Just the Facts? Unbelievable
Manufacturing a scientific scandal
Although sceptics have been gnawing away at the credibility of climate science for years, over the last five months they have made enormous leaps owing to the hacking of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and the discovery of a number of alleged mistakes in the benchmark reports of the IPCC.
While the "revelations" have been milked for all they are worth, and a lot more, the science remains rock solid. If instead of cherry-picking two or three that lend themselves to spin, you read the 1000 or so emails that were posted on a Russian server the picture that emerges is one of an enormously dedicated group of men and women doing their best to carry out research of the highest quality.
If there were a conspiracy among scientists to manipulate the truth, you would expect the evidence to be there in spades in these private emails. But it's not. Instead they show scientists working their backsides off to do good science, with email exchanges stopping briefly on Christmas Eve to be resumed on Boxing Day, with apologies to colleagues for taking time out to have surgery or get married, all with a sub-text of worry about the implications of their work for the future of humanity.
Rather than cover-ups, we read private emails from one scientist to Phil Jones, the CRU head who has been forced to step down pending an inquiry, saying he has been watching the sceptics blogs and, anticipating misrepresentation, says "this last aspect needs to be tackled more candidly in AR4 than in the SOD, and we need to discuss how to do this". Others show them bending over backwards to be open.
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Media Still Failing To Do Its Job On Bush's Iraq Lies
Former Bush administration national security adviser Stephen Hadley appeared on MSNBC today to respond to Karl Rove's admission in his new book that "Congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without the W.M.D. threat." MSNBC's Chuck Todd remarked "I can't remember anybody this close to the president saying we went to war under a false pretense."
HADLEY: It's not that we did it on a false pretense, we did it on the basis of intelligence that turned out not to be true. This was intelligence that the intelligence community believed, other intelligence services across the world did, based on UN inspection records. We all thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. [...]
It's very clear that when the president made the decision to go to war, that the inspections regime was not getting at the truth in Iraq, and that the economic sanctions which were preventing Saddam from using oil revenues for pressing his neighbors, supporting terror, doing WMD, were about to collapse. So I think the president really played this out as long as possible. And he would tell you today that he thinks that if the international community had retained its unity, if President Chirac, Chancellow Schroeder, President Putin had stayed with us in putting pressure on Iraq, we might have been able to do this without resort to war.
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Real Reform - but no Republican Support
All talk no action from the republicans
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) "will announce an ambitious set of reforms" today to "change many of the rules under which" the Senate works, "including an effort to restrict earmarks and limit the filibuster." Bennet "will propose eliminating anonymous holds, banning private-sector earmarks, freezing pay and budgets for members of Congress, and barring lawmakers from lobbying for life."
"Senate Republicans are waging a pre-emptive strike against the Senate's parliamentarian," charging that he is biased towards Democrats. Parliamentarian Alan Frumin's ruling on reconciliation "could determine the fate" of health care reform. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said, "I think clearly the majority leader has [Frumin's] ear."
Hatch Forgets About The Bush Years, Claims Reconciliation Is Meant To 'Balance The Budget'
Today, in the Washington Post, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has written an op-ed condemning the use of reconciliation for health care, saying that it would be "inappropriate" to use the process, claiming that it was "designed to balance the federal budget." While admitting that "both parties have used the process" in the past to pass legislation such as the Welfare and Medicaid Reform Act of 1996, he claims that using reconciliation would amount to an "abuse that stifles dissent and badly undermines our constitutional checks and balances." Yet what Hatch fails to mention is that he has voted for bills passed through reconciliation every single time a bill was offered through the process during the Bush years, including to pass massive tax cuts for the wealthy that served to do anything but "balance the federal budget":
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FOX's Roger Ailes Is a Self-Loathing Liberal
Roger Ailes, corpulent prick and president of Fox News, has come out of the closet as a liberal who opposes the war in Afghanistan and thinks wearing lapel pins to prove that you care about something is shallow.
