The Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council Has Petitioned The Supreme Court For Certiorari

October 21, 2023 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

 It’s the question that I know has been on the tips of the tongues of all Manhattan Contrarian readers: Will the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council, after getting booted ignominiously out of the D.C. Circuit on grounds of standing, now continue its fight to overturn EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding by petitioning the Supreme Court for Certiorari?

The answer is YES. Our Petition for a Writ of Certiorari was filed on Wednesday, October 18, and is now available on the Supreme Court’s website.

Not that other strategies did not occur to us. An obvious alternative would have been to let it go on this round, and then start over with a new Petition to reconsider the Endangerment Finding, addressed to EPA itself, only once there is a new Republican administration in Washington that might take such a Petition seriously.

But that approach would mean giving the Endangerment Finding a complete pass for the time being. No way were we going to do that. For those unfamiliar with the subject, the Endangerment Finding, adopted by EPA back in 2009, is the biggest piece of pseudoscientific absurdity ever perpetrated on the American people. It purports to determine that CO2 — a colorless, odorless, non-toxic trace gas constituting about 0.04% of the atmosphere — constitutes a “danger” to human health and welfare. The Endangerment Finding is then the entire basis for an unprecedented regulatory tsunami unleashed by the Biden administration on the American people and economy. The world needs to see that the serious people know how crazy this is, and that we are going to keep saying so, and that we are not going away.

Right now the Biden administration is moving aggressively to eliminate all use of fossil fuels to generate electricity, via a new Power Plant Rule proposed in May 2023. The entire basis for that Rule is the Endangerment Finding. The Biden administration is also moving aggressively to ban all internal combustion personal vehicles, via another Vehicle Rule also put forward in May 2023. That one also has the Endangerment Finding as its entire basis. The same goes for a multitude of other rules and regulatory initiatives covering things like blocking pipelines, restricting drilling, subsidizing intermittent electricity generation, requiring costly corporate disclosures, and many others. In the aggregate these regulatory initiatives look to impose hundreds of billions of dollars, or even trillions of dollars, of costs on the American people. All of this has no reason for existence other than the Endangerment Finding.

The Petition for Certiorari gave us an opportunity to shine a small spotlight on some of the absurdities of the law of standing as it currently exists in the Supreme Court and in the various Courts of Appeals. Readers of my previous updates on this litigation know that the D.C. Circuit threw out our case seeking to force the EPA to reconsider the Endangerment Finding on this ground of “standing,” which requires that the petitioning party show some kind of concrete injury from the regulation in question. We thought we had satisfied that requirement by making a presentation as to the tight correlation between regulatory efforts in various jurisdictions to suppress use of fossil fuels and sharply increasing electricity prices in the same jurisdictions. The D.C. Circuit found that this showing of concrete monetary harm was insufficient.

But, as we now show in our Petition for Certiorari, the same D.C. Circuit that thinks that increasing electricity costs are insufficient to establish consumer standing decided a case called Natural Resources Defense Council v. Wheeler in 2020. In that case the NRDC sought to compel additional regulation of hydrofluorocarbons on the ground that they (like CO2) are “greenhouse gases” that cause “climate change.” A member of NRDC asserted that he owned coastal property that was therefore “threatened” by rising sea levels. From our Petition:

There was no assertion that any of the harm had actually yet occurred, nor when it would occur, nor how it could be redressed by a court order that would have the same power over sea level as the commands of King Canute, but without the humility. In the real world, no scientifically valid evidence has ever established any link between greenhouse gas emissions and any supposed enhanced “threats” to coastal property, and all attempts to show that such emissions have led to accelerating sea level rise or increased hurricane activity have failed.

But the completely speculative claim was found sufficient to establish standing, because claims of threatened future environmental degradation, no matter how speculative or slight, are politically favored.

