the meeting of MPs today that the government's priorities were now 'growth, jobs, competitiveness and fighting deficits'.


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Grassroots Opposition to Climate Change Bill Delivered to Senate

FROM-The Voice of Agriculture (American Farm Bureau)

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 11, 2010 – The American Farm Bureau Federation’s successful, six-month campaign to oppose cap-and-trade climate change legislation, “Don’t CAP Our Future,” culminated Wednesday when farmer and rancher members from across the country presented key lawmakers some of the 100,000 grassroots calls-to-action gathered in opposition to the issue.

“Cap-and-trade provisions would create an energy shortage and ultimately reduce food production. That was the driving force behind the ‘Don’t CAP Our Future’ campaign,” AFBF President Bob Stallman said at an event on Capitol Hill.

Stallman, members of the AFBF Board and additional state Farm Bureau presidents and members, warmly thanked senators attending the event who have shown outstanding leadership in the battle against cap-and-trade legislation.

“On behalf of the American Farm Bureau Federation board of directors, please accept my sincere appreciation,” Stallman said. “Thank you for your support of America’s farmers and ranchers and for your recognition of both the challenges that they face and their important contributions to our nation.”

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) was recognized by Stallman for “leading the charge” against cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate. Stallman and other Farm Bureau leaders also expressed appreciation to other strong supporters of the effort, including Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah).

A comprehensive approach was used for the campaign, including e-mails, online petitions, signed postcards from farmer and rancher members and social media outreach.

Earlier this week, AFBF and several dozen other organizations sent a letter to the full Senate urging support for S.J. Res. 26, a resolution to disapprove the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Senators from “both sides of the aisle” have said throughout the climate change debate that this issue should be decided by Congress rather than EPA, the letter noted. Last week, AFBF sent a letter of support for a companion House measure.



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A new French Revolution too?

"A poll released Wednesday showed that the public appeared to have turned against the planned tax. The survey by pollster ViaVoice showed 51 percent of the French thought the government should abandon it."






France prepares fresh carbon tax plans

FROM-Breitbart

France renewed efforts on Wednesday to become the first big economy to tax harmful carbon emissions, with the government due to thrash out new plans for the measure to curb climate change.

Ministers were due to draw up amendments to a law that was rejected last month by the country's high court, days before it was to kick in -- an embarrassing setback for President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The tax is aimed at encouraging French consumers to stop wasting energy, but the court ruled that too many exemptions created inequalities and unfairly placed the burden of cuts on a minority of consumers.


Sarkozy had fiercely defended the measure in the face of strong public opposition, calling it a "revolutionary" approach in the fight against climate change and making it a pillar of his 2010 budget.

France would be the biggest economy to apply a direct carbon tax, mirroring measures that exist in Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said he would propose plans to preserve most of the earlier bill, vowing not to hit families and key sectors hard, while seeking an agreement on how to tax heavy industry by July.

"We will not touch households, hauliers or fishermen," Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told reporters.

Industries such as metals and refineries, seen as major polluters, were spared under the earlier tax plan since they were already subject to European emissions quotas.

Borloo announced plans to launch formal talks with companies and authorities on ways to tax industry fairly, possibly through incentive schemes and tax credits.

After this consultation he aims to present a new bill to parliament by May.

While pursuing environmental reforms on the one hand, Sarkozy risks jeopardising another of his major priorities: making French businesses more competitive.

When the bill was struck down last month, numerous industry bodies said they feared that a new version would penalise them, hurting their competitiveness.

The leading business association, Medef, called on Tuesday for the tax to be postponed to 2011 and said it should be introduced throughout the European Union in order to avoid putting French industry at a competitive disadvantage.

"Such an approach would avoid all distortion of competition," said Medef's leader Laurence Parisot.

She added that an EU-level tax would strengthen Europe's stance in fighting global warming after the Copenhagen climate summit last month, where world leaders failed to reach a climate binding deal.

A poll released Wednesday showed that the public appeared to have turned against the planned tax. The survey by pollster ViaVoice showed 51 percent of the French thought the government should abandon it.

