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2014 post heart attack

see inhofe2doc (also sep node)

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The letter calls for the Fed to ensure the relief program is “broad and flexible” and asserts that companies in the “energy and transportation sectors” deserve support. But the message appears particularly concerned with the possible exclusion of coal companies, noting that BlackRock decided in January to exclude any company from its actively managed holdings if it derives more than 25% of its revenue selling coal used in power plants. BlackRock has more than $7 trillion under management, although much of that is in passive holdings. A representative for the company declined to comment on the senators’ letter.

The flurry of exhortations are meant to influence the Fed’s planning, which has yet to be set in stone. Although the U.S. central bank is dedicated to buying newly issued corporate bonds, existing investment-grade bonds, and exchange-traded funds based on highly rated debt as part of its economic-relief efforts, it hasn’t laid out which specific sectors or companies will get the program’s attentions.

BlackRock Chairman Larry Fink shook the finance establishment in January when he called for a “fundamental reshaping of finance” in response to global warming. Last month he used his letter to shareholders to argue that the pandemic should be used by investors as an “opportunity to accelerate into a more sustainable world.” Within the environmental community, however, BlackRock isn’t always seen as a steadfast ally. The move to exclude coal companies from some investments drew ire from those who didn’t think the world’s asset manager was going far enough.

BlackRock was responsible for a similar, smaller bond-buying program on behalf of the Fed during the 2008 financial crisis. Even back then, some Republicans raised objections to selecting the asset manager. But it won out because Fed’s expertise is setting big-picture monetary policies, whereas firms like BlackRock are able to assess and manage different kinds of debts, such as corporate bonds.

On Tuesday, BlackRock also won a contract to develop strategies for including sustainability in the European Union’s banking system. The asset manager beat out eight other bids, and over the next year will help incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) measures in the EU banks’ processes for managing risks and assessing investment policies.

no lnx

at Least 2 GOP Senators Dumped Millions In Stock After Coronavirus Briefings

Sens. Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler reportedly made dozens of stock trades shortly after private health briefings for Congress began in January.

By Nick Visser

At least two Republican senators sold hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in stock shortly after Congress began receiving regular briefings about the outbreak of coronavirus spreading around the globe, according to several reports and reviews of financial disclosures.

ProPublica first reported Thursday that Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, offloaded between $628,000 and $1.72 million worth of holdings in 33 transactions on Feb. 13, shortly after he publicly assured Americans the government was prepared to deal with the novel coronavirus that has since been declared a pandemic. A week after the sales, the stock market began to precipitously fall, erasing about 30% of its value.

Just hours later, the Daily Beast first reported that Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) began selling stocks jointly owned with her husband on Jan. 24, the day the Senate Health Committee held a private, all-chamber briefing from top American officials about COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. In a series of 29 transactions ending in mid-February, documented in Senate financial disclosures, Loeffler and her husband sold between $1,275,000 and $3,100,000 in stock.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) reportedly sold hundreds of thousands in stock shortly after Congress began receiving regular briefings about the outbreak of coronavirus.

The Georgia senator also made two purchases, including one in a company that owns teleworking software, the Beast noted. Loeffler’s husband is Jeffrey Sprecher, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. The pair are worth an estimated $500 million.

Two other senators made major stock sales around the same time: Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.). Feinstein’s office told The New York Times the lawmaker’s assets are held in a blind trust and she has “no involvement” in the sales.

Selling stock before a market crash can insulate stockholders from any potential losses. It’s against the law for lawmakers to use non-public information to influence financial decisions.

Burr’s office has pushed back against ProPublica’s reporting — which is also based on public financial disclosures required by law ? saying the forms were filed “several weeks before the U.S. and financial markets showed signs of volatility due to the growing coronavirus outbreak.”

“As the situation continues to evolve daily, he has been deeply concerned by the steep and sudden toll this pandemic is taking on our economy,” an aide said in a statement Thursday.

Early Friday, Loeffler called reports about the sales a “ridiculous and baseless attack”: ...

c street family?

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/06/impeachment-defense-bill-jim-inhofe-067150

11/06/2019 07:43 PM EST

Annual defense policy legislation would be in jeopardy if House Democrats move forward with the impeachment of President Donald Trump, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee warned on Wednesday.

In a floor speech, Sen. Jim Inhofe reiterated that time is running short for negotiators to reach a deal on the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. A staunch Trump ally, Inhofe dinged the House impeachment inquiry, arguing Democrats are placing partisan aims over national security.

Story Continued Below

"It concerns me to see them prioritizing their misguided attempts to undo the results of the 2016 election through impeachment instead of taking care of our troops with the NDAA," the Oklahoma Republican said. "If we can't get our defense authorizations free [from] the partisan gridlock, what kind of a message does that send Americans who rely on our troops for protection."

Story Continued Below

Moreover, partisan wrangling over the legislation hurts national security, he argued.

"Our adversaries, for them, they enjoy this dysfunction. That's what they want," Inhofe said. "They want defense funding mired in partisan debate. They don't want us to catch up."

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/sen-inhofe-is-just-fine-with-flooding-his-neighbors-as-long-as-it-keeps-his-lake-view/

no lnx

Sen. Inhofe is just fine with flooding his neighbors as long as it keeps his lake view

Written by Sarah Okeson / DC Report November 27, 2019

Sen Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, tucked an amendment into the $750 billion defense spending bill that would benefit fellow wealthy homeowners at Grand Lake in northeast Oklahoma by keeping lake levels high but is expected to worsen flooding in nearby Miami, Okla.

The amendment, which starts on page 1,183 of the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, would limit the ability of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to say how high the lake should be. The Grand River Dam Authority, which has board members who also own lake houses, is licensed by the commission to operate the dam.

“He’s helping his buddies to make sure the lake is full during summer so those very big boats do well,” said Rebecca Jim of Local Environmental Action Demanded which put up a billboard in Miami criticizing Inhofe.

Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees was created in 1940, when the federal government’s New Deal-era Public Works Administration built the Pensacola Dam on the Grand River. The 66-mile-long lake is so beloved by the wealthy and powerful of Oklahoma that one of its subdivisions is called Governors Retreat. Inhofe, a climate-change denier and vocal anti-environmentalist with an estimated net worth is $4.5 million, built a vacation house at Grand Lake in 1962. Former Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and her husband bought a second home on Grand Lake in 2011. Dam authority board members Pete Churchwell, Jim Richie and Tom Kimball also have lake houses.

“For the better part of my career in the United States Senate I have been working to maintain higher lake levels on Grand,” Inhofe wrote the commission in 2016.

Law professor Richard Painter said the annual defense bill has been used before to try to get environmentally questionable projects through Congress. In 2018, the Senate defense bill included an amendment that would nullify lawsuits over a land exchange for PolyMet Mining Co. to build a copper-nickel mine in Minnesota. That provision was removed before the bill went to the president.

“That’s something that should not be dealt with in a defense appropriations bill,” said Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.

The federal financial conflict of interest law exempts members of Congress, the president and the vice president. Miami officials learned about Inhofe’s amendment just before the July 4 holiday from the press.

“It’s just as unfair as it can be,” said Miami City Manager Dean Kruithof.

Since the early 1990s, Miami has flooded more than two dozen times, most recently in May. A 2015 study Miami paid for found that the dam worsened flooding.

“The economic and social fabric of the community is slowly being destroyed,” said Miami Mayor Rudy Schultz.

Natasha McKibben spent her oldest son’s eighth birthday packing up their house near Miami, shortly before it flooded in 2007, causing $30 million to $40 million in damage to Miami and the surrounding area. Some of her neighbors’ houses are still vacant.

“We had a FEMA trailer for probably two months before we could get back in the house,” McKibben said.

Miami officials had hoped to address flooding problems with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The license for the dam runs through March 2022. The dam authority now wants to extend the license until Dec. 31, 2026.

https://nondoc.com/2019/11/09/inhofe-applauds-withdrawal-from-paris-climate-agreement-urges-passage-of-defense-bill/

no lnx

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2019

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Home Civics Politics Inhofe applauds withdrawal from Paris climate agreement, urges passage of defense bill

CIVICSPOLITICS

Inhofe applauds withdrawal from Paris climate agreement, urges passage of defense bill

By Addison Kliewer and Sarah Beth Guevara - November 9, 2019 206

paris climate

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) continues efforts on the Senate floor to pass a national defense bill that would authorize military appropriations for 2020. (Addison Kliewer/Gaylord News)

WASHINGTON — Amid Sen. Jim Inhofe’s (R-OK) efforts to pass a defense authorization bill this week, the senator commended President Donald Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Monday, Trump announced that the U.S. would officially begin withdrawing from the Paris climate accord — a promise he made in 2017. Nations worldwide signed the agreement in 2016 to increase international responses to climate change by setting carbon emission reduction plans.

Gaylord NewsThis story was reported by Gaylord News, a Washington reporting project of the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma.

As a senior member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Inhofe applauded the announcement, saying the agreement only contained empty promises.

“The reality is America’s CO2 emissions have been falling. In fact, in 2017, the United States led the world in CO2 emission reductions while, notably, China led in emissions — and the Paris Agreement wouldn’t have done anything to rein in China,” said Inhofe in a statement. “Clearly the president’s environmental policies are working without heavy-handed, one-sided commitments.”

In September, the U.S. was ranked under the “barely trying” category in reducing carbon emissions by National Geographic. The countries that were listed in the “top of the class” category were Morocco, The Gambia and India.

Shortly after Trump announced his intent to withdraw from the agreement in 2017, Inhofe wrote a USA Today op-ed, praising the president’s decision.

In the 2017 article, Inhofe wrote that by pulling out of the Paris accord, Trump is prioritizing America’s energy dominance and steering the world away from relying on energy-rich countries such as Iran and Russia.

“Our abundance is a competitive advantage that we can share freely with our allies,” wrote Inhofe. “Remaining in the Paris Agreement could hinder Trump’s energy dominance agenda. This risk is not worth taking.”

White House science advisor and Oklahoma native Kelvin Droegemeier said on Tuesday that Trump has made a promise to pull out of the agreement since entering office. Now, he is simply following through.

“I just make sure the president has the best science in front of him anytime, whatever the policy issue is,” said Droegemeier.

Inhofe urges House to pass National Defense Authorization Act

Inhofe, who is also chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, spoke on the Senate floor Wednesday about the need to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, a bill that would authorize appropriations for the 2020 fiscal year and advance policies for defense programs.

“I’ve been asked in the last three days where we are with — what I consider to be the most significant bill of the year every year — which is the Defense Authorization bill. I’ve been having to give the same answer for the last three or four days, and it’s unfortunate,” said Inhofe.

The NDAA has been stalled in the House largely due to Democratic opposition to funding a wall at the Southern U.S. border using military appropriation dollars. Inhofe said he thinks the House will eventually pass the bill, which has passed with bipartisan support for 58 consecutive years.

“If, for some reason, we didn’t get this thing passed until December, our kids over there would not be funded. I am talking about payrolls, I’m talking about everything else. Our military would stop in its tracks,” said Inhofe.

Last week, Inhofe introduced a smaller version of the NDAA, excluding all parts of the larger bill that do not directly relate to defense. Because members of the House spent the week working in their districts, the smaller bill was unable to be voted on this week.

We need to get it in a matter of days now, as soon as the members of the committees in the House are back in town,” said Inhofe.