In a 7-minute interview with the National Review Online's Peter Robinson that was posted this morning, Ailes casually undermined the point of Fox News and acknowledged that much of what it peddles to "real Americans" in "the heartland" is just calculated rhetoric that he's not stupid enough to actually believe. The q-and-a is a maddening parade of hypocrisy and inconsistency, and demands a close reading. We'll start with the bit of video above, in which Ailes presents a cogent case for why it's unreasonable to infer from the lack of a pin signifying support a given cause on a person's lapel that the person therefore doesn't support said cause:
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Microsoft's position on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce climate-related activities
A number of stakeholders have asked us for our position on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce climate-related activities. We've shared the following response with them and I wanted to share it publicly as well:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has never spoken for nor done work on behalf of Microsoft regarding climate change legislation, and we have not participated in the Chamber's climate initiatives. Microsoft has stated that climate change is a serious issue that demands immediate, worldwide attention and we are acting accordingly. We are pursuing strategies and taking actions that are consistent with a strong commitment to reducing our own impact as well as the impact of our products. In addition, we have adopted a broad policy statement on climate change that expresses support for government action to create market-based mechanisms to address climate change. And, we believe the greatest value Microsoft brings to the fight against climate change is our expertise on the role software and technology can play in reducing carbon emissions. To this end, Microsoft is working ranging from the Digital Energy Solutions Campaign to the World Wildlife Fund to the European Environmental Agency to advance public policies that promote the use of ICT solutions to advance energy efficiency, spur innovation and economic opportunity, and contribute to practical strategies for mitigating climate change.
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Republicans filibustered a judicial nomination that then passed it with no objection.
Obstruction for Obstruction's Sake
If you need any more proof that Senate Republicans' sole mission at the moment is to prevent anything from happening in their chamber of Congress, look no further than the fact that today the Senate had to seek cloture on the nomination Barbara Milano Keenan to fill a vacancy on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, resulting in a vote of 99-0.
That's right - not one Republican senator spoke against her qualifications, record, or views or voted to prevent her nomination from receiving an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor ... and yet still they filibustered, forcing Democrats to seek a cloture vote in order to move ahead, simply because they are committed to obstructing the governing process in every way possible.
Earlier today, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy took to the Senate floor to blast the Republicans' refusal to allow the Senate to move on even noncontroversial judicial nominations:
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The Real Consequences of Obstruction
For the past year, Republicans have embarked on an aggressive obstructionist agenda, determined to block any progress the Democratic majority may try make on health care, jobs, or even approving presidential nominees essential to keep the government running. This week, the country saw the real-life effects of this partisan game. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) became a "poster child" for GOP obstruction and demonstrated the outsized influence a determined minority can exert over policies affecting the entire country. Although he's not the first obstructionist, he likely won't be the last. Most recently, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) put a blanket hold on President Obama's nominees in order to secure pork funding for his state. Although he eventually relented on most of the nominees, he continues to block several military officials. Since last week, Bunning had been blocking legislation that would offer a 30-day extension on unemployment and COBRA health benefits, which expired on Sunday for millions of Americans, over objections about how the bill would be funded. Although the blockade was primarily Bunning's work, he was aided by a party that either stayed silent or even cheered on his obstruction. Even when Bunning finally relented last night and allowed a vote to go forward on the legislation, 18 Republican senators joined with him to vote against the temporary extension of benefits. Although the suffering of millions of Americans has now been eased, their well-being will continue to be subject to the whims of dysfunctional obstruction if lawmakers continue to put their partisan interests over the best interests of their constituents.
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The Romney Flop
Q: Has the President done anything right? Anything good in the past 12 months? [...]
ROMNEY: He boosted our effort in Afghanistan, which is the right course to take.
-- Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, 3/02/10
VERSUS
"[President Obama] should have been making sure that we're successful in our fight against terrorism around the world, particularly in Afghanistan. But instead, he diverted to health care.
-- Romney, 3/02/10, later on Fox News
The Lamar Alexander Flop
"[Using reconciliation to pass health care reform] would really be the end of the Senate as a protector of minority rights."
-- Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), 2/28/10
VERSUS
Q: Is reconciliation something you would say, "We would never use for something substantive legislation like health care?" Are you prepared to make that kind of statement?
ALEXANDER: No. I'm not going to prepare to make any kind of statement.