Among the examples of favored environmental allegations held sufficient to meet the “injury” element of standing, my favorites are the standing allegation of the plaintiffs in Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana v. United States:

Kelsey spends time along the Oregon coast in places like Yachats and Florence and enjoys playing on the beach, tidepooling, and observing unique marine animals. . . . The current and projected drought and lack of snow caused by Defendants are already harming all of the places Kelsey enjoys visiting, as well as her drinking water, and her food sources – including wild salmon. . . . Defendants have caused psychological and emotional harm to Kelsey as a result of her fear of a changing climate, her knowledge of the impacts that will occur in her lifetime, and her knowledge that Defendants are continuing to cause harms that threaten her life and wellbeing.

In 2020 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held these allegations sufficient to establish the injury element of standing. In the 2022-23 winter, the whole claim of “projected drought” got blown to bits by record snowfalls over the Western mountains; but no matter. The mere fear of such droughts is enough to establish standing if you are a favored environmental plaintiff.

It is likely that there is a good deal of sympathy for our position on today’s Supreme Court. But that does not mean that they will take this case. Perhaps more likely, they will wait until cases challenging the Power Plant Rule or the Vehicle Rule or other such rules get presented. But those will take several years to work their way up to the Court, during which time untold damage will have been done to the electric utility and automotive industries. In the end, the courts, and particularly the Supreme Court, can be an important part of the unraveling of the energy transformation sought by today’s climate cult. But likely the much more important factor in the unraveling will be the cost and unworkability of the net zero plans of the climate campaigners.

At CHECC, We're Down But Not Out!

May 25, 2023 Francis Menton  @ Manhattan Contrarian 

Today, the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit issued its Judgment in the case of Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council, et al. v. EPA. I am one of the lawyers for CHECC in this matter, where the Petitioners seek to have the court order EPA to reconsider its ridiculous 2009 Endangerment Finding (EF) that CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” constitute a “danger” to human health and welfare. To no one’s surprise, the court dismissed our Petition. The sole ground for the dismissal was what they call “standing.” The court did not reach or discuss the merits of the Petition, namely whether data and evidence accumulated since the 2009 EF had rendered the Finding definitively false and in need of reconsideration.

Also today, the Supreme Court decided the case of Sackett v. EPA. The Sackett case involved a different EPA rule, called the Waters of the United States rule. Thus the two cases may seem to be unrelated. But in fact they are closely related in the most important way, which is that both involve wild overreach by EPA, followed by cynical gaming by EPA of court procedural rules in order to avoid ever being held to account for the overreach. In Sackett, EPA finally got its comeuppance today, after almost 20 years of litigation. The Sackett decision increases our confidence that EPA will ultimately also be held to account for the EF and the many destructive rules flowing from it; but exactly how and when that will occur remain to be seen.

As discussed in my prior post of April 14, the oral argument held that day in CHECC v. EPA dealt almost entirely with the issue of standing. EPA focused their argument on seeking dismissal on this procedural ground, thus hoping (successfully, as it turned out) to avoid the merits. They contended that the Endangerment Finding was not itself a rule that affected anyone financially, and that there wasn’t even a pending, let alone final, rule seeking to limit greenhouse gas emissions from the electric power sector. They also contended that the 2009 Endangerment Finding that we were challenging related to the transportation sector (“mobile sources”) rather than the electricity sector (“stationary sources”).

Talk about cynical. The 2009 EF that we challenged in fact contained the only thing passing for the scientific basis of the Obama-era rule, called the Clean Power Plan, that sought to abolish fossil-fuel generated electricity. The CPP was rescinded by the Trump administration, and then ultimately declared an invalid overreach by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA on June 30, 2022. As CHECC v. EPA was getting briefed and argued between late 2022 and April 2023, it was common knowledge that Biden’s EPA had in the works a new and even more onerous rule restricting power plant emissions. That rule was only announced on May 8, and officially appeared in the Federal Register on May 23 — just two days ago. In the newly-published proposed rule relating to stationary sources, EPA acknowledges the 2009 EF as the source of the supposed scientific basis for the rule (at page 33,249):

In the 2009 Endangerment Findings, the Administrator found under section 202(a) of the CAA that elevated atmospheric concentrations of six key well-mixed GHGs—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2 O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)—“may reasonably be anticipated to endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations” (74 FR 66523; December 15, 2009) . . . .

