The Environment Attacks … Again

As President Obama heads off to Copenhagen to meet with other world leaders and scientists at the global warming convention, serious concerns and doubts are growing around the science behind climate change. The EPA formally declared that CO2 is a danger to the public’s health and scientists have been caught doctoring the data to make global warming seem more dangerous than it really is.

Last month the email system of a leading global-warming advocacy center in the UK was hacked and the data was published on line. The director of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit confirmed that the more than three thousand e-mails are genuine, proving that none of the files were fabricated.

The emails and files show that scientists from the U.K. and the U.S. have been deleting or replacing data that didn’t support global warming with numbers they made up for over ten years. A letter from a scientist in Colorado admitted that they can’t account for the lack of global warming.

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.” the letter stated.

Earlier this week the Environmental Protection Agency formally declared that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and a danger to public health. This move is widely expected to clear the way for the agency to regulate a wide range of CO2-emitting industries under provisions of the Clean Air Act. Emissions legislation has been stalled in the Senate for some time now and many view this announcement as a vehicle for Obama to bypass congress and micromanage just about every aspect of the economy.

Any serious restrictions placed on businesses to restrict emissions would be devastating to our economy and could prolong or exacerbate the recession. Since 85 percent of the U.S. economy runs on fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide, imposing a cost on CO2 is equivalent to placing an economy-wide tax on energy use.

The kind of industrial-strength EPA red tape that the agency could enforce in the name of global warming would result in millions of dollars in compliance costs. These are unnecessary costs that businesses will inevitably pass on to the American consumer, slow economic growth and kill jobs. Although the crafted rules say only facilities that emit 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year or more will be affected, businesses fear the exemption may not hold up in court and could now be imposed on many smaller commercial buildings, farms, restaurants, churches and small businesses.

Despite the growing mountain of evidence disputing the science of global warming, President Obama was desperate for a prize to deliver to Copenhagen this month. The EPA delivered his prize and how we all get to wait and see what regulations the agency will come up with.