-- Alexander, 3/01/10
The Ghosts of Reconciliation Past
The first bar is the impact on the unified budget balance of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (EGTRRA) of 2001. The second is the impact on the budget balance of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA) of 2003. The third bar is the CBO estimated impact on the deficit of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act proposed in the Senate on November 19, for 2010-2019.
Those are "the Bush tax cuts." Of course when GOP Congressional majorities used reconciliation liberally, you heard some Democratic whining about it. Process hypocrisy is endemic in Congress. What you didn't hear was mainstream media coverage taking the whining as its key framing element for the story. The 2003 tax cut package, in particular, passed the Senate by an extremely narrow majority without a ton of cable news handwringing about "controversial procedural tactics" or any of the rest. It was a controversial underlying bill, but the administration had a majority in favor so they went forward with it.
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McCain Bill Making Medicare Untouchable Via Reconciliation Contradicts His Record
In a direct challenge to Democratic leadership, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) introduced an amendment on Thursday night that would prohibit Congress from using reconciliation to make changes to Medicare.
Framed as an effort to protect the sanctity of entitlement programs, McCain's measure would deprive Democrats of a stream of revenue for their health care bill. The party has targeted hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts and savings to the Medicare program that it would turn around and use to pay for other reforms.
But for McCain to be the Republican face behind this effort is to distract, a bit, from its seriousness. The Senator has a fairly lengthy history of voting for reconciliation bills that do exactly what his current amendment prohibits: change Medicare.
As pointed out by a Democratic source on the Hill, the Arizona Republican has voted for nine out of 13 reconciliation bills that have been offered during his time in the Senate. Of those nine, four included cuts to Medicare.
One of those bills McCain supported was the Balanced Budget Act of 1995 (vetoed by President Clinton) which, as written by the GOP, would have cut Medicare and Medicaid by a combined $452 billion over seven years. In addition, McCain supported the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989, which included Medicare cuts; the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which cut Medicare by $115 billion over five years; and the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which also cut Medicare.
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George W. Bush's education secretary: The Politics of Failure
It's always been a little odd the way that there is only one U.S. federal department that uses its ineffectiveness as a major speaking point.
No matter what's going on in the news, the secretary of the treasury would never say the U.S. economic system is a failure. The secretary of defense would not say the U.S. military is so terrible that it loses all its wars. This is not the case with the U.S. secretary of education, who loves to talk about the horrible problems in U.S. education. According to a piece in Inside Higher Ed:
Margaret Spellings, the former U.S. education secretary, made it clear that she didn't just want to pour more Americans into "this broken system" of higher education, language that will resonate with those who followed her administration's policies and rhetoric. "We need a higher education system that's more responsive to the market place.... One of the things we've never asked much of higher education is accountability, and some results orientation."
This language, oddly enough, occurred at a debate on Feb 26 in which Spellings argued that the U.S. workforce needs more college graduates
Spellings, George W. Bush's education secretary from 2005-2009, actually frequently used the sort of language that in any other profession might be interpreted to mean "I'm not very good at my job."
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The Murdochization of the Wall Street Journal News Pages
The sensationalist WSJ: [T]he front page of today's Wall Street Journal... three main items.... The big headline splashed across the top is "Hedge Funds Pound Euro."... The story is accompanied by a chart showing the recent deterioration in the value of the euro, for all the world as though it were caused by the hedge funds in question. There's even hints of conspiracy: the story begins with the tale of a few fund managers having dinner - together! And talking about the euro! There's only the vaguest hint, in the ostensibly-sober WSJ, that it's ridiculous to think that hedge funds could cause a large medium-term change in the value of the euro against the dollar. They can certainly bet on such a move, and make money if it happens, but you can't manipulate the largest currency pair in the world, when it's freely floating and does over a trillion dollars in volume per day. But that doesn't stop the WSJ from trying. After talking about nothing but currency trades for the first 11 paragraphs of the story, there's then a screeching of gears and those demons du jour – credit default swaps (CDS) – are shoehorned into the story, which suddenly starts talking about bets on Greece's creditworthiness. While it's true that worries about Greece can have an adverse effect on the euro, again it's pushing the limits of credibility to suggest that hedge funds are deliberately trying to manipulate the market in Greek credit so as to make money on their foreign exchange plays.
