The Gang That Can't Talk Intelligibly
A few days ago, House Republicans held their first hearing on climate science. Actually, as John Broder reported in the NYT, the ostensible purpose of the hearing was
to review the economic impact of pending limits on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. But much of the discussion focused instead on whether climate science supports the agency’s finding that greenhouse gases are a threat to health and the environment; that finding is what makes the gases subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.
Broder does a nice job distilling the highlights to support his nutgraph (what much of the hearing’s discussion focused on). But if you want a saltier taste of the event, head over to The Economist’s Democracy in America blog, where this post gives you the same news while also deconstructing the absurdist kabuki nature of a typical congressional hearing.
Posts like this demonstrate why reporting-centric blogs at magazines are much more engaging than those at newspapers. For example, I really like the Green blog at the NYT, but its style is only marginally less dispassionate than the house style of official NYT news stories. In that sense, the blog serves as just another platform to report environment and energy related stories, which is great in of itself. But if you want some color and verve with your news, you’ll have to look elsewhere, and that is usually at magazine blogs like Democracy in America.
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.
Somehow people think that because the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision( before Climategate revealed the depths of climate science) that it is established that there are good reasons to regulate greenhouse gases under existing law. One quote from the Court’s syllabus reveals how fatuous the majority opinion was. It stated:
“The harms associated with climate change are seriousand well recognized. Indeed, the NRC Report itself””which EPA regards as an “objective and independent assessment of the relevant science,” 68 Fed. Reg. 52930″”identifies a number of environmental changes that havealready inflicted significant harms, including “the globalretreat of mountain glaciers, reduction in snow-coverextent, the earlier spring melting of rivers and lakes, [and]the accelerated rate of rise of sea levels during the 20th century relative to the past few thousand years . . . .” NRC Report 16.
Petitioners allege that this only hints at the environ-mental damage yet to come. According to the climate scientist Michael MacCracken, “qualified scientific experts involved in climate change research” have reached a”strong consensus” that global warming threatens (among other things) a precipitate rise in sea levels by the end of the century, MacCracken Decl. ¶15, Stdg. App. 207, “se-vere and irreversible changes to natural ecosystems,” id., ¶5(d), at 209, a “significant reduction in water storage inwinter snowpack in mountainous regions with direct andimportant economic consequences,”
Can anyone seriously read this passage without laughing at ludicrous it is? Anyone who wants to read the full extent of the majority’s ineptitude can Google Massachusetts v EPA 2006, Supreme Court Decision.
JD
Yes, JD, I’m sure serious and informed people, including many scientists, can indeed read that without laughing at or finding it ludicrous.
Does that answer your question?