The Obama administration’s recently re-imposed deepwater drilling moratorium is now reportedly stopping shallow-water drilling as well. The Louisiana Department of Natural Resources issued a release Tuesday showing that the moratorium has resulted in a near-total decline of approved shallow-water drilling permits:

Approved permits for shallow water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico have dropped significantly since the federal moratorium on deepwater drilling earlier this year, with only one approved new well permit so far in July. In the 11 months prior to the moratorium, the federal government approved an average of 14 permits per month in the Gulf of Mexico.

The first attempt at imposing the moratorium met outspoken resistance by Gulf coast residents. After federal courts threw out the first ban, the Obama administration regrouped and issued a new ban on July 12^th, this time banning drilling regardless of water-depth. Ken Salazar said of the new ban:

Like the deepwater drilling moratorium lifted by the District Court on June 22, the deepwater drilling suspensions ordered today apply to most deepwater drilling activities and could last through November 30…the May 28 moratorium proscribed drilling based on specific water depths; the new decision does not suspend activities based on water depth, but on the basis of the drilling configurations and technologies.

According to Lafayette, Louisiana’s The Advertiser these “configurations and technologies” are pretty much the same regardless of water-depth. “Since shallow-water wells often utilize floating drilling platforms,” which is one of the key pieces of banned equipment, “the ban in fact applies to most shallow-water drilling.”

While off-shore oil drilling is lurching to a standstill, there’s plenty of fuel being added to the fire of outrage by Gulf coast residents being affected by the moratorium. A “Rally for Economic Survival” took place Wednesday at the Cajundome in Lafayette, Louisiana, where it was attended by more than 11,000 local citizens who spoke with what Opelousas, Louisiana “Daily World” called “a remarkable degree of unanimity.”

Speakers from across state and local government and industries declared that, “The Obama administration’s six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling must be lifted before it does more damage to the region’s economy — and to the nation’s capacity to produce energy.”

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal specifically highlighted the compounding effect of the shallow-water drilling ban:

New requirements for shallow-water drilling are causing permitting delays that could lead to significant additional economic impacts on top of those caused by the deepwater drilling moratorium. Shallow water OCS drilling activities support thousands of Louisiana jobs in addition to those related to deepwater activity.

Offshore drilling bans stretch far beyond simply hurting Louisiana. Dr. David Kreutzer and John Ligon report thatthe economic impact of a total offshore drilling ban could be nationally crippling. It would: 1) Reduce GDP by $5.5 trillion; 2) Reduce job growth by more than 1 million jobs by 2015 and more than 1.5 million jobs by 2030, and 3) Increase the total expenditures for imported oil by nearly $737 billion.

The Heritage Foundation remains on the scene in the Gulf states, surveying the devastating impact the misguided federal response has had so far. Citizens affected by the drilling moratorium are clamoring to get back to work, and fearful that they might not be able to if the administration continues to compound the damage done by the largest oil disaster to ever wreak havoc on our country.

Lifting the oil-drilling moratorium is priority number 1 on Obama’s Oil Spill To-Do List, and there is so much more to be done.

Allegations that scientists’ views were improperly used to justify a federal moratorium on deep-water drilling are being investigated, the Interior Department’s top watchdog says.

House Republicans who had sought the investigation released a letter Thursday from Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall confirming the probe.

Scientists who consulted with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for a report on drilling safety this spring said the department falsely implied they had agreed to a “blanket moratorium.” The scientists said the drilling moratorium went too far and warned that it may have a lasting impact on the nation’s economy.

The Interior Department’s May 27 report, which called for the moratorium, said that its recommendations had been “peer-reviewed” by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.

Interior spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said the experts were not asked to review or comment on the decision to implement the moratorium. They were asked only to review the 22 safety recommendations contained in the report on a technical basis, and they performed that task, she said.

The department has said previously that by listing the experts who had peer-reviewed those recommendations, it did not mean to imply that those experts also agreed with the moratorium.

Those assurances have done little to mollify a group of Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee, who urged Kendall in a letter this week to launch the investigation.

“Were any laws broken?” asked the seven lawmakers, led by the committee’s top Republican, Doc Hastings of Washington. They also questioned whether the White House or political appointees had any influence.

Depending on the results of the investigation, the inspector general could come up with recommendations aimed at preventing a repeat of any problems she finds.