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At Health Summit, Cranky McCain Complains About Nonexistent 'Special Deal' For Florida
At yesterday's health care summit and again this morning on Good Morning America, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) proved that he was yesterday's man as he rehashed old grievances and complained that Obama's health care bill was full of special interest deals and carve outs. McCain signaled out an amendment offered by Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) during the Senate Finance Committee's mark-up process, characterizing the provision as "unsavory":
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Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets
Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation's classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools.
In Kentucky, a bill recently introduced in the Legislature would encourage teachers to discuss "the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories," including "evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning."
The bill, which has yet to be voted on, is patterned on even more aggressive efforts in other states to fuse such issues. In Louisiana, a law passed in 2008 says the state board of education may assist teachers in promoting "critical thinking" on all of those subjects.
Last year, the Texas Board of Education adopted language requiring that teachers present all sides of the evidence on evolution and global warming.
Oklahoma introduced a bill with similar goals in 2009, although it was not enacted.
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Palin: "I joined Fox" because there's too much "opinion interjected in hard news" in the mainstream media
When it comes to ex-Gov Sarah Palin, irony died a while ago, but I'm still posting this under humor. After all, Palin was speaking on Leno.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has called Palin a conservative leader on energy issues. She has also emerged as a conservative thought leader on the science (see WashPost goes tabloid, publishes second falsehood-filled op-ed by Sarah Palin in five months - on climate science and the hacked emails!). Now she explains why she joined FoxNews, as reported in this Think Progress repost.
In January, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) joined other potential 2012 Republican presidential nominees at Fox News as a paid contributer. Last night, she appeared on Jay Leno's show and decried the state of the mainstream media as "quite broken," and - touting her employer's slogan - in need of more "fairness" and "balance":
PALIN: I studied journalism, my college degree there in communications. And now I am back there wanting to build some trust back in our media. I think the mainstream media is quite broken and I think there needs to be the fairness, the balance in there - that's why I joined Fox. Fair and balanced, yes. You know because, Jay, those years a go that I studied journalism it was all about the who, what, when, where, and why, it was not so much the opinion interjected in hard news stories. … As long as there is not the opinion under the guise of hard news stories - I think there needs to be clear differentiation.
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Investors need climate information to make decisions
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) introduced legislation on February 24 that would prevent the SEC from forcing companies to disclose their climate-related risks. CAP energy policy analyst Richard W. Caperton explains why that is a bad idea in this repost. In the AP photo, Barrasso, left, is accompanied by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), center, and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).
A group of 56 investment-industry leaders representing $2.1 trillion in assets applauded the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday for taking action to ensure that companies disclose their climate-related risks to investors. The leaders stated that the SEC's Guidance Regarding Disclosure Related to Climate Change "will provide us with significantly improved information about the material risks and opportunities faced by our portfolio companies." This reinforces a fundamental principle of the American economy: Investors need transparent information on companies to make informed decisions.
Yet there is a movement in the Senate that would deny investors access to that critical information. Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) introduced legislation on February 24 that would prevent the SEC from forcing companies to disclose their climate-related risks. His bill is just two sentences long, but would have the disastrous effect of allowing companies to hide information that investors need to make smart decisions.
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Crist calls out hypocritical governors who condemned the stimulus but touted the funding projects.
As ThinkProgress has documented, well over a hundred GOP lawmakers have voted against or condemned the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, while later touted the funding or asked for more money. The latest person to point out this hypocritical behavior is Republican Gov. Charlie Crist (FL). Yesterday, while speaking at his last State of the State as governor, he called out governors who "may have rather loudly condemned the stimulus money" but who accepted it anyway:
CRIST: A few governors may have rather loudly condemned the stimulus money, but that did not stop any of them from quietly accepting it. ... During these very difficult economic times, we do a disservice to the people who elected us., the people who are counting on us, to elevate ideology over problem solving. We are here to guide our ship through a storm.
