“I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized. I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. I think we’re seeing it almost weekly or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. Yes, our climates change. They’ve been changing ever since the earth was formed. But I do not buy into, that a group of scientists, who in some cases were found to be manipulating this data.”

Not much to quibble with Texas Governor Rick Perry about there. Except if you’re the Washington Post which, like Politico, cannot countenance Perry’s refusal to bow at the altar of what has been decided. So for his apostasy WaPo gives Perry a whopping “four Pinocchios” in a sneering, nasty and intellectually dishonest piece, “Rick Perry’s made-up ‘facts’ about climate change”, rife with straw men, heavy on double standards, and otherwise mixing and matching errors of omission and commission.”

First, an editorial note. WaPo reveals its delirium on the issue by citing polls as its apparent evidence for man-made climate change, concluding with “After all, it was first established in 1896 that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could help create a ‘greenhouse effect.’” Apple, meet orange.

This non-sequitor misreads WaPo’s own cited source and is more confused than the ritual confusion of climate change with man-made climate change, then conflated with the alleged catastrophic climate change (which WaPo also then offers). So, Mr. Kessler, the greenhouse effect, in existence somewhat longer than man, enables life on earth. Man does not help create it. It’s here with us, or without us. On WaPo’s relative scale, this scolding of another for supposed ignorance, clueless about that of which it scolds, merits at least five Pinocchios.

Perry’s camp referred ’something called’ the Washington Post to “something called the Petition Project, which claims to have collected the signatures of 31,487 ‘American scientists’ on a petition that says there is ‘no convincing scientific evidence’ that human release of greenhouse gasses will ’cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate.’ The petition is a bit old, having been started in opposition to the 1997 Kyoto agreement on global warming.”

WaPo, using a week’s worth of sneer quotes if still citing ‘no convincing evidence’ of catastrophic heating, just polls of other people not addressing ‘catastrophic climate change’, didn’t like that.

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The Washington Post had a story on Sunday titled, in its print edition, “Obama’s return to Europe in a changed world”. It chronicled how “the dominant themes of the president’s European tour, set to begin Monday, highlight how much the world has changed over that time. As he enters the second half of his term, security issues, in South Asia and the broader Middle East, have replaced the economy as the chief shared interests of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful allies.”

Er…what? The absence of a certain ‘greatest threat facing mankind’ is a bit of a red-flag for someone who has chronicled the establishment press having thrown in completely with (selective) political hysteria over the climate issue, and the havoc that ’skeptics’ of the computer model projections and the policies have allegedly caused. And, incidentally, with no interest in the havoc the actual models have caused here in the real world through policies premised in them.

I scanned the full-page article for mention of Obama’s swift reversal of Bush’s alleged recklessness or, barring that, of the now surely worsened climate crisis and the stalled Kyoto process, that Obama didn’t, in fact, rush to ’sign the Kyoto Protocol’ as Bush supposedly neglected per the media for eight years (Clinton signed it; Bush never unsigned it), comfortable I would find no such cheerleading, or keening.

That is of course because of the uncomfortable truth that political realities led Obama to continue the Bush policy of continuing the Clinton-Gore policy of not seeking ratification of Kyoto. And, further, he continued the Bush rejection of the Kyoto model, agreed to by Clinton-Gore to the great foreign policy and otherwise political detriment to the U.S. in ensuing years.

And, on cue, a story in a trade press outlet yesterday writes:

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The Senate will, one presumes, finally vote either this week or next to block EPA from imposing President Obama’s ‘other way to skin the cat’ of Kyoto-style energy rationing, by using the Clean Air Act – a law that EPA’s own public filings inescapably acknowledge was never intended for such purpose. What will be at stake is little less than the rule of law itself.

Policy sanity also stands to take a beating, or else gain a new lease on life. The United States derives over 80% of its total energy from the three fossil fuels now being regulated by the Clean Air Act on the basis of EPA’s Endangerment Finding, which by design strangles our ability to use them.  Further, the Obama Administration has in effect decided that the EPA knows how to run the U. S. economy.

With über-green Germany, even nuke-happy France, appearing set to ramp up their coal use in the wake of Japan’s nuclear incident, the first rational response would be to call off EPA’s war on coal. Not to fight like mad to preserve and advance it.

But fight like mad to preserve and advance this war on coal is what the administration and its Senate enablers are doing.

And as George Mason University professor of science and public policy Thomas Lovejoy said in an astonishing admission to the Washington Post not long ago, in the context of this very Obama Power Grab:

“When Congress resists action on pressing environmental issues, regulation provides a way forward”.

Actually, no. Our Constitution – so quaint and outdated according to certain quarters though it may be (it’s still better than whatever it is we have today) – makes it quite plain that it is only when Congress decides to act that agencies have a way forward.

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The news about China overtaking Japan as the world’s second-largest economy is actually quite relevant to the US climate and energy policy debate, which promises to continue despite the scientific scandal and evaporation of political will to associate with a “global warming” or cap-and-trade legislation.