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I'll sell them mine

I am still flabbergasted that the world, the Europeans in particular, is fixated on the idea of making carbon dioxide a commodity. Of course as we have pointed out before it isn't really carbon dioxide that they are making a commodity but rather the absence of carbon dioxide which they wish to sell back and forth. In an effort to do my part I will sell them all my non carbon emissions at a discount rate. I'll begin by auctioning off all the emissions I will not emit by not driving twenty four hours a day and then we'll work on my non flight time. Always willing to do my part to save the planet.

But seriously, is the EU seriously considering bailing out...uh air.

FROM- NYT

Should Europe Intervene to Support the Price of Carbon?

The price for emitting carbon in the European Union — already weak because of the recession — fell further in the wake of the Copenhagen climate conference.

Carbon traders had bet that European leaders would tighten emissions quotas during the conference, which would have driven up the price for permits. Disappointed by emissions reduction offers made by China and the United States at the meeting, however — and fearing that tighter quotas would send industries fleeing to less regulated parts of the world — Europe’s leaders backed away from the plan.

But experts say this highlights a fundamental problem in Europe’s carbon market: the price of has never been high enough for long enough to force utilities and factories to invest in new and cleaner equipment — the goal of the system in the first place.

The question now is, should regulators step in to shore up prices?


Faced with the price of carbon drifting even lower in coming months, the European Commission could seek to buy up surplus credits, or to set a minimum price. Some versions of carbon legislation in other parts of the world, including in the United States, would aim to use such a “floor price” to counter volatility and ensure continuing investment in low-carbon technologies and processes.

But the European Commission has said it wants to avoid intervening in the market — not least because it would face continuing pressure to do so again in the future. That could make investors question the fairness and reliability of a market open to political meddling.

And experts now say that the carbon price in coming months will mostly depend on whether coal-dependent industrialized nations like the United States and Australia redouble their efforts to introduce similar systems.

James Emanuel, the commercial director of CantorCO2e, an environmental brokerage based in London, warned last week that if those efforts fail in countries like the United States and Australia, the E.U. will have very little incentive to tighten its caps on emitters, and prices could continue to languish at the current low levels.

“There are only voluntary commitments in the Copenhagen Accord, and it was particularly disappointing to see the time frame for a legally binding deal stripped from the final draft,” Mr. Emanuel said.

“That leaves the threat hanging over the price of carbon because of real uncertainty that we will ever see a single global carbon market to drive cleaner technologies,” he said.

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Climate Change: The Religion of Copenhagen

FROM-Big Government

by Caroline May

During the recent COP-15 Conference in Copenhagen, the United Nations claimed it wanted to maintain religious neutrality. It was a lie. Global Warming is the established religion at these international events.

This was made especially clear when, days before the event’s commencement, the Denmark Foreign Ministry rejected a donated delivery of Christmas fir trees. “We have to remember that this is a U.N. conference and, as the [Bella] center then becomes U.N. territory, there can be no Christmas trees in the decor, because the U.N. wishes to maintain neutrality,” explained Ministry official Svend Olling.

Religious objectivity, however, is impossible at a conference explicitly engaged in blind adherence to an unproven premise- a faith in the veracity of global warming. For though the science is not settled, participants convened to devise strategies for what they believe will be the world’s environmental salvation, the capping of carbon dioxide emissions.

Global Warming devotees’ religious fervor commands action, even if their deliverance comes at the expense of economic devastation. American disciples such as Al Gore and President Barack Obama are more than willing to sacrifice economic stability at the alter of Global Warming.


The faith dictates absolute advocacy for draconian carbon dioxide regulations such as the cap and trade scheme detailed in the House-passed “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.” To Warming enthusiasts the $9.4 trillion reduction in aggregate GDP, the loss of another 2.5 million jobs, and increase in inflation-adjusted electricity prices by 90 percent, gasoline prices by 58 percent, and residential natural gas prices by 55 percent, all estimated to occur within the first 24 years under such a cap and trade scheme, are merely an afterthought.

Though economists have highlighted the dire financial implications of energy restriction ad nauseam and questions remain about the actual science, the Global Warming theory adherents are steadfast in their beliefs. Ironically, it seems that most of these Warmers -many of whom are often quick to proclaim religious believers as backward- stick to their faith with the unbending will of St. Paul.

