The Chamber of Commerce wanted to know what the White House Council on Environmental Quality was up to when it came to “climate change.”  So they filed a FOIA request.  Should be pretty straight forward, yes?  It’s not like there are any national security secrets involved.

But here is what they got in response from the most transparent government ever to grace these United States:

Hat-tip: The Foundry

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Ken Connor of the Center for a Just Society wonders where Al Gore has disappeared to:

…In the face of the embarrassing Climategate scandal and an unprecedented winter season that has for the first time ever delivered measurable snowfall to all 50 states, Al Gore’s absence from the public stage has been conspicuous.  Perhaps he’s taken a page from Punxsutawney Phil’s playbook and is hibernating in hopes of a sunnier forecast come April.

…

The bottom line is that intelligent, responsible people are getting tired of being made to feel guilty for every carbon credit consumed and every mile-per-gallon burned, especially when it’s becoming more and more clear that the current climate change hysteria is being fueled less by solid scientific evidence than by an extreme Green ideology that – much like Agent Smith in the Matrix movies – views humanity as a virus, a plague upon the earth that must be contained and ultimately eradicated.  For the extreme enviro-ideologues, mankind’s devastating impact on the earth is a foregone conclusion; the appeal to “science” is simply a clever public relations tactic…

Read the whole article here.

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Don’t look at all that snow.  TIME is here to remind us that global warming is still to blame:

But as far as winter storms go, shouldn’t climate change make it too warm for snow to fall? Eventually that is likely to happen — but probably not for a while. In the meantime, warmer air could be supercharged with moisture and, as long as the temperature remains below 32°F, it will result in blizzards rather than drenching winter rainstorms. And while the mid-Atlantic has borne the brunt of the snowfall so far this winter, areas near lakes may get hit even worse. As global temperatures have risen, the winter ice cover over the Great Lakes has shrunk, which has led to even more moisture in the atmosphere and more snow in the already hard-hit Great Lakes region, according to a 2003 study in the Journal of Climate.

Hat-tip: Planet Gore at NRO

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While most of the federal government was shut down on Monday due to the weekend’s blizzard (your humble blogger jas just got his internet service restored after 3 days, and has spent the afternoon unburying his mobile CO2 manufacturing unit), the President decided it was the perfect time to unveil his new office of doom-mongering Climate Service:

The Obama administration on Monday proposed a new agency to study and report on the changing climate.

Also known as global warming, climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.

“Whether we like it or not, climate change represents a real threat,” Locke said Monday at a news conference.

Lubchenco added, “Climate change is real, it’s happening now.” She said climate information is vital to the wind power industry, coastal community planning, fishermen and fishery managers, farmers and public health officials.

This new propaganda service arrives on the scene just in time, as the AGW theory melts around us.

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This sort of thing would never, unfortunately, be said here.

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Remember this the next time they say that the IPCC reports on “settled” science:

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

In court that’s called hearsay.  Why is the UN claiming that it’s “science?”

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More unintended consequences from government interventionism in the market, via WaPo:

…In a matter of months, the Biomass Crop Assistance Program — a small provision tucked into the 2008 farm bill — has mushroomed into a half-a-billion dollar subsidy that is funneling taxpayer dollars to sawmills and lumber wholesalers, encouraging them to sell their waste to be converted into high-tech biofuels. In doing so, it is shutting off the supply of cheap timber byproducts to the nation’s composite wood manufacturers, who make panels for home entertainment centers and kitchen cabinets.While it remains unclear whether Congress or the Obama administration will push to revamp the program, even some businesses that should benefit from the subsidy are beginning to question its value.

“It’s not right. It’s not serving any purpose,” said Bob Jordan, president of Jordan Lumber & Supply in North Carolina, even while noting that he might be able to get twice as much money for his mill’s sawdust and shavings under the program.

“The best thing they could do is forget about it. All it’s doing is driving the price of wood up.”

…

Subsidies, by their very nature, distort markets.  While this specific outcome may or may have not been foreseeable, that there would have been some destruction by forcing a good to be used for a different purpose than the market generally allocates it should have been obvious.