Watch it:
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Blanche Lincoln Attacks Bill Halter for Not Supporting Public Option Strongly Enough
Blanche Lincoln fires the opening shots of her primary battle with Bill Halter with a rather incoherent, rambling press release about his supposed wavering on the public option.
"Who does he think he's fooling?" asked Lincoln's campaign manager Steve Patterson. "Bill is going to find he can't have it both ways. Either he is with the majority of Arkansans and opposed to the public option, like Senator Lincoln, or he is with the national liberal establishment that is angry with her right now."
Actually, the polls show that the majority of Arkansans favors a public option - including, wait for it - 81% of Arkansas Democrats. So Patterson is just lying there.
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THINK FAST
A 72-page RNC PowerPoint presentation for donors and fundraisers obtained by Politico caricatures Obama as The Joker and portrays Democratic leaders as part of an "evil empire." The document preys on "fear" of Obama moving the country "toward socialism."
An investigation by the Institute for Southern Studies has found that of "the 19 Senators who voted against the [recent Senate] package including jobless benefits after [Sen. Jim Bunning's (R-KY)] filibuster ended, eight of them come from states that face jobless rates higher than the national average." The Institute notes that "these are the kind of votes that could prove costly for Republicans where they face challengers in 2010."
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Leaked documents reveal GOP plan to use scare tactics to raise money
National GOP leaders are doing damage control today after a Politico scoop lifted the curtain on the party's plan to tap voters' "fear" in the coming campaign season. The PR problem started when an absent-minded attendee at the Republican National Committee (RNC) confab on February 18 in Boca Grande, Florida, left a 72-page document from its 2010 strategizing session in a hotel room. Today, Politico reporter Ben Smith's expose is making headlines.
The memo tracks the fundraising presentation that RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart delivered to the RNC's $2,500-a-head annual retreat. The best path to victory in 2010, the document advises, is for Republican candidates to depict themselves as the best hope for resisting the "trending toward socialism" taking shape in a Democrat-dominated Washington.
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Murkowski to Senate: Drill the Arctic or my state gets it!
Opposes bipartisan energy and climate bill if no ANWR drilling; Lieberman says, "That's a deal-breaker."
Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has decided to hold the fate of her state, nation, and world hostage to drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as explained by guest blogger Daniel J. Weiss, CAPAF's Director of Climate Strategy.
Murkowski gave a long impassioned speech when she introduced her "Dirty Air Act" – a Congressional Review Act resolution that would overturn EPA's scientific finding that carbon pollution threatens public health and the environment. One of her complaints was that the threat of impending EPA Clean Air Act implementation would force the Senate into action without ample time for deliberation.
Today, however, as we seek the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we're being presented with a false choice between unacceptable legislation and unacceptable regulations. We're being told, threatened really, to "pass a bill now or the economy will suffer."
Senator Murkowski's aversion to threats, however, does not extend to threats that she makes. She told E&E Daily (subscription required) that she would oppose a global warming bill unless it included oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska:
Murkowski said yesterday she would not consider voting for the climate package without drilling in ANWR. "I'm still saying ANWR is one of the must-haves," Murkowski said.
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The Guardian disappoints on Climate Change
Over the last few weeks or so the UK Guardian (who occasionally reprint our posts) has published a 12-part series about the stolen CRU emails by Fred Pearce that are well below the normal Guardian standards of reporting. We delineate some of the errors and misrepresentations below. While this has to be seen on a backdrop of an almost complete collapse in reporting standards across the UK media on the issue of climate change, it can't be excused on the basis that the Mail or the Times is just as bad. As a long-time Guardian reader and avid Guardian crossword puzzle solver, I'm extremely unhappy writing this post, but the pathologies of media reporting on this issue have become too big to ignore.
We highlight issues with three of the articles below, which revisit a number of zombie arguments that have been doing the rounds of the sceptic blogs for years. Two follow-up pieces will deal with two further parts of the series. Hopefully some of the more egregious factual errors can be fixed as part of a 'group experiment' in improving the stories, though the larger misconceptions probably can't be (and readers should feel free to use this information to comment on the articles directly). Why the Guardian is asking for group input after the stories were published instead of before is however a puzzle. Some of the other pieces in this series are fine, which makes the ones that get it so wrong all the more puzzling. The errors consist of mistakes in the basic science, misunderstandings of scientific practice, more out of context quotes and some specific issues that are relatively new. (In the text below, quotes from the articles are in italics).
