“Optimistic” Obama Distances Himself from “Malthusian, woe, Chicken Little, the earth is falling”

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 20, 2009

President Obama had a realism moment last week when he responded, off-script, to a question posed to him at a meeting with the Business Roundtable in Washington. In response to a challenge to costly carbon-dioxide (CO₂) regulation by Weyerhaeuser President Daniel Fulton, Obama opined:

I’m not somebody who — I’ve never bought into these Malthusian, woe, Chicken Little, the earth is falling — I tend to be pretty optimistic. I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t pretty optimistic. But I think this is–the science is overwhelming. This is a real problem. It will have severe economic consequences, as well as political and national security and environmental consequences.

Well, here is a little secret that should be brought out in the open. …

CO2 Regulation under the Clean Air Act: Economic Train Wreck, Constitutional Crisis, Legislative Thuggery

By Marlo Lewis -- March 19, 2009

Call it an economic train wreck, a constitutional crisis, or legslative thuggery. Litigation-driven regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) under the Clean Air Act (CAA) is all of the above.

The Supreme Court case of Massachusetts v. EPA (April 2, 2007) has set the stage for a policy disaster. Mass v. EPA’s second anniversary rapidly approaches, and in a Power Point presentation leaked to Greenwire last week, EPA reveals how it plans to respond to the Court. But first, some background on the case and the Pandora’s Box it has created.…

The Validity of Man-made Atmospheric CO2 Buildup (Part I in an occasional series challenging ‘ultra-skeptic’ climate claims)

By Chip Knappenberger -- March 18, 2009

In the realm of climate science, as in most topics, there exists a range of ideas as to what is going on, and what it means for the future.

At the risk of generalizing, the gamut looks something like this: Ultra-alarmists think that human greenhouse-gas-producing activities will vastly change the face of the planet and make the earth inhospitable for humans; they therefore demand large and immediate action to curtail greenhouse gas emissions.

Alarmists understand that human activities are changing the earth’s climate and think that the potential changes are sufficient to warrant some pre-emptive action to try to mitigate them.

Skeptics think that humans activities are changing the earth’s climate but, by and large, they think that the changes are not likely to be terribly disruptive (and even could be, in net, positive) and that drastic action to curtail greenhouse gas emissions is unnecessary, difficult, and ineffective.…