Thanks to a poll by Stanley Greenberg, the measure has been re-branded as “green economy” and “clean energy”.  But whatever you call it, and lame duck or otherwise, this latest excuse for central planning will be with us until it is unavoidably tied to serious political costs, like its forerunner the 1993 BTU energy tax, which according to Al Gore in a 2006 interview with the Financial Times led to the Democrat’s loss of Congress. Instructively, that experience originally prompted the re-branding to cap-and-trade.

Now, about  the relatively fading Japan, it is important to note that although it has been a persistent economic basket case, it nonetheless serves as one of President Obama’s models for stimulating an economy with “renewable energy” mandates (as we’ve documented in this space on numerous occasions, he’s not always the best-informed about these matters).

China’s relevance to our current policy debate is in part due to the ritual “but, China’s doing it…” line of — for lack of a better word — “argument” for why the US should impose all manner of global warming policies on itself. That deserves scrutiny.

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Climate-gate could further complicate the re-election prospects of congressional representatives from industrialized states who are already playing defense over the economic costs of climate change legislation.

Thousands of  emails leaked to the Internet from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom appear to substantiate a growing body of research that questions the idea of man-made global warming. Climate-gate has the potential to emerge as an unexpected gift to Republican candidates in this year’s midterm elections. But there’s the rub.

With the exception of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), and a handful of other elected officials, Republicans have been reticent to engage and debate the dubious claims of human induced global warming, laments Steve Milloy, editor and founder of JunkScience.com.

“Too many of them don’t understand the issue and the extremism that stands behind green activism,” he observes. “They are afraid of being labeled as anti-environment and are just not well-equipped or well informed enough to confront policies that could result in an unprecedented expansion of government power.”

At the very least, 2010 Republican challengers could invoke the email scandal to demonstrate how research has been falsified and distorted to advance a political agenda at odds with the economic well-being of many Americans. This in turn could open the way to a larger discussion of global warming science and the role of the United Nations.

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We will call the whole thing off.

Although the media altered the story line beginning in March 2001, the inescapable fact is that the Clinton administration doomed the Kyoto treaty by agreeing to something for which there was insufficient will in Congress. Clinton thereby put our name and political prestige on the line recklessly, hoping to pressure Congress, but leading to eight years of (largely either uninformed or simply disingenuous) harping about the wretchedness of George W. Bush refusing to follow through on Clinton’s political commitment.

By this and according to none other than candidate Barack Obama, our national name was tarnished. He vowed to restore it. He has not only failed but made things worse, though we should remain thankful for small favors such as this.

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What would be the result if someone walked into a psychiatrist’s office and disclosed their belief that the weather is out to get them? Should the doctor be compelled by the state to initiate a competency hearing, or would a prescription for a fist-full of Prozac do?

What if the patient were a cop? Should they lose their badge?

What if the patient were a teacher? Should they lose their classroom?

What if the patient were an entire political movement? Should they lose their credibility and status as an authority on any and all subjects, at least those related to the weather?

At first glance, this 2007 report pulled from the internet archives of the Tides Foundation would appear to be making the claim described above; however, the cause is not so much driven by delusion as it is pathologically fraudulent.

The basic thrust of the publication (a conversation between the Tides Foundation’s Catherine Lerza and Redefining Progress’ Michel Gelobter) is that the effects of “global warming” are disproportionately felt by disadvantaged minorities.

[Catherine]Lerza: The impacts of global warming highlight social and racial inequalities around the world. It certainly affects poor communities differently. We saw that clearly in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Could you talk about these different impacts of climate change depending on geography, race, and class?

[Michel]Gelobter: Communities of color and low income communities in this country clearly feel the impact of climate change and have been feeling that impact for over 20 years.

My organization, Redefining Progress, has conducted a number of studies on Latinos and climate change and African-Americans and climate change. Different communities bear quite a different vulnerability to the risks of global warming. Six years ago, we already had figured out that the greatest victims of climate change were the lower-income communities and communities of color. You can see it in the disparity in heat deaths in St. Louis. You can see there’s an impact on agricultural communities and on border communities and indigenous communities, particularly in the Arctic.

We have to address issues of justice: people have a right to health and to a secure place to live. They have this right whether they’re black, or white, or whatever.

This excerpt clears up at least one major misconception: that the devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina was the result of nature mixed with systemic governmental failure at all levels.

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On numerous occasions, to tout his own agenda President Obama told America to “take a look at what’s happening in countries like Spain” to witness his model for a “green jobs” economy. Well, a team of Spaniards produced an academic study, officially of King Juan Carlos University in Madrid, which revealed that Spain’s scheme has proven a disaster.

In response, Obama’s administration provided a lesson in how Big Government can be abused when its officials are angered and embarrassed, turning its institutions on a private individual, even a foreign academic whose offense was to produce scholarly research about his own nation’s policy failures.

Here is what happened. The Spanish “green jobs” study received substantial play in the U.S. media and gained favorable attention in the Wall Street Journal’s U.S., Europe and Asia editions, among other outlets. It came up in a White House press conference, embarrassing spokesman Robert Gibbs who boasted how he disagreed with the study and its conclusions while admitting he had not read it.

The rest of administration’s three-fold response was in sum highly troubling. The benign second step was to substitute, without missing a beat, Denmark for Spain in Obama’s ritual “look at what’s happening in…” litany of our environmental superiors (though that experiment, too, has been defrocked). Then things got ugly.

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