Even in the wake of Climategate and new peer-reviewed studies -which give lie to consensus driven apocalyptic climate forecasts- by such renowned scientists as Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Dr. Stephen E. Schwartz, MIT’s Dr. Richard Lindzen, and University of Auckland’s Dr. Chris de Freitas, Warming adherents remain loyally convinced that man and his evil energy usage is destroying Mother Earth.

Faith is belief without verifiable evidence. This unquestioned adherence to the theory of Global Warming bears all the markings of what traditionally would be recognized as a religion. Complete with sin (the emitting of carbon dioxide), scriptures (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports), commandments (drive a Prius, use Compact Florescent Light bulbs, do not eat meat etc.), indulgences (carbon offsets), proselytism, prophets (Al Gore), priests (scientists), prophecy and apocalypse (floods, hurricanes, dead polar bears), infidels (Warming skeptics), and salvation (the halting of carbon emitting industrial progress) the religion of Global Warming fits the mold.

Great Britain has already recognized belief in anthropogenic Global Warming as a religion. In November, in a landmark case brought before the UK Employment Appeal Tribunal, the court found that under the “2003 Religion and Belief Regulations” “belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives” qualified for the same employment discrimination protections as a traditional religion.

Though we have yet to see Al Gore or James Hansen walk on water, COP-15 was far from religiously-neutral. Instead, participants were expected to adhere to their one true faith: Global Warming. There was no room at this conference for religious or even ideological competition.

Consequently, it makes sense that Christmas tress were not welcome at the church of Global Warming. After all, when was the last time you saw a menorah in a Cathedral?


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He must be a scientist or something

FROM-Washington Examiner


Plants need more CO2, not less

By: H. Leighton Steward

Congress and federal regulators are poised to make a misguided and reckless decision that will stifle our economy recovery and spur long-term damage to plant and animal life on earth.

In the coming months, the Environmental Protection Agency will hold hearings to justify the movement to brand carbon dioxide (CO2) as a pollutant. Congress will also consider cap-and-trade legislation that, if enacted, could also regulate CO2 as pollution.

Why is it such a catastrophic decision? Because there is not a single piece of evidence that CO2 is a pollutant. In fact, lower levels of carbon dioxide actually inhibit plant growth and food production. What we see happening in Washington right now is the replacement of politics for science in conversations about CO2.

For plants, CO2 is the greatest, naturally occurring air-borne fertilizer that exists. Even schoolchildren learn in elementary science class that plants need carbon dioxide to grow. During photosynthesis, plants use this CO2 fertilizer as their food and they “breathe out” oxygen into the air so humans can inhale it, and in turn exhale CO2. This mutually beneficial and reinforcing cycle is one of the most basic elements of life on earth.

An article appeared recently in the Environment and Energy Daily that claimed a “modeled” nitrogen deficiency will occur as CO2 rises. Well, CO2 has already risen over 37%, 105 parts per million, and where is the real world nitrogen deficiency?

Why are Earth’s forests lush if the added growth that has already occurred, due to big bursts of CO2, has depleted the nitrogen supply? The nitrogen supply of pristine ecosystems has been resupplied through natural processes for eons.

Computer models, manipulated to produce desired results, can generate catastrophic, front page, forecasts. We encourage our government’s scientists to step back from their models and observe what is and what has happened in the real world, as well as in actual plant experiments. Doesn’t anyone recognize the good news that is staring them in the face?

It simply defies imagination, let alone science, that the United Nations has now backed an arbitrary limit on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The chairman of the politically charged Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said he supports efforts to reduce carbon dioxide to 10% below current levels.

In the context of today’s political conversations, this recommendation may sound like an acceptable position to save the environment. But the scientific reality of such a step is quite the opposite. Lowering carbon dioxide in our atmosphere will have catastrophic affects on our food supply.

Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide support plant life and helps plants thrive. If our food supply is reduced, the hunger crisis in many parts of the world will worsen. Not only would lowering CO2 levels be wrong, one can make the argument that even higher levels would be desirable. Greenhouse operators routinely increase CO2 to about three times the current level in earth’s atmosphere in order to encourage plant growth.

