| Those making the claim weren't around in the old days, so they can't possibly be expected to believe the old "data". |
Last Monday, President Barack Obama took his biggest step yet in establishing an environmental legacy that could make his two terms in office the most consequential for the environment - and for the U.S. energy industry - in four decades.Remaking America, in Bill Ayres image.
But unlike the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and President Jimmy Carter the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, Obama has pushed his agenda with little support, or even the involvement, of Congress. He's done so almost entirely through authority granted to the EPA by an all-but-unanimous Congress decades ago and upheld in most respects by subsequent Supreme Court decisions.
There you have it. Carter and Nixon in the same sentence! But Champ is unlike either one.
Matched against his aggressive agenda has been equally furious push-back by Republicans in Congress. Leading the fight has been San Antonio U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, a Southern Methodist University-trained lawyer and Yale graduate who has used his perch atop the House Science committee to wage war with the EPA like few others have.
"The Environmental Protection Agency has released some of the most expensive and expansive regulations in its history," Smith said at July 9 hearing featuring EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. "These rules will cost billions of dollars, burden American families and diminish the competitiveness of American industry around the world."
Yeah, so what's yer point, Congressman?
Nearly every Texas Republican has been outspoken against the EPA and any effort to curb the energy industry. But it has been Smith, in his role as committee chairman, who has spent the most time railing against what he called the "climate change religion" in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this year.
Another Rantburg reader discovered!
"The president says there is no debate," he said in a hearing in May 2014. "Actually, the debate has only just begun. When assessing climate change, we need to make sure that findings are driven by science, not an alarmist, partisan agenda."Nobody says Einstein' theories are 'settled science', even though scientists have been testing them for a century.
For U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, that opposition to the climate change consensus amounts to a dereliction of duty by Smith and the Republican leader who appointed him chairman. Johnson, the top Democrat on the panel, says Congress seems intent on ignoring climate change.
And asteroid impacts. Don't forget those concerns!
| The voters don't care about climate change. A clever politician would take note of that. |
Depends on what your definition of 'science' is.
"While the Obama administration pretends to know
The Clean Power Plan, he said, would simply do too little to help stave off climate change to justify the costs it will impose on businesses and consumers of energy. "If implemented, [it] would reduce global temperatures by only 0.01, or one one-hundredth of a degree Celsius. ... As a result of the rule, energy costs for Texans could increase by up to 20 percent in 2020. That is the definition of all pain, no gain."
| I just read that the real thing we need to fear is the explosion of the supervolcano under Yosemite national park -- if that's the one with all the hot springs. So our next panic already waits in the wings, complete with a Natural Geographic or some such special on the subject from a few years ago. |