TAGSCONGRESSGAYLORD NEWSJIM INHOFENATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACTNDAAPARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT

Addison Kliewer

Addison Kliewer is a champion equestrian and a member of the Chickasaw Nation. She hails from Cordell, Oklahoma, and is a student at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Sarah Beth Guevara

https://www.ehn.org/peter-dykstra-happy-birthday-senator-inhofe-2641352753.html

[req interview in 15 yrs]

...Inhofe's parents moved the family to Tulsa during World War II. Young Jim attended the University of Tulsa, followed his Dad's footsteps as an insurance industry executive, and served a two-year Army hitch, terms in the state House and Senate, and as Mayor of Tulsa. He won a seat in the U.S. House in 1986, and rose to the Senate in 1994, serving two stints as Chair of the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee.

I'll spare you the full chronicle of Inhofe's climate related activities, but here are a few high spots.

In May, 1978 as Tulsa Mayor, Inhofe issued a proclamation praising the hunt for clean energy. "I think we're all interested in looking for alternate sources of energy. And of course, we want clean sources," he said. "Solar energy is bound to be in our future. There's a kind of inevitability about it."

On July 29, 2003, He delivered a stemwinding speech on the Senate floor, concluding "could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? I believe it is."

With the assistance of Marc Morano, a political operative on Inhofe's committee staff, he became the go-to voice of climate denial. Morano, who had been a key conduit of information on the "swift-boat" claims against Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004, became a key voice on the so-called "ClimateGate" emails in 2009.

Inhofe has played the Hitler Card, characterizing environmentalists as the "Third Reich" and EPA as the Gestapo.

Several of Inhofe's family members built an igloo four blocks from the U.S. Capitol after a record-breaking 2010 snowstorm. They dedicated the structure to climate action advocate Al Gore.

He playfully lobbed a snowball on the Senate floor at the Senate's presiding officer during another snowstorm in 2014.

His lifetime voting score from the League of Conservation Voters in both the House and Senate is 5%.

Posterity will show at least two exceptions to Inhofe's treatment of environmental issues. In 2003, he co-sponsored the Marine Turtle Conservation Act, which funded efforts to protect the nesting areas of endangered Kemp's Ridley sea turtle. And in 2011, the environment treated him to hospitalization, when an unprecedented heat-driven outbreak of blue-green algae sickened him after a swim in Oklahoma's Grand Lake.

Jim Inhofe is alternately described as courtly and ruthless, and no doubt both qualities have helped carve out such a long political career. He is also a notoriously robust octogenarian, giving him a fair chance of beating the actuarial tables to live to 100. If he does, and he chooses to keep his Senate job until then, his re-election bids have been won by increasingly comfortable margins.

Hence, my standing invitation to the senior Senator from Oklahoma.

Midday Friday, I received my response from Leacy Burke:

I shared your inquiry with the Senator and he said: "Sure! How is 10 am on Friday, November 17, 2034?"

I'll pursue clarification whether it's 10am Eastern or Central time. Watch this space, or whatever information platforms exist, in November 2034.

racism new problem? ProEnglish tanton

The Southern Poverty Law Center reported on the group’s statement about the January 2018 meeting and also noted the July 2019 meeting in a piece about Tanton’s death.

On its 25th anniversary last month, the organization wrote that it “is very proud to have been able to have several meetings directly in the White House with a variety of aides to both President Trump and Vice President Pence.” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) recorded a message of congratulations to the group for its work.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/watch-elizabeth-warren-grills-trumps-defense-nominee-on-ties-to-major-defense-contractor/

kos

Elizabeth Warren is keeping up a grueling presidential campaign schedule, but she has not lost a step in her day job in the Senate, as Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of Defense found out Tuesday. Mark Esper was a top lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon, but he’s not interested in resolving that conflict of interest by permanently recusing himself from decisions involving his former employer.

Warren zeroed in on that and on Esper’s ability to get a waiver from recusing himself while he’s still waiting for a final seven-figure payout from Raytheon, questioning Esper about why he’s not doing what former acting Secretary Pat Shanahan did when Shanahan permanently recused himself from decisions about Boeing, his former employer. (See a pattern in who Trump is elevating?) Warren pressed hard for yes or no answers as Esper fought to filibuster and evade. He really did not want to commit to stepping back from decisions affecting his former employer—having some loopholes is very important to Esper.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Jim Inhofe first stepped in to defend Esper from the questioning, then cut Warren off after Esper got up on a very wobbly high horse to make the case for why he should absolutely be allowed to mix million-dollar payouts from defense contractors with so-called public service. (Spoiler: Esper’s high horse involved his own past military service.) “This is outrageous,” Warren said as Inhofe dinged her on time after repeatedly creating space for Esper to filibuster.

But before that, Warren summed up the situation: “Let me get this straight. You’re still due to get at least a million-dollar payout from when you lobbied for Raytheon. You won’t commit to recuse yourself. You insist on being free to seek a waiver that would let you make decisions affecting Raytheon’s bottom line and your remaining financial interest. And you won’t rule out taking a trip right back through the revolving door on your way out of government service or even just delaying that trip for four years after you leave government.”[vid]

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/06/epa-formaldehyde-warnings-blocked-696628

many lnx

Trump administration is suppressing an Environmental Protection Agency report that warns that most Americans inhale enough formaldehyde vapor in the course of daily life to put them at risk of developing leukemia and other ailments, a current and a former agency official told POLITICO.

The warnings are contained in a draft health assessment EPA scientists completed just before Donald Trump became president, according to the officials. They said top advisers to departing Administrator Scott Pruitt are delaying its release as part of a campaign to undermine the agency’s independent research into the health risks of toxic chemicals.

Andrew Wheeler, the No. 2 official at EPA who will be the agency's new acting chief as of Monday, also has a history with the chemical. He was staff director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2004, when his boss, then-Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), sought to delay an earlier iteration of the formaldehyde assessment.

Formaldehyde is one of the most commonly used chemicals in the country. Americans are exposed to it through wood composites in cabinets and furniture, as well as air pollution from major refineries. The new assessment would give greater weight to warnings about the chemical's risks and could lead to stricter regulations from the EPA or class-action lawsuits targeting its manufacturers, as frequently occurs after these types of studies are released.

“They’re stonewalling every step of the way,” the current official said, accusing political appointees of interfering with the formaldehyde assessment and other reports on toxic chemicals produced by EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System. Industry has long faulted the IRIS program, the agency’s only independent scientific division evaluating the health risks of toxic chemicals, whose assessments often form the basis for federal and state regulations.

The current official and former official requested anonymity out of fear for their jobs and the impact that speaking out could have on the IRIS program.

Interfering with the formaldehyde study is one of several steps Trump's EPA has taken to side with the businesses the agency is supposed to regulate and undermine the agency's approach to science, critics say. Public health advocates also expressed alarm after Pruitt replaced academic scientists with industry advocates on the agency’s influential science advisory boards and sought to limit the types of human health research the EPA can rely on in rulemakings.

The officials said Trump appointees have required that career officials receive their permission before beginning the required internal review of the formaldehyde study and have canceled key briefings that would have advanced it. That interference came after EPA career scientists revised the study once already last year to insulate it from political controversy, they said.

In a statement, EPA denied that the assessment was being held back.

“EPA continues to discuss this assessment with our agency program partners and have no further updates to provide at this time," EPA spokeswoman Kelsi Daniell said. “Assessments of this type are often the result of needs for particular rulemakings and undergo an extensive intra-agency and interagency process.”

But as long ago as January, Pruitt told a Senate panel that he believed the draft assessment was complete.

Five months later, it has yet to see the light of day. Meanwhile, internal documents show, a trade group representing businesses that could face new regulations and lawsuits if the study were released had frequent access to top EPA officials and pressed them to either keep it under wraps or change its findings.

“As stated in our meeting, a premature release of a draft assessment … will cause irreparable harm to the companies represented by the Panel and to the many companies and jobs that depend on the broad use of the chemical,” Kimberly Wise White, who leads the American Chemistry Council’s Formaldehyde Panel, wrote in a Jan. 26 letter to top officials at the EPA. The panel represents companies including the Koch Industries subsidiary Georgia-Pacific Chemicals LLC that could face higher costs from stricter regulations or lawsuits.

Environmentalists: Pruitt's replacement 'should scare anyone who breathes'

By ERIC WOLFF

Nearly a million jobs “depend on the use of formaldehyde,” White’s letter argued.

The holdup is attracting attention on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have already expressed alarm, arguing that the Trump administration has allowed politics to interfere in EPA’s scientific assessments of threats such as toxic pollution and climate change.

The agency must “move past politics and focus on its job of protecting human health” by releasing the formaldehyde study, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement to POLITICO.

"Because formaldehyde can be found in everything from wood products to women’s hair straighteners, the public health risks are substantial,” Markey said. “Delaying the EPA’s latest assessment of the health risks of formaldehyde only further endangers the health of Americans."

Public health advocates have similarly expressed fears that the Trump administration has allowed EPA to be captured by the industries it regulates. The revelations about the formaldehyde study come after Pruitt removed academic scientists from the agency’s influential science advisory boards and in many cases replaced them with industry advocates, and after he proposed a policy to limit the agency's use of human health data while offering a carve-out for confidential industry studies.

“At every corner, you see the agency trying to either minimize the role of science or manipulate the role of science or just ignore the work of scientists in doing the critical work to ensure that human health and the environment is protected,” said Jennifer McPartland, a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund’s health program.

POLITICO also reported in May that Trump administration officials, including EPA chief of staff Ryan Jackson, sought to delay an HHS study finding that nonstick chemicals pose health dangers at a lower level than EPA has said is safe.

Insiders anticipate few major policy changes under Wheeler, who is widely expected to continue Pruitt's deregulatory agenda and is well-versed in chemicals issues. He began his career in EPA's chemical safety office, and after leaving Inhofe's staff lobbied for several chemicals companies, including Celanese Corp., a major formaldehyde manufacturer and ICOR International, a refrigerants manufacturer that was recently acquired by Chemours Co., a DuPont spin-off. A Celanese spokesman said Wheeler worked only on the Renewable Fuels Standard for the company, although Wheeler’s disclosure forms describe his lobbying as being on the broad topic of “chemicals issues.” Wheeler is not barred from working on chemicals issues under the recusal statement he signed in May.

Decades’ of research has linked formaldehyde to nose and throat cancer and respiratory problems, and newer research has suggested the connection to leukemia — controversial conclusions that would gain significant credence if EPA formally adopts them. The new assessment affirms those links to leukemia, nose and throat cancer and other ailments, according to the current and former officials familiar with its findings.

The new assessment could lead the EPA to impose stricter regulations of chemicals refineries or wood products and could spur class-action lawsuits from cancer patients attempting to hold companies responsible for their illnesses.

The agency officials said the political aides blocking the assessment include Jackson and Richard Yamada, a former staffer for House Science Chairman Lamar Smith(R-Texas) who is now a top official in EPA’s Office of Research and Development. And they said Nancy Beck, who criticized the IRIS program in her previous job as a top chemical industry expert, is now helping to stymie the program’s assessments in her new post as head of EPA’s chemical safety office. Jackson, Yamada and Beck did not respond to requests for comment.

The EPA spokeswoman disputed the accusations and said Yamada and Jackson have, in fact, requested briefings on the assessment.

The current EPA official told POLITICO that political appointees have managed to avoid creating written evidence of their interference with the formaldehyde assessment by refusing to send emails or create other records that eventually could become public, instead using what the official described as “a children’s game of telephone."

By blocking the report at the first step of the IRIS review process, political appointees are keeping it from being reviewed by the National Academies of Sciences, an independent panel of the country's top scientists that must weigh in on all such risk assessments. EPA has already paid the academies $500,000 for that review, the highest level of scrutiny a scientific study can receive, but the work cannot start until Pruitt's aides send the study.

“If the administration was really keen on protecting public health, why wouldn’t they send this to the National Academy and give it a really good review?” the former EPA official asked. “If it survives that review, then there’s a public health problem that needs to be dealt with, and if it doesn’t survive the review, then they can point the finger at IRIS and say, ‘You’re dead.’”

How Scott Pruitt blew it

By ALEX GUILLÉN and ANDREW RESTUCCIA

The former official said there would be only one reason not to ask the country’s top experts whether they agree with the analysis: “You don’t want the answer.”

Public health advocates say the administration’s attacks on science have had especially significant implications for the IRIS program. The small office of about 35 experts pores over the huge body of existing research on chemicals, including industry-backed studies aimed at proving the substances safe, to independently assess their risks. While purely scientific, the program’s reviews are looked to by regulators not just at EPA, but also in the states and around the world, often paving the way for new or more stringent regulations.

But industry has long targeted the program, arguing it uses an opaque process to decide which studies to rely on and which research to give credence to when findings conflict.

The American Chemistry Council, Beck’s former employer, spent more than $7 million last year lobbying EPA and Congress on issues including IRIS, formaldehyde and the policy to limit EPA’s use of human health research. Chemicals manufacturers, including Hexion, one of the country’s largest manufacturers of formaldehyde, have also spent tens of thousands of dollars on lobbying related to the program this year.

A National Academies panel agreed with some of industry’s criticisms of the IRIS program in a blistering review of an earlier iteration of the formaldehyde assessment that recommended major changes to how IRIS decides how much weight to give conflicting studies, although it did not attack the substance of its findings about the health effects of formaldehyde. Critics of the IRIS program have pointed to that review frequently as they have sought to kill it, including in an appropriations battle this spring. The EPA spokeswoman also pointed to that assessment in her statement. "The National Academy of Science and Congress in legislative reports have for years been highly critical of EPA’s previous assessments involving formaldehyde," she said.

But te EPA has overhauled the program since then, hiring a new director for IRIS and a new head of the National Center for Environmental Assessment, in which it is housed. The changes have received high marks from the National Academies in two more recent reviews, one in 2014 and one this past April. The latest formaldehyde assessment is expected to demonstrate further progress implementing the academies’ recommendations, potentially undermining industry critiques of the overall IRIS program if it were to be released.

Although efforts to kill EPA’s independent scientific arbiter have so far failed, EPA officials and public health advocates say the program has been significantly hobbled under an administration with close ties to the chemicals industry.

White, the top staffer for the American Chemistry Council’s Formaldehyde Panel, wrote the EPA three times between September 2017 and January 2018, urging the agency to incorporate industry-funded research that found no link between formaldehyde and leukemia, and arguing that the studies shifted the scientific consensus away from the conclusion that it does. In November, Pruitt appointed her to the agency’s influential Science Advisory Board.

Less than a week after the council's Jan. 24 meeting with EPA, Pruitt himself confirmed that the report had been complete for months. During a Senate hearing at the end of January, Markey asked Pruitt for an update on the formaldehyde assessment, saying it was his understanding “that the EPA has finalized its conclusion that formaldehyde causes leukemia and other cancers and that [the] completed new assessment is ready to be released for public review, but is being held up."

“You know, my understanding is similar to yours,” Pruitt replied, promising to follow up.

Markey reminded Pruitt of the exchange in a May 17 letter. In a response Thursday, the agency’s principal deputy assistant administrator for science, Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, said EPA “continues to discuss the formaldehyde assessment internally and has no further updates to provide at this time."

7/18 lcv

. Republican leaders in Congress have just moved to backdoor a series of anti-environment provisions into law.

Their plan includes a policy to weaken public land protections without public review or input. There's a massive expansion of mining operations. Gutting the Endangered Species Act. Undermining protections for whales and other marine mammals.

They've added all these provisions to the National Defense Authorization Act bill. This is a must-pass military bill that isn't supposed to include riders on the environment.

There's a short window before a bill is finalized. We need to be flooding congressional offices with letters and calls, organizing in key districts, and getting teams to Capitol Hill. As it stands now, we can't do it all. Not without your help.

A major donor has agreed to triple every donation made to help stop this attack on the environment.

Please, Padraic, renew your membership with LCV today for $5 or more »

Adding these kinds of riders to a must-past military bill is nearly unprecedented.When Senator McCain led the Armed Services Committee, he didn't let unrelated anti-environmental riders into these bills.

But with McCain's ailing health, right now the committee is being chaired by vehement climate change denier Senator Inhofe. He's letting these riders in.

https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060084255

Trade, mining proposals in limbo in Senate mess

Nick Sobczyk, E&E News reporter

E&E Daily: Wednesday, June 13, 2018

The Senate defense authorization bill yesterday hit a procedural snag on several amendments, including a proposal to limit President Trump's authority to set tariffs.

The snafu could mean that a pair of controversial mining amendments filed by Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) never get a vote.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) has been pushing for an add-on to the National Defense Authorization Act that would require congressional approval of any tariffs imposed by Trump under the national security provisions contained in Section 232 of a 1962 trade statute.

But it has run into "blue slip" issues because of the Constitution's origination clause, which requires bills that raise revenue start in the House.

That led Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), managing the bill on the floor in the absence of Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), to object to Corker's attempt to offer the amendment and remedy the blue-slip problem yesterday.

Corker, in an impassioned floor speech, said he was disappointed that members of his own party were refusing to vote on the bill because it would "upset the president."

"I can't believe it!" he said. "I would bet that 95 percent of people on this side of the aisle support, intellectually, this amendment. I would bet that. I would bet more than 95 percent."

Corker said he would allow the process to move forward without his amendment, but the bill has hit a web of other roadblocks.

Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky are holding up the NDAA until they get votes on a pair of amendments related to indefinite detention at military prisons. Other senators, meanwhile, have threatened to hold up the process if Lee and Paul do get their votes, Inhofe said.

Corker estimated yesterday that there are "about 15 people blocking the bill." The situation has put the Senate in a bind and could effectively mean that no amendments get a vote.

"That's a possibility," said Inhofe.

That includes two proposals on critical minerals — elements deemed vital to national security — that have sparked an outcry from environmentalists.

One, from Heller, would make myriad changes to environmental permitting for mining, including designating a lead federal agency and slapping a 30-month time limit on National Environmental Policy Act reviews.

The other, from Murkowski and Heller, would require the Interior Department to determine which minerals are "critical" and address permitting delays.

Also included in a bipartisan manager's package of amendments awaiting approval is a proposal by Minnesota Democratic Sens. Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar to codify a land exchange between PolyMet Mining Corp. and the Forest Service, paving the way for a major copper-nickel mine in Minnesota (E&E Daily, June 12).

For now, Corker's amendment is effectively dead and the rest on standby. And Majority Leader Mitch McConnell yesterday took a procedural step to move toward final passage.

Senate leaders had been hoping to finish up on the bill by Friday, but Inhofe acknowledged yesterday that it could bleed into next week.

"It could," he said. "I don't want it to."

no lnx

https://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-climate-disinformation-campaign-2534087685.html

ExxonMobil’s Climate Disinformation Campaign Is Still Alive and Well

By Elliott Negin

In a recent blog post, ExxonMobil executive Suzanne McCarron reiterated her company's claim that it fully accepts the reality of climate change and that it wants to do something about it.

"I want to use this opportunity to be 100 percent clear about where we stand on climate change," she wrote. "We believe the risk of climate change is real and we are committed to being part of the solution."

So why is the company still a part of—in fact, a major part of—the problem?

An exchange between Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt during a recent oversight hearing is a case in point, providing a window into how ExxonMobil's undue influence continues to block climate action.

During the Jan. 30 hearing, which was held by the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, Sen. Cory Booker inadvertently provoked Inhofe by raising the issue of environmental justice. The New Jersey Democrat cited the threat climate change-induced flooding poses to three dozen Superfund sites in his state and asked Pruitt if he was "taking into account the environmental burdens disproportionately impacting communities of color, indigenous communities and low-income communities."

Inhofe seized the opportunity to contradict Booker, claiming that minority and low-income communities are disproportionately harmed by environmental protections, specifically citing the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, which would have dramatically reduced carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants if Pruitt hadn't repealed it.

Booker, Inhofe said, was implying that Pruitt was trying to "punish" vulnerable Americans. "I wanted to just remind you," Inhofe told the committee, "that we had a guy I remember so well, Harry Alford. He was the president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. He provided some of the most powerful testimony that I have ever heard when it comes to the effects of the Clean Power Plan and some of the other regulations … on black and Hispanic poverty, including job losses and increased energy costs.

"[Alford] was very emphatic as to who was paying the price on these," the Oklahoma Republican continued, "and I think sometimes that the previous administration forgot that there are already people out there who are paying all they can pay just to try to eat and keep their house warm."

ExxonMobil's Echo Chamber

Inhofe's source for his assertion? A discredited, ExxonMobil-funded study by an Exxon-funded advocacy group that was based on discredited studies by other ExxonMobil-funded organizations.

Inhofe rested his argument on previous congressional testimony by Harry Alford, president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), a shoestring, mom-and-pop operation that is unapologetic about taking fossil fuel industry money. "Of course we do and it is only natural," Alford wrote on NBCC's website. "The legacy of Blacks in this nation has been tied to the miraculous history of fossil fuel…. [F]ossil fuels have been our economic friend."

One of NBCC's closest economic friends is ExxonMobil, which has donated more than $1.14 million to the group since 2001.

What did the company get for that money?

In 2015, NBCC commissioned a report that claimed the Clean Power Plan would "inflict severe and disproportionate economic burdens on poor families, especially minorities."

In fact, unchecked climate change would more than likely hurt those communities most, and investments in energy efficiency under the plan would ultimately lower electricity bills across the country.

How did NBCC arrive at its upside-down assessment? The Union of Concerned Scientists took a close look at the report and found it was based on several flawed fossil fuel industry-friendly studies. Two of those bogus studies were produced by ExxonMobil grantees: the Heritage Foundation, which received $340,000 from ExxonMobil between 2007 and 2013, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which received $3 million between 2014 and 2016.

The Chamber study, which came out just days before the EPA released a draft of the Clean Power Plan, was debunked not only by the EPA, but also by PolitiFact.com and The Washington Post. Among its many faults, the Chamber study—which was co-sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute—wildly inflated the cost of the plan and failed to consider the benefits of cutting carbon emissions.

ExxonMobil Spreads its Money Around

But there's more than just the fact that ExxonMobil financed deliberately flawed studies to try to derail the Clean Power Plan. The company also is a major supporter of a number of Senate EPW Committee members, including Inhofe, who are adamant climate science deniers.

Inhofe has deep ties to the oil and gas industry, which has donated $1.85 million to his campaign war chest over his long career in Congress, more than twice than any other industry. Three oil and gas companies are among the senator's top 10 corporate contributors: Koch Industries, Devon Energy and … ExxonMobil.

Six of the other 10 Republicans on the EPW Committee also are on ExxonMobil's donation list, including Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the current committee chairman. Roughly half of the $119,500 ExxonMobil contributed to the seven senators over the last decade went to Barrasso and Inhofe, the committee's previous chairman.

Then there's ExxonMobil's link to Pruitt, Oklahoma's attorney general before President Trump tapped him to run the EPA. From 2012 through 2013, he chaired the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) and afterward served on the organization's executive committee. From 2014 through 2016, ExxonMobil gave RAGA $160,000 in three annual installments.

Just a few weeks after the company made its 2016 donation of $50,000, Pruitt and then-RAGA Chairman Luther Strange, at the time Alabama's attorney general, co-authored a National Review column attacking a coalition of state attorneys general investigating ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies for misleading investors and the general public about climate change. Parroting ExxonMobil's argument, Pruitt and Strange charged that the coalition was violating the company's first amendment right to free speech.

"The debate" over climate change, they wrote "is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged—in classrooms, public forums and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime."

Inhofe Upstaged

In this case, Inhofe's counterfactual comment didn't make it into the ensuing media coverage. Along with nearly everything else that was said during the two-and-a-half hour marathon, it was eclipsed by a bombshell dropped by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. The Rhode Island Democrat revealed that during a February 2016 radio interview, Pruitt said Trump would be "more abusive to the Constitution than Barack Obama, and that's saying a lot." Whitehouse read Pruitt's remark aloud and asked him if he recalled making it.

"I don't," Pruitt responded, "and I don't echo that today at all."

"I guess not," Whitehouse replied.

Not surprisingly, that embarrassing nugget was the story. There was no way that Inhofe's rambling, ExxonMobil-sponsored falsehood could compete in the media with red meat like that. But overshadowed or not, Inhofe provided yet another incontrovertible piece of evidence that—despite ExxonMobil's statements to the contrary—the company is still very much engaged behind the scenes in trying to stymie any government attempt to seriously address climate change.

Elliott Negin is a senior writer in the Communications Department at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Here's Who's Getting Paid to Destroy the Endangered Species Act

By Rebecca Bowe

A small yet vocal group of congressmen are gearing up this summer to dismantle the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Campaign finance records of these lawmakers reveal that they have all taken significant money from extractive industries frustrated by the law's protection of critical habitat for endangered species.

The ESA has proven to be a powerful, effective conservation safeguard. More than 99 percent of species that have been designated for federal protection continue to exist in the wild today, including the bald eagle, grizzly bear, the leatherback sea turtle and the Florida manatee.

But the work of the ESA has only grown more urgent as many scientists agree that the planet is either on the cusp of or already experiencing a sixth mass wave of extinction. A study last week by Stanford scientists foundthat a significant number of plant and wildlife populations are growing dangerously thin.

Earthjustice is working with coalition partners to oppose efforts on Capitol Hill to weaken protections for endangered species. The public can also make a difference in this fight—despite the big money from fossil fuel industries funding opponents of the ESA—by contacting their Congressional offices (use this call-in tool to be directly connected).

The Anti-ESA Effort and the Money Behind It

The assault on the ESA comes in the form of dozens of legislative proposals and amendments tacked onto spending bills. One bill that's expected to be introduced in a matter of weeks is the handiwork of Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

A Republican from Wyoming, Barrasso shares something in common with other politicians who have made it a legislative priority to weaken or undermine this conservation law. He's received substantial campaign contributions from extractive industries that wish to exploit public lands for mining, drilling and other environmentally destructive operations. Across the American West, for instance, the fossil fuel industry is often pitted against conservationists because habitat for the imperiled sage grouse overlaps with lands eyed by industry for mining or drilling.

According to campaign finance records, from 2011 until 2016, Barrasso received $458,466 in total campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, plus $241,706 from the mining industry. The boost got him a good part of the way toward the $3.66 million he reportedly spent in that time. The Murray Energy Corporation, the nation's largest coal-mining company, was listed as a top donor.

Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican senator from Oklahoma who also serves on the Environment and Public Works Committee, has also garnered substantial support from the fossil fuel industry, collecting $465,950 from the oil and gas industry and $111,275 from the mining industry in campaign donations from 2011 to 2016. Inhofe, who does not believe in climate change, recently went on national television and answered a question about U.S. Environmental Protection Agency budget cuts by suggesting that that the EPA is "brainwashing our kids."

Rep. Rob Bishop, a Republican congressman from Utah who has gone on the record saying he'd like to "repeal and replace" the Endangered Species Act, received $150,516 in total campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry in the 2015-16 cycle alone.

How You Can Help Protect Wildlife

Battles to protect wildlife are intensifying in the face of attacks from these and other lawmakers. However, they may be in for a bigger fight than they realize. A recent poll showed that 90 percent of voters across all demographics were supportive of the ESA.

Join the movement to defend the wild. Call today and tell your senators to stand strong in defense of imperiled wildlife and the lands and waters that sustain them!

https://www.ecowatch.com/koch-brothers-paris-agreement-2430226599.html

Paris Exit Was 'Victory Paid and Carried Out' by Republican Party for the Koch Brothers

nolink

The 22 Republican senators who sent a letter to President Donald Trump last week urging the United States' withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement received more than $10 million dollars in campaign funds from fossil fuel interests.

The two-page letter was signed by a number of Republican heavyweights from coal/gas/oil-rich states, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Ted Cruz of Texas.

The Guardian calculated that the 22 senators received a total of $10,694,284 from oil, gas and coal money in just five years. (See the breakdown below.

However, that sum does not even come close to the amount of undisclosed funds coming from the deep pockets of Charles and David Koch's coal, oil and gas conglomerate, Koch Industries, and other outside groups.

As the Guardian explains:

"Visible donations to Republicans from those industries exceeded donations to Democrats in the 2016 election cycle by a ratio of 15-to-1, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And that does not include so-called dark money passed from oil interests such as Koch industries to general slush funds to re-elect Republicans such as the Senate leadership fund.

"At least $90m in untraceable money has been funneled to Republican candidates from oil, gas and coal interests in the past three election cycles, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics."

Jeffrey Sachs, professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, shared recently his views on Trump's climate walkout.In an interview with Bloomberg Surveillance, Sachs referenced the senators' letter and specifically cast blame on the billionaire oil barons for pulling the strings of Republican party leaders such as McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who both supported exiting the Paris accord.

"This is the victory paid and carried out for 20 years by two people, David and Charles Koch," Sachs said. "They have bought and purchased the top of the Republican party. Trump is a tool in this."

Notably, most of the Republican signatories of the letter do not support the belief that human activity contributes to climate change.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Democratic Sen. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts explained why he thinks his Republican colleagues do not believe in the science of climate change.

"This Conservative party in the United States is funded by the Koch brothers [and] it's funded by the coal industry," Markey said. "[They] insist that Scott Pruitt—the Attorney General of Oklahoma that actually sued the EPA 19 times on clean air, clean water, soot, mercury issues—becomes the head of the EPA in our country."

The 22 Republican signatories' funding from Big Oil, Gas and Coal in the past three election cycles (2012, 2014 and 2016):

James Inhofe, Oklahoma

Oil & gas: $465,950 + Coal: $63,600 = $529,550

John Barrasso, Wyoming

Oil & gas: $458,466 + Coal: $127,356 = $585,822

Mitch McConnell, Kentucky

Oil & gas: $1,180,384 + Coal: $361,700 = $1,542,084

John Cornyn, Texas

Oil & gas: $1,101,456 + Coal: $33,050 = $1,134,506

Roy Blunt, Missouri

Oil & gas: $353,864 + Coal: $96,000 = $449,864

Roger Wicker, Mississippi

Oil & gas: $198,816 + Coal: $25,376 = $224,192

Michael Enzi, Wyoming

Oil & gas: $211,083 + Coal: $63,300 = $274,383

Mike Crapo, Idaho

Oil & gas: $110,250 + Coal: $26,756 = $137,006

Jim Risch, Idaho

Oil & gas: $123,850 + Coal: $25,680 = $149,530

Thad Cochran, Mississippi

Oil & gas: $276,905 + Coal: $15,000 = $291,905

Mike Rounds, South Dakota

Oil & gas: $201,900 + Coal: none = $201,900

Rand Paul, Kentucky

Oil & gas: $170,215 + Coal: $82,571 = $252,786

John Boozman, Arkansas

Oil & gas: $147,930 + Coal: $2,000 = $149,930

Richard Shelby, Alabama

Oil & gas: $60,150 + $2,500 = $62,650

Luther Strange, Alabama (Appointed in 2017, running in 2017 special election)

Total: NA

Orrin Hatch, Utah

Oil & gas: $446,250 + Coal: $25,000 = $471,250

Mike Lee, Utah

Oil & gas: $231,520 + Coal: $21,895 = $253,415

Ted Cruz, Texas

Oil & gas: $2,465,910 + Coal: $103,900 = $2,569,810

David Perdue, Georgia

Oil & gas: $184,250 + Coal: $0 = $184,250

Thom Tillis, North Carolina

Oil & gas: $263,400 + Coal: $0 = $263,400

Tim Scott, South Carolina

Oil & gas: $490,076 + Coal: $58,200 = $548,276

Pat Roberts, Kansas

Oil & gas: $388,950 + Coal: $28,825 = $417,775

22 GOP Senators vs. World Leaders on Paris Agreement

Twenty-two GOP senators sent a letter Thursday urging Donald Trump to pull out of the Paris agreement. They argued remaining in the deal could "upend" the administration's ability "to fulfill its goal of rescinding the Clean Power Plan."

Accounting for fewer than half of Senate Republicans, signers included coal-friendly politicians and prominent climate deniers, such as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

Overseas, French president-elect Emmanuel Macron urged Trump not to make a "rushed decision" on the agreement at a Thursday meeting. White House economic adviser Gary Cohn predicts "fairly robust" talks on the Paris agreement at this weekend's G7 leadership summit in Sicily, and European leaders at the summit have indicated they will pressure Trump to remain in the deal.

As The Guardian reported:

"Some western powers are trying to frame the climate change discussion as a national security argument, pointing to the risk of war and terrorism if mass migration explodes out of drought-ridden Africa.

Trump's aides insist he remains in listening mode on climate change, and no decision will be made for a few weeks. The British, eternal optimists, at least sense he is moving on the issue. Results may have to wait for the G20 summit, to be attended by China in Hamburg in June."

For a deeper dive:

GOP letter: AP, Axios, The Hill; Macron: Reuters, CNBC; G7: The Guardian, Reuters, BBC

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/us/politics/scott-pruitt-environmental-protection-agency.html

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-jackson-22b8b874/

Chief of Staff

Company NameOffice of U.S. Senator James M. Inhofe

Dates EmployedJan 2011 – Present Employment Duration6 yrs 3 mos LocationWashington, D.C.

Office of U.S. Senator James M. Inhofe

Legislative Director

Company NameOffice of U.S. Senator James M. Inhofe

Dates Employed2007 – 2011 Employment Duration4 yrs LocationWashington, D.C.

U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

Counsel

Company NameU.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

Dates Employed2003 – 2007 Employment Duration4 yrs LocationWashington, D.C.

Fourteenth Judicial District - Oklahoma

Assistant District Attorney

Company NameFourteenth Judicial District - Oklahoma

Dates Employed2001 – 2003 Employment Duration2 yrs LocationTulsa, Oklahoma

Education

Oklahoma City University School of Law

Degree Name Doctor of Law (JD)

Dates attended or expected graduation 1998 – 2001

University of Oklahoma

Degree Name Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Dates attended or expected graduation 1994 – 1998

Luke Holland 3rd degree connection 3rd

Legislative Director at U.S. Senator James M. Inhofe

Greg Slavonic

Greg Slavonic 3rd degree connection 3rd

Chief of Staff at Office of U.S. Senator James Lankford Washington, DC | Government Administration

Herrgott, Alex

Herrgott, Alex 3rd degree connection 3rd

Majority Deputy Staff Director, United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

Susan Bodine

Susan Bodine 3rd degree connection 3rd

Chief Counsel at United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

Daniel Hillenbrand

Daniel Hillenbrand 3rd degree connection 3rd

Legislative Assistant at United States Senate

Andrew Neely

Andrew Neely 3rd degree connection 3rd

Professional Staff Member at U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

Andrew Wheeler

Andrew Wheeler 3rd degree connection 3rd

at Faegre BD Consulting

Stephen Aaron

Stephen Aaron 3rd degree connection 3rd

Senior Vice President at Mercury

Kozeny (Grassley)

Kozeny (Grassley) 3rd degree connection 3rd

Chief of Staff at U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley

Bettina Poirier

Bettina Poirier 3rd degree connection 3rd

Adjunct Associate Professor, American University Washington College of Law

ays after his confirmation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt began stacking his department with conservatives, many of them climate deniers and all of them eager to axe environmental regulations—much like President Trump himself, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

To start, there's Ryan Jackson, former chief of staff to Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of the most outspoken climate deniers in Congress, infamous for bringing a snowball into the chamber to illustrate that global warming was not real. Jackson will serve as Pruitt's chief of staff.

Then there's Byron Brown, another Inhofe staffer, who will now be Jackson's deputy.

Andrew Wheeler, formerly of Inhofe's team but now a fossil fuel lobbyist, is at the top of Pruitt's list to be deputy EPA chief, although he will require confirmation by the Senate.

And two Trump campaigners, Don Benton and Douglas Ericksen, are also taking on senior positions in the agency.

The Times' Coral Davenport wrote:

To friends and critics, Mr. Pruitt seems intent on building an EPA leadership that is fundamentally at odds with the career officials, scientists and employees who carry out the agency's missions. That might be a recipe for strife and gridlock at the federal agency tasked to keep safe the nation's clean air and water while safeguarding the planet's future.

It remains to be seen whether that kind of conflict will arise between Pruitt and EPA employees. Under Trump, the agency has already rolled back critical Obama-era regulations, effectively restricting the government's ability to prevent water pollution and collect data on methane emissions.

More anti-environmental plans and executive orders from Pruitt and Trump are expected to come this week as well. Meanwhile, the president's first draft budget includes a proposal to slash the EPA's annual funding by about 24 percent or $2 billion.

EPA employees say morale has plummeted, particularly for those who helped strengthen regulations under former President Obama and will now be ordered to undo their own work.

The changes have also come in more subtle ways. The day after Trump took office, WhiteHouse.gov scrubbed any mention of "climate change" and on Tuesday, the watchdog group Environmental Data and Governance Initiative reported that the agency's Office of Science and Technology Policy no longer lists "science" in its own description.

"This is probably the most important thing we've found so far," Environmental Data and Governance Initiative's Gretchen Gehrke told the New Republic. "The language changes here are not nuanced—they have really important regulatory implications."

Reposted with permission from our media associate Common Dreams.

OMG

Famous for repeatedly claiming climate change is a “hoax”, Inhofe is a senator and chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

He was part of the US advisory council of Atlantic Bridge, and though he has publicly ruled out getting a post in Trump’s administration, he told his local paper:

“I got a phone call on the 5th of October and it was Trump. … I am now in a position where I am giving him some advice on national defense”.

McConnell hired policy chief, koch lobbyist

Mitch McConnell owes the Kochs big time. The Kochs bought McConnell a slew of GOP Senate seats in the 2014 midterms and handed him his post as Senate Majority Leader. In addition, Koch Industries gave over $10,000 to buoy McConnell in his own Senate battle. Now McConnell is hiring a Koch crony to push the Koch agenda through Congress. McConnell has hired Hazen Marshall, a former lobbyist on behalf of Koch Industries, to serve as his new policy director.

Koch Industries spent a hefty $13 million on influencing the federal government last year. Marshall previously served as partner of the Nickles Group where he worked on behalf of Koch Industries. There, he lobbied on the Kochs’ pet issues, including against the Wind Production Tax Credit. The wind PTC has been crucial to the growth of the wind energy industry as it has boomed in recent years, providing more affordable energy, supporting thousands of new jobs, and protecting our environment. But self-interested fossil fuel titans like the Koch brothers are lobbying to crush the wind industry. The Kochs will stop at nothing to stave off threats to their petrochemical empire.

Since the midterms, Koch lieutenants have been dispatched to work in offices across Capitol Hill — demonstrating the deep ties between Koch-world and the GOP. Joni Ernst hired her chief of staff from the Koch-backed National Federation of Independent Small Business, Jim Inhofe tapped his Environment and Public Works Committee press secretary from the Koch-funded Generation Opportunity, and Tom Cotton’s former spokesman is the new director for Americans for Prosperity-Arkansas. It’s getting harder and harder to separate the Koch shills from the GOP.

Mitch McConnell's Policy Chief Previously Lobbied for Koch Industries

https://theintercept.com/.../mitch-mcconnells-policy-chief-previously-lobbied-koch-in...

May 18, 2015 - Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appointed Hazen Marshall, a lobbyist for Koch Industries, as his new policy chief. Marshall, whose lobbying ...

McConnell Names Koch Shill to Key Senate Post | Real Koch Facts

realkochfacts.com/mcconnell-names-koch-shill-to-key-senate-post/

May 20, 2015 - McConnell has hired Hazen Marshall, a former lobbyist on behalf of Koch Industries, to serve as his new policy director. ... Joni Ernst hired her chief of staff from the Koch-backed National Federation of Independent Small ...

//lucas house

S. 543: EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act of 2015

Introduced:

Feb 24, 2015

Status:

Referred to Committee on Feb 24, 2015

This bill was assigned to a congressional committee on February 24, 2015, which will consider it before possibly sending it on to the House or Senate as a whole.

Sponsor:

John Boozman

Senior Senator from Arkansas

Republican

Sen. Manchin, Joe, III [D-WV]* 02/24/2015

Sen. Inhofe, James M. [R-OK]* 02/24/2015

http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/12/inhofe-pope-francis-climate-change/

iccc 10th

They include discredited fossil fuel-funded scientist Willie Soon; Marc Morano, executive editor of the denial website ClimateDepot.com and one of the main subjects of the documentary Merchants of Doubt; and two congressmen, including the infamous, snowball-throwing chairman of the Senate Environment Committee, James Inhofe. When you’ve got the author of The Solar Fraud: Why Solar Energy Won’t Run the World and Bass Ackwards: How Climate Alarmists Confuse Cause With Effect (those are written by retired University of Connecticut physics professor Howard Hayden) and another speaker whose touted as “a popular guest of America’s number one radio show, the Rush Limbaugh Show,” it’s pretty clear what direction the event is going to take.

And according to The Guardian of London, “Lamar Smith, the Texas congressman who heads the science, space and technology committee, raised cheers from the room when he said he proposed a 40 percent cut in NASA’s budget for Earth sciences last week.” So the crowd clearly heard what they came for.

Inhofe opened the conference with a keynote address flogging the same narrative he’s been putting out there since the 2012 publication of his book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, passing out sheets with 12 talking points for those intent on refuting the evidence of climate change.

He dismissed the upcoming Paris climate summit as nothing but a bunch of talk, saying, “They talked about it—very good. Now they say it is all going to come together in Paris, and I don’t think it is.” And he assured his audience that the Republican Party will stand firm with them on climate change, saying, “If you look at Republican candidates, they are all denying this stuff with the exception of Lindsey Graham. They’re all with the people in this room.”

He also took potshots at Pope Francis, who has spoken out repeatedly on climate change and is expected to deliver his long-awaited encyclical on the topic next week.

“Everyone is going to ride the Pope now. Isn’t that wonderful,” said Inhofe sarcastically. “The Pope ought to stay with his job, and we’ll stay with ours.”

“I am not going to talk about the Pope,” he said, immediately after doing so. “Let him run his shop, and we’ll run ours.”

Never mind that Inhofe’s “shop” is fueled by millions from the oil and gas industry, he’s already trespassed on the Pope’s “shop” to make his hoax argument. In 2012, he appeared on a Christian radio program where he said, “The Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.’ My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.” He repeated the “God is still up there” line in his speech at the Climate Conference.

Inhofe also warned his audiences against “appeasers,” Republicans tempted by the money spent by people such as Republican businessman Jay Faison, who has committed $175 million to encourage them to address climate change as a reality.

“When they see how much money is there, and they see that the bureaucracy is on their side, they might be tempted to give them a vote,” said Inhofe. “This is why you have this last guy with $175 million claiming to be a Republican, and all it takes is one or two or three of the senators to say, maybe I’ll appease them.”

Not only was Inhofe honored with the opening keynote slot, he was also one of five individualsgiven awards by the Heartland Institute for “decades fighting the politicization and misinterpretation of climate science.” He joined three scientists—only one a climatologist—and a TV weatherman in receiving the honor.

“The Climate Change Awards were started in 2014 as a way to recognize individuals of extraordinary ability and unflagging commitment to restoring sound science and common sense to the debate over global warming,” according to the Heartland Institute. “The awards serve to increase public awareness of the global warming realism movement and send a signal to the academy and other elite institutions saying if they won’t recognize these genuine heroes, then the sponsors of these awards will. And finally, they encourage otherwise silent scientists, philanthropists, and civic and business leaders to speak up on behalf of sound science and common sense.”

Listen to Sen. Inhofe and other climate deniers speak at the Heartland Institute’s Climate Conference:

http://legalnewsline.com/issues/global-warming/256209-u-s-sen-capito-introduces-bill-to-roll-back-epas-proposed-clean-power-plan

May 14, 2015 8:30 AM

By JESSICA M. KARMASEK

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) – West Virginia’s U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito has introduced legislation aimed at rolling back President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan.

Capito, a Republican and chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Clean Air and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee, introduced the Affordable Reliable Energy Now Act, or ARENA, Wednesday.

Capito said ARENA will ensure reliable and affordable energy, put jobs and the economy first, and curb federal overreach.

“President Obama’s misguided ‘Clean Power Plan’ threatens to drastically reduce coal-related jobs, increase energy prices and reduce reliability,” she said. “After carefully considering the economic and legal implications of this unprecedented proposal, the need for action is clear.

“The Affordable Reliable Energy Now Act enables us to fight back against the assault on coal, and the broader threat to affordable, reliable energy nationwide. I am proud to lead the charge against the Clean Power Plan’s sweeping regulations and look forward to working with my Senate colleagues to move this very important legislation forward.”

Under the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal, new large natural gas-fired turbines would need to meet a limit of 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour, while new small natural gas-fired turbines would need to meet a limit of 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour.

New coal-fired units would need to meet a limit of 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour, and would have the option to meet a somewhat tighter limit if they choose to average emissions over multiple years, giving those units additional operational flexibility.

The agency expects to finalize the rules this summer.

However, under ARENA, before the EPA can set a technology-based standard for new power plants, the standard must first be achieved for at least one year at several separate power facilities throughout the country.

