Senate committee voted Tuesday to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from using ‘secret science’ to back its regulations. The vote in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee came after the GOP-controlled House repeatedly approved the bill. It previous was stalled in the Democratic-majority Senate. Under the measure, which President Obama has threatened to veto if the Senate passes it, the EPA would only be allowed to use scientific studies whose detailed results are posted publicly online. –Timothy Cama, The Hill, 28 April 2015
President Barack Obama and Congress are headed for another power clash on the international stage, as key Senate Republicans challenge his efforts to forge a global pact on climate change. The White House considers the agreement with nearly 200 nations a historic opportunity to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions world-wide. But some GOP senators view it as executive overreach, and they are quietly considering ways to warn other countries that the president doesn’t speak for them and may not be able to deliver on his promises to slash emissions. –Colleen McCain Nelson, The Wall Street Journal, 27 April 2015
India has voluntarily announced efforts to reduce emission intensity by 20-25 per cent by 2020 from the 2005 level without reckoning the emissions from agriculture sector, Lok Sabha was informed today. Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said during Question Hour that though India was a party to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, it did not have legally binding green house gas (GHG) emission reduction commitments. —Press Trust of India, 29 April 2015
India has pledged to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 20 – 25% in 2020 compared to 2005 levels. This target does not cover emissions from the agricultural sector. India proposed the target during the Copenhagen negotiations and submitted it to the Copenhagen Accord on 30 January 2010. —Climate Action Tracker
The Modi government has cancelled the registration of nearly 9,000 foreign-funded NGOs that failed to file their annual returns. The order, quietly issued on April 6, came days before the Centre’s effort to tighten the grip on prominent NGOs that receive foreign funds like Greenpeace India and the Ford Foundation. The security establishment has been advocating a hard line on foreign-funded NGOs for years. But it was only after a change of regime at the Centre that the home ministry started the groundwork for the crackdown. –Aloke Tikku, Hindustan Times, 28 April 2015
With news that Pope Francis will release a document articulating the importance of addressing climate change, a document that will be paired with a three-month-long campaign for individual parishes per the Times and a speech to Congress that is likely to broach the subject — can Pope Francis actually change Americans’ minds? We’re skeptics. Attitudes on global warming have been fairly flat for decades now, with those considering it a subject for worry comprising just over half of the population and those not worried at all slowly gaining in number. –Philip Bump, The Washington Post, 28 April 2015
There was no discussion at this week’s Vatican “conference” en route to Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change. What’s to discuss? Anybody who disagrees is an apostate, destined for damnation. The important point is to stop them bringing climate hell to earth. The event ‚Äì along with an accompanying statement — confirmed that the Vatican has become an arm of the godless United Nations, and an unabashed shill for its murky Sustainable Development Goals. The Vatican’s climate change statement peddles eco-liberation theology based on the tedious demonization of markets and capitalism. –Peter Foster, Financial Post, 29 April 2015
Its hard to tell if we are witnessing mass climate hysteria, or just loathsome fear mongering to promote a political agenda, but it is oh so predictable, and oh so sickening. Every weather event and every tragedy is now due rising CO2. To paraphrase Dr. Viner, “natural storms and earthquakes are now just a thing of the past”. With the help of a few alarmist scientists, the media bombards us with the meme that “Everything is caused by rising CO2.” Today the Seth Bornstein prize for yellow climate journalism goes to Newsweek. –Jim Steele, Watts Up With That, 29 April 2015
Jean-Pascale van Ypersele, a Belgian activist scientist who is seeking leadership of the UN climate panel, approaches climate change not as a dispassionate scholar, but as a committed environmental activist. He is an honourary member of that granddaddy of green groups, the Club of Rome. He has accepted financing from Greenpeace and produced a report for that organization at the very same time he was serving as an IPCC official. This is outrageous behaviour. If a judge in a murder trial were writing reports for the prosecutor’s office, no one would believe for a second that he was impartial. He’d be dismissed. –Donna Laframboise, No Frakking Consensus, 28 April 2015