Meanwhile, from today’s DC Circuit opinion:

CHECC draws no connection between the Endangerment Finding (which compels the regulation of motor vehicle emissions under § 202(a) of the Clean Air Act) and the price of residential electricity.

And thus, if you can even follow the convoluted logic here, EPA, with the support of the DC Circuit, has made it such that no consumer of electricity can challenge a rule seeking to eliminate the large majority of all reliable sources of electricity, and to impose on consumers what will almost certainly be hundreds of billions of dollars of additional costs.

We plan to fight on, likely through the en banc DC Circuit and the Supreme Court. Maybe we will see success at one of those levels, and maybe not. Undoubtedly, when the new power plant rule becomes final — later this year or maybe in 2024 — there will be multiple challenges to that on grounds similar to the ones that were ultimately successful in West Virginia v. EPA. Those challenges will likely reach the Supreme Court some time around 2027 or 2028. The question is, will there be anything left of our reliable electricity-generation sector by that time?

In the Sackett matter, the Sacketts began to work on building a house back in 2004. Within a few months, EPA issued an order to the Sacketts demanding that they stop work and restore the property, on the ground that wetness on the property was part of “waters of the United States” that EPA regulated. When the Sacketts attempted to bring a court action to determine that EPA’s order was overreach, EPA contended that the Sacketts had no ability to sue until going through a full administrative process — and incurring fines for non-compliance of some $40,000 per day. The Sacketts took that case to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2012 that the Sacketts had the right to sue. So they went back to the District Court, where, after 7 additional years of proceedings, the court ruled against the Sacketts in 2019 and determined that the wetness on the Sackett property was part of the “waters of the United States.” The Ninth Circuit affirmed in 2021. And the Supreme Court reversed today.

Incredibly, the Sacketts saw their case through nearly 20 years of this to achieve their victory. But their saga shows you EPA’s game plan — string things out so far as to exhaust the opposition and, in our case, force the entire reliable capacity for generating electricity out of business before the courts can intervene. We hope to achieve some success before too much destruction has occurred, but as can be seen from the DC Circuit’s decision, even at that prestigious court there is little sense yet of any kind of problem.

Oral Argument In CHECC v. EPA: The Issue Of Standing

April 14, 202  Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

This morning the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington held oral argument in the case of the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council v. EPA. That’s the case where a hardy band of citizen petitioners (CHECC) challenges the 2009 finding of EPA that CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” constitute a “danger” to human health and welfare by reason of their potential to warm the atmosphere. That finding, known as the Endangerment Finding or EF, is the underlying basis for the all-of-government regulatory assault on the fossil fuel industry and the energy economy currently being conducted by the Biden Administration.

I attended today’s argument in my capacity as one of the lawyers for CHECC (although my excellent co-counsel Harry MacDougald delivered the oral argument). I have had previous posts summarizing the briefing in the case, including this post at the time of the filing of the Opening Brief back in October 2022, and this one in February 2023 upon the filing of the final Reply Brief.

My previous posts on this case have focused on what we lawyers like to call the “merits,” which here means, has EPA articulated any valid scientific basis for its supposed “finding” of human endangerment from increased atmospheric CO2? On that issue, EPA’s position is pathetically weak. Given the mass hysteria gripping essentially all of our major institutions with the fear that the world is about to end from “climate change,” you would think that our government overlords would at least have a well-rehearsed and coherent story as to how that is supposed to happen. But they don’t. The stated basis for the EF is a combination of a temperature series where almost half of the data has been manufactured and infilled by computer algorithm, together with model predictions of atmospheric temperature patterns that have never been found in the empirical data as it has been collected. Unfortunately, almost none of the oral argument was devoted to these subjects.

Rather, slightly less than all of the argument was devoted to another issue that we lawyers call “standing.” Since the non-lawyers among the readership may not be familiar with this issue, I’ll provide some background.

Article III of the U.S. Constitution, in vesting what it calls the “judicial power” in the federal court system, defines the scope of that power in Section 2 in terms of what it calls “cases” and “controversies.” Those terms have long been interpreted to mean that for someone to qualify to initiate a federal litigation, he must have some kind of real stake in the matter. In contrast to many of the European countries, our courts do not entertain requests from mere citizen advocates who want to push some political cause by getting a favorable advisory court ruling. The courts use the term “standing” to refer to the required personal stake in the matter needed to qualify to bring a suit.

As a starting proposition, the requirement of standing is frankly a good idea, and keeps our courts out of quite a bit of mischief. However, the drawing of the lines between who has standing and who does not has proved to be quite difficult, most particularly in the area of challenges to the regulatory initiatives of the administrative state. The DC Circuit has issued one lengthy opinion after another on the subject — some as long as 100 pages — and the Supreme Court has also weighed in on multiple occasions. The opinions are confusing and not fully consistent. Moreover, the flood of verbiage in the cases provides a convenient smokescreen to cover the reality of what has occurred, which is that the cases as they currently exist give an advantage to left-wing advocacy groups in obtaining standing, and a disadvantage to advocates of limited government seeking to challenge federal agency overreach.

So as an example highly relevant to our case, it is well-established that any person or environmental advocacy organization can obtain standing to challenge environmental regulations by the simple assertion of interest in a clean and healthy environment. That interest is abstract, non-quantifiable, and non-monetary; but the courts have said that it is sufficient.

How about the interests of the members of CHECC? You might think (and we do think) that their interests are orders of magnitude more worthy of conferring standing than the interests typically asserted by environmental organizations. The members of CHECC assert that they all pay electric utility bills, and that the Endangerment Finding is being used in an intentional effort to drive up the cost of electricity in order to reduce the use of fossil fuels. As examples, we cited the famous quote from then-candidate Barack Obama (“Under my plan, . . . the price of electricity will necessarily skyrocket.”), as well as the experiences of places like California and Germany, where aggressive efforts to suppress fossil fuels and promote wind and solar energy have led to electricity prices two and three times higher than those in places that have continued the reliance on fossil fuels.

But despite the seemingly highly favorable contrast to the situation of the environmentalist advocates, the assertion of standing by CHECC is not open-and-shut. The questioning from the panel entirely focused on this issue: How do you know that electricity prices are going to go up? Have you offered sufficient proof of that?

Even as the judges pressed CHECC with those questions, in this very matter, a collection of environmental groups (e.g., American Lung Association, Clean Wisconsin, Appalachian Mountain Club) intervened with no more basis for standing than the generalized claim of an interest in a clean and healthy environment. Note that these organizations were not mere “amici” or “friends of the court.” Rather, by “intervening,” they claimed status as parties to the case, people with a sufficient stake that their voice is entitled to heard as of right, but on no more basis than concern that temperatures might rise by a couple of degrees a hundred years from now. Nobody bothered to try to object, because the case law supports that that claim is sufficient to confer standing. Needless to say, all of these groups are in favor of leaving the Endangerment Finding in place and proceeding with a transformation of the energy economy by the force of regulations issued by unelected bureaucrats.

Meanwhile, EPA’s energy transformation imposes its inevitable costs on consumers of electricity, likely to be at least in the hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions — without doubt the single most costly regulatory initiative of all time — and the DC Circuit appears to be struggling over whether any electricity consumer has a sufficient stake in the matter to convey “standing.” You literally can’t make this stuff up.

It will probably be multiple weeks if not months before we get the court’s decision.

Final Brief Submitted In CHECC v. EPA

February 11, 2023 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

The briefing is now complete in Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council v. EPA. That is the case, currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where a small and brave band of electricity consumers, CHECC, challenges the “science” behind EPA’s 2009 finding that CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” constitute a danger to human health and welfare. I am one of the attorneys for CHECC.

Our final Reply Brief was filed originally on Tuesday February 7, and then re-filed in corrected form the next day. (The reason for “correction” is too trivial to go into here. The clerks in the D.C. Circuit take great pleasure in devising trivial reasons to require lawyers to file “corrected” briefs.). Here is a link to the brief. It probably requires a subscription to access. Over the next few days we will probably come up with a way to provide a public access link to the full set of briefs in the case.

