Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Texas Sen. Cornyn on Greenhouse Gasses

Dear Sen. Cornyn.

Thank you for your greenhouse gas form letter.

You are against controlling carbon dioxide emissions by fossil fuel burning as proposed by the EPA, because you see the great cost and damage to our economy in doing so. This is a very pragmatic and attractive approach, but it still leaves you wide open to continued EPA pressure.

The EPA starts with the assumption that greenhouse gases are bad and if you follow that assumption, you are liable for easy manipulation by the EPA.

The fact is that greenhouse gases are not in general destructive to our environment. Earth's atmospheric gases are absolutely essential for maintaining life on earth. Without greenhouse gases, the differences between nighttime and daytime temperatures would be so great as to obviate Earth's ability to maintain organic life.

We are this favorable presence of greenhouse effect primarily because of two major gases in the atmosphere; nitrogen and oxygen. Other natural gases, such as argon at 1% and carbon dioxide at less than 0.05% have only minor effects on the greenhouse ability of the system. There is nothing special about carbon dioxide. It is neither poisonous nor especially heat reflective in its greenhouse ability. Because of its low concentration, it can be considered an almost insignificant part of the greenhouse gas complex. However, it does have another special property. Even at low atmospheric concentration, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is necessary for the continued growth and health of plant life, on which we depend as food. That is, even slight increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide contribute are to higher crop yields and general forestry.

Once again, contrary to the position of the EPA, carbon dioxide is not a dangerous greenhouse gas. It is a greenhouse gas, but there's nothing dangerous about it. It is part of the greenhouse gas system as originally required for the production and continuance of life on this planet.



From: Senator Cornyn [mailto:SenateWebmail@cornyn.senate.gov]
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2015 9:23 AM
To: asucsy@suddenlink.net
Subject: Thank You For Contacting My Office

Dear Dr. Sucsy:

Thank you for your recent letter regarding global climate change and greenhouse gases. I appreciate having the benefit of your comments on this matter.

I welcome an open debate on how to be a good steward of our environment; however, I cannot support regulatory actions that create a massive new government bureaucracy, raise energy prices, increase taxes, and send American jobs overseas. I oppose actions by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to treat greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, as pollutants under the Clean Air Act (CAA). This misrepresents the legislative intent of the CAA in favor of expanding the EPA's regulatory authority.

Recently, the EPA has sought to restrict carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. Furthermore, the EPA seeks to limit new plants by imposing new standards that are not commercially demonstrated today. As a result, a considerable amount of electricity generation is at risk and could be taken offline, increasing electricity prices and harming grid reliability. When regulatory agencies discount real-world data or fail to follow due process, they needlessly destroy jobs and threaten whole industries, increasing economic uncertainty and hampering job creation.

I strongly believe that innovation and technological advances in traditional and alternative sources of energy will address our nation's environmental challenges more effectively than more government regulation. Furthermore, I believe that any effort to control greenhouse gas emissions should not place the United States at a global economic disadvantage or penalize American families and workers.

Given the scope and magnitude of the EPA’s regulations and their impact on the economy, it is essential that the regulatory process remain transparent and accountable to all Americans, not solely in the hands of unelected bureaucrats. In an effort to restore transparency and accountability to the federal regulatory process, I cosponsored the Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny Act (REINS Act; S. 226). This legislation would require major agency actions—defined as those having an economic impact of $100 million or more—to obtain prior congressional approval. S. 226 was referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for further consideration, and it is my hope that this important legislation will be brought to the Senate floor for debate during the 114th Congress.

I appreciate having the opportunity to represent Texas in the United States Senate, and I will continue to support policies that ensure economic viability while protecting public health. Thank you for taking the time to contact me.

Sincerely,

JOHN CORNYN
United States Senator





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Friday, April 10, 2015

Basis of CO2 Emissions and Climate Change

According to the Washington Times, Pres. Obama has proposed to the United Nations that he will cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 26% over 10 years. By the term "greenhouse gases", Obama means carbon dioxide, which is a gaseous emission from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, natural gas, etc.. He is basing this on the long-term opinion held by his administration and propagandized as the anticipated cause for climate change, with associated disasters, including flooding of coastal cities.
There is no true scientific basis for making any claim that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels has any significant effect on climate change. It is purely an imaginary connection engendered to develop fear as a motivation to use the hypothetical connection for other reasons.
The question is how does the Obama administration come up with such a nonscientific based position. The quick answer is because they want it to be so, not because it is. The alternate question then is how can relatively intelligent people come up with a belief and program, which has no basis of scientific fact. To answer this, I thought we might take a look at the background of education for Brian Deese, who is a senior advisor to Pres. Obama.
Brian has a Bachelors Degree in Political Science from Middlebury College. For his degree, he had to take 10 courses in Political Science, and at least one course in eight other fields, one of which is Science. We do not know whether he had chosen Science, but suspect that he did not. If he had, the Science Department describes its courses as, "A study of inductive and deductive processes of science. Emphasis is on the methods used to gather, interpret, and evaluate data critically, and the placement of this information into a larger context. Fundamental principles of each discipline are discussed in a manner that illustrates the evolving relationship of science, technology, and society." Notice that there seems to be no teaching of scientific fact.
Brian followed this with a law degree from Yale University and then one might say did some super graduate work as an employee of the Center for Global Development, a think tank whose stated mission is "to reduce global poverty and inequality by encouraging policy change in the United States and other rich countries through rigorous research and active engagement with the policy community. In short, there is no indication that Brian Deese has ever studied gases, including CO2 and properties related to it, such as specific heat. His concentration has been to redistribute global wealth, consistent with that of Obama, and a distorted version of CO2 emissions and associated climate change is only a means to that end.