We know CO2 is vital for plants, but what about the argument that it is a dominant contributor to the greenhouse effect? Again, science does not support this argument. CO2 is not even close to being the most important of the greenhouse gases. Most of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor, which is more than 30 times as abundant in the atmosphere as CO2.

As further evidence, we find that as the post-war industrial boom began to put significant volumes of CO2 into the atmosphere, global temperatures did not rise. Since 1945, there have been about 40 years of cooling trend and only 20-plus years of warming.
While the warming is significant, it followed an unusually high period of solar activity.

Temperature did rise steeply in the 1920’s and in the 1930’s in the U.S. and 1934 was the warmest year of the 20th century. The rate of warming then was also higher than in the 1980’s and 1990’s, even though CO2 levels were lower.

Many in the scientific community reject reducing atmospheric CO2 to 350 parts per million, as Dr. Pachauri of the U.N. wishes. Thousands of peer-reviewed experiments have demonstrated CO2’ s ability to “green” the earth dramatically.

Nonetheless, Dr. Pachauri and those who prefer to debate science with politics are sticking to their old story and clinging to their inadequate climate models and their headline-grabbing catastrophic forces.

Do Americans want to see their government spend trillions of dollars removing CO2 that will not lower the Earth’s temperature but absolutely will risk harming ecologies, economies and mankind itself?

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Great Pumpkin soon upon us

FROM-Washinton Times

By Wesley Pruden


The Senate is losing its grip on unreality, so it may be up to whoever can teach manners to cows and pigs to save us from the consequences of global warming. (We're supposed to call it "climate change" now, but some of us, being strict constructionists, remain faithful to the original text as set down by the founding father, Al Gore.)

Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, a leading Democrat, says he now has "serious reservations" about Sen. Barbara Boxer's global-warming bill, and if he deserts Babs and her coterie of climate hysterics there may be no global-warming legislation this year. This would probably suit most senators, even those who would have to vote for it.

Babs and her like-minded Senate colleagues want to get the legislation passed quickly, just like the health care "reform" legislation, and for the same reason. The longer the wait, the more it smells. A lot of legislation, like mackerel and other fishes, must be consumed quickly, or else not at all. Babs, Al and their congressional friends and colleagues must hurry, before the multitudes notice that the sky is still safely overhead.

Certain kooks insist that we don't have much time before everything goes poof, anyway. The year 2012 is often cited as the year the cosmic screen will go dark, perhaps when the Hadron Collider will either swallow our globe whole, like a python breakfasting on the family dog, or reduce the globe to the size of a tennis ball. "Imagine seven billion of us trying to stand on a tennis ball," observes Rod Liddle in the London Spectator. "You just hope personal hygiene standards won't be sacrificed."

But even being swallowed whole in a nanosecond would be less painful than being parboiled over time, as Al Gore predicts. Better swallowed than sauteed. This could be Al's most persuasive argument if he could only think to make it.

Even short of parboiling, bad times lie ahead. Lord Stern of Brentford, identified by the London Times as "a leading authority on global warming," says we must all consider becoming vegetarians to conquer global warming, or earthly cooling, or climate change, or whatever the season's fashionable terminology may be.

"Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases," he says in an interview. "It puts enormous pressure on the world's resources. A vegetarian diet is better."

Direct "emissions" of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases, and methane, Lord Stern says, is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas. Anyone stranded in a crowded elevator on a Friday afternoon, the day Navy bean soup is the special in the cafeteria, would offer no argument to Lord Stern's stern warning.

Teaching cows and pigs to show consideration for their fellow creatures would be only a very long-term solution, perhaps beyond even the persuasive powers of Al, Babs, Barack Obama, John Kerry and others peddling the frantic alarums that somebody has to do something about the weather, even if it bankrupts the nations of the world. Lord Stern concedes that "a successful deal" at the forthcoming Copenhagen conference on global warming, where the United States and the developed nations of the world are expected to answer the altar call to repent and reform, would lead to soaring prices of meat.

Lord Stern, once the chief economist at the World Bank and now a professor at the London School of Economics, predicts that a juicy cheeseburger or a ham sandwich -- not to speak of a tenderloin of beef, medium rare -- will one day be as unfashionable as driving drunk. "People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food." Lord Stern says he is not a vegetarian himself, of course. It is not important to do as he does, but to do as he says do.

Rude as burping sheep, windy cows and flatulent pigs may be, as they go about doing what comes naturally in the rustic innocence of the barnyard, vegetables are sources of bucolic villainy, too. The glorious tomato, the senior partner of bacon and (iceberg) lettuce in that best of all sandwiches, is a source of greenhouse gas, too. So, alas, are many other fruits and vegetables. Beer and booze may have to go, too, since hops and malt generate nearly 2 percent of greenhouse gases in certain countries.

Unless the Hadron Collider can finally get cranked up in time to send us into the safe embrace of an enormous black hole, we may soon be freezing (or parboiling) in the dark, supping on thin pumpkin gruel with Babs and Al. All is woe.



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"Hey it's only people.....

they'll find green jobs"

FROM-Wheeling News-Register

Global Warming’ Issue Questioned

WHEELING - As a fifth-generation "coal guy," Rob Murray knows the importance of coal to the nation's future.

But with coal under attack through the cap-and-trade legislation before the U.S. Senate, Murray now is out questioning whether carbon emissions really are causing harmful global warming effects.

He says with certainty, though, that many coal jobs will be lost is the proposed climate control legislation meant to improve air quality standards is made into law.

Murray, vice president of business development and external affairs for his family's company, Murray Energy Co., spoke on cap-and-trade legislation during a forum at the Ohio County Public Library Tuesday sponsored by We The People - Ohio Valley.

Murray's father, Murray Energy President and Chief Executive Officer Robert Murray, initially was slated to speak at the event. But the younger Murray told the crowd of about 100 that his father was presently involved with plans to "restructure" the company, and was unable to attend.

Murray spoke on the issue of global warming, and referenced a recent study by the International Panel on Climate Change that questions whether the concept of global warming is real.

The study shows that the use of coal has increased in the nation and around the world over the past decade - but also notes that there has been no subsequent change in average temperatures.

"Is global warming man-made or natural?" he asked. "I have my own feelings about that."

Cap-and-trade legislation would establish financial incentives for businesses that work to reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere by paying them for "carbon credits" that result from the reductions.

Other businesses with a need to burn fossil fuels - such as utility companies - would be able to purchase the "carbon offsets," which would be auctioned by the federal government.

Utility companies also could make environmental improvements to their plants, resulting in considerable financial investments.

The costs would likely be passed on to consumers, and could severely harm the coal industry in Ohio and West Virginia, Murray noted.

Murray Energy employees 1,326 in the Ohio Valley, he said.

And Murray cited a Penn State University study that found that each mining job leads to 11 more ancillary jobs in the community around it.

As such, he set the number of jobs dependent upon Murray Energy's local operation at about 15,000.

"This is not a political or partisan issue," said Murray, who noted he personally has visited the offices of 50 U.S. senators in recent weeks. "It's a human issue.

"I know I can give you the names of the 15,000 people who will lose their jobs if this legislation passes the Senate. I don't want these people to lose their jobs," he said.

He frequently referred to "cap and trade" as "cap and tax," adding that "anything that increases cost to consumers is a tax. Simple."

Murray next showed data compiled by the Congressional Budget Office depicting what the Cap and Trade legislation would cost each individual state by 2012, based on allocation formulas in the current bill.

Among states expected to be hit the hardest, according to the information, is West Virginia. The allowances the state would receive would not cover the amount of coal-fired emissions in the state, resulting in an expected cost to West Virginia residents of $734 million.

Ohio and Pennsylvania, likewise, are projected to experience a projected $707 million energy cost deficit. Only Texas, at about $1.27 billion, and Indiana, at $820 million, would have higher losses.

Energy companies in these states would would pass on the costs they incur to consumers.

The National Association of Manufacturers and other sources sets the additional burden on consumers at about $800 per household per year.

Murray also pointed out in the CBO data which states are expected to incur no additional costs because of climate change legislation - California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho in the west, and Massachusetts and other New England states in the East.

"I'm a coal guy, and coal has put food on my family's table for five generations," Murray said. "But I care about America."