The bill also prevents the EPA from using any demonstration projects — projects that are reliant on federal support — from being used to set the standard.

In addition, Capito’s proposed legislation:

Extends compliance dates: The bill would extend the rule’s compliance dates pending final judicial review, including the dates for submission of state plans;

Holds the EPA accountable: This bill would require EPA to issue state-specific model plans demonstrating how each state could meet the required GHG emissions reductions under the rule;

Enables states to protect ratepayers: The bill would provide that no state shall be required to implement a state or federal plan that the state’s governor determines would negatively impact economic growth, negatively impact the reliability of the electricity system or negatively impact electricity ratepayers; and

Protects highway fund dollars: The bill would prevent the EPA from withholding highway funds from any states for noncompliance with the Clean Power Plan.

ARENA also would require the federal agency to submit to Congress a report describing the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions the Clean Power Plan is expected to reduce, and to conduct modeling to show the impacts of the rule on the climate indicators used to develop the rule.

The bill is co-sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas; Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune, R-S.D.; Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla.; and Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.; John Barrasso, R-Wyo.; Roy Blunt, R-Mo.; Roger Wicker, R-Miss.; Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; Pat Roberts, R-Kan.; Rand Paul, R-Ky.; John Hoeven, R-N.D.; Johnny Isakson, R-Ga.; Dan Coats, R-Ind.; Mike Crapo, R-Idaho; Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.; Jim Risch, R-Idaho; Deb Fischer, R-Neb.; Ted Cruz, R-Texas; John Boozman, R-Ark.; David Perdue, R-Ga.; Steve Daines, R-Mont.; Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; Tom Tillis, R-N.C.; Mike Rounds, R-S.D.; and Bill Cassidy, R-La.

“I applaud Sen. Capito for introducing legislation that would allow states to better protect middle class families from the ramifications of the Obama Administration’s regressive, and likely illegal, energy regulations,” McConnell said.

4/15

The traditional definition of chutzpah involves a guy who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy because he is now an orphan. The modern definition of chutzpah involves … Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).

The chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has an Earth Day (!) op-ed arguing we should embrace carbon-free nuclear power because of the threat posed by global warming. You remember Inhofe, the guy who called global warming a hoax, the guy who for over a decade has trashed climate scientists, such as James Hansen, whom he called in 2006 a “NASA scientist and alarmist.”

Apparently, however, Inhofe no longer sees Hansen as radioactive. He writes, without a trace of irony:

One of America’s most powerful and outspoken opponents of climate change regulation received election campaign contributions that can be traced back to senior BP staff, including chief executive Bob Dudley.

Jim Inhofe, a Republican senator from Oklahoma who has tirelessly campaigned against calls for a carbon tax and challenges the overwhelming consensus on climate change, received $10,000 (£6,700) from BP’s Political Action Committee (PAC).

Following his re-election, Inhofe became chair of the Senate’s environment and public works committee in January, and then a month later featured in news bulletins throwing a snowball across the Senate floor.

Before tossing it, the senator said: “In case we have forgotten – because we keep hearing that 2014 is the warmest year on record – it is very, very cold outside. Very unseasonal.”

The 'exclusive' photos of 'Russian invasion in Ukraine' in 2014 turned out to be easily found in the Web, with at least one of them dating back to 2008. Now, US senator James Inhofe is furious with the Ukrainian delegation for setting him up with the 'evidence'.

Questions have been raised about the veracity of reports that claim Russian troops have invaded Ukraine after US Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe confessed that several photos of Russian convoys he obtained from a Ukrainian parliamentary group were taken during the 2008 Georgia conflict, the Washington Free Beacon said.

On Tuesday, the Washington Free Beacon ran a story that unveiled "exclusive" photos of victims of militia bombs and Russian armed vehicles seemingly rolling into Ukraine.

The photos were provided to Inhofe's office in print by an obscure Ukrainian delegation, led by a Georgetown professor, who said the images were taken at the height of Russia's alleged military incursion between August 24 and September 5, 2014.

Inhofe's spokeswoman Donelle Harder was cited as saying they had checked back with their sources - none of them high-level Ukrainian officials - before releasing the photos. She said they had been quite confident about their authenticity since the imagery allegedly matched reports about the Ukraine conflict.

But speaking to The Mirror on Thursday, Sen. Inhofe confessed he was "furious" to learn that at least one of the photos was taken by Associated Press during Russia's military operation in Georgia back in 2008. Several other images are readily available elsewhere online and can be found using a Google Images search.

Among the Ukrainian delegation was Semen Semenchenko, the commander of the "Donbas" volunteer battalion and a newly elected member of the Verkhovna Rada. Earlier, he was known as Konstantin Grishin and was reportedly suspected of fraud in Crimea.

...

http://www.sott.net/article/292559-US-Senator-furious-over-duped-photos-of-Russian-invasion-in-Ukraine-still-wont-change-his-mind

3/15

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/27/james-inhofe-fracking_n_6957406.html

The following post first appeared on FactCheck.org.

Sen. James Inhofe says there has never been “an instance of ground water contamination” caused by hydraulic fracturing — fracking — for oil and natural gas. Inhofe’s office told us he is referring only to “the physical act of cracking rocks through hydraulic fracturing.” But drilling operations that involve fracking include other actions that have caused contamination.

peer-reviewed study published in 2014 found that drinking water wells near fracking sites in Pennsylvania and Texas were contaminated with methane that had the chemical signature of gas normally found only deep underground.

Rob Jackson, a Stanford University professor of earth system science who coauthored the 2014 study, told us that drilling that uses hydraulic fracturing has “contaminated ground waters through chemical and wastewater spills, poor well integrity, and other pathways.”

The Fracking Boom

Fracking involves injection of a large volume of water, sand and a cocktail of chemicals (known as fracking fluid) deep underground to fracture the rock and allow gas to seep out. It is also used for oil extraction. (See EPA diagram at bottom.)

In common usage, the term “fracking” is sometimes used to describe the entire process of drilling for natural gas, but that isn’t accurate. After a well is drilled, cemented and prepared in other ways, only then is the well “fracked” — the actual stimulation of rock far beneath the earth’s surface to allow extraction of the gas.

Although hydraulic fracturing has been in use since the late 1940s, better technology and changing economics have led to a recent boom in natural gas extraction, in particular from shale formations. U.S. production of shale gas rose by almost 500 percent between 2007 and 2013, according to the Energy Information Administration.

With this boom, however, have come questions regarding water contamination related to drilling activity. This could occur through a number of mechanisms, including spills of gas or fracking fluid at the surface that could leach into groundwater, faulty cement casings inside wells allowing seepage of gas into the water table, and failed pieces of the well, such as steel and cement.

Partially in response to those concerns, the Department of the Interior finalized a regulation on March 20 regarding hydraulic fracturing and related activities on public and tribal land. The regulation includes a number of provisions related to fracking and other aspects of natural gas drilling activity.

For example, the rule includes “[p]rovisions for ensuring the protection of groundwater supplies by requiring a validation of well integrity and strong cement barriers between the wellbore and water zones through which the wellbore passes.” It has specific requirements for constructing cement casings for wells, and monitoring pressure on certain well parts during fracking operations. And it also requires disclosure of the chemical contents of fracking fluids.

Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, opposes the regulation. He, along with 26 cosponsors, introduced a bill that would specifically put the responsibility for regulating relevant oil and gas operations in the hands of the states rather than the federal government.

In a statement, Inhofe claimed fracking operations have never resulted in any contamination issues:

Inhofe, March 20: Since 1949, my state of Oklahoma has led the way on hydraulic fracturing regulations, and just like the rest of the nation, we have yet to see an instance of ground water contamination.

A spokeswoman for Inhofe, Donelle Harder, told us in an email that “the physical act of cracking rocks through hydraulic fracturing, thousands of feet below ground, has never caused groundwater contamination. What we are not saying is that a surface spill, faulty casing, bad drilling practices cannot be a problem. There is a difference between the hydraulic fracturing process and rest of the well drilling process.”

But scientists we interviewed say that it doesn’t make sense to separate fracking from the entire gas and oil production process, and there is ample evidence that the overall process can cause contamination of water supplies. As we noted above, the new DOI rules cover the entire process including fracking, well casings and other activities.

Well Failures and Water Contamination

Anthony Ingraffea, a Cornell civil and environmental engineering professor, told us in a phone interview that discussing contamination related to the frack per se isn’t useful. “The simpler question to ask is, ‘Is there any instance in which oil and gas development, writ large, has contaminated peoples’ drinking water?’ And the answer is, thousands. Thousands of cases.”

For example, Pennsylvania — which has been at the center of the recent rapid growthin natural gas extraction – maintains a list of hundreds of cases where a “private water supply was impacted by oil and gas activities.” The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection list covers both conventional and unconventional drilling — unconventional gas development refers to drilling for gas in shale and other difficult-to-access geologic formations. But it does not address specifically how the contamination occurred.

Among the first studies specifically linking natural gas development and fracking to water quality was a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014 that analyzed drinking well water near fracking operations in Texas and Pennsylvania.

In that study, which was coauthored by Jackson at Stanford, researchers identified the presence of methane — the primary component of natural gas — in drinking well water near unconventional drilling sites in the Marcellus Shale region in Pennsylvania and the Barnett Shale region in Texas. Using chemical signatures of certain gases, the researchers were able to determine in several cases that the methane was from deep underground — evidence that the drilling operations had caused the contamination.

The study found that faulty and leaky wells were likely to blame, and recommended studying “whether the large volumes of water and high pressures required for horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing influence well integrity.”

Ingraffea, of Cornell, said sending the water, sand and chemicals down the well puts an enormous amount of pressure on the casing, which could cause it to crack or separate from the steel surrounding it. Many wells are often fracked up to dozens of times, he added, and the repeated increase in pressure could cause failures as well. According to one 2014 paper published in Marine and Petroleum Geology, an estimated 6.3 percent of all Pennsylvania wells drilled between 2005 and 2013 suffered either a “well integrity failure” — meaning failures of barriers including casing, tubing and cement, and actual leakage of gas or fluids into surrounding soil and water — or a “well barrier failure” — meaning failure of one or more barriers with no information indicating actual leakage. The DOI points out that about 90 percent of all new wells are fracked.

Methane has been the primary culprit in proven cases of contamination, but other substances including heavy metals and chemicals related to fracking fluid have been found as well.

A paper published in Environmental Science and Technology in 2013 found higher levels of heavy metals such as selenium and arsenic in wells close to drilling activity in the Barnett Shale region compared with water that was farther from drilling. The researchers concluded that these contaminants could have arrived via a variety of mechanisms, including natural processes or failure of gas well components. Another study found fish kills and damage to other aquatic life following a surface spill of fracking fluid. The fracking process itself was not responsible, but in order to spill fracking fluid at the surface one must intend to frack a well.

Clearly, the DOI’s new regulation is designed to ensure water quality and safety as it relates to the entire process of extracting oil and natural gas, not just to the singular action of fracking. Inhofe is entitled to the opinion that such regulations should be left in the hands of the states, but he is wrong to say or imply that existing regulatory efforts have a perfect track record when it comes to preventing contamination of water supplies.

Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.

1/2015 back in charge

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted 98-1 to approve a resolution stating that “it is the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax.” Then, about 15 minutes later, the Senate rejected a second resolution that said climate change is real and caused by humans.

