….
|
|
||||
In Australia, the situation is comi-tragic. As potential record-breaking heatwave heads eastwards across the country our fire-fighters are reduced to emergency backburning— an act of sheer desperation on the verge of panic in these conditions. The fires they light in the hope of stopping firestorms are causing firestorms — with flames 70 meters high — even burning down one of the RFS captains homes. This is fuel reduction six months too late. One twelve year old drove a car to escape a fire. 2,000 firefighters are battling 108 blazes. A coal mine and a power station are in the path in NSW. The Mount Piper Power Station generates about 10 per cent of NSW’s electricity and is 3km from a fire front. At the coal mine unprocessed coal lies on the surface. How much fun can you have? Temperatures of 44C (111f) and 46C (114f) are forecast for the outskirts of Sydney on Friday and Saturday. Fire has already consumed almost three million hectares of land across NSW this bushfire season driven by hot, dry and windy conditions. Six people have died, and 724 homes, 49 facilities and 1582 outbuildings have been destroyed. — Nine news
The East Coast is a cauldron of fuel, millions of hectares of dense match-sticks waiting-to-go. Meanwhile Greens are complaining about the smoke haze and pollution that their policies created and chanting about “climate change” with all the indulgent self righteousness and scientific reasoning of injured four-year-old fortune-tellers. The grown-ups see things differently. Roger Underwood is a former General Manager of CALM in WA (Dept of Conservation and Land Management), a regional and district manager, a research manager and bushfire specialist. Roger Underwood has 60 years experience in Australian bushfire management. He is one of the leading experts behind Bushfirefront, and this graph (below) that I keep showing. For 18 years they’ve been warning “reduce fuel”, “reduce fuel”, “reduce fuel”. As he says: Fire need three things — oxygen, fuel and a spark. The only thing we can control is the fuel.The big decision Australia faces — We could try to stop all arsonists, lightning, wind, droughts and cool the entire world, or we can reduce the fuel. Which will it be? The intellectual giants running the national conversation are still not sure which way to go.  In Western Australia after the major fires of 1961 a massive and dedicated fuel reduction program stopped wildfires for twenty years. Then as the prescribed burn area fell, the wildfire emergencies returned. Its obvious, unarguable, and agrees with everything else we know. It’s still to complicated for the ABC. A one degree temperature rise does not create a firestormThe difference between 39C and 40C is not the difference between normal and catastrophic fires. Modern witchdoctors wave their windmill-totems and want us to stop fires with solar panels and batteries — so possibly in one hundred years we might get shorter droughts, slower winds, less lightning, and temperatures that might be a meaningless 1 degree cooler (in their wildest dreams and with no possible numerical justification even through their own broken, failing models and as assessed by their favourite mass foreign committee of 26,000 experts). Even if we sacrificed our economy and way of life and somehow achieved what they wanted the nation would be a powder-keg for the next hundred years, and then after they “succeeded” it would still be a powder keg. Watch this space… pray for people, koalas and forests. Trainwreck in action in Australia… — Jo ______________________________________________________ Climate change versus bushfires: killer flaws in an unhelpful and dangerous argumentby Roger Underwood A group of former “fire chiefs” are blaming the current bushfires across Australia on climate change, and demanding that Prime Minister Morrison takes urgent action to fix the climate. This, they claim, will fix the bushfire threat. This position is not just unhelpful, it is dangerous. Even if we could change the climate (cooler summers, saturating winter rains, light breezes, no more droughts), it would not influence the current weather patterns or stop the fierce bushfire coming up the driveway this afternoon. Even if we knew exactly how to change the climate, anything we do in Australia will have to be replicated globally (especially in China and India) to make any difference, and even if these climate-changing measures were applied globally tomorrow, the desired new climate might not cut in for many years. The “climate-change-is-causing-bushfires” position has two killer flaws.
Ignoring fuel is an error of astonishing magnitude and seriously undermines the credibility of the “fire chiefs”. It is almost as if they never studied elementary bushfire science. In Bushfire 101 we learned about The Fire Triangle. This illustrates a fundamental reality: a bushfire (in fact any fire) can only occur if three things are co-present: oxygen (in the air), fuel (to burn) and heat (a source of ignition to get the fire started). If any one of the three is missing the result is no fire. Unfortunately, nothing can be done to remove the air and the oxygen it contains. Unhappily, nothing can be done to stop bushfires starting. They will either be lit by Mother Nature in the form of lightning strikes, or will be started by humans, either deliberately or accidentally. But bushfire fuel can be removed, or at least the quantity of fuel around a house or in the bush can be reduced to a point where a fire will burn at a relatively low intensity , allowing firefighters to deal with it relatively comfortably. On the other hand, if fuel is allowed to build up, as happens in long-unburned eucalypt bushland, the eventual fire will be of high intensity. If a crown fire results, generating a downwind ember storm, the fire will be impossible to control and highly damaging, no matter how many thousands of firefighters and water bombers you throw at it. Blaming climate change for the current spate of bushfires ignores the fact that these bushfires have proven almost impossible to control once they got going. This is because they are burning in heavy fuels dried out by drought. Ignoring fuel is the ultimate cop-out. It absolves the authorities of any responsibility for the incubation of this fire epidemic, and especially it absolves the former “fire chiefs” for not doing their job over the years, allowing dangerous levels of fuel to accumulate in the nation’s bushlands. Keep reading → Polls are like climate models. You can get any answer you want, but not the one you need.An immortal headline from Oct 30: The Guardian declares: Climate crisis affects how majority will vote in UK election – pollSurvey also finds two-thirds of people agree climate is biggest issue facing humankind Damian Carrington Environment editor, @dpcarrington A majority of people in the UK say the climate crisis will influence how they vote in the looming general election, according to an opinion poll, with younger voters feeling particularly strongly about the issue.
 … And of course the greatest landslide in 30 years wasn’t won by the party aligned with teenage girls who promised better weather. Six weeks before the UK election and the poll served no purpose other than to fool some politicians and the journalists that write about them. The biggest issue facing mankind either got solved before December 12, or perhaps no one gave a toss, they just said what the pollster wanted them to say. Or how about the July 2019 poll: Climate more pressing long-term issue than Brexit, say 71% of BritonsBigger than Brexit? Jeremy ought to have that election wrapped up…. Christian Aid poll finds climate emergency should be a top priority for Boris Johnson by Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian Most Britons believe climate change is more important in the long term than Brexit and say it should be a top priority for Boris Johnson’s government, according to an opinion poll. Women and young people are more likely to say that action over climate change is a more pressing priority than issues around Brexit. The ComRes survey, commissioned by Christian Aid, found that 71% of the UK public agreed that climate change would be more important than the country’s departure from the EU in the long term. Six out of 10 adults said the government was not doing enough to prioritise the climate crisis….
 … Neither Guardian journalist asked any hard questions — did people have the option to tick “Total waste of time”,or “Looks like Pagan witchcraft”. Did the surveys ask people how much of their own money they wanted to spend or did they just do the usual apple pie wish list — would you mind if the government paid for nicer weather? Which is, of course, why real leaders who want to win elections, don’t read The Guardian. See posts on Polls here, where I’ve said: Better survey’s show 80% of Australians don’t donate to environmental causes or vote for it. How committed are they? Answer, not even ten bucks a year. On flights, not even two bucks a trip. Survey after survey shows that when people rank issues, climate concerns are flat at the bottom of the barrel. Only 3% of US people think climate is most important issue. Climate change is not a battleground — it’s a fantasy land. The Great Barrier Reef is an icon that half of Australia never visits. When it comes to ranking issues, Climate change is about as scary as “litter”.
Skeptics are an absolute majority and have been for years, repeatedly, consistently, and across the continents. Someone should tell these PhD’s about things called “polls”. A ten-second online search shows 56% of Canadians are skeptics. Likewise, 54% of Australians are skeptics (a CSIRO estimate). The OECD estimates Australian skeptics outnumber believers. A very well done British survey show skeptics are a “minority” of 62%. A third in the US are not just skeptical they think it’s a total hoax. (And that was years ago, before The Trump. It would be higher now).If a majority “agreed with the consensus” why is it that most Australians don’t want to pay even a tiny $10 a month for renewables to save the world? Nearly half of US adults don’t want to pay $1 a month. And The British don’t want to pay a cent.
The pollsters on climate exult,
In promoting their climate-change cult, With questions that tilt, At degrees of man’s guilt, To achieve the desired result. –Ruairi
Stupid engineers think we need climate models that work and electricity that costs less than a dollar a kilowatt hour. All along we’ve been worried about FCAS, moist adiabatic lapse rates, voltage surges, and frequency drops, while the answer was staring us in the face. The cheapest way to change the global climate is to call men petty names, bully them into submission and kick their truck nuts. Here’s “genius” Megan MacKenzie: Professor of Gender and War at the University of Sydney showing us how little she knows about climate, men or war. Is fragile masculinity the biggest obstacle to climate action?Megan MacKenzie, ABC Leaving fossil fuels in the ground symbolises a loss of power and money. Some male leaders see real climate action as a threat to power and to profit, through extraction and exploitation of the environment. Male resistance to climate action has bipartisan support. Any hope that the Labor party might offer climate policy alternatives the Liberals went up in smoke in the past few months as Anthony Albanese announced he doesn’t want to phase out coal. Researchers in Norway also found what they call a “cool dude effect” when it comes to climate change. They show that white conservative men, especially those that think they understand the science of climate change, are the biggest climate deniers and the least likely to be moved by further research. There are multiple examples of ‘cool climate dudes’ and petro-masculinity, including “right wingers…going crazy about meat”, by embracing diets called “the carnivore” or “the caveman” at the same time that vegans are belittled as “soyboys” and “beta males”. We knew Sydney Uni and the ABC are intellectually primitive, incompetent, slaves to fashionthink, but this dumber than that. Time to just say No. No more funds to Sydney Uni, no more funds to the ABC. No more funds to the human rights commission either. Sexist, racist, self-serving intolerance is apparently fine. Toxic white men with balls are the reason Megan MacKenzie has the freedom to write noxious self-serving trollop and get paid for it. — h/t David B
December 15th, 2019 | Tags: Gender Studies | Category: Academia, Global Warming, Human Rights |  Print This Post | | … Experts predict a warmer world will be “geologically turbulent”. Join the dots, get a solar panel, and stop the world cracking up ok? Below one national news outlet speculates about the effects storms, melting ice and floods have on crustal plates, and fault lines. It’s possible, unknown, or at least not-entirely-ruled-out that man-made CO2 could maybe theoretically lead to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. The story contains stacked “ifs”, “buts”, “coulds” and caveats, plus some links that are not-statistically-significant and several “unknowns”. This is essentially one-sided scientific rumour mongering. Quick let’s transform our economy. h/t Andrew V This is what our future looks like if climate change goes uncheckedJamie Seidel … experts predict a warmer and more geologically turbulent future for the planet. The US Geological Survey has discovered there is one link between weather and earthquake. Just one link? Major storms, such as cyclones and hurricanes, can produce substantial changes in atmospheric pressure. This sometimes triggers a ‘slow earthquake’ – a slow but steady movement that does not create any noticeable jolt. “They note that while such large low-pressure changes could potentially be a contributor to triggering a damaging earthquake, the numbers are small and are not statistically significant,” Buis says. So experts say there is really no evidence at all here? What does this next line even mean? And then there’s the fact that weather is not the same as climate. Would you like an earthquake with that? Recent NASA research in California, Oregon and Washington indicate extended drought could have implications of seismic proportions. Between 2011 and 2017, the Sierra Nevada mountain range lifted by up to 2.5cm as it shed water and lost weight. Then it fell more than 1cm after heavy rains. “Such stress changes could potentially be felt on faults in or near the range,” Buis writes. It supports earlier research linking depleted subterranean groundwater aquifers to seismic activity on the San Andreas Fault. Once again, the change in pressure and weight had a domino effect. You don’t say: But there are still too many unknown variables at play to be sure. “We’re not close to being able to predict when an earthquake may occur as a result of climate processes,” he concludes. Don’t be surprised if the Earth cracks up: Researchers already know dramatic changes in the water levels of lakes and dams can trigger local seismic activity. But upscaling this impact to a global level is difficult. We know glaciers are retreating rapidly around the world. So, what if such enormous weights shift? “With this in mind, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the loading and unloading of the Earth’s crust by ice or water can trigger seismic and volcanic activity and even landslides,” Professor McGuire says. Stopping surprises like this is just what we have professors for. The article mentions “climate” nine times, and the the sun, solar magnetic, solar wind and solar weather not at all. Get the picture? Your taxes pay for these experts. Climate change could produce more stacked caveats. December 14th, 2019 | Tags: Earthquake, Media bias | Category: FakeNews, Geology, Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post | | Photos just in from Bill Johnston in NSW show why Sydney is shrouded in smoke and why so much is still at risk this summer. The sign marks the fire trail — which is lucky, otherwise no one would know it was there.
Spot the sign in the photo below. Spot the fire-trail. How many fires would this stop? About as many as a solar panel.  Fire trail or fire trap? | Photo Bill Johnston This is NSW fire preparation in 2019. This is what a different fire trail looks like (one that works):  Fire meets fire trail, stops. | Photo: Bill Johnston This break was small but still stopped a manageable fire. Only the ocean will stop a firestorm. As as Bill says — rainfall lowers the temperature, and drought raises it. Wet soils are hard to heat. Wet woodlands are slower to burn. If there is fuel to burn, a lack-of-rain causes a high fire risk, and everyone knows climate models can’t predict rain on any short term or regional basis. The only thing we know for sure is that a warmer world is a wetter one. Thus and verily 1 + 1 = a new water bomber. Blame Climate Change and say Give us your money! — Jo ——————————————————————————— Accumulated fuel is an environmental time-bombGuest post on the climate-science emergency by Dr. Bill Johnston The Guardian decrys that if only Australia had reduced its minuscule emissions, something would have happened to stop kiddies and other arsonists causing the allegedly earliest, longest, hottest, beastiest fire season in Australia’s history. Resident catastrophist at the University of New South Wales Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick was “surprised, bewildered, concerned”, IPCC’s Professor Mark Howden from ANU thought “the public had already joined the dots” – the most obvious being that fire needs fuel and that ever since restrictions on fuel reduction were imposed by various native vegetation and biodiversity reforms twenty or so years ago, fuel loads across eastern Australia have inexorably increased. Although supposedly paid to think, Euan Ritchie, wildlife ecologist at Deakin University misses the obvious. Not reducing fuel loads will always look like a raging bushfire every seven years or so when La Niña fades, the landscape dries out and El Niño kicks-in. Fire in Australia has been around for as long as there is fuel to burn and they invented two sticks to rub together. [Or since God invented lightning]. Surely the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action[1] would also understand the ferocity of fire is only abated by preemptively controlling the fuel load, which in their time they didn’t do. Keep reading → Great news for Australia. Brilliant for the UK. The Brits have chucked out EU climate bunnies.No one can deny the British want out. All the stupid parliamentary games, the attention-seeking mass rallies, and the fake concern about “threats to democracy” got knocked on the head. Finally the country will be able to follow the wishes of voters instead of the wishes of a few career pollies. In great part thanks to Nigel Farage. Exit poll: Conservative 368, Labour 191, Liberal Democrats 13, SNP 55 If the exit poll results ring true, it will be the biggest Conservative general election win since Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 triumph — and Labour’s worst result since 1935. “Certainly this exit poll is a devastating blow,” said Labour trade spokesman Barry Gardiner. “It’s a deeply depressing result.” The bloodbath in the UK marks the seismic realignment of the two major parties, with Labor losing working class seats that it has held for years, and the conservatives losing city seats that once were their strongholds. It seems the Labor alignment with the smarty-pants soy-latte set, foreign bureaucrats and immigrants instead of workers is fashionable but not a winning plan. Predictably Labor M.P’s are blaming Corbyn, but not taking any responsibility themselves for the train wreck. Plus the party’s method for electing leaders was rortable, which may have looked like a feature at the time, but what can be corrupted, will be. It doomed the party. The pollsters running loaded push polls tell us everyone believes in climate change and wants to save the world. But despite the mass XR protests, and nightly news-catastrophes people don’t vote for “climate action”. There are so many more important topics than slowing storms one hundred years from now. Finally the United Kingdom will be able to choose their own hairdryers and vacuum cleaners. Don’t mention the Commonwealth?In the land Downunder there has been close to zero discussion about the obvious benefits in Australia of freer trade with the fifth largest economy and long time cultural partner, almost like the media (especially the ABC) don’t want to mention it. What’s remarkable here is that 44% of Australians don’t know or don’t back a post-Brexit Trade deal. Aussies back closer ties with post-Brexit BritainBen Packham, The Australian A majority of Australians support closer ties with Britain once it breaks away from the European Union, despite being largely ambivalent about the impact of Brexit on their own lives.A new YouGov poll found nearly two-thirds of Australians back freer movement between Australia and Britain after Brexit, while 56 per cent believe it is in the nation’s interests to reach a post-Brexit trade deal with Britain. Britain is the second-largest source of foreign investment into Australia at almost $600bn. Two-way trade already stands at $29bn. Why isn’t a post-Brexit deal with Britain a bleedingly obvious win for 99%? Watch Spock in the 1970s describing how climate scientists were predicting a mile high wall of ice that could cover Canada down to Boston “in your lifetime”, and it may already have started. Commenter Bulldust found Gary Orsum’s droll commentary on that documentary. Great stuff. Best part begins from 5:45 mins on: In 1977 the worst winter in a century struck the United States… one desperate night in Buffalo, eight people froze to death… the brutal Buffalo winter might become common all over the United States. Climate experts believe the next ice age is on its way. Temperatures have been dropping for thirty years… With 40 years headstart on climate scares, Orsum has all the answers. Leonard Nimoy: Arctic cold and perpetual snow could turn most of the inhabitable portions of our planet into an Arctic wasteland. Sure says Orsum, but there are ways to allieviate that threat even with your primitive caveman technology, just get the kids to take Fridays off school. The opening five minutes explaining how he’s not a denier though he keeps being called one. Readers here have lived that landscape already. Just say “lukewarmer” and jump to 5:45 on. Worked a treat for me at 1.5 speed (look for the cog on the bottom right). Imagine if schools taught the children history and they all watched documentaries like this once a year…
December 13th, 2019 | Tags: Ice Age Scare, YouTube | Category: Cryosphere, Geology, Global Warming, Paleolithic, Satire & Parody | Print This Post | | … Some teenagers risk ten years in a Chinese jail. While another risks school detention as the chosen puppet of Big Government and Big Money. Guess which one Time Magazine thinks is more worthy?
UPDATE:Giovanni Cavalcanti @giovannicavett
·
Just a little history of who was once considered “Person Of The Year” according to TIME magazine:
1938 -Hitler
1939 -Stálin
1942 -Stálin
1979 -Khomeini
2007 -Putin
Friday 13th: Newcastle sceptics for lunch and Sunshine Coast sceptics are getting together for afternoon drinks. Email me: joanne AT joannenova.com.au and I’ll forward your email to the skeptic in charge. Even if you can’t get there this time, we’ll let you know for the next. I hear the Sunshine Coast Sceptics are in for a real treat… (send me those photos please!) Jim, in Newcastle your email bounced when I replied. Please try again. Last week’s events were a great success in Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide and Rockhampton. Avid friendly conversations. Likeable, interesting people. Seems we all need more meetings more often: Ray writes: “Thank you! It was quite shocking really. I was quite unprepared for normal conversation… “ There’s a regular weekly (weekly!) event in Sydney on Thursday nights. For people in other areas — get cracking…! Photo by Jonathan Rautenbach on Unsplash
December 12th, 2019 | Tags: Social Events for Skeptics | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | UPDATE: Poll results will be announced after 10pm GMT in the UK. That’s 9AM Daylight savings time Sydney Australia. Thoughts are with you Freemen of the United Kingdom for a very important election. Boris is just brilliant in this Ad. He carries off the parody of the carol singers in “Love Actually” without looking smug or self conscious. … The Australian-ABC Groupthink Predictor points at a conservative win — since ABC NEWS has barely mentioned the UK election during the whole campaign, obviously it’s not looking good for the leading socialists. If Corbyn was in the lead we’d hear about it every night and see him with adoring crowds. If Corbyn was winning, it would be called a Climate Election, and a Brexit election. But Groupthink can be wrong. To all skeptics and Brexiteers in the UK, please get out and vote. Don’t take anything for granted. Conservatives don’t just need a win, they need a workable government. Will the nation that invented freedom manage to escape the clutches of the EU?
h/t David “Exxon knew” is now legally proven to be the vacuous empty dogwhistle it always was — a cheap stunt to whip up jealously and anger in gullible minds. Exxon wins first-of-its-kind climate change case against New YorkDecember 10, 2019, Josh Seigel, Washington Examiner ExxonMobil won a first-of-its-kind climate change fraud trial on Tuesday as a judge rejected the state of New York’s claim that the oil and gas giant misled investors in accounting for the financial risks of global warming. New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager said the state failed to prove that Exxon violated the Martin Act, a broad state law that does not require proof of intent of shareholder fraud. “The office of the Attorney General failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that ExxonMobil made any material misstatements or omissions about its practices and procedures that misled any reasonable investor,” Ostrager wrote in a 55-page ruling, deciding the case without a jury. The Democrats in NY spent three years working on this before filing the suit, but apparently didn’t realize they were barking at clouds the whole time? New York Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Zweig announced during his closing statement that the state would no longer be claiming Exxon knowingly and willfully misled investors on how it accounts for the financial risks of climate change. Incompetence is the Deep StateOfficials waste taxpayer money on frivolous law-suits to either support their own faith in a neopagan religion, or support the financial interests of their party donors. Their greatest strength is their overwhelming audacious confidence, but it’s also their greatest weakness, and guarantees they will take any tiny seed of something and run with it til they smash headlong on the rocks. We can only hope some heads roll. This is very related to the ASIC investigation coincidentally announced yesterday in Australia. ASIC investigating large companies’ climate change risk managementJackson Gothe-Snape, ABC The corporate watchdog has launched a new surveillance program to ensure Australia’s biggest companies are dealing with the risks of climate change. The move follows comments by former High Court judge and royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne that directors of companies could end up in court if they do not properly deal with the risk. The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) has started contacting large companies this week as part of its investigation into climate risk governance. We wish ASIC would investigate the CSIRO and BOM for misleading taxpayers and corporations about the risks of climate change. Who protects the taxpayers? Who is responsible for all the malinvestment, wasted money, destruction of a perfectly good grid? If there are directors who are concerned please get in touch. I can quietly connect you with information and experts. Greater minds than I may have more insight into the validity of the ASIC move. Why is a government watchdog trying to protect investors in situations where sane investors should be making up their own minds — both about the risk of climate change and also the corporate response? It’s as if the government has decided that no sane investor would prefer to put money into companies that are not wasting it preparing for a fantasy future. Welcome to creeping communism — where the state decides what private businesses have to do, and what private investors need to know. After twenty years of non-stop propaganda on this topic surely there is no person in the West within one SD of an average IQ who is not fully aware of theoretical, supposed “climate change” risks. h/t Pat. Thank you for your card! h/t also Howard H. …. The Deep State gets around congress and voters but we all know it isn’t supposed to be that way … The voters may not like the decisions, but they can’t vote out the bureaucrats. Think of the EPA, the FDA, and of course, the central bankers. Think of the Clean Air Act! Some of these agencies effectively make the guidelines that we-the-people have to live by, then they enforce them, and adjudicate them too. They become defacto Kingmakers in their own fiefdoms. They are the fourth branch of government, also known as The Deep State. But what feels wrong, may indeed be wrong, and it’s possible the Obama era Clean Power Plan could be repealed if it is deemed to breach the NonDelegation Doctrine, and there is renewed interest in this now that Brett Kavanaugh is in the Supreme Court. (No wonder some tried so hard to get him out). The nondelegation doctrine is centuries old, and implicit in not just the US but all written constitutions that impose a separation of power. Here’s the wikipedia entry: The origins of the nondelegation doctrine, as interpreted in U.S., can be traced back to, at least, 1690, when John Locke wrote: The Legislative transfer the Power of Making Laws to any other hands. For it being but a delegated Power from the People, they, who have it, cannot pass it over to others. … And when the people have said, We will submit to rules, and be govern’d by Laws made by such Men, and in such Forms, no Body else can say other Men shall make Laws for them; nor can the people be bound by any Laws but such as are Enacted by those, whom they have Chosen, and Authorised to make Laws for them. — (Locke 1690. Ch 17, § 94) An article in E&E argues that no one has used them since 1935, but now with Kavanaugh on the benches, they might. That would rather drop the cat among the pigeons… Kavanaugh opens door to carbon rule challengeNiina H. Farah, E&E News Court watchers say Kavanaugh’s addition to the bench could open the door to a revival of the long-dormant nondelegation doctrine, which prevents Congress from handing off policy decisions to federal agencies. The return of the doctrine, which the court has not used to scrap an agency rule since 1935, could pose a threat to greenhouse gas regulations, said UCLA law professor Ann Carlson. “The basic idea is that if Congress hasn’t specifically addressed a question, then for an agency to take up that question and regulate on it — particularly when there has been a relatively large passage of time since Congress spoke — it shouldn’t and can’t do so, at least in expansive ways,” Carlson said. Litigation over the repeal and replacement of the Clean Power Plan could test conservative interest in bringing the nondelegation doctrine back into play. Critics of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan have argued that EPA overstepped its authority when it drafted a rule to systematically slash emissions from power plants. Under President Trump, the agency has ushered in the less-stringent Affordable Clean Energy rule and has asked a lower court to find that the 2015 regulation was not allowable under the Clean Air Act (Energywire, Nov. 5). Wikipedia: The Nondelegation doctrineUnited StatesIn the Federal Government of the United States, the nondelegation doctrine is the principle that the Congress of the United States, being vested with “all legislative powers” by Article One, Section 1 of the United States Constitution, cannot delegate that power to anyone else. However, the Supreme Court ruled in J. W. Hampton, Jr. & Co. v. United States (1928)[1] that congressional delegation of legislative authority is an implied power of Congress that is constitutional so long as Congress provides an “intelligible principle” to guide the executive branch: “‘In determining what Congress may do in seeking assistance from another branch, the extent and character of that assistance must be fixed according to common sense and the inherent necessities of the government co-ordination.’ Delegation is a question of balance — how do we define what a “big policy” decision is, and what’s a small one? Jonathan Adler, an environmental law professor at Case Western Reserve University said: “A revival of nondelegation claims doesn’t mean agencies like EPA would be robbed of discretion to act, but that Congress would make the “fundamental legislative choices,”… That could be a good thing, he added. “Congress could certainly identify criteria on which the regulations would be based, and that’s the way the democratic process is supposed to work,” Adler said. “The legislature is supposed to be making the big policy judgments.” There is, maybe, hope in Australia and Canada and NZ … (See wikipedia) Australian federalism does not permit the federal Parliament or Government to delegate its powers to state or territorial parliaments or governments, nor territorial parliaments or governments to delegate their powers to the federal Parliament or Government, but the states parliaments delegate its powers to the federal parliament by means of section 51 subsection (xxxvii) of the Constitution Act 1901. Supposedly “Independent” agencies are also unaccountable agencies
|
Jo appreciates your support to help her keep doing what she does. This blog is funded by donations. Thanks!
Follow Jo's Tweets
   
 
|
|||
|
Copyright © 2025 JoNova - All Rights Reserved |
||||
Recent Comments