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A big chill on global warming

FROM-Washington Examiner

Something important is happening when even the BBC is compelled to ask, as it did this week, "What happened on global warming?" The British news organization has heretofore insisted that the scientific consensus was cemented long ago that global warming is real and is mainly caused by human use of carbon-based fossil fuels. Put simply, what has happened is global temperatures have dropped every year since 1998, recent peer-reviewed research has uncovered the decisive influence of hot and cold cycles in the oceans on land temperatures, and growing numbers of scientists with unquestioned credentials are stepping forward to question the conventional wisdom.

But reaching a new consensus will be exceedingly difficult because the raw data on which the landmark 1996 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based its conclusion has been destroyed. The University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit acknowledged in August that it discarded data that, in addition to the IPCC report, has been cited by other international studies as the main justification for severe restrictions on carbon emissions worldwide. This development raises more troubling doubts about global warming just as scientists and policymakers are expected to call for harsh new limits on energy use in its name when they meet in December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Every schoolchild knows that the last step in the scientific method is independent reproduction of results. But lost climate data cannot be reproduced, which is a huge problem for everybody. "Every time CRU massaged the temperature data, they were getting more warming from the same numbers. It's incumbent upon scientists to find out why, but you can't find out if you don't have the data," Dr. Patrick Michaels, senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, told The Examiner. "The data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared."

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has formally requested that the Environmental Protection Agency, which helps fund CRU, "reopen the record" and allow CEI and others to submit newly uncovered information regarding the East Anglia data destruction. The conservative think tank also wants to submit information about flaws in other data EPA is using as it devises stringent new anti-global warming regulations. Congress should also investigate the dumping of data partially paid for by U.S. taxpayers and other suspicious global warming anomalies, such as the temperature readings taken from "ghost weather stations" like the one at Maine's Ripogenus Dam. It was officially closed in 1995 but allegedly is still transmitting climate data 14 years later. Such questionable data sources must be eliminated if credible policy decisions are ever to be reached.

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The Bean Counters Take

Climate Costs: The CBO’s Take on Cap-and-Trade–and Carbon Taxes

FROM-WSJ

By Keith Johnson

As the Senate wrestles with the climate bill, the cost of curbing greenhouse-gas emissions reigns paramount. Yesterday, a host of officials paraded before a Senate panel to estimate how much similar legislation passed by the House could hurt the economy.

The director of the Congressional Budget Office sparked headlines when he acknowledged that climate legislation could dent GDP growth and lead to a net loss of jobs in the short term. Well, that’s exactly what the CBO said publicly a month ago.

But there are three interesting takeaways from CBO boss Douglas Elmendorf’s testimony.
First, it’s not an either-or question. There are costs to not acting on climate change, too. While the CBO analysis focused on the costs of curbing emissions, the U.S. economy would suffer from rising temperatures and climate change throughout the century: “As a consequence, a relatively pessimistic estimate for the loss in projected real gross domestic product is about 3 percent for warming of about 7°Fahrenheit (F) by 2100,” Mr. Elmendorf said, cribbing directly from last month’s report.

Second, the U.S. isn’t acting in a vacuum. The cost and effectiveness of whatever the U.S. does will be determined by what the rest of the world does or doesn’t do. If the U.S. limits carbon-dioxide emissions while other big economies don’t, for example, economic activity (and emissions) will probably “leak” to those unregulated economies. Which would undermine U.S. efforts, the CBO said: “Such emissions ‘leakage’ would lead countries that were controlling emissions to incur greater costs while achieving smaller reductions in global emissions.”
Third, candy’s dandy but a carbon tax is still nicer. That’s been the CBO’s line back since this whole debate began, championed by former CBO boss and now White House budget director Peter Orszag.

Mr. Elmendorf’s point? A cap-and-trade program, like the one the Senate is considering, offers certainty on the level of emissions reductions—but only by offering a lot of uncertainty about the costs. That makes the whole system less appealing:

In essence, the additional certainty that a cap-and-trade program could provide about the amount of cumulative emissions would be bought at a relatively high cost without yielding corresponding certainty about the amount of climate change that would occur. The greater certainty about the price of emissions in the future that a tax would offer would provide affected firms and households with greater certainty about the conditions they would face in adjusting to restrictions than a cap would provide. That greater certainty would ease planning for capital investments and could lower the risk associated with developing new technologies.