In the case, we ask the court to compel EPA to go back and re-assess the “science” of greenhouse gas “endangerment.” The briefing process gave EPA the chance to put its best foot forward as to the scientific basis underlying the finding of endangerment. What is truly remarkable is the extent to which EPA, not to mention the entire government-backed scientific establishment, completely lack any real scientific basis for the claim of great “danger.” The briefing has made that embarrassingly clear.

Equally remarkable is that the job of challenging EPA’s pseudoscientific smokescreen is left to a small handful of individuals working completely pro bono. The fear of being labeled a “science denier” by leftist groupthinkers is apparently strong enough to force almost everyone who should know better off the field of battle. However, we are grateful to the CO2 Coalition for its support in the form of an excellent amicus brief. The CO2 Coalition is the principal group of real scientists willing to continue to speak out about the fake science behind the climate change scare. The CO2 Coalition’s amicus brief was mainly the work of Professors William Happer of Princeton and Richard Lindzen of MIT.

I won’t try to go into great detail about the arguments in the brief, but here are two of the main ones:

The Made-up Surface Temperature Record

EPA relies on so-called “surface temperature” data, dating back to the late 1800s, which show substantial atmospheric warming over that period. The data derive from a network of ground-based thermometers. There are many, many problems with these data, mostly relating to the undeniable fact that the people who are responsible for compiling and maintaining the data massage, manipulate and in-fill information for various purposes, leading to an overall record that is thoroughly corrupted and unfit for any policy purpose. My thirty-part series “The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time” addresses the processes by which the massaging and manipulating leads to reductions in earlier-reported temperatures to enhance the apparent warming trend in the record.

But for purposes of this case, we focused on an aspect of the surface temperature record that is even clearer and less ambiguous: there is virtually no reported data as to surface temperature from the Southern Hemisphere oceans from before the year 2000. The Southern Hemisphere oceans are approximately 40% of the earth’s surface, and the period before 2000 is more than 80% of the surface temperature record. All the data for that vast proportion of the record has been fabricated by the people who are promoting the climate change scare. That fact leaves a gaping hole in EPA’s rationale for the Endangerment Finding. In its Brief, EPA simply tried to avoid the subject. From the Reply Brief, page 14:

EPA says the argument presents nothing new, and that it previously rejected similar arguments, and that the D.C. Circuit affirmed in Coal. for Responsible Regul., Inc. v. E.P.A, 684 F.3d 102 (D.C. Cir. 2012). But EPA has not shown where in the Endangerment Finding documents the lack of data from the Southern hemisphere oceans was addressed.

The Failure Of Real World Data To Validate The Models On Which EPA Relies

You might think that using real world data to validate hypotheses is the essence of science. But in the field of climate science, and particularly of government-backed climate science, when the data don’t support the model the response is a barrage of excuses and evasions.

Besides the failure of temperatures to rise at nearly the rate models have predicted, there is an even more definitive and embarrassing model failure, which is the absence of the predicted “tropical hot spot.” The “hot spot” was fundamental to EPA’s claimed understanding of the mechanisms of world climate that formed one of the bases of the Endangerment Finding. At pages 15-19 of the Reply Brief we beat EPA over the head with the fact that the “hot spot” can’t be found.

In EPA’s Brief, it responded as to the “hot spot” not by showing that it existed, but rather by claiming that they never said it was important. From the Reply Brief, page 18:

EPA’s contention at p. 48 of its brief, and p. 21 of the Denial that the model- observation mismatch on the Tropical Hot Spot is not important is inconsistent with its previous position on this topic. The Technical Support Document for the 2009 Endangerment Finding at p. 50 says that if the Hot Spot were missing it would be “an important inconsistency.” Now that it is proven to be missing, even by the IPCC, EPA says it is an unimportant inconsistency. EPA’s double-talk does not meet the requirement of rational decision making.

There is plenty more in the Reply Brief for your reading pleasure, should you have the time. The betting line is that the D.C. Circuit will fall for EPA’s hocus pocus, but you never know when rationality might prevail.