Separately, a bipartisan group of senators urged Salazar to resume and expedite shallow-water drilling permits. Although those operations are not covered by the moratorium, the senators noted that only one new shallow-water permit has been issued in the last 10 weeks.

“Idling the Gulf’s shallow-water rig fleet indefinitely would be another blow to a region that has already suffered enough during this unprecedented disaster,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.

She and the nine other senators — eight Republicans led by Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, and one other Democrat, Mark Begich of Alaska — introduced a resolution urging a swift review of applications. They also pressed the case in a letter to Salazar.

Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said it has been working with shallow-water drillers to provide guidance on the requirements of new reforms, which were put in place to strengthen offshore drilling safety and protect the environment.

In addition to issuing written guidance, the bureau has concluded a week of discussions led by Director Michael Bromwich and will continue to have a dialogue on the matter, she said.

It’s one thing to say that President Obama’s administration showed its ineptitude and mismanagement in its handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It is quite another to grasp the situation up close, as I did during a recent visit to Alabama.

According to state disaster relief officials, Alabama conceived a plan — early on — to erect huge booms offshore to shield the approximately 200 miles of its coastline from oil. Rather than install the relatively light and shallow booms in use elsewhere, the state (with assistance from the Coast Guard) canvassed the world and located enough huge, heavy booms — some weighing tons and seven meters high — to guard its coast.

But … no sooner were the booms in place than the Coast Guard, perhaps under pressure from the public comments of James Carville, uprooted them and moved them to guard the Louisiana coastline, instead.

So, Alabama decided on a backup plan. It would buy snare booms to catch the oil as it began to wash up on the beaches.

But … the Fish and Wildlife Administration vetoed the plan saying it would endanger sea turtles that nest on the beaches.

So, Alabama — ever resourceful — decided to hire 400 workers to patrol the beaches in person scooping up oil that had washed ashore.

But … OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Agency) refused to allow them to work more than 20 minutes out of every hour and required an hour-long break after 40 minutes of work, so the cleanup proceeded at a very slow pace.

The short answer is that every agency — each with its own particular bureaucratic agenda — was able to veto each aspect of any plan to fight the spill with the unintended consequence that nothing stopped the oil from destroying hundreds of miles of wetlands, habitats, beaches, fisheries and recreational facilities.

Where was the president? Why did he not intervene in these and countless other bureaucratic controversies to force a focus on the oil, not on the turtles and other incidental concerns.

According to Alabama Gov. Bob Reilly, the administration’s “lack of ability has become transparent” in its handling of the oil spill. He notes that one stellar exception has been Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, without whom, he says, nothing whatever would have gotten done.

Eventually, the state stopped listening to federal agencies and just has gone ahead and given funds directly to the local folks fighting the spill rather than paying attention to the directives of the Unified Command. Apparently, there is a world of difference between the competence of the Coast Guard and the superb and efficient regular Navy and military.

Now, the greatest crisis of all looms on the horizon, as hurricanes sweep into the gulf. Should one hit offshore, it will destroy all the booms that have been placed to stop the oil from reaching shore. And there are no more booms anywhere in the world, according to Alabama disaster relief officials.

The political impact of this incompetence has only just begun to be felt. While administration operatives are flying high after a week in which the president’s ratings rebounded to 49 percent in Rasmussen after his firing of Gen. McChrystal, the oil is still gushing and the situation is about to worsen.

The obvious fact is that Obama has no executive experience, and neither do any of his top advisors. Without a clear mandate from the top, needed efforts to salvage the situation are repeatedly stymied by well meaning bureaucrats strictly following the letter of their agency policy and federal law. The result, ironically, of their determined efforts to protect the environment has been the greatest environmental disaster in history. But some turtles are OK!

Well, it’s about time.   With a hurricane forming in the Gulf, oil washing up along the shorelines along the Gulf states, and major damage already done to the coast and industries, Obama finally has accepted foreign help:

The United States is accepting help from 12 countries and international organizations in dealing with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The State Department said in a statement Tuesday that the U.S. is working out the particulars of the help that’s been accepted.

The identities of all 12 countries and international organizations were not immediately announced. One country was cited in the State Department statement — Japan, which is providing two high-speed skimmers and fire containment boom.

More than 30 countries and international organizations have offered to help with the spill. The State Department hasn’t indicated why some offers have been accepted and others have not.

As the United States has always been there for so many countries in need, we thank these countries for their aid. If only our president didn’t use this oil spill to create a platform for his climate agenda, the cleanup would be ahead of schedule and a bit more manageable.

Allahpundit and Ace have so much more on this. However, the Jones Act is still not waived.

Oil Spill Timeline from RightChange on Vimeo is a must see.

A quickie but goodie courtesy of The Shark Tank, which wrangled this interview with LeMieux after a meeting of the Florida GOP. I’d be curious to know when, precisely, O told him that we can’t spare an all-hands-on-deck approach with American skimmers — although given the fact that that remains the policy today, their convo might as well have happened yesterday. As for foreign skimmers, Rob Bluey asks the question of the hour: Why hasn’t Obama waived the Jones Act yet?

Jones Act expert Charlie Papavizas said the 2005 Katrina waiver, which lasted from Sept. 1 to Sept. 19, was used primarily to move cargo between ports, but it didn’t result in any new foreign ships in the region. “Twenty days is not enough time to reposition and do anything useful,” he said…

Sen. George LeMieux (R-Fla.) pressed the president on the Jones Act during a recent face-to-face meeting. LeMieux said the action would signal America’s allies that their help is wanted. Given the dire situation in the Gulf, what’s the harm?

Two other members from Florida, Reps. Corrine Brown (D) and John Mica (R), said their state is suffering while skimmers sit idle. At a hearing on Thursday, Brown held up photos of vessels in Mexico and Norway, asking, “What is the process for the state to take advantage of skimmers from other countries?”…

This, of course, is the primary criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of the spill. While the president says he “will not settle for inaction,” his failure to waive the Jones Act — even if for the sole purpose of sending a message to our allies — suggests he’s not doing everything he can.

Remember, this is a guy who wants us to get started on “clean energy” today, even though it could take decades to develop, because there’s no time like the present to begin work. And yet the Jones Act remains in effect almost 10 weeks after the rig blew, presumably because it’ll “take too long” to get skimmers in there. As for the theory that Obama’s keeping foreign ships out to protect American unions, see Bluey’s piece for a debunking of that.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyyL50dFkMc

In a 1999 Gallup poll, that’s what 6 percent of Americans believed. And today, that’s the same percentage of Americans that believe that Obama’s $862 billion stimulus created jobs, in a new CBS/New York Times poll. Compare that to the 48 percent of Americans who don’t believe that the stimulus has created, or will create, any jobs.

But Obama’s problem isn’t just the poll numbers.  It’s the reality of his stimulus failure.  And a new report from Obama’s own economists are confirming that his stimulus package is not delivering on his promises. Yesterday, the White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report estimating the U.S. will add 95,000 jobs per month in 2010, well short of their own job standard. Here’s why:

• Obama promised the stimulus package would create 3.5 million jobs by end of 2010.
• Since the stimulus was signed, we have lost 2.8 million jobs.
• In order to meet his own job standard, President Obama needs to create 6.3 million jobs this year, but 95,000 jobs per month would only result in 1.1 million.
• Therefore, at the end 2010, Obama will still have a net job loss of 1.7 million.

Two days ago, Obama still had the gall to say that his policies were “fundamentally business-friendly” and that we “would be hard pressed to identify a piece of legislation that … is not good for business.” But while a majority of Americans (56 percent) say that President Obama does not have a clear plan for creating jobs, it’s actually worse.  Obama’s agenda actually kills jobs, and he is dead set on nominating people like Craig Becker, an SEIU and ACORN lawyer, to implement his job-killing regulations.

In his speech at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, President Obama told leaders from around the world that “the time for talk is over.” Obama pushed for all major economies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but admitted some doubt as to whether a collective agreement would be reached. He could offer no concrete plans and nothing more than confidence that cap and trade legislation would be signed into law next year in the United States. While the focus of his speech was primarily on what actions the United States government was undertaking, he stressed that climate change should be addressed using

“Mitigation. Transparency. And financing. It is a clear formula – one that embraces the principle of common but differentiated responses and respective capabilities. And it adds up to a significant accord – one that takes us farther than we have ever gone before as an international community.”

This is a formula for nothing more than economic disaster and wealth distribution.

