By Paul Chesser

I’ve been tough (I think) in challenging former Minnesota Gov. (and now presidential candidate) Tim Pawlenty​ about his past support for cap-and-trade and policies to constrain carbon dioxide emissions. In December 2009, when he first started visiting New Hampshire, he was still talking like CO2 was pollution, and still failed to remove his state from the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Accord.

Now he’s pretty much completed a 180-degree turnaround on the whole issue – even questioning the science of human-caused global warming, as revealed in a Miami Herald interview with him this week…

Read the rest and see the video at American Spectator.

Candidates need to be ready to blow away the arguments

By Steve Milloy

If you’re thinking of becoming a Republican presidential candidate – and who isn’t these days – you can plan on being pressed on the climate issue. In the wake of last week’s new report from a panel of the National Research Council (NRC) reiterating its old talking points on climate, The Washington Post editorialized that all (read “Republican”) candidates for political office should be quizzed about whether they agree with the “scientific consensus of America’s premier scientific advisory group.”

Although this threat is intended to intimidate Republicans who tend toward queasiness when confronted with environmental issues, the attack is easy to parry and then even to counterattack – that’s why Al Gore and his enviros duck debating so-called “climate skeptics.”

First, let’s dismiss a couple of faulty premises of The Post’s editorial.

While it is true that the NRC operates under the umbrella of the National Academy of Sciences, the NRC panel that authored the report has nothing to do with the prestigious individual scientists who make up the National Academy of Sciences membership. NRC panels are highly politicized and often stacked, and no climate skeptics were included in the panel that wrote last week’s report.

Next, science doesn’t work on a consensus basis. We don’t accept that the Earth revolves around the Sun because most scientists or a group of scientists have agreed to say so. Science is driven by data, not groupthink.

In actuality, the NRC report is more an exercise in political science than climate science.

Read the rest of this op-ed at the Washington Times.

Steve Milloy is the author of Green Hell.

By Siobhan Hughes (Dow Jones)

Governors of 18 U.S. states on Wednesday urged Congress to stop “harmful” Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions, saying the agency isn’t equipped to deal with “the very real potential for economic harm.”

The governors, led by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, made their request in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and their Republican counterparts. The letter was also signed by Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican who has been cited as a possible contender in the 2012 presidential election.

“We feel compelled to guard against a regulatory approach that would increase the cost of electricity and gasoline prices, manufactured products, and ultimately harm the competitiveness of the U.S. economy,” the governors wrote. “We strongly urge Congress to stop harmful EPA regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions that could damage those vital interests.”

The Obama administration’s EPA fired back that it “rejects the premise that addressing greenhouse gases threatens the economy,” saying that other EPA actions “have led to innovations and the creation of new markets that can spur economic growth.” The EPA “will continue to follow the law and the science, which overwhelmingly indicates climate change is a real and growing threat to the American people,” spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said in a statement.

The governors’ letter, signed mostly by Republicans, intensifies a battle with the Obama administration’s EPA as it prepares to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles and stationary sources such as power plants. The rules are due to be finalized by the EPA later this month. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said the regulations for power plants, factories and oil refineries will be effective on a delayed basis, beginning in 2011, allowing companies extra time to plan ahead.

Coal, oil and manufacturing states have warned of the costs of complying, which could involve equipment purchases and other spending. In Congress, multiple measures are pending to hinder the EPA. One measure, from coal-state lawmakers including Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) would suspend EPA regulations for two years. Another measure, led by oil-state Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) would overturn the EPA regulations.

“A simple delay of EPA action will do nothing to provide relief to Americans looking for jobs or businesses looking to make new investments in our states,” the governors wrote in urging Congress to stop the EPA outright and to pass comprehensive energy legislation. “Furthermore, such delay of EPA action only creates more uncertainty in a difficult fiscal environment.”

The letter emboldened Republicans already at odds with the EPA. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R, Okla.) said in a statement that the EPA should “stop this tax and the regulatory nightmare it will create, and work with Congress to pass an all-of-the-above energy plan that means more jobs, more energy, and more security for America.”

Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal.

Corn prices have more than doubled in the past two years, contributing to sharp rises in the price of virtually everything in the American economy. Obvious products like corn flakes and meat aren’t the only commodities affected. Soda, beer, motor vehicle fuel, medicines and even car parts rely on corn-based substances in their production.

Ethanol-based fuel gets fewer miles per gallon than petroleum based gasoline, and some argue that ethanol, though touted as a “green” fuel, actually produces more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuel.

In June, US Senator and candidate for president, John McCain said “Support for corn-based ethanol has been a case study in the law of unintended consequences.” 

The national Republican Party revised it’s platform last week during the national convention calling for a reversal of the energy bill signed by president Bush that mandates a five-fold increase in ethanol production and provides additional government subsidy. The new platform plank says the US government should end ethanol mandates and let the free market work. 

McCain says he didn’t push for the platform change, but supports it. He pointed out that ethanol mandates have led to “distorted food markets through crop land competition,” and are “depriving America of better and cheaper fuels.”

For his part, presidential candidate Barack Obama says he “strongly supports ethanol subsidies.”

President Bush, in defending the policy suggested that new technology might come along that will allow economical production of ethanol from other biomass, like wood chips or switchgrass. He’s counting on the development of currently non-existent technology within the next nine years to meet the demands of the energy bill he signed in December and federal dollars are being invested in that research. Presently, not a single commercial US refinery is producing ethanol from anything but corn.

Failing the development of the theoretical new technology within a decade will leave US energy law in the precarious position of mandating something that is not physically possible. There is not enough corn farmed to meet the demands of the energy bill. As the forces of reality inch closer to currently unattainable ethanol mandates in the coming years, the price of virtually everything is likely to rise even more sharply than the preceding two years. Supply simply cannot meet the artificial demand imposed by government.

Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty has been leading the charge for increased ethanol mandates. During his tenure as chairman of the National Governor’s Association, he advocated increased ethanol usage nationally and in 2005, he signed a law doubling Minnesota’s ethanol mandate from 10% to 20% by 2013. “Only people on the far margins of the political spectrum oppose ethanol,” he said.

Minnesota’s increased ethanol mandate will not take effect unless a waiver can be obtained from the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Center for Climate Strategies (CCS) is a global warming mitigation think-tank largely funded by the Rockefeller Brothers that has had a hand in creating a cookie-cutter climate change plan for many states. A new video produced by Sea Studios, titled “Ahead of the Curve” features Minnesota Governor Pawlenty (R), Florida Governor Charlie Crist (R) and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano (D), all chiming in on the benefits of adopting CCS-recommended strategies. Probably not coincidently, the video was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and these three governors are all clients of CCS.

Minnesota’s own Climate Change Advisory Group (MCCAG) contracted with CCS to help create a climate mitigation action plan intended to provide guidance to legislators and the governor. Many of the policies suggested by CCS are the same as could be found in the defeated Lieberman-Warner Cap and Trade bill, and both the MCCAG report and CCS’ methodology in general have come under heavy fire from critics.

A peer review of MCCAG’s report by the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University found serious flaws in the methodology and assumptions used to reach it’s conclusions. The Beacon Hill review concluded that the report provides zero guidance to policy makers, fails to perform the most basic task of any cost/benefit analysis and that CCS’ cost savings estimates are not just wildly optimistic, but are “the product of a purely fictitious analysis.”

The Minnesota Free Markets Institute also undertook a review of MCCAG’s policy recommendations, and exposed further weaknesses in the plan. That analysis found MCCAG’s (and CCS’) assumptions and recommendations for land use, transportation and agricultural policies to be unrealistic, and in some cases, contrary to established laws. MCCAG’s emphasis on increasing the cost of driving and reducing investment in roads came under particular scrutiny in the review.

Ahead of the Curve features Governor Pawlenty advocating CCS recommendations, saying, “I don’t think many people would disagree with the fact that what we’re doing is unsustainable, environmentally, economically, and from a national security standpoint. But we have a chance to try to make a difference and to do good.

“When we say things like we want to have 25 percent of our energy from renewable sources by the year 2025, that’s a goal or a strategy, but you also have to make sure those goals are realized, and that’s what we’re working on as we speak.”

The governors of Arizona and Florida also chime in with their support for CCS-inspired policies despite the documented flaws in their basic assumptions.

When the facts don’t matter any more, and the realities of rising energy, fuel and food costs apparently leave governors and legislators nonplussed, it can be difficult not to worry about our future with leaders pushing self-destructive energy policies based on unsound science and political whimsy.

The debate about global warming is over, say environmental activists. Now comes the hard task of developing a national global warming policy. To use nightmare scenarios to forge national policies the activists have decided to circumvent the outgoing Bush administration – and more to the point, Congress – and get state governors to follow their advice. That’s where the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS) comes in. CCS persuades governors to appoint “study commissions” on global warming, then steers the policy process, rigging commission proceedings to produce a predetermined result: higher energy costs, diminished property and other individual rights, and more Big Government. These undemocratic maneuvers do an end-run around state legislators and should trouble advocates of open government.

Click here to read the full report from Capital Research Center

The state of Minnesota hired the Center for Climate Strategies as its ”consultant” to assist in the development of environmental policy recommendations.

The close relationship between the advocacy-oriented Pennsylvania Environmental Council and the Center for Climate Strategies, which has managed global warming commissions (it claims as an “objective consultant”) for governors in several states, has been well established. Statements from their 2006 Form 990 tax return explains that PEC formed Enterprising Environmental Solutions, Inc. (where CCS is housed) to “carry out their non-regulatory agenda.” The tax return also explains, “EESI has its own board of directors and is controlled by PEC, since PEC is the only member of EESI.” Also, EESI/CCS exists to “advance, support and promote the purposes of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council….”

Now here’s the latest revelation uncovered in e-mail correspondence obtained from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, which was sent by Kimberlea Konowitch, who is identified as the senior accountant for EESI/CCS. Her email address, like others who handle administrative work for EESI/CCS, is identified by a pecpa.org domain. But here’s the kicker, in your average legal disclaimer (“only intended for the recipient,” blah, blah…) that you find at the end of emails: “The Pennsylvania Environmental Council and any of its subsidiaries each reserve the right to monitor all e-mail communications through its networks.”

So now EESI/CCS is recognized as an official subsidiary of PEC. And the continued insistence by CCS executive director Tom Peterson that advocates for PEC don’t work on these state projects, and that EESI/CCS does not have an advocacy history, that they are objective, becomes more laughable each time he repeats it. CCS’s only reason for existing is to promote PEC’s agenda.

Read the rest of the post at GlobalWarming.org

Kudos to KSTP-TV for finally breaking the apparent Twin Cities media boycott of GlobalClimateScam.com.  Today KSTP aired a news story on our campaign and its potentially conflict with Governor Pawlenty’s agenda.  A press release announcing the campaign was originally issued to all major Twin Cities media outlets in mid-February in conjunction with the first billboard advertisement being posted on I-94 in Albertville.  Over the past three weeks, five additional boards have been posted in and around the metro-area, but no Twin Cities media outlet elected to cover the story until now.

It’s interesting to contrast our campaign to that of a recent campaign sponsored by Progress in Motion (PIM), the transportation alliance that just helped to pass the single largest tax increase in Minnesota’s history.  Last year, PIM ran a one month campaign consisting of a single billboard touting the slogan, “No New Taxes Means No New Bridges“.  While this campaign was much smaller, both in terms of its duration and the number of billboards, most of the the Twin Cities covered the story.  This situation appears to validate the claims made in the recently released BMI report on the media’s censorship of information that contridicts the agenda of global warming alarmists.

Robert Novak reports today that it was a less than favorable National Governor’s Association (NGA) meeting for the organization’s chairman, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.  His carbon-emissions proposal was shot down by bipartisan opposition. According to Novak, this did not help Pawlenty’s vice presidential aspirations.  We can only hope that Pawlenty’s pubic policy proposals being developed for Minnesota by his Climate Change Advisory Group will be met with the same cool reaction in the Minnesota state legislature.

This video from a Colorado talk show exposes the corruption behind the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS), the so-called “consulting” organization hired by the State of Minnesota to “assist” in the development of policy recommendations for the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group (MCCAG).  CCS travels the nation “advising” state governments on developing state climate change strategies.  While they try to give the appearance of being an independent consulting organization, the truth is that CCS is being funded by Left-wing environmental advocacy groups.  And the policy recommendations developed by CCS are nearly identical from state-to-state.

It’s interesting to note that none of the Twin Cities mainstream media has done a story on the obvious bias behind CCS.  Which leads us to wonder how the media might react if the state had hired a conservative advocacy group, such as the Heritage Foundation, as its ‘consultant’ for developing Minnesota’s climate change strategy?  Learn more about CCS by visiting ClimateStrategiesWatch.com.

According to the Star Tribune, Gov. Tim Pawlenty will travel to Las Vegas next week to be a keynote speaker at a renewable energy conference that also will feature U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada. 

Pawlenty will address the Power-Gen Renewable Energy & Fuels conference on Tuesday afternoon.  More than 3,000 leading players in the renewable energy industry are expected to attend.

Minnesota has a growing budget deficit combined with an out of control governor and legislators who continue to regulate, mandate, tax and fee its residents. This legislative session promises much more and will continue to be the driving factor for the increased costs for food, gas, energy, health care and education for all Minnesotans.

Last years Renewable Energy Standards bill provided funding and courage to mandate and regulate unsustainable, unproven, unreliable and costly sources of energy. Environmental buzz words make politicians feel good but this type of legislation costs a lot of our tax dollars to pay for these useless good intentions. It should come as no surprise that our legislators, with the help of our governor, are not done yet.

Read the rest of this post by Sue Jeffers at Look True North

Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch

Here in Minnesota, where I’ve been the last two days talking about the state’s Climate Change Advisory Group and explaining what can be expected in their recommendations, the Center for Climate Strategies has not been able to push all their greenhouse gas-reduction ideas as robustly as they have been able to in most other states. Perhaps that has to do with the fact that Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty was the one who created the commission and brought CCS on board, and politically has to be sensitive to the elements of his support who actually care about the state’s people and their economy.

That’s not to say the MCCAG’s report itself won’t be filled with the usual CCS pap, like cap-and-trade, smart growth-based land use regulations, and “climate-friendly transportation pricing.” It’s just that Pawlenty already is showing he is not willing to go as far as CCS and the commission would like. For example, the MCCAG approved a plan to reduce speed limits on highways in the state back down to 55 mph. That was too much for the governor, and he left it out of his preliminary recommendations – which were supposed to largely reflect the will of the MCCAG – that he released on Friday. That report is already being criticized by lefty environmentalists for not being strong enough, which they are right about if they hoped Pawlenty would just rubberstamp and release the findings of the MCCAG.

Also worthy of note, demonstrating that CCS and environmentalists aren’t getting everything they want: one of the MCCAG’s recommendations is to repeal the state’s ban on construction of new nuclear power facilities. That is a first (at least as far as I’ve seen) for any of these state commissions. And you can tell in the language (written by CCS) explaining the recommendations for the MCCAG that they are less than enthusiastic about the idea. Nevertheless, it got through.

So, there are two separate tracks to follow in Minnesota as they prepare to formally release their proposals in the coming weeks or months. First is Pawlenty: how much of the energy cost-raising and property rights-limiting ideas from MCCAG will he embrace as his own, and implement (to the degree he is able) through executive orders? Second is MCCAG: How much will the Democrat-dominated legislature take their recommendations and try to make them law? 

Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Republican of Minnesota, and Gov. Janet Napolitano, Democrat of Arizona, have joined together in a new radio ad campaign sponsored by Environmental Defense designed to urge Congress to take action on climate change.