Still, when it comes to cap-and-trade or a carbon tax, it looks like the die’s already been cast in favor of the former—whatever people such as Mr. Elmendorff or Rex Tillerson say.

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STOP THE PRESSES !

Sanity in the Main Stream Media


FROM-THE PORTERVILLE RECORDER

EDITORIAL: Cool cash to be made on warming mania
Businesses seek to ride climate-change rules by government.


Many corporations hopped on the global warming bandwagon because, as skeptic Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., puts it, “This is about profit, not Gaia” (the Greek earth goddess).

When government regulation seems inevitable, some corporate decision-makers reckon it’s better to be at the table than on the menu. They seek, in Mr. Inhofe’s words, “greater competitive advantage through regulatory means.”

For example, General Electric is now an advocate of global-warming regulation. The cap-and-trade bill introduced by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., would compensate GE, the world’s largest manufacturer of jet engines, by requiring new aircraft standards for greenhouse gas emissions.

The Boxer bill, writes Steve Milloy at JunkScience.com, “would compel airlines and the military” to buy GE’s more expensive “green” engines. A letter to GE employees from the company’s political action committee underscored the relationship: “The intersection between GE’s interests and government action is clearer than ever.”

Those not at the table, partaking of government-mandated global warming profits, are left on the menu, and side dishes at that. For example, to implement the California Air Resources Board’s global warming regulations alone will cost California businesses more than $100 billion “upfront” to comply, says state Sen.

Tom Harman, R-Costa Mesa, plus $182 billion in revenue lost. That comes to $3,857 for every household in California, and 1.1 million lost jobs, as costs mount.

Advocates of regulatory intervention ignore its negative consequences, even as numerous new findings disprove climate-disaster theory.

Tree-ring data used to concoct the infamous “hockey stick” chart of soaring temperatures allegedly proving the 20th century to be the hottest period in modern history have been discredited. New research by Canadian mathematician Steve McIntyre based on complete original data shows the original study cherry-picked information to get desired results.

Not only does the temperature upswing disappear in the later, more complete study, “it turns negative,” reports Chris Horner, senior fellow at Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Patrick J. Michaels, a Cato Institute senior fellow of environmental studies, reports that other, original surface-temperature research data used to predict global warming catastrophe no longer exists and may have been lost or destroyed, making it impossible to test its validity.

Mr. Michaels’ own studies show the purported “warming trend since 1979 may have been overestimated by 50 percent.”

Even if the most ambitious of proposed greenhouse gas reductions are implemented, surface temperatures might be reduced by only one-tenth of one degree Celsius over the next century, writes James Manzi, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow.

Despite those queuing up to profit, the case is overwhelming for slowing, not accelerating, this mad regulatory rush to solve what’s likely a nonproblem.


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Who is Un American ?

Let me get this straight, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Farm Bureau not to mention the American people all oppose the current crop of cap and tax bills going through congress and the political class in DC are still promoting them. Who is out of touch with America ?

FROM-Wisconsin Agriculture Connection

Farm Bureau Opposes Boxer-Kerry Climate-Change Bill


The Boxer-Kerry climate-change bill introduced in the Senate on Wednesday includes few provisions that are friendly to agriculture and will be strongly opposed by the American Farm Bureau Federation.

"America's farmers and ranchers did not fare that well in the House-passed climate change bill and they fare even worse in the Senate bill," said American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman. "There are few benefits and even greater costs to agriculture and the American public."

The bill, authored by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass), seeks to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions through a cap-and-trade program. The legislation would require greenhouse gas emissions to be cut 20 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels -- greater than the House bill's target of 17 percent. Stallman said the 20 percent target is unrealistic and will lead to higher energy bills for all consumers.

"The Waxman-Markey bill, passed narrowly by the House this summer, did at least include credits to farmers for carbon-storing or carbon management practices. The Senate bill does not guarantee any benefits to agriculture for carbon sequestration," Stallman said.

