Observations From the Back Row

By Rich Kozlovich

“It’s For the Children!” New ad portrays GOP attack on EPA as assault on babies

With several key votes set for next week on the GOP’s ongoing assault on the Environmental Protection Agency, this new ad gives us a hint on how the left intends to respond — by portraying the GOP push as an assault on children.

So opposition to regulation of the gas we all breathe out is equivalent to feeding babies arsenic. There is no lie the Warmists will not sink to. But their entire case is built on dishonesty so we should not be too surprised. Global warming has long ceased to be a scientific debate. It is now just a Fascist lunge for power on the part of the Green/Left -- John Ray

The ad will run for a week on D.C. cable, suggesting the target audience is Beltway elites and that its goal is to frame the Dem response in Congress.

They claim that; “The Clean Air Act prevented 160,000 early deaths last year, including 230 infants, yet Congress is busy working to prevent the EPA from updating and enforcing standards that would limit toxic pollutants that endanger the public health,” Mike Lux, President of American Family Voices, says. “If we don’t curb those pollutants, they’ll end up in our air, water and food and eventually in our children. Congress needs to let the EPA do its job to protect public health.”

The EPA is an out of control rogue agency that must be dealt with.
This link will take you to three articles that outline the problem properly without the emotional hand wringing.  It also outlines what is going on in Congress over how to deal with it. RK

My Take - I am completely convinced from EPA's past claims that they can't for a minute substantiate those figures.  The minute that you hear this phrase, It's For the Children", you had better perk up your ears and sharpen your wits, because some greenie group or their handmaidens at the EPA or government are about to take advantage of all of us. Either they are introducing some new piece of legislation based on junk science that will undermine the economy and destroy individual rights, or they are attempting to maintain legislative authority over something they shouldn't have gotten in the first place. But one thing is for sure. They don’t have the science on their side or they wouldn’t be working this con.  Below are some articles that get to the root of this issue. 

Desperate Climate Scientists File Second Lawsuit Against Top Skeptic
Mann, the infamous creator of the now discredited ‘hockey stick’ graph was once the darling of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a tax hungry government funded organization that blames mankind for raising global temperatures by 0.7 degrees during the 20th Century. Now he is desperate to hit back at his critics with the help of Big Green's immense financial resources. Below we examine the shady background of Professor Mann and explain what Ball must do to defeat this latest legal challenge.

The ascent of Mann
Climate Realists has an interesting article (see link below) that looks at the extraordinary rise to prominence of the hockeystickmeister, Michael Mann. This is one of the angles of the hockey stick story that is still something of a mystery - how did such an obscure scientist, one who had just completed his PhD, get to be lead author on the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC?

Mann’s Ph.D ‘Rushed Through’
Instantly, Mann was then plucked from obscurity and appointed not just a contributing author for Chapters 7,8,12 of the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (1998-00) but also Lead Author for Chapter 2. And with no track record whatsoever in this field, Mann now with tree ring data thrust into his hand, famously carved out his infamous ‘hockey stick’ graph.

Headline Story: Did a Secret Climate Deal Launch the Hockey Stick Fakery? By John O’Sullivan, guest post at Climate Realists
…………."So what miracle turned this problematic researcher’s life around?
If miracles happened for Mann, they came in the form of Barry Saltzman. You see, this struggling student’s career was transformed the moment Saltzman became his Ph.D adviser. Only after Saltzman applied his influence were Mann’s lofty credentials “rushed through.” Mann then turned himself into a makeshift tree ring counter, and overnight became the iconic figure in the IPCC Third Report (2001). The rest is history, as they say."........If my name were Ken Cuccinelli I would want to chase down one or two grant and funding sources; with proof of collusion a case for fraud holds water. That's treble damages and Virginia’s taxpayers will be sitting $1.5 million better off plus expenses.

My Take - Normally I wouldn’t pay any attention to something such as this because on the surface it appears to be nothing except an ad hominem attack…normally that is. Except there seems to be a pattern here. I have already linked the article about, The Strange Case of Sari Kovats, which places another unknown, unqualified and unpublished “scientist” in a position of enormous responsibility. Why? Is it because qualified scientists wouldn’t have gone along with this fraud? Maybe, except scientific fraud is so common I doubt that they couldn’t find someone corrupt enough to go along. Perhaps this was easier though. Take someone with nothing to lose and make them special, make them important and famous. Someone easy to convince. Someone who perhaps really didn’t have what it takes to be those things on their own.

Dr. John Costello writes, “Climategate has shattered that myth (the myth of global warming). It gives us a peephole into the work of the scientists investigating possibly the most important issue ever to face mankind. Instead of seeing large collaborations of meticulous, careful, critical scientists, we instead see a small team of incompetent cowboys, abusing almost every aspect of the framework of science to build a fortress around their ‘old boys club’, to prevent real scientists from seeing the shambles of their research. Most people are aghast that this could have happened; and it is only because climate science exploded from a relatively tiny corner of academia into a hugely funded industry in a matter of mere years that the perpetrators were able to get away with it for so long.”

What fascinates me about Mann’s lawsuit is that he has to know that when you sue someone…everyone is deposed…that means he has to come forth with all the stuff he has been refusing to come forward with. You must answer the questions asked. Which makes me wonder; does he believe that his work isn’t fraudulent? Does he actually believe that his work can stand up to honest peer review? Does he honestly believe that he can win? Is this a case of desperate delusion?  It does seem clear though that "he knows even less about law than he does about science."

Many ‘scientists’ are going down the tubes over this, and some of them will pay for their fraud financially and it would be nice to see some end up in jail. After all, fraud isn’t just a civil offence, it is a criminal offense. That would help with the fact that “corruption among scientists is actually quite common. According to official statistics 40 percent of scientists have witnessed such conduct but do not report it.”   As for Cuccinelli's civil case against Mann, that could end up being a criminal case;

 "The Evidence Shows Probable Cause" - If anyone doubts Cuccinelli’s just cause then I suggest they read the Wegman Report, those leaked Climategate e-mails plus the British investigation known as the Oxburgh Committee Report. 

The IPCC has been shown to be thoroughly corrupt; but then again it is part of the United Nations, so what can we expect?  Mann's pinnacle work, The Hockey Stick Graph, has been shown to be fraudulent, and it seems impossible to believe that this was anything less that deliberate, and Hansen’s work was shown to have easily discoverable mathematical “errors” .  So would someone please explain to me why people still quote them?

Let's get this right once and for all.  Scientific integrity is an oxymoron, we can no longer trust these people.  We need to start questioning everything they say and do; especially if it involves environmental issues. Especially since we are paying them for their expertise.  The least we should expect is that it would not be corrupt; but then again they do so much work for the EPA; so what can we expect?    RK

_______________________Quote of the Week_________________________

Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science, its called peer review.  If something isn't peer reviewed it isn't science. Warmism is junk science and junk science cannot stand such scrutiny. Paraphrased quote from John Ray.

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