Mitigation is a costly, ineffective way to address climate change. Using a cap and trade system in an attempt to change the earth’s temperature would cause gasoline prices to rise by 58 percent ($1.38 more per gallon) and average household electric rates to increase by 90 percent. Net job losses approach 1.9 million as immediate as 2012 and could approach 2.5 million by 2035. Cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) losses are $9.4 trillion between 2012 and 2035. Climatologist Paul Knappenberger projects that cap and trade will only change global temperatures a fraction of a degree and admission from Environmental Protection Agency’s Lisa Jackson that U.S. action alone won’t have any noticeable effect, yet President Obama urged that “America is going to continue on this course of action no matter what happens in Copenhagen.”

But even collective action wouldn’t fare any better. One study of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that called for 5 percent emissions cuts below 1990 baseline levels by 2012 found that even if each country reached its targeted emissions reductions, it would reduce the earth’s temperature 0.07 degree Celsius by 2050.

Transparency is a term that has been stressed repeatedly even before the President took office; it was one of the lynchpins of his campaign. The Climategate emails and other documents that revealed collusion in exaggerating data, ostensible illegal destruction of information, manipulation of data, and attempts to freeze out dissenting scientists from publishing their work in reputable journals show that the scientific debate is anything but transparent.

We’re unlikely to see any transparency in commitments to reducing carbon dioxide emissions either. China, for instance, prefers to measure carbon emissions relative to its size of the economy mostly because it is less verifiable than a pure emissions target. Since carbon intensity is measured in relation to gross domestic product and Chinese statistics are often altered or censored, it will be easier for China to “meet” its goals.

Financing for developing countries would merely be a historic transfer of wealth. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said America would be a part of a massive foreign aid package, $100 billion annually, in the name of helping developing countries combat global warming. Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Ben Lieberman writes, “How much she expects the U.S. taxpayer to contribute to the $100 billion annual fund was not clear, but it could well be more than the $26 billion America spends on foreign aid each year. There are plenty of issues with past foreign aid programs. In many cases only a fraction of the funds were well spent, and aid can encourage the perpetuation of the very reasons (and regimes) that gave rise to the need for assistance in the first place. Foreign aid doled out to fight global warming has another big drawback – the problem it addresses is an overstated one.”

Action may be louder than words, but with Americans strongly opposed to an exorbitant national energy tax, the only thing Obama can offer are words of hope.

From TimesOnline.co.uk:

Barack Obama’s climate deal unravels at last moment

The United Nations climate change conference ended in recrimination yesterday without reaching a clear deal on emissions targets.

After a stormy session in Copenhagen, in which a vociferous anti-American minority brought the talks close to collapse, most countries agreed simply to “take note” of a watered-down agreement brokered by President Barack Obama and supported by Britain.

This accord — which had been drawn up in discussions with China and 30 or so other countries on Friday — sets a target of limiting global warming to a maximum of 2C above pre-industrial times.

Above this temperature, scientists say, the world would start to experience dangerous changes, including floods, droughts and rising seas.

Critics pointed out, however, that the agreement failed to say how this limit on rising temperatures would be achieved. It pushed into the future decisions on core problems such as emissions cuts, and did not specify where a proposed $100 billion (£62 billion) in annual aid for developing nations would come from.

Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN climate change secretariat, called it “basically a letter of intent … the ingredients of an architecture that can respond to the long-term challenge of climate change”.

Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International, dismissed it as “a triumph of spin over substance. It recognises the need to keep warming below 2C but does not commit to do so. It kicks back the big decisions on emissions cuts and fudges the issue of climate cash”.

The deal was denounced when put early yesterday to a plenary session of the conference after Obama and other heads of state had flown home.

Delegates from Sudan, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia — who form an anti-American front — led the attack.

A Sudanese delegate, Lumumba Di-Aping, caused uproar when he compared the plan with the Holocaust. It was, he said, “a solution based on the same very values, in our opinion, that piled 6m people into furnaces in Europe”.

“The reference to the Holocaust is … absolutely despicable,” said Anders Turesson, Sweden’s chief negotiator.

John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and President Barack Obama’s top science adviser, told Congress last week that the Earth could be approaching a series of “tipping points” that could drastically alter the climate and Earth’s natural systems and cause the sea level to rise dramatically.

