http://www.opiniojuris.org/posts/1200350661.shtml
All Quiet on UNCLOS
By Duncan Hollis
Opinio Juris
A weblog dedicated to reports, commentary, and debate on current developments and scholarship in the fields of international law and politics
01.14.2008 at 5:44pm
Notwithstanding its recent efforts to avoid recess appointments with 12 second sessions, the Senate will return in full next Monday. For international lawyers, the big question is whether UNCLOS finally gets a vote for the Senate's advice and consent. As I noted here and here, the SFRC voted UNCLOS out of Committee last fall largely along party lines. But it's been all quiet since. Indeed, I've heard from a couple of sources that the window for Senate A&C to accession is closing, if not closed. What I don't know is why? Is it that the Democracts really don't have the two-thirds majority for A&C? Or, is the opposition less than a third of the Senate, but the Senate leadership doesn't want to have the UNCLOS fight given all the procedural roadblocks and counter-measures even a handful of heavily committed Senators can invoke to oppose the treaty or forestall a vote? I suppose the fact that the election cycle is in full swing may have some explanatory value as well. But, what do readers think (or know)?
If UNCLOS doesn't get a vote this Congress, it has to go back and start all over again at the SFRC, something I suspect UNCLOS supporters would be eager to avoid. In that respect, I wonder if the supporters have one last push in them, or if the best chance for U.S. accession in the last decade has already passed.
[THE ANSWER IS: ALL OF THE ABOVE. PERHAPS, NEXT TIME THE UNCLOS RATIFICATION PROCESS BEGINS THE ADMINISTRATION & CONGRESS WILL HOLD OPEN, PUBLIC & TRANSPARENT HEARINGS UNDER OATH??? HIGHLY DOUBTFUL!]
Peter Prows:
1.15.2008 6:23am
As world commodities prices continue to rise, perhaps there will also be a push (or maybe a pushback?) as well from US mining companies interested in dusting off Part XI and the 1994 Agreement for prospective seabed mining ventures.
[A LIKELY THOUGHT RUNNING ACROSS THE MINDS OF OIL & GAS EXECUTIVES. BUT, THEY'RE REALLY NOT INTERSTED IN DEALING WITH THE INT'L SEABED AUTHORITY. THEY WOULD RATHER PURSUE U.S. TERRITORIAL EXPANSION VIA THE MAKING OF SUBMISSIONS TO THE U.N. CONTINENTAL SHELF COMMISSION FOR PURPOSES OF EXPLOITING U.S. GOV'T -GRANTED DRILLING/EXTRACTION LICENSES. WHY DO YOU THINK THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION RESUBMITTED UNCLOS TO THE SFRC SHORTLY AFTER AN AMENDMENT TO THE LONDON DUMPING CONVENTION THAT EXEMPTED CARBON SEQUESTRATION IN THE DEEP SEABED FROM THE TREATY'S POLLUTION PROVISIONS WAS SECURED?? OBVIOUSLY, OIL & GAS INTERESTS WERE BEHIND THIS PUSH, & ARE ALSO BEHIND THE CURRENT PUSH AT THE 'ARCTIC'. See e.g.,: UNCLOS Alchemy, http://itssdjournalunclos-lost.blogspot.com/2008/01/unclos-alchemy.html].
