Environment

Regular readers will have noted that I haven't exactly been in top form lately.  Sorry.  I have a lot of stuff to post when I feel more like writing and posting it.  Nevertheless, the news that California is suing car manufacturers for pollution damages briefly stirred my apathy.  I fear that this was both horrifying and inevitable.  I am reminded of the premise of Atlas Shrugged -- the petty vindictive envy held by the human leech for those it feeds upon.

Gregg, the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, slipped in a last minute rider to the just passed CJS Appropriations bill that exempts the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from complying with the mandates of the Data Quality Act. The DQA guarantees the use of sound science in policy making by ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility and integrity of scientific information federal agencies use. If approved, NOAA would be the only agency exempt from sound science. NOAA's DQA regulations are available here.

NOAA, of course, oversees the National Climatic Data Center and is the lead agency in conducting research into the existence and effects of climate change. By exempting NOAA, this provision will prevent an honest evaluation of the science of climate change from occurring and ensure that future policy decisions are based not on sound science but rather on junk science.

Thanks to the Countertop Chronicles for the scoop. I would think that sound scientific data would be one thing that all sides in the environmental debate would agree on, but it seems that just isn't so. Of course, the political wing of the environmental movement appears to have become dominated by the agenda of eco-terrorists and hypocrits, rather than people truly concerned about conservation, so I shouldn't be surprised by this sort of thing.

Remember the infamous Clinton tactic of treating militia groups simply concerned about their communities, and interested in preserving their rights, as "domestic terrorists"? It was joked for a while that if three men met and called themselves a militia, two of them were federal agents. Compared to real terrorists, we really have seen any problems from those so-called "threats". But now that the shoe is on the other foot, we're starting to see incidents of real domestic terrorism from the left-wing counterparts, specifically this series of arsons.

... but this documentary debunking the Kyoto Protocol is well worth the time spent watching it.  When you look closely at the policies promoted by the Green Party, it's easily possible to come away with the impression that they would be better termed the red party; communists and socialists with a coat of paint to give them an environmentally-friendly appeal.   And indeed, that's exactly what they are: the environmental policies demanded by the Greens can only be implemented by a state that disregards private property rights and exercises a suffocating centralized control of production.  Hat tip to Little Green Footballs.