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Close Encounters of the Absurd Kind
Part 2 of a series discussing the recent Guardian articles
A recent story by Fred Pearce in the February 9th online edition of the Guardian ("Victory for openness as IPCC climate scientist opens up lab doors") covers some of the more publicized aspects of the last 14 years of my scientific career. I am glad that Mr. Pearce's account illuminates some of the non-scientific difficulties I have faced. However, his account also repeats unfounded allegations that I engaged in dubious professional conduct. In a number of instances, Mr Pearce provides links to these allegations, but does not provide a balanced account of the rebuttals to them. Nor does he give links to locations where these rebuttals can be found. I am taking this opportunity to correct Mr. Pearce's omissions, to reply to the key allegations, and to supply links to more detailed responses.
Another concern relates to Mr. Pearce's discussion of the "openness" issue mentioned in the title and sub-title of his story. A naïve reader of Mr. Pearce's article might infer from the sub-title ("Ben Santer had a change of heart about data transparency…") that my scientific research was not conducted in an open and transparent manner until I experienced "a change of heart".
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Utah alleges conspiracy on climate change data
Usually when US states strike out at the federal government's track record on environment issues it is to highlight its lack of action. Not so for Utah.
Previously, California has sued the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) over water and car emission regulations. And Massachusetts and 11 other states famously sued the EPA for not regulating industrial emissions.
Now Utah has done the opposite. In a resolution passed earlier this month, the state's House of Representatives called on the US government to suspend efforts to cut industrial emissions until an investigation into climate science has been completed.
The original text of the resolution mentioned "the climate data conspiracy", a reference to the fallout from the leaked emails from the UK's Climatic Research Unit, but this was removed in a later amendment. The resolution states that the messages reveal a "well organized" effort to "manipulate" global temperature data.
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Utah House kills 'green' schools recommendation
Utah lawmakers have rejected a call to build and certify "green" schools that are energy efficient and have a clean learning environment.
Rep. Mark Wheatley, D-Murray, proposed the resolution to encourage Utah schools to build or retrofit to the standards of a "silver" certification by the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design [LEED] program. Doing so could save each school up to $100,000 in energy costs every year, he said.
The certification also assures appropriate lighting for school work and healthful indoor air quality, he said.
"It gives children a head start for a healthy, prosperous future," Wheatley said.
But critics said building to those standards is expensive, and the Legislature shouldn't encourage a program that likely would lead school districts to ask the cash-strapped state for construction money.
"We need to be really careful here," said Rep. Brad Dee, R-Washington Terrace. "We're asking [schools] to create a fiscal liability."
Resolution opponents said they have heard of LEED certification adding 20 percent or more to the cost of buildings, a figure that Wheatley disputed. Rep. Mike Morley, R-Spanish Fork, opposed the resolution, HJR20, and said schools can add insulation and other energy-saving improvements without committing to the full cost of LEED certification.
Democrats argued that the energy efficiency would make certification a cost saver rather than a liability, but the measure was defeated 47-21 in the House.
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UNDER THE RADAR - Utah Again
WOMEN'S RIGHTS -- UTAH LAWMAKERS PASS BILL TO CRIMINALIZE ILLEGAL ABORTION AND MISCARRIAGES: The Utah legislature passed a bill last week that defines illegal abortions and miscarriage as "criminal homicide," carrying penalties of "up to life in prison." The measure, not yet signed by Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R), "goes further than any other state" in holding a woman "criminally liable" for trying to end a pregnancy through illegal means. Not only does the measure impose severe penalties for illegal abortion, but it also narrows the definition of legal abortion in an attempt "to further restrict abortion," according to the bill's sponsor, state Rep. Carl Wimmer (R). Moreover, it "holds women legally responsible for miscarriages caused by 'reckless' behavior," allowing a district attorney to allege homicide merely by showing that "a woman behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn't intend to lose the pregnancy."