Another major concern for Farm Bureau is that the Boxer-Kerry bill would not prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from continuing to move forward to fully regulate all greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The bill also does nothing to provide alternative sources of energy to fill the energy deficit left by the reduction in fossil fuels, nor does it prevent the EPA from using controversial indirect land use principles that penalize ethanol, according to Stallman

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B.O.B. Presents

Best Of the Blogs







The Resilient Earth: Serious Black: The Quest for Clean Coal








The Reference Frame: Poland rejects global carbon communism









Roy Spencer: The Search for a Short Term Marker of Long Term Climate Sensitivity



Gateway Pundit: Obama Administration Admits Cap-&-Trade Will Be Far More Expensive Than Advertised

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STOP THE PRESSES !

Sanity in the Main Stream Media

FROM-Boston Herald
Hot air on warming

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 could buy emissions rights from other emitters is similar to the one in the House bill sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.). Both bills target a reduction in warming emissions of 83 percent by 2050.

But the Kerry-Boxer bill never specifies how initial emission rights are to be distributed. Waxman-Markey would distribute most initial rights free to various classes of emitters chosen to attract votes in the House, with auctions for about one-sixth of the total.

The strategic logic of Boxer and Kerry escapes us. Perhaps they think an allocation plan offered at the last minute would scrape by opponents.

Congress will shackle the economy if it succeeds in acting against the dubious threat of disastrous global warming on the increasingly shaky theory that unchecked emissions of carbon dioxide must be curbed. The effects of Boxer-Kerry, if passed, cannot be far different from Waxman-Markey: A reduction in average global temperature in 2050 of 0.09 degree Fahrenheit at an annual cost that could reach $1,791 per household.

Some senators say the Senate will be too busy to act this year. And that is the best thing we can hope for.


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B.O.B. Presents

Best Of the Blogs


Roger Pielke Jr: The Environmental Perversity of Cap and Trade: Case N+1-






Christopher Booker: Global warming is much too cosy a name








The Blogprof: What to do as unemployment inches up towards 10%? Climate czar Carol Browner thinks it's time to push cap-and-trade and tax each household at $1,700


Objectivist Individualist: Obama Gives EPA Mission to Limit Plant Growth















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Trouble brewing in workers paradise

Not that they shouldn't, they should, but you know the Democrats have problems when even their staunch labor union allies are openly expressing concern about their cap and trade legislation.

FROM- AFL-CIO Now



'Bad Climate Change Bill Could Cost 4 Million U.S. Jobs'

by James Parks

Industries supporting more than 4 million U.S. jobs could be at risk unless lawmakers include strong provisions in climate change legislation to keep energy-intensive, trade-sensitive manufacturers competitive.

A new report says the legislation should include a system of rebates and allowances to help U.S. companies make the transition to lower carbon emissions and a tariff system, or border adjustments, to penalize countries that fail to regulate greenhouse gases in the production of goods.

The report, “Climate Change Policy,” released today by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), says a well-designed climate policy can support the economic recovery and green investments can support millions of new jobs, starting with the creation of more than 1 million jobs in the next two years. Click here to read the report.

Robert Scott, author of the EPI study, warned in a telephone press conference today that the United States will face serious consequences if it develops climate change policies that apply only to domestic companies without regard for their effects on trade. He said companies that use large amounts of energy in production and are in pitched battles with cheap imports could respond by moving jobs overseas, causing what is euphemistically called “carbon leakage.” Industries that are particularly vulnerable include steel, pulp and paper, basic chemicals and glass products.

Worse yet, Scott said, increased production of these energy-intensive goods in developing countries with no climate change rules could likely increase net global greenhouse emissions.

The job loss would impact every state, Scott writes, with the biggest losses coming in California (404,000 lost jobs) and Texas (425,000).

During the press conference, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard said the issue of global warming is everyone’s business:

It’s not just Pittsburgh warming or Cleveland warming…it’s global warming. It’s important to have a climate change bill that doesn’t cost us jobs and leak carbon.

Ten Democratic senators, led by Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) recently signed a letter to President Obama calling for measures in any climate change legislation to ensure that the U.S. domestic manufacturing base remains strong. Joining Brown in signing the letter were Sens. Evan Bayh (Ind.), Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin (Mich.), Al Franken (Minn.), Bob Casey and Arlen Specter (Pa.), Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.) and Russ Feingold (Wis.).

Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, summed it up this way:

The stakes are simply too great, and the potential damage to the economy and
environment too large, if we fail to adequately address the trade-related
implications of climate change.

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