The Briefing Begins In CHECC v. EPA

October 22, 2022/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

In a post last week, I gave notice that battle was about to be joined with the EPA over what it claims to be the “science” behind global warming alarm. The case is called the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC) v. EPA, now pending in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. CHECC challenges EPA’s 2009 Finding that CO2 and other greenhouse gases constitute a “danger” to human health and welfare. At the outset of the Trump administration, CHECC filed a Petition for reconsideration and rescission of the Endangerment Finding. That Petition was finally denied by EPA on April 20, 2022, more than a year into the Biden administration, and the appeal followed. I am one of the attorneys for CHECC.

The opening Brief on behalf of CHECC was filed on October 14, and a week later on October 21 an amicus curiae brief was filed in support of CHECC by the CO2 Coalition, together with Professors William Happer of Princeton and Richard Lindzen of MIT. I was going to start off with a review of the CHECC brief, which I helped to prepare, but as luck would have it our CHECC brief got “bounced” by the clerks at the DC Circuit. 

For those of you who have never dealt with court clerks, there is a great resemblance to the DMV, or perhaps to the old Soviet bureaucracy. The alleged ground for bouncing our brief was that we had used too many acronyms — things like EPA, IPCC, GHG (greenhouse gases), GAST (global average surface temperature), and so forth. Our use of such acronyms was somehow deemed excessive, so we need to go back and make some very minor modifications before there is a completely final version of the brief. Rather than confuse things by referring to a brief that will shortly change in minor ways, I’ll start today by covering some of the highlights of the CO2 Coalition amicus brief.

First, we are extremely honored to have such distinguished and serious scientists supporting our position. For those who haven’t heard of them, Professors Happer and Lindzen are, respectively, the senior atmospheric physicists on the faculties of Princeton and MIT. Their lists of titles, awards and honors are almost endless, and occupy several pages in the brief. The CO2 Coalition is a large group of top scientists and people in related fields with specialties related in one way or another to the global warming subject matter, and whose views lean toward skepticism. Happer is the Chair of the CO2 Coalition, and Lindzen is a member.

You might think that tackling the “science” of CO2-driven atmospheric warming is just too heavy a lift to get a court interested, and maybe that’s where this court will end up. But this brief shows why the subject is not really that complicated. At page 18 the brief quotes the famous aphorism of physicist Richard Feynman, “If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.” In other words, it’s just a question of finding a few, or even one, example where the theory relied on by EPA is contradicted by the data.

The brief minces no words in distinguishing real science from the government-dictated orthodoxy and consensus on which EPA relies. This is from the summary of argument:

Scientific knowledge is determined by the scientific method, through which theoretical predictions are validated or rejected by observations. If the theoretical predictions do not work, the theory is rejected. That’s real science. Scientific knowledge is not determined by government-controlled opinions, consensus, peer review, or theoretical models that do not work. Those are false science. This brief applies the scientific method to the Endangerment Findings and its supporting Technical Support Document and demonstrates both are scientifically corrupted and thus must be rescinded .. . . .

In subsequent sections the brief compares IPCC model predictions of catastrophic warming — specifically relied upon by EPA in the Endangerment Finding’s Technical Support Document — to temperature observations thus far in the real world. They include this famous chart from Congressional testimony given by John Christy back in 2017:

From the brief, commenting on the divergence of theory from observations:

We now know the IPCC theoretical climate models, an early version of which was used in the Endangerment Findings and Technical Support Document, fail the basic test of the scientific method and, thus, should not be used. Without a valid theoretical model, the IPCC’s future climate projections and scenarios have no scientific validity. For this reason alone, the Findings and Technical Support Document should be rescinded.

And the brief does not just end after demonstrating that EPA’s theoretical projections of climate catastrophe have been scientifically invalidated. Pages 30-32 are then devoted to a presentation of new work by Professor Happer and co-author William van Wijngaarden demonstrating why the capacity of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to warm the atmosphere is largely saturated at current concentrations, such that further increases in concentrations only have the potential to cause insignificant further warming. The Happer/van Wijngaarden paper is definitely technical and challenging to understand. However, in the context of this dispute, it is just an additional argument not essential to victory. The key point is that EPA’s “science” has been invalidated by evidence.

By all means read the entire brief if you have the time and inclination. We are very grateful to the CO2 Coalition and Professors Happer and Lindzen for their support.