Posted by
BLOGASSAULT on Saturday, August 29, 2009 10:25:07 AM
Here is a interesting story a freind emailed me from the
L.A. Times. It seems the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants to take the EPA to court to determine if man is warming the planet. It would be interesting, but probably won't happen.
"It would be evolution versus creationism," said William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs. "It would be the science of climate change on trial."
The goal of the chamber, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, is to fend off potential emissions regulations by undercutting the scientific consensus over climate change. If the EPA denies the request, as expected, the chamber plans to take the fight to federal court.
The EPA is having none of it, calling a hearing a "waste of time" and saying that a threatened lawsuit by the chamber would be "frivolous."
It is pretty clear that this will end up going no where. No court is going to take up a case that simply can't be proved or disproved.
Environmentalists, of course, are laughing at the idea of a trial.
Environmentalists say the chamber's strategy is an attempt to sow political discord by challenging settled science -- and note that in the famed 1925 Scopes trial, which pitted lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in a courtroom battle over a Tennessee science teacher accused of teaching evolution illegally, the scientists won in the end.
The chamber proposal "brings to mind for me the Salem witch trials, based on myth," said Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist for the environmental group Union of Concerned Scientists. "In this case, it would be ignoring decades of publicly accessible evidence."
Here is the crux of the story...
In the coming weeks, the EPA is set to formally declare that the heat-trapping gases scientists blame for climate change endanger human health, and are thus subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. The so-called endangerment finding will be a cornerstone of the Obama administration's plan to set strict new emissions standards on cars and trucks.
This is why I disagree about the "publicly accessible evidence." This has a lot more to do about politics than science. Obama needs this ruling to help his legislation through congress. Once that happens, his second large democratic activists "payoff" gets set in motion. You can believe that man-made climate change is real, but until it is proven, inacting trillion dollar govenment programs and tax increases on the general public tomake little to no difference on climate seems ridiculous. But hey, that is just me.
The good thing is, like the health care bill, citizens are seeing these government monstosities for what they are; government takeovers.