“Climate scientists worry about ‘tipping points’ in the climate system, including ecosystems, meaning thresholds beyond which a small additional increase in average temperature or some associated climate variable results in major changes to the affected system,” Holdren told members of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Holdren, who testified on the current state of climate science and submitted written testimony, presented the points of no return.

“Examples of tipping points of eventual concern include the complete disappearance of Arctic sea ice in the summer, leading to drastic changes in ocean circulation and climate patterns across the whole Northern Hemisphere.”

Another possibility he laid out was that ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica would begin losing mass more rapidly “driving rates of sea-level increase that could reach 6 feet per century or more.”

But Holdren, who was the director of the Woods Hole Research Center before being appointed to head Obama’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, caught heat from Republicans on the committee for the prediction.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the ranking Republican, pointed out that Holdren had previously cited 13 feet as the figure for possible sea level rise by the end of this century–a figure far higher than the one released by the United Nations a year later.

“You gave an interview in August of 2006 with BBC News in the UK and you said that a sea level rise of up to 13 feet was in the realm of possibility,” Sensenbrenner told Holdren. “However, that’s 11 feet higher than what the IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has estimated over this period of time, which is somewhere between seven and 23 inches.”

Holdren answered that, like his current claim of 6 feet, the previous estimate was based on his reading of the scientific literature.

“That was based on scientific peer-reviewed publications that appeared in the early 2000s that indicated that over geologic time in periods of natural climate change, there had been episodes in which the sea level rise increased by as much as 2-5 meters per century, and that this could not be ruled out at the temperatures for which we were heading in the 21st^t century as a result of our activity,” Holdren said.

Critics say “tipping points” are scare tactics to bring weight to their conjectures.

Steve Milloy, the president of the environmental consulting group, Steven J. Milloy Inc., told CNSNews.com that the notion of “tipping points” is trendy, but unfounded.

“I don’t even know what that means; I mean, it’s a ridiculous concept,” he said.

“There’s no such thing as a tipping point. How do we know that? We know that we’ve been coming out of the Little Ice Age for the last 200 years. How do we know that we’re not headed into another period like the Medieval Optimum — which was very warm?”

Milloy, who founded the popular Web site, JunkScience.com, to highlight what he claims are poor scientific analyses of global climate change, said the forecasting models scientists use to make ify “tipping point” predictions of catastrophe are faulty.

“The models are all wrong,” he said. “And why are they wrong? Well, they’re based on the unproven assumption that man-made CO2 drives climate.”

“(Holdren and others) are worried about the temperature going too far and that if we get a degree warmer somehow the world is going to turn upside down.”

An Unscientific Trend in Science?

In fact, Holdren is far from alone in his notion that there are approaching “tipping points” for the earth’s climate. A survey of scholarly publications shows a number of journal articles addressing the concern.

– In 2005, the Journal of Climate published “The thinning of arctic sea ice, 1998-2003: Have we passed a tipping point?” while researchers at the University of Oregon predicted in 2008 that a tipping point for the health of the Southern Ocean ecosystem would be reached when CO2 levels in the atmosphere reached 450 parts per million. 

– Jim Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testified before the same House Select Committee in June that “ominous tipping points” loom regarding the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

– Holdren himself has used the “tipping point” idea before in his confirmation hearing before the Senate in February, while he described another dramatic prediction of his — that one billion people could die from carbon-caused famines over a 34 year period.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), a top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, called Holdren’s hand over the prediction, asking the nominee: “In 1986, you predicted that global warming could cause the deaths of one billion people by 2020. Would you stick to that statement today?”

Holdren said it was unlikely, but that “I think it could happen, and the way it could happen is climate crosses a tipping point in which a catastrophic degree of climate change has severe impacts on global agriculture. A lot of people depend on that.”

Vitter followed up, asking, “So you would stick to that statement?”

“I don’t think it is likely,” Holdren said. “I think we should invest effort –considerable effort — to reduce the likelihood further.”

Claims such as these are evidence that Holdren is a “huge alarmist,” according to Milloy.

“A thousand years ago the Vikings farmed Greenland. What was the Arctic ice shrinkage then, in the summer? I imagine it was pretty extensive and there were no SUVs or coal-fired power plants back then,” Milloy told CNSNews.com

Milloy said the models used by climate scientists, especially those who contributed to the most recent United Nations IPCC report, do not take account of some huge factors — including the sun and clouds.