The first resolution was approved — and co-sponsored — by one of the most outspoken climate deniers in the Senate, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), a man who literally wrote a book about how climate change is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated.” The only Senator to vote against the resolution was Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS).

Sounds too good to be true, right? That’s because it is. At the last minute, right before a vote was taken, Inhofe took the floor to state that he would be co-sponsoring and approving the amendment on the grounds that yes, climate change is real, but human-caused climate change is not. “Man cannot change climate,” Inhofe said. “The hoax is that there are some people that are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful that they can change climate.”

The resolution was originally put forth by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) as an amendment to the bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. It was widely seen as a way to troll Republicans — a way for Democrats to say “Fine, if you want to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, you have to go on record about whether you think global warming is real.”

But Jim Inhofe out-trolled Sheldon Whitehouse. Jim Inhofe out-trolled us all.

Fortunately, the effort to get every Senator on the record about their stance on human-caused climate change was not all for naught. Shortly after the vote on Whitehouse’s resolution, the Senate also took up an amendment from Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), which stated that climate change is real and that humans contribute to it. That amendment failed, however, following a short speech from Sen. Lisa Murkoswki (R-AK) saying that the amendment’s inclusion of the word “significantly” — as in, humans “significantly” contribute to global warming — should warrant a “no” vote. Schatz’s amendment failed 50-49 (it needed 60 votes to pass), but it does mean that a slim majority of the U.S. Senate acknowledges that climate science is a real and valid thing.

Among the votes against Schatz’ amendment acknowledging that climate change is real were Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH). Republicans who voted to say that climate change is real and significantly caused by humans included Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Susan Collins (R-ME), Mark Kirk (R-IL), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

mayfly bs MTR related?

argh 2014

As a consequence of Tuesday's election, the most aggressive climate change denier in the Senate, Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma, will be replacing Barbara Boxer of California as chair of the Committee on Environment and Public Works. That's like having an arsonist at the head of the local fire brigade. Except that arsonists usually hide in the shadows. And that's one thing Inhofe doesn't do.

Two years ago, WND Books published Inhofe's,The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.

In it he cites as his favorite Bible verse, Genesis 8:22: “As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” About that, he said to a radio interviewer at the Voice of Christian Youth America: "My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."

He hasn't changed his mind about what he wrote in his fantasy tome. Of the International Panel on Climate Change's Synthesis Report released last week, he said:

The idea that our advanced industrialized economy would ever have zero carbon emissions is beyond extreme and further proof that the IPCC is nothing more than a front for the environmental left. It comes as no surprise that the IPCC is again advocating for the implementation of extreme climate change regulations that will cripple the global economy and send energy prices skyrocketing. The United States is in the midst of an energy renaissance that has the potential to bring about American energy independence, which would strengthen our national security and energy reliability for generations into the future. At a time of economic instability and increased threats to American interests, the IPCC’s report is little more than high hopes from the environmental left.

If we were going to have a replacement for Boxer, who has shown excellent leadership on the committee and introduced climate legislation with Sen. Bernie Sanders, it should have been Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. Starting in October 2011, when he gave this bullseye speech, he has been speaking every week on the floor of the Senate about climate change and what should be our response. Of course, most of those speeches are given to an empty chamber. Whitehouse also plans to introduce carbon pricing legislation in the near future. Obviously, that bill will go nowhere. It may not even get a hearing on the EPW committee.

This cannot all be blamed on Republican know-nothings. metero b

Uganda

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/senator-inhofe-lied-to-rachel-maddow-about-his-knowledge-of-ugandas-kill-the-gays-bill-says-author/politics/2012/03/16/36584

march 2012

Republican Senator James Inhofe in a rare GOP appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show, last night labeled as “hysterical” international concern over the Uganda “Kill The Gays” bill, while claiming he has never even heard of the three-year old bill and claiming he has never heard of the bill’s sponsor, MP David Bahati, one of the most powerful and the best-known Ugandan lawmakers. Senator Inhofe boasts that he has traveled to Africa, and primarily, to Uganda, almost two dozen times, and met with lawmakers and religious leaders there. A well-respected investigative journalist and popular author who has written two books on the topic says Inhofe is “lying.”

Rachel Maddow, in one segment of her extensive interview with the man who claims no one in his family has ever been divorced or gay, asks, now “that the Kill The Gays bill is back now, are you for it or against it?”

enator Inhofe, in a rather theatrical twist of emotion, responds with this diatribe:

Are you saying, are you suggesting, Rachel — I want to make sure everyone understands this — that I am for executing gays, that I somehow knew something about what their philosophy is over there and what they’re doing legislatively? I know Uganda , I know Ethiopia, I know Ghana, I know Benin, I know Africa better than anyone else certainly in the United States Senate. I’ve spent a lot of time over there, I’ve developed close relations over there. When 9/11 happened, I was the only member of the Armed Services Committee who knew where Africa was. We were making a decision to get into Africa to help train them to resist all the things coming into the state, into the country, into the continent. That’s what I did. So I do know Africa well.

It is not possible for these two statements to co-exist. If Senator Inhofe knows Africa well, then he knows David Bahati — and knows about the Uganda Kill The Gays bill — very well. Frankly, millions of Americans know about David Bahati and his Kill The Gays bill, so if Senator Inhofe doesn’t — after spending hundreds of thousands of you tax dollars on trips to Africa and Uganda, then something is desperately wrong and we should immediately stop paying for these excursions.

There is no possible way to deny this, and I all but guarantee that anyone feeling like doing a bit of FOIA research could easily prove it.

In fact, the one person best able to prove it might very well be journalist Jeff Sharlet, author of the groundbreaking book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. No other American journalist knows Inhofe better than Sharlet.

So, what does Sharlet say?

sharlet: t's also built around internal Family documents that ID Uganda as Inhofe's special responsibility for grooming leaders.

8:04 AM - 16 Mar 2012

American Culture Warriors in Africa

msg bd:

Inhofe seeks to force the EPA to report the costs of its rules

04/01/2014

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe introduced a bill to force the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce its own rules and report the costs of agency regulations.

Inhofe’s bill would prevent the EPA from issuing any new major rules until it follows the law and starts reporting economic costs.

“Americans are not as aware of the costs that have come from the regulations of this administration,” Inhofe told reporters on a conference call. “[They're] essentially putting people out of business.”

The Clean Air Act (CAA) already requires the EPA to report the impact of its regulations across the economy, but the Obama administration has failed to enforce this part of the law.

Inhofe aims to force EPA to enforce CAA Section 321(a) and report the costs of its rules.

“This would put teeth in Section 321(a),” Inhofe said.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/04/01/in...#ixzz2xfLLOzcR

then links to mayfly

larry bell

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/11/13/epa-charged-with-lethal-experiments-on-hundreds-of-unsuspecting-subjects/

A suit filed in federal court charges the Environmental Protection Agency with conducting illegal and potentially lethal experiments on hundreds of financially needy people who were paid $12/hour without even informing them of risks. Based upon thousands of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, procedures undertaken since 2004 and continuing through the Obama administration exposed subjects at the University of North Carolina’s School of Medicine to very high levels of toxic air pollutants. Many of these subjects were already health-impaired, suffering from asthma, metabolic syndrome, and aging (up to 75 years old).

One of the pollutants was a fine particulate substance known as PM2.5, a major component of diesel exhaust which EPA had determined to be unsafe for inhalation at any level, particularly for health-impaired and elderly populations. The administration’s own Clean Air Scientific Advisory Council chairman, Jon Samet, stated that in a 2011 commentary published in the New England Journal of Medicine. House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) reiterated EPA’s position on this in a February 2012 letter to EPA air chief, Gina McCarthy.

EPA has strictly regulated PM2.5 under its Clean Air Act since 1997. Those air quality standards costing multi-billions of dollars are being dramatically tightened. Two of the biggest new ones under its recently D.C. District Circuit Appeals Court-rejected Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Mercury Air Toxics Standard, are heavily premised upon condemnation of PM2.5 as a killer. As EPA Administrator Jackson testified in Congress in September 2011, “…particulate [PM2.5] matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should.” She added, “If we could reduce particulate matter to levels that are healthy we would have an identical impact to finding a cure for cancer.”

So if this is the case, why did EPA fail to warn their test subjects that the substances they would be exposed to in high doses were so dangerous? While the administration has repeatedly told Congress and the public that PM2.5 can kill within hours of exposure, they only told them, for example, that “You may experience some minor degree of airway irritation, cough or shortness of breath or wheezing. These symptoms typically disappear two to four hours after exposure, but may last longer for particularly sensitive people.” ...One such “sensitive person” is an obese woman with a history of heart disease. She had to be rushed to a hospital for an overnight stay after suffering a cardiac arrhythmia during an experiment. And although EPA attributed her heart problem to PM2.5 in a published report, no one ever bothered to warn subsequent subjects of cardiac arrhythmia risk.

The American Tradition Institute (ATI) which filed the law suit against EPA and its administrator asserts that such practices are not only illegal, but run afoul of virtually every rule of ethical standard established since World War II and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments to protect human study subjects from rogue scientific research. The egregious Tuskegee experiments were influential in prompting Congress to pass the National Research Act of 1974 creating a commission to develop principles for protection of human subjects in scientific experimentation.

ATI believes that EPA has both civil and criminal liability. The litigation was filed on behalf of lead plaintiff Landon Huffman, an ATI member who participated in the EPA’s human experimentation after receiving a consent form that did not explain that he would be exposed to something that the agency claims to be lethal. He was also never informed that such human experimentation was only supposed to be conducted in a manner that would potentially and directly benefit the study subjects.

To the contrary, Mr. Landon maintains that he was led to believe the experiment would help people with asthma, a condition he suffers…not told that the pollution that was forced into his lungs could actually cause an asthma attack. Nor was he ever given anything by EPA that would possibly relieve his asthma.

Since learning that EPA considers that the gases he was exposed to are lethal, Landon reports being distraught and consumed with emotional distress. This includes a fear of dying and future inability to support his wife and family. He is also distressed that other participants may suffer in the same way.[plag?]

Guided by painful lessons of such tragedies, it is difficult to imagine any possible justification for the EPA’s experiment program on plausible ethical or legal grounds. Section 42 of U.S. Code 3515b addressing prohibition on funding certain experiments involving human participants states that: “…[no]funds appropriated by this Act ….shall be used to pay for any research program, project, or course which is of an experimental nature, or any other activity involving human participants, which is determined by the Secretary or a court of competent jurisdiction to present a danger to the physical, mental, or emotional well-being of a participant or subject of such program, project, or course, without the written, informed consent of each participant or subject.”

Since three of the EPA researchers connected with its human experiments are North Carolina-licensed physicians, that state’s medical board is now investigating their participation. The University of North Carolina which provided the EPA with a required institutional review board (IRB) for approving the experiments is also conducting an inquiry. And while the Obama-appointed Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues has refused multiple requests to get involved in the issue, Senator Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, is now calling for investigatory hearings on the matter.

7/14

Ryan is merely the latest Republican in Congress to calculate that disparaging the Administration’s efforts to confront climate change will play well in election year politics. With a split Congress unable to move basic legislation, let alone anything that would require actual cooperation across the aisle, the Obama Administration has focused on mitigation and adaptation efforts at the executive level through their Climate Action Plan.

This week Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) blocked a Senate resolution simply stating that climate change is real before receiving a highly informative rebuttal from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). Earlier this summer another potential Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), said he doesn’t agree with the notion that “there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on what’s happening in our climate.”

This climate defeatist tact is a part of the Republican’s overall strategy this year — yesterday the House voted to sue President Obama for overstepping his legal authority, i.e. trying to get stuff done. The strategy also runs counter to international efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Investment in clean energy globally is at its highest point in several years and major economies like India and China are looking ramp up even further in the near term. China is also setting up pilot carbon reduction plans and Mexico recently hinted at possibly considering a carbon scheme of their own.

However, fossil fuel invested politicians in Canada and Australia have also managed to regress the conversation from how to make progress to how to maintain the status quo. In the meantime, greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb at an alarming rate and the world continues to see record high temperatures.

JUMPS THE SHARK:

AlterNet [1] / By Cliff Weathers [2]

GOP Senator Attacks Retired Military Brass for Saying Climate Change Threatens Security

May 16, 2014 |

Republican Sen. James Inhofe is once again dismissing a report on climate change, attacking the integrity of the report's authors. While that's not news in itself, the targets of Inhofe's derision are 16 retired three- and four-star generals and admirals. Inhofe claims that retired military officers are just desperate for publicity, and don't understand the defense needs of the nation.

The generals and admirals wrote a federally funded report on climate change, assessing the threats of global weather events on national security.

Other Republicans, however, have been notably quiet since the report's release. Typically, they form a chorus to shout down any climate-change report, claiming that man-made climate change is fraud perpetuated by the "liberal agenda.” This time, the authors of the report are not scientists and environmentalists, the typical targets of conservative derision. It would be political suicide for any Republican to categorize such a large group of career military officers as liberals, especially in an election year.

The authors of the climate change report focused solely on their area of expertise, national security. They serve as the military advisory board for the CNA Corporation, a non-profit research and analysis organization in Alexandria, VA. They warned that climate change is not only a menace to the environment but presents the U.S. with several new security threats. The advisory board's report said that climate change has already led to conflicts over food and water because of droughts and extreme weather, and it anticipates that the incidence of these conflicts will increase exponentially. The report also predicted that the increase in catastrophic weather events would create more demand for U.S. military troops, and could cause damage to naval ports and military bases.

“Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and it presents significant national security challenges for the United States,” says the report, adding that conflicts will likely be felt “even in stable regions.”

The report says that climate events like flooding, prolonged drought and rising sea levels could result in population dislocation, waves of refugees and food insecurity. These would serve as “catalysts for instability and conflict,” in more vulnerable regions, aggravating existing stressors such as poverty, political instability and social tensions. Such conditions can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence, according to the report.

The report concluded that the U.S. military should shift course, and adopt strategies to manage catastrophes and conflicts both domestically and internationally.

The report's forward was written by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. They warned that “we no longer have the option to wait and see” and pleaded for a “bipartisan call to action.”

Responding to the report, Secretary of State John Kerry told the New York Times [3] that American foreign policy will need to adjust to respond to the climate events predicted. Kerry said, “The intelligence community takes it seriously, and it's translated into action.”

“Tribes are killing each other over water today. Think of what happens if you have massive dislocation, or the drying up of the waters of the Nile, of the major rivers in China and India,” Kerry said.

Pentagon officials also said they would use the report's findings to shape military policy; however, it is already moving in that direction. Last month, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel hosted 10 defense ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations at a meeting in Hawaii where they discussed how their militaries can work together to effectively tackle non-traditional security challenges, including climate change and natural disasters. And in March, the Department of Defense announced it had drawn a direct link between the effects of global warming and terrorism.

“The department certainly agrees that climate change is having an impact on national security, whether by increasing global instability, by opening the Arctic or by increasing sea level and storm surge near our coastal installations,” said John Conger, the deputy under secretary of defense for installations and environment. “We are actively integrating climate considerations across the full spectrum of our activities to ensure a ready and resilient force.”

One of the report's authors, retired Rear Admiral David Titley, the former oceanographer of the Navy, told the Huffington Post he hopes the message will be received differently by climate-change deniers as it comes from retired and respected U.S. military brass.

“This report is signed, not by environmentalists or climate scientists, but by 16 admirals and generals who collectively have over 500 years of service to our country,” said Titley, who is now a meteorology professor at Penn State University.

There is some speculation that the report could spawn a National Intelligence Estimate regarding climate change. NIEs are authored by the U.S.' 16 intelligence organizations and various military organizations and are used to evaluate security threats here and abroad, typically suggesting actions to be taken.

In 2007, then Sen. Hagel, a Republican, called for legislation requiring federal intelligence agencies to collaborate on a National Intelligence Estimate to evaluate the security challenges presented by climate change. He was joined by Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin. Although Hagel and Durbin's bill died in committee, a NIE was later released in 2008. No NIE on climate change has been released since.

Any mention of climate change by scientists, the media and the Obama administration is met with piranha-like attacks by Republicans that often climax in an abundance of media appearances to denounce the messengers. But with the exception of Inhofe, they've been notably hesitant to attack former top military officers.

Inhofe, of Oklahoma, is a ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He calls himself "a vocal skeptic of the established science that greenhouse-gas emissions contribute to global warming." He claims to believe the science of climate change is a "hoax."

"There is no one in more pursuit of publicity than a retired military officer," said Inhofe of the CNA Corporation study. "I look back wistfully at the days of the Cold War. Now you have people who are mentally imbalanced, with the ability to deploy a nuclear weapon. For anyone to say that any type of global warming is anywhere close to the threat that we have with crazy people running around with nuclear weapons, it shows how desperate they are to get the public to buy this."

Climate change, which was once considered an issue that would only pose problems many years from now, has moved firmly into the present. Although scientists caution against linking any single atypical climate event to climate change, they note that together these aberrant and severe weather events are consistent with global warming.

In March, the United Nations released a report stating that climate change is already cutting into the global food supply and fueling wars and natural disasters. The report stated that political instability and riots in Asia and Africa in 2008 were a direct result of food-price shocks brought on by regional weather events. The UN report warned that governments are unprepared to protect those most at risk.

Syria's civil war is believed to have been spurred by the droughts which have distressed the country since 2006. Three-quarters of the nation's crops have failed and nearly all of its livestock have died of thirst or hunger. Syria’s farmers abandoned their farms, fleeing to the cities in search of jobs and critically insufficient food supplies, creating regional social unrest. UN observers estimated that between 2 and 3 million of Syria’s 10 million rural inhabitants were reduced to extreme poverty, and this is the core cause of recent national instability.

See more stories tagged with:

climate change [5],

terrorism [6],

national security [7]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/inhofe-attacks-retired-generals-and-admirals-over-climate-change

in June, senator James inhofe (r-ok)

introduced a bill in the senate that would have

killed epa’s new mercury rule, which will slash

emissions 90% over the next three years.

moms Clean air force, a group of mothers and other clean

air supporters, now more than 100,000 strong, swung into action

to defend the rule, one of the biggest public health advances in a

generation. Inhofe claimed that the public health benefits of lowering

mercury emissions are “epa propaganda.” edf

2011 looks like reprise of truth squad, this one in durban

On Wednesday, December 7, CFACT cosponsored a press conference with U.S. Senator James Inhofe at the UN climate change conference in Durban, South Africa. The UN broadcast it live on their website, and you can watch the highlights here:

...If you wish to view the full 30-minute press conference, the UN has it available as awebcast here.

On Tuesday, CFACT conducted a highly publicized parachute drop which called attention to Climategate 2.0.

The Wednesday press conference featured an analysis from Senator Inhofe of the prospects of a new climate treaty in the U.S. Senate. The conference also featured the release of Marc Morano's (publisher of ClimateDepot.com) new report “A-Z Climate Reality Check” which details troubles and failings in what has been falsely proclaimed by global warming advocates to be a “settled scientific consensus.”

“Climate Depot’s new A-Z report reveals that the great man-made global warming catastrophe that was predicted – has been cancelled.” Morano said. “The scientific reality is that on virtually every claim – from A-Z – the claims of the promoters of man-made climate fears are failing and in many instances going in the opposite direction. The global warming movement is suffering the scientific death of a thousand cuts. This Climate Depot special report categorizes and indexes the full range of climate developments in a handy A-Z reference guide from the Antarctic to Polar Bears to Mount Kilimanjaro to Sea Levels to Global temperatures to hurricanes and tornados.”

Nobel Prize nominee, Leon Louw, Executive Director of South Africa's Free Market Institute, discussed the devastating impact climate policy has had on the economies of both the developed and developing world and the crippling hindrance it poses to the poor.

South African nuclear physicist Dr. Kelvin Kemm discussed global warming policy providing a unique South African analysis.

When a Greenpeace activist asked a question about ocean acidification, Lord Christopher Monckton, freshly rested from his parachute jump to call attention to Climategate 2.0, delivered a thorough scientific refutation of the idea that ocean acidification is a problem caused by man-made global warming.

“Secretary Figueres is telling the COP that she can obtain a new commitment period in Durban.” Said CFACT Executive Director Craig Rucker. “After she hears what Senator Inhofe has to say, she may want to reevaluate her wishful thinking.”

Visit www.ClimateDepot.com, www.CFACT.org, and www.CFACT.tv for the latest developments here in Durban.

Sen Manchin, Joe, III [WV] - 3/16/2011

Sen Hatch, Orrin G. [UT] - 3/16/2011

Sen Toomey, Pat [PA] - 3/16/2011

Sen Cornyn, John [TX] - 3/16/2011

Sen Johanns, Mike [NE] - 3/16/2011

Sen Portman, Rob [OH] - 3/28/2011

Sen Isakson, Johnny [GA] - 3/28/2011

Sen Paul, Rand [KY] - 3/29/2011

S.AMDT.183

Amends: S.493

Amendments to this amendment: S.AMDT.244

Sponsor: Sen McConnell, Mitch [KY] (submitted 3/15/2011) (proposed 3/15/2011)

AMENDMENT PURPOSE:

To prohibit the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from promulgating any regulation concerning, taking action relating to, or taking into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas to address climate change.

The battle over an amendment to essentially strip the EPA of regulatory authority it arrogated to itself over the last two years deepened today when Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) blasted Republicans for abandoning his temporary measure. Speaking from the Senate floor, Rockefeller angrily called the McConnell-Inhofe bill “theological,” “immature,” and warned that it had no chance of passage at all. The full transcript will be at the bottom of the post, but here is the key portion

COSPONSORS(8):

Sen Manchin, Joe, III [WV] - 3/16/2011

Sen Hatch, Orrin G. [UT] - 3/16/2011

Sen Toomey, Pat [PA] - 3/16/2011

Sen Cornyn, John [TX] - 3/16/2011

Sen Johanns, Mike [NE] - 3/16/2011

Sen Portman, Rob [OH] - 3/28/2011

Sen Isakson, Johnny [GA] - 3/28/2011

Sen Paul, Rand [KY] - 3/29/2011

AMENDMENT PURPOSE:

TEXT OF AMENDMENT AS SUBMITTED: CR S1686

Sen Manchin, Joe, III [WV] - 3/16/2011

Sen Hatch, Orrin G. [UT] - 3/16/2011

Sen Toomey, Pat [PA] - 3/16/2011

Sen Cornyn, John [TX] - 3/16/2011

Sen Johanns, Mike [NE] - 3/16/2011

Sen Portman, Rob [OH] - 3/28/2011

Sen Isakson, Johnny [GA] - 3/28/2011

Sen Paul, Rand [KY] - 3/29/2011