As this is being written, it is the Wednesday prior to the announcement of the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the fate of Obamacare. If SCOTUS upholds it, it will condemn Americans to having bureaucrats deny medical care to some because of their age and others to die while waiting for it.
By any standard it is a horrendously bad law and one that initiated a huge political movement, the Tea Party, to oppose it. Mitt Romney is campaigning on the promise to repeal it. It was a law passed in the dark of night and it embodies all the worst aspects of Socialism.
There has been another judicial opinion, however, that promises to destroy many aspects of the nation’s economy, from the coal industry to the coal-fired plants that provide about 42% of the nation’s electrical power. It used to be 50%. An successful economy requires and thrives on energy. We are decreasing ours. China is building a new coal-fired plant every month.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw out a pro-industry petition that challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s assertion that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a “pollutant” that endangers public health and is a factor in global warming.
It was an 81-page decision, based in part on a 2007 SCOTUS decision that ruled 5-4 that the 1970 Clean Air Act empowered the EPA to regulate C02, even though that was never the original intent of the Act.
It is a ruling that will permit the EPA to continue to wreak havoc on business and industry, large and small, based entirely on the greatest science hoax in history.
As one observer said, “with a sweep of the pen the elite of the American legal system affirms that the Earth’s atmosphere simulates the glass barrier of a greenhouse.” Only the Earth’s atmosphere is composed entirely of gases.
CO2 represents an infinitesimal 0.038% of the atmosphere.
The other atmospheric gases are nitrogen at 78.084%, oxygen at 20.94%, argon at 0.934%, carbon dioxide, and trace elements at 0.002%.
To suggest, as the EPA does, that CO2 poses a public health hazard is to ignore the fact that humans exhale about six pounds of it every day and that it is vital to all vegetation on Earth in the same fashion as oxygen is to all animal life. Does this sound like a hazard to you? Are humans dying because of 0.038% of CO2?
The decision opens the floodgates of EPA regulation to require all manner of technology to abate emissions from thousands of sources of CO2 whether they are a huge factory or a local bakery. Unless Congress asserts its right to properly interpret the Clean Air Act, the decision will further undermine job growth and economy recovery.
The decision is likely to become part of the political campaign leading to the elections. Mitt Romney has declared his opposition to it.
It is worth considering that, among the members of the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia just turned 78, Justice Kennedy will turn 76 later this year, Justice Breyer will be 76 in August, and Justice Ginsburg just turned 81. The next President is likely to choose at least one and possibly more justices to the court.
Suffice to say that the Court of Appeals arrived at their decision by relying on all the lies that buttressed the global warming hoax and made no effort to consider the vast body of scientific literature that demonstrates that CO2 plays no role in climate change and is, as noted, vital to all life on Earth. It was a very stupid decision as was the 2007 SCOTUS decision.
It was, however, a decision that will cause an untold amount of harm to the nation’s economy. Congress, already having failed to act in the years since 2007 to assert its role with regard to the Clean Air Act, must do so soon or the further destruction of the nation will follow as night the day.
© Alan Caruba, 2012
All of our institutions have been suborned by the incompetent climate consensus of runaway global warming. After two full generations of miseducation of atmospheric physicists and climate scientists--the supposed experts themselves--it is now literally illegal to show competence in the science, because it only takes scientific competence to COMPLETELY DISPROVE the "greenhouse effect" that is the foundation of the global warming consensus. It is insanity, but even the Supreme Court has shown itself to be incompetent. If a new administration does not reverse the decisions made, which make the consensus science literally unquestionable--when some of us independent scientists KNOW it is really incompetent--then we are literally unmade as a nation of free people. That, not a runaway global climate, is the real turning point we, and the whole world, face.
ReplyDeleteAnd what? We are supposed to vote for Romney because he says he's against it? I never listen to what a politician says, especially during an election time. So let's look at what he's done. Romneycare now obamacare. NDAA, H.R. 347, the SS protected persons act. Acts which ended our 1st, 4th, and 6th amendment rights, supported overwhelmingly by both parties. Obuma amnesty, just didn't do it properly, but ok with the idea. The platform on the GOP is virtually unchanged for years. It says pretty much the same thing every election cycle. Their actions once foolishly elected are way different. Now we face the choice of evil communism or the lesser evil of fascism. Yep, Romney and the gop is worth my vote. Get off the GOP kool aid.
ReplyDeleteKen Lowder: There is no "kool aid" in my first comment above; I am simply telling everyone that the "science consensus" is literally incompetent--not only does the Venus/Earth temperatures comparison show any halfway-educated person that THERE IS NO GREENHOUSE EFFECT AT ALL, but that this should have been obvious to scientists 20 years ago, when the Venus data was first obtained by the Magellan spacecraft. Also try reading "Runaway Global Warming is Scientific Hysteria" to see how obvious is the incompetence of all the climate scientists. Your non-scientific position, which is an incompetent, emotional reaction to the definitive evidence I am trying to communicate, against "global warming" hysteria, rather illustrates the incompetence of the American electorate, too many of whom are "thinking" only on the level of frightened, selfish children, who refuse to focus upon the real problems, but only want to fight according to their preferred dogmatic ideas. I only tangentially referred to the tyrannous politics at work with respect to the global warming hysteria, and it is entirely obvious that Obama too will not listen to the true science (I wrote to him personally about the general scientific incompetence immediately after his election, and was simply ignored with a "thanks for writing" postcard--after 4 months). The choice in the Presidential election is not between "communism" and "fascism", it is between insanity (Obama's blind and committed agenda) and unhysterical, clear thinking that respects the reality of a situation. The "choice" is really a test, for every voting individual--are you going to think dispassionately and clearly, or according to the dogma on either side? (97% of both climate alarmists and "skeptics" alike are incompetent, in believing there is a greenhouse effect, even after I have literally demonstrated the plain fact that there is no such thing.) The 2012 election is first and foremost a test, of the competence of the electorate to judge dispassionately and well, and you, sir, are on your way to failing that test badly.
ReplyDeleteHarry, I wasn't talking about your comment at all. I was talking about the article. As for global warming I call bs every time I hear it. I'm way on you're side about that, which by the wy had nothing to do with the article in question.
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