But don’t count on government deciding to “forget about it,” despite the damaging evidence.  The deep-seated desire of some to save civilization by promoting “green technology” is based on a near-religious fanaticism in support of AGW.  If it hasn’t been shaken by ClimateGate and today’s global cooling, a little economics isn’t going to do it either.  The only hope is to vote them all out.

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Definition of irony: when global warming believing, cap-and-trade supporting, RINO Gov. Charlie Crist is forced to issue an emergency order to deal with Florida’s record cold.

Florida’s governor has signed an emergency order to deal with the cold weather threatening the state’s crops.

Gov. Charlie Crist on Tuesday signed the executive order that relaxes the normal restrictions on transporting crops. It also gives the state’s Division of Emergency Management and other agencies the authority to provide growers with assistance.

Throughout central and south Florida, farmers are trying to salvage millions of dollars worth of citrus and vegetable crops. They are spraying them in protective layers of ice and covering them in plastic.

Forecasters say the cold spell will last through the weekend, likely breaking records for continuous cold temperatures in many parts of the state.

It’s been a tough week for the warm-mongers.

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The Gore Effect is the tendency of global warming events to be marked by record cold temperatures.

Blizzard hits Copenhagen:

World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.

“Temperatures will stay low at least the next three days,” Henning Gisseloe, an official at Denmark’s Meteorological Institute, said today by telephone, forecasting more snow in coming days. “There’s a good chance of a white Christmas.”

…Denmark has a maritime climate and milder winters than its Scandinavian neighbors. It hasn’t had a white Christmas for 14 years, under the DMI’s definition, and only had seven last century. Temperatures today fell as low as minus 4 Celsius (25 Fahrenheit).

Both the President and Nancy Pelosi had to leave the global warming conference early in order to get home before the record challenging blizzard hitting Washington DC today.

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The Copenhagen talks aren’t about climate science.  They aren’t about carefully crafting policy to deal with scientifically calculated problems.  For one thing, we know that the science has been cynically manipulated to the point that the very scientific process itself has been forever undermined.

No, Copenhagen is not about science.  It’s about two things: power and ideology.

The violent protests taking place outside the conference probably look familiar to you. They should.  We’ve seen all this before.  It’s the same bunch who have been protesting since the 60’s – radical leftwing agitators who hate capitalism.  They’ve found a new home in the confines of ecoreligion, where they can again comfortably lob emotional attacks on the capitalist order.  These are ideologically minded radicals; brainwashed, capitalist-hating and know-nothing college youths; and other social malcontents.  They don’t have the first clue as to what the science does or does not say, nor do they care.  All they know is that the West is evil and capitalism has got to go.

Been there, done that. We’ve heard it all before.

They are quite clear in what they want.  Marching under the banner of “Climate Justice Action,” some of these leftwingers want redistribution as “reparations” for “ecological debt.”  They are demanding up to $45 trillion.  This is attempting confiscation and political revolution, not science.

Inside the conference, it’s all about power.  These people don’t give a damn about the environment, climate change, or whatever buzz words they’re throwing out to the world at large.  Oh, sure, they’ve invited plenty of people who have been duped into believing such things, but those actually making the decisions aren’t there to save the planet or any such feel-good nonsense.  They’re there because the world order is suddenly up for negotiation.  Power is being redistributed, and everyone wants to maximize their acquisitions.

Don’t believe me? Just look at the two sides. Where are the fault lines? The so-called developing nations want power redistributed to them, while the current powers seek desperately to defend the status quo.  The entire affair is best understood through the prism of realist foreign policy.  It’s power politics, plain and simple.

This might actually be good, as it reduces the chances of all sides settling on some economy destroying agreement that leaves none better off.  If they’re all indeed fighting to preserve or enhance their own power structures, we might just skate by without any freedom-reducing agreements to “save the planet” from imagined catastrophe.

Update: Confirmation that it’s not about science (via The Foundry):

Janos Pasztor—the Director of U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon’s Climate Change Support Team—was characterizing the nature of the talks between the rich and poor nations of the world when he said the following: “This is not a climate-change negotiation … It’s about something much more fundamental. It’s about economic strength.” The nations at the negotiation, he added, “just have to slug it out.”

Update II: Hugo Chavez gets wild applause for saying that capitalism is the “silent and terrible ghost in the room.”

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