“The models exclude that big yellow ball in the sky and they also exclude those white fluffy things that float by,” Milloy mocked. “Both of those have dramatic effects on climate on a daily basis.”

Meanwhile, a series of leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit between climatologists now known as “Climategate” show that there is not enough understanding of all of the impacts on climate to make such dramatic predictions.

“If you look at those Climategate e-mails,” Milloy said, “Kevin Trenberth, who’s a very senior IPCC scientist, admits that he does not understand energy flows in the atmosphere. Well, if you don’t understand energy flows in the atmosphere, then you can’t model those energy flows and you can’t make those crazy predictions–and you ought not make global energy policy based on something you don’t understand.”

Trenberth, a contributor to the last U.N. report, is also head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

According to e-mails that are part of the Climategate leak, Trenberth allegedly told colleagues in 2004 that “we are nowhere close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet bright. We are not close to balancing the energy budget.”

Trenberth said that “geoengineering,” attempts to change the Earth’s climate, should not be attempted.

“The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!”

Meanwhile, more than 140 other scientists wrote an open letter Monday to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, challenging the body to “produce convincing OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for their claims of dangerous human-caused global warming and other changes in climate.”

The signers include Dr. Ian D. Clark, a paleoclimatology professor at the University of Ottawa, and Joseph D’Aleo, first director of meteorology for The Weather Channel.

The group said dire predictions from computer models alone were not sufficiently scientific.

“Projections of possible future scenarios from unproven computer models of climate are not acceptable substitutes for real world data obtained through unbiased and rigorous scientific investigation,” they wrote.

Climate Depot’s Morano on Fox News talking Climategate, UN and latest science:

Read more about Climategate:

• E-Mails Of Climate Researchers Buttress Case Of Warming Fraud
• Climategate spells end to the false science of climate change
• UN scientists turn on each other: UN Scientist Declares Climategate colleagues Mann, Jones and Rahmstorf ’should be barred from the IPCC process’ — They are ‘not credible any more’
• Global Warming Meltdown: Climategate!
• ClimateGate: Man Made Global Warming May Be What Some Scientists Chose to be True
• The Day Science Died
• Climategate: CRU looks to “big oil” for support
• Lord Monckton: Shut Down The UN, Arrest Al Gore
• Ocean Absorption Of CO2 Not Shrinking
• Brownshirt Youth Corps Invade Monckton Speech

Both the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade energy approved earlier this year and the version just okayed by Sen. Barbara Boxer’s Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Democrats (Republicans boycotted the vote) contains an obscure but nasty bureaucratic provision that requires President Obama to act like Venezuelan strong man Hugo Chavez.

Here’s how: The bills require a federal declaration of a “climate emergency” if world greenhouse gas levels reach 450 parts per million. Guess what? The Pacific Northwest National Lab says it is a virtual certainty that level will be reached within a few months. The bill then requires the president to “direct all Federal agencies to use existing statutory authority to take appropriate actions…to address shortfalls” in achieving needed greenhouse gas reductions.

When Vitter asked EPA Administrator what would be done in such a situation, she refused to say. So it must be asked: Would the president be empowered to do things like nationalize whole sectors of industry, ban coal use, restrict private automobile use, or whatever else the “emergency” requires?

The Examiner’s David Freddoso reports that Sen. David Vitter, R-LA, is holding a news conference later today concerning this provision. Vitter wonders if companies that support cap-and-trade in the hope they will profit from going green realize what could happen to them soon after enactment. More to the point, we wonder what the American people will do when they realize what is actually going on here.

From The Heritage Foundation:

The New York Times reports:

The Environmental Protection Agency has directed two of its lawyers to makes changes to a YouTube video they posted that is critical of the Obama administration’s climate change policy.

The EPA lawyers did take their video down. But not before others reposted it. Watch:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSNQzSjb38g

You can read an op-ed the lawyers wrote for the Washington Post here. The Heritage Foundation does not endorse the couple’s call for carbon taxes, but their analysis of the futility of cap and trade is dead on.Read about how the economists who first thought up cap and trade, do not believe it can control carbon, here.

Read about how carbon credits are an absolute fraud here, here, here, here, and here.