Lawrence Kogan:
Dear Duncan,
Perhaps the Senate's silence surrounding UNCLOS has something to do with:
1)New data that has been provided about the universe of MEAs revolving around and relating to the environmental regulations within Part XII of the UNCLOS and the final and proposed environmental regulations of the International Seabed Authority;
2)The plans of some UNCLOS State Parties to 'import' norms from such other treaties to interpret UNCLOS norms in the event ITLOS or arbitral jurisdiction is invoked in a dispute with the US, should it ratify;
3)The plans to reform the UNEP and the now moribund UN Trusteeship, to strengthen the UNEP into an IEO, as suggested by France and Germany, and to improve the relationship between the UNEP secretariats and the UN General Secretariat overseeing the UNCLOS;
4)The plans to vest the International Seabed Authority with broader and more extensive scope to regulate the marine environment of the Res Communis (Global Commons), including below, on and above the seabed, the water columns, and the air above, with ISA jurisdiction in a dispute arguably reaching into US EEZs and coastal waters, inland waterways, and the continental US;
5)The plans to impose environmental taxes and user fees on US and other countries' commercial activities for the use of the Res Communis, as defined above, as explained by France and Germany;
6)The growing number of lawsuits commenced by US environmental extremist groups against the US Navy for operating sonar devices along US coastlines and the US EEZ, such that the Navy JAG has to employ a greater number of attorneys just to keep up with the caseload;
7)The European Union and its coastal EU Member States' growing environmental activism to claim more and more of the EU EEZ as off limits to commercial traffic, as 'Marine Protected Areas' and/or as 'Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas' (PSSA's);
8)Clear and convincing evidence that the UNCLOS, as it is now being practiced by the EU and its Member States, incorporates the wingspread version of the hazard-not-risk-based Precautionary Principle, directly, indirectly, and 'in spirit'.
Perhaps since evidence about all of these factors have been adduced, the US Senate leadership of the 110th Congress believes it doesn't have the requisite number of votes to ratify the treaty. Alternatively, they do not believe it wise to expend the political capital to debate the treaty on the floor of the Senate and risk exposing the documented evidence showing all of the above.
Don't you think this could be why???
Best Regards,
Lawrence
Showing posts with label communitarian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communitarian. Show all posts
Friday, May 9, 2008
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
BUILDING A BRIDGE TO NOWHERE BUT OBLIVION: USG Funding Of UNCLOS & UN Environment Program Will Undermine US Sovereignty
BUILDING A BRIDGE TO NOWHERE BUT OBLIVION **
The UNCLOS has not been properly researched and scientifically investigated by the U.S. Executive and Legislative branches. Neither have these organs of U.S. government closely examined whether the UNCLOS's environmental regulatory rules can: 1) advance sound environmental policy; 2) ensure objective, balanced enforcement free from the political influence of special interests’ having philosophical/political and economic leanings antithetical to free markets and the protection of private property rights; and 3) guarantee that the Rule of Law, NOT the Rule by Law, is the order of the day - i.e., that Rule of Law is NOT undermined, circumvented or usurped to support a system of unaccountable supranational power where top-down rather than bottom-up Global Governance reigns.
As a result of inadequate executive and legislative branch research and oversight of the UNCLOS and its relationship to the burgeoning United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), U.S. policymakers have remained largely unaware of how the U.S. State Department continues to fund and seek future funding for these organizations/institutions - despite the fact that such funding can be and, in some cases, is actually being employed against U.S. national sovereign interests. For one thing, the UNEP is the multilateral environmental treaty-making machine of the UN, which the European Union, specifically, France and Germany, aim to enlarge and reform into an International Environmental Organization with vast powers to facilitate global environmental regulatory and economic governance over U.S. affairs, based on other than free market, private property, rule of law and scientific principles.
It is therefore surprising that the U.S. State Department has actually funded the UNEP in the neighborhood of $42.17 million from 2004-2007 ($10.94 million – 2004, $10.91 million – 2005, $10.16 million – 2006, $10.16 million – 2007), has estimated that actual 2008 UNEP funding will be $10.42 million, and has recently requested additional 2009 UNEP funding in the amount of $9.52 million – for a total of $19.94 ($20) more million, for a grand total of actual, estimated and projected UNEP funding for 2004-2009 of $62.11 million! [1] Adding insult to injury, the U.S. State Department has also, on at least two occasions, sought federal budget line funding for the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and the International Seabed Authority (ISBA). These funding requests were submitted FY 2006 $3.1 million (ITLOS - $1.9 million + ISBA - $1.2 million) and just recently FY 2009 $4.9 million (ITLOS – $3.6 million + ISBA - $1.3 million)! [2]
What is the sound rationale justifying the U.S. Department of State's appropriation of monies to the UNCLOS [a treaty not yet ratified], to the tune of approximately $5 million dollars? If the monies are being allocated to the UNCLOS, where other treaty parties hostile to U.S. interests are 1) refocusing and reshaping the UNCLOS into a more communal, centralized social system and 2) planning to utilize the interrelationship between the UNCLOS and the UNEP to promote the development of a global governance system that compromises U.S. national sovereignty, are we not undermining ourselves by building a “Bridge That Leads to Nowhere”, but oblivion?
**[THE ITSSD WISHES TO THANK CLIFF KINCAID OF AMERICA'S SURVIVAL (http://www.usasurvival.org ) FOR BRINGING THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT'S PROPOSED FY 2009 BUDGET LINE FUNDING OF THESE UNCLOS BODIES TO OUR ATTENTION]
[1] See U.S. State Department “Summary and Highlights - International Affairs Function 150 Budget Requests”, ‘Contributions to International Organizations’, FY 2009 at p. 92, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/100014.pdf ; FY 2008 at p. 109, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/80151.pdf ; FY 2007 at p. 88, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/60297.pdf ; FY 2006 at p. 90, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/41913.pdf .
[2] See U.S. State Department “Summary and Highlights - International Affairs Function 150 Budget Requests”, ‘Contributions to International Organizations’, FY 2006, supra at p. 92; FY 2009, supra at p. 96.
The UNCLOS has not been properly researched and scientifically investigated by the U.S. Executive and Legislative branches. Neither have these organs of U.S. government closely examined whether the UNCLOS's environmental regulatory rules can: 1) advance sound environmental policy; 2) ensure objective, balanced enforcement free from the political influence of special interests’ having philosophical/political and economic leanings antithetical to free markets and the protection of private property rights; and 3) guarantee that the Rule of Law, NOT the Rule by Law, is the order of the day - i.e., that Rule of Law is NOT undermined, circumvented or usurped to support a system of unaccountable supranational power where top-down rather than bottom-up Global Governance reigns.
As a result of inadequate executive and legislative branch research and oversight of the UNCLOS and its relationship to the burgeoning United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), U.S. policymakers have remained largely unaware of how the U.S. State Department continues to fund and seek future funding for these organizations/institutions - despite the fact that such funding can be and, in some cases, is actually being employed against U.S. national sovereign interests. For one thing, the UNEP is the multilateral environmental treaty-making machine of the UN, which the European Union, specifically, France and Germany, aim to enlarge and reform into an International Environmental Organization with vast powers to facilitate global environmental regulatory and economic governance over U.S. affairs, based on other than free market, private property, rule of law and scientific principles.
It is therefore surprising that the U.S. State Department has actually funded the UNEP in the neighborhood of $42.17 million from 2004-2007 ($10.94 million – 2004, $10.91 million – 2005, $10.16 million – 2006, $10.16 million – 2007), has estimated that actual 2008 UNEP funding will be $10.42 million, and has recently requested additional 2009 UNEP funding in the amount of $9.52 million – for a total of $19.94 ($20) more million, for a grand total of actual, estimated and projected UNEP funding for 2004-2009 of $62.11 million! [1] Adding insult to injury, the U.S. State Department has also, on at least two occasions, sought federal budget line funding for the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and the International Seabed Authority (ISBA). These funding requests were submitted FY 2006 $3.1 million (ITLOS - $1.9 million + ISBA - $1.2 million) and just recently FY 2009 $4.9 million (ITLOS – $3.6 million + ISBA - $1.3 million)! [2]
What is the sound rationale justifying the U.S. Department of State's appropriation of monies to the UNCLOS [a treaty not yet ratified], to the tune of approximately $5 million dollars? If the monies are being allocated to the UNCLOS, where other treaty parties hostile to U.S. interests are 1) refocusing and reshaping the UNCLOS into a more communal, centralized social system and 2) planning to utilize the interrelationship between the UNCLOS and the UNEP to promote the development of a global governance system that compromises U.S. national sovereignty, are we not undermining ourselves by building a “Bridge That Leads to Nowhere”, but oblