Republican state AG's threaten to prosecute climate change alarmists

From Rick Moran at The American Thinker Blog:

Thirteen state GOP attorneys general have sent a letter to the Democratic AG's who are investigating ExxonMobile for fraud in climate change research, telling them that if minimizing the danger of climate change is fraud, so is exaggerating the peril. They threaten to prosecute climate alarmists for making spectacular claims of disaster that have not materialized.

If Democratic attorneys general can pursue climate change skeptics for fraud, then also at risk of prosecution are climate alarmists whose predictions of global doom have failed to materialize.

The “cuts both ways” argument was among those raised by 13 Republican attorneys general in a letter urging their Democratic counterparts to stop using their law enforcement power against fossil fuel companies and others that challenge the climate change catastrophe narrative.

"Consider carefully the legal precedent and threat to free speech, said the state prosecutors in their letter this week, headed by Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange.

“If it is possible to minimize the risks of climate change, then the same goes for exaggeration,” said the letter. “If minimization is fraud, exaggeration is fraud.”

If the AG's go through with their threat, their number one target should be Al Gore. He has not only been spectacularly wrong in many of his predictions, but he has also become fabulously wealthy by gaming the carbon trading system and capitalizing on his notoriety as the number one scaremonger in the world. I fantasize about putting him in an orange jumpsuit and making him do the perp walk in front of the cameras.

I agree, indict Algore for fraud!

AG Claude Walker contradicts self on ‘danger’ of fossil fuels

From The American Thinker Blog:

What kind of a prosecuting attorney would sue one fossil fuel company to keep an oil refinery in his jurisdiction, then five months later launch an investigation of another, claiming that fossil fuel is a “product that is destroying the earth”?

Flanked by Al Gore and other left-wing climate alarmist attorneys general, Virgin Islands A.G. Claude Walker was part of a March 29 press conference called “AGs United For Clean Power.” Walker then issued administrative subpoenas to ExxonMobil and free-market think-tank Competitive Enterprise Institute under auspices that their public statements about climate change violate the Virgin Islands' Criminally Influenced Corrupt Organizations law.

The investigation is highly controversial, and probably in violation of several constitutional rights protected by the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. Law professor Glenn Reynolds wrote that it may even be a criminal offense under a federal statute prohibiting conspiracies to violate constitutional rights.
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In the category of “you can’t make this stuff up,” in October last year, Walker sued Hovensa LLC, an oil refiner co-owned by Hess Corp and Venezuela, to keep open its Virgin Islands refinery so it could continue producing what Walker just five months later would call the “product that is destroying the earth.”

As reported in September at Bloomberg, Hovensa “filed for bankruptcy protection following years of environmental litigation, plunging oil prices and increased competition.”

Then, in October, Walker sued Hovensa, alleging that the financially crippled company was “violating the law by abandoning the refinery a decade before it fulfilled its obligation to operate it,” according to Argus News. The lawsuit sought “damages of at least $1.5 [billion], which includes at least $150 [million] in annual benefits to the Virgin Islands in 2012-22 when Hess was obligated to continue operating the refinery.”

Walker seems to be a bit of a one-trick pony in his schizophrenic approach to prosecuting fossil fuel companies. He sought treble damages against Hovensa to keep it operating in his jurisdiction under the same Criminally Influenced Corrupt Organizations law that allegedly is his basis for investigating Exxon, which is not operating in his jurisdiction.

Consistency has never been a strong suit for liberals.

Punish State A.G.’s Who Treat Disagreement As A Crime

Instapundit's USA Today column:

UPDATE: From the comments:

These AG should be met with howling crowds whenever they show their faces. The people and businesses that give them political contributions should get the same treatment. They and their supporters should be publicly shamed at every opportunity. These are the tactics that the left uses and they should receive them in return tenfold.

Plus: “Howling crowds should bring their friends ‘Tar’ and ‘Feathers’.”

The tar and feathers need to applied AFTER they are dragged out to the street naked.

After a Million Years of Daily Use The UK May Finally Ban Using Fire to Cook Food

From The Daily Mail UK via H/T Ace of Spades HQ:

The Paris climate change deal spells the beginning of the end for cooking and heating with gas, experts claimed yesterday.

Within 15 years, British families may have to start phasing out gas cookers, fires and boilers if the UK is to meet new tougher targets aimed at halting rises in global temperature.
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Experts predict the stricter targets will mean the familiar sights of gas hobs and ovens and gas-fired boilers will become a thing of the past.

WTF?!?!?!

The Week in Pictures -- Workplace Confusion Edition

From the guys at Powerline Blog:

NOAA refuses to comply with House subpoena for documents on climate

From Rick Moran at The American Thinker:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is refusing to fully comply with a subpoena from Science Committee chair Lamar Smith that would shed light on the 15 year "pause" in warming.

The agency cites "confidentiality" in refusing to turn over documents.

Confidentiality, the documents were paid for by the American Taxpayer. WE own the documents.

Aside from the shocking arrogance in defying a subpoena from Congress, it's pretty obvious that the NOAA doesn't want to release the data because it will either show they cooked the books, or, as they've done in the past, misinterpreted the data. Smith can go to court, but by the time the issue is adjudicated, the next Congress will be sitting.

There is a simple solution. Zero out the NOAA budget until they comply.

Another Climate Alarmist buys Another Coal Company

From Breitbart's Big Government:

It’s a good thing I finally went public last week with my long-held view that Democrat investors were going to snap up coal companies driven to bankruptcy by Obama’s war on coal.

The day after I made my prediction, news came that leftist billionaire George Soros had purchased shares of the two largest U.S. coal companies, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal. Now comes news that bankrupt Patriot Coal is being purchased in a $400 million deal led by Tom Clarke, a prominent Virginia-based environmentalist.

But Clarke’s purchase of Patriot brings a new — and likely fraudulent — twist to what I called “Obama’s Great Coal Train Robbery.”

My original article forecast that the new kings of coal would have try to rehabilitate coal so they could profit from it with a straight face after having for years bashed the essential commodity as a people- and planet-murderer.

So Clarke plans to do this — no kidding — by planting trees. Clarke will sell his coal at a 10 percent premium. And why would any cash-strapped utility pay 10 percent more for Clarke’s coal? The coal will come with a carbon credit certificate (also called a “carbon offset”) worth 30 percent of the coal’s emissions.

One time is an anomaly, two times is a coincidence, three times is a pattern. This is a pattern.

Putting climate change ahead of constituents

From Joel Kotkin at the OC Register:

This great betrayal has many causes, but perhaps the largest one has been the abandonment of broad-based economic growth traditionally embraced by Democrats. Instead, they have opted for a policy agenda that stresses environmental puritanism and notions of racial redress, financed in large part by the windfall profits of Silicon Valley and California’s highly taxed upper-middle class.

Nowhere in California is this agenda more clearly manifested than with state Senate President pro Tem Kevin de León, who represents impoverished East Los Angeles. De León has proclaimed addressing “climate change” as the Senate’s “top priority” and is calling for, among other things, disinvestment from fossil fuel companies. Rarely considered seem to be the actual impacts of these policies on the daily lives of millions of working- and middle-class Californians.

Kotkin, self describes as a classic '60's liberal, not one of the new progressives. His background as a demographer and college professor, who actually publishes legitimate academic papers, write opinion pieces based of scientific collected and reproducaible data. Not pie on the sky, un provable theories. It's refreshing to have an honest academic.

EPA climate change regs don’t change climate

From Legal Insurrection:

EPA Chief Gina McCarthy recently testified before Congress; when questioned by Chairman Lamar Smith over ineffective regulations that raise the cost of energy and thereby punish low income Americans, she admitted the regulations would have virtually no impact on climate.

So, the only question asked by Congress should be, why?

The Week in Pictures -- Graduation Edition

From the guys at Powerline Blog: