February 16, 2016

The Supreme Court Sided with Objective Science Against Obama, and Now Justice Scalia is Dead

In December 2015, President Barack Obama vetoed two measures that would have blocked steps that his administration is taking to address climate change. One would have nullified carbon pollution standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. The second would have voided a set of national standards designed to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas pollution from existing power plants. In a letter notifying Congress of his decision, Obama says climate change is a "profound threat" that must be addressed. Obama has made addressing climate change a priority. He recently praised a new international climate agreement reached at a Paris conference and credited his administration as being a driving force behind the deal. He rejected the measures through a rare "pocket veto," intended to be used when Congress has adjourned. A pocket vote essentially takes effect when the president fails to sign a bill within 10 days. [Source]
Tuesday night, February 9, 2016, even as votes were being tallied in New Hampshire, the Supreme Court shocked many — including the Obama administration — by putting on hold the president’s signature climate policy, the Clean Power Plan, pending resolution of a lawsuit against it by a number of states, utilities and coal companies. Everybody knew the Clean Power Plan would face major legal challenges, but few thought they’d significantly derail it so early on. One legal expert, the Sierra Club’s Bruce Nilles, told The Washington Post it was “unprecedented for the Supreme Court to stay a rule at this point in litigation. They do this in death-penalty cases.”

Saturday morning, February 13, 2016, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead in a hotel room. Scalia spent his final hours as part of a group of about 35 weekend guests who had arrived at Cibolo Creek Ranch, a West Texas resort, at around noon Friday. [Source]

The Supreme Court sided with science against Obama


New York Post - In his State of the Union Address, President Obama invited “anybody [who] wants to dispute the science around climate change . . . to have at it.”

The Supreme Court’s response? Thank you, Mr. President, for the offer. We will.

On Feb. 9, the court upheld a delay of Obama’s war on fossil fuels, which is supposed to “stop climate change,” in the form of new restrictions on factories’ greenhouse-gas emissions. Apparently a majority of the court is less confident of the “science around climate change” than Obama is.

As well they should be. Obama’s policies will have negligible effects on the climate and will be all pain with no gain.

Two critical points about “the science around climate change” stand out in a review recently completed by the CO2 Coalition, a new independent, nonpartisan scientific-educational group (CO2Coalition.org).

First, carbon dioxide, CO2, is emphatically NOT a “pollutant.” All living things are built of carbon that comes from CO2. An increase in essential CO2 in the atmosphere will be a huge benefit to plants and agriculture. Satellite measurements show that the increase of CO2 over the last few decades has already caused a pronounced greening of the planet — especially in arid regions.

For tens of millions of years, plants have been coping with a “CO2 famine.” Current CO2 concentrations of a few hundred parts per million (ppm) are close to starvation levels compared to the several thousand ppm that prevailed over most of history.

We support the cost-effective control of real pollutants associated with the use of fossil fuels — for example, fly ash, oxides of nitrogen and sulfur or smog-forming volatile hydrocarbons. But CO2 isn’t a pollutant, and there’s no reason to control it.

Second, the “warming” from CO2 — and yes, CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” — has been much less than predicted by the climate models Obama bases his policies on. For 20 years, the temperature has been virtually unchanged, in stark contrast to model predictions.

The war on fossil fuels isn’t based on science but on unreliable climate models. Rather than trying to correct the models, Team Obama is trying to “dispute the science” by trying to manufacture scary warming trends.

A recent letter to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology by more than 300 experts on data quality pointed out that the feds’ attempt to erase or ignore evidence of the recent lack of global warming arguably violated the Data Quality Act of 2001, which requires that “highly influential scientific assessments,” bearing the imprimatur of the federal government, be subject to rigorous external peer review.

It exposes the hollowness of the left’s claim that “97 percent of scientists” support Team Obama’s version of climate science.

Satellite measurements of atmospheric temperatures are the genuine gold standard — and they show negligible warming for the past two decades. Since the Obama administration can’t read just satellite data (as they have tried to do with surface data), they have unleashed a campaign to discredit the satellite temperature record.

The observational record indicates that the temperature increase by the year 2100 will be less than 1 degree Celsius as a result of CO2 emissions. This small temperature increase, together with the robust benefits to plants and agriculture, will benefit the world.

How about other concerns? Some claim that more CO2 causes extreme weather, accelerating a rise in sea levels or other horrors. But extensive global measurements reveal no increase in extreme weather: The trends in tornadoes, droughts, floods and hurricanes are flat over the past generation. Sea levels are rising at about the same rate they did before the rising concentrations of CO2 during the past century.

Inexpensive, reliable energy from fossil fuels has raised living standards in the developed world to levels that only the wealthy could dream of a few centuries ago. Eliminating fossil fuels would do nothing to stop climate change, but it would keep much of the developing world in poverty.

Rising energy costs would hurt the less privileged populations of the developed world as well.


Bravo for the Supreme Court’s vote for solid science!

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, pictured here in 1993, did not always win allies to his opinions, but he succeeded at pushing the Court toward constitutional originalism, and particularly toward textualism.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, pictured here in 1993, did not always win allies to his opinions, but he succeeded at pushing the Court toward constitutional originalism, and particularly toward textualism.

How Scalia Changed the Supreme Court

February 13, 2016

New Yorker - The loss of Justice Antonin Scalia is immensely significant on two levels. First, Scalia himself ranks among the most influential Justices in American history, alongside such figures as John Marshall, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and William Brennan. Second, Scalia was the linchpin of the Supreme Court’s five-justice conservative majority. His departure gives President Obama—or a Democratic successor—the opportunity to reshape the ideological balance among the Justices.

When Scalia joined the court, in 1986, the leading school of constitutional interpretation was the “living Constitution”—the claim that the meaning of the document evolves with changes in American society. Scalia brought with him the concept of “originalism”—that the Constitution should be interpreted as its eighteenth-century framers understood it. In practical terms, originalism gives constitutional sanction to conservative politics. It amounts to no protection for abortion rights, no recognition of gay rights, and no sanction for affirmative action or protective legislation to benefit racial minorities and women. Over three decades, Scalia won more than he lost, and originalism remains ascendant among political conservatives.

In his most significant decision for the court’s majority, District of Columbia v. Heller, in 2008, Scalia transformed the understanding of the Second Amendment. Reversing a century of interpretation of the right to bear arms, he announced that individuals have a constitutional right to possess handguns for personal protection. The Heller decision was so influential that even President Obama, whose politics differ deeply from Scalia’s, has embraced the view that the Second Amendment gives individuals a constitutional right to bear arms.

It is worth noting that on the constitutional issues Scalia cared most about—overturning Roe v. Wade and ending affirmative action—he never found a majority. But his greatest achievement may have been in a less visible realm. In interpreting laws, he was the leading spokesperson for “textualism,” the idea that, when interpreting laws, courts should look not to legislative history, or congressional “intent,” but rather only to the words of the law itself. While originalism remains controversial within the legal community, textualism won support from nearly all his colleagues (all except Stephen Breyer). This means that the Justices will limit the reach of laws to their precise terms, expanding the court’s power over Congress.

Scalia was a voice for conservative political views throughout his entire tenure. He voted for gutting the Voting Rights Act, and for deregulating political campaigns in Citizens United and subsequent cases. And of course he was in the majority in Bush v. Gore, which ended the recount of the Florida vote in the 2000 Presidential election. His opinions, always combative, took on an ugly edge in recent years, especially on the subjects of immigration and gay rights. It is possible that his belligerence, especially early in his tenure, cost him an alliance with Sandra Day O’Connor, who, as a swing vote, controlled so many outcomes. His friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg is well known, but it never won him her vote in big cases.

The arithmetic of the Supreme Court for the rest of this term is straightforward. There are four liberals—Ginsburg, Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—and three remaining hardcore conservatives—Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito—who are usually joined by Anthony Kennedy. If Barack Obama has a chance to fill Scalia’s seat, it will transform the court in a progressive direction. Not surprisingly, then, leading Republicans, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, have vowed to prevent a vote on any nominee that the President puts forward.

It’s unclear that the President or his party can do anything to force a vote on a nominee. That’s part of why it matters so much which party controls the Senate. But ultimately Obama—or the next President—will have no more consequential role than choosing Scalia’s replacement.

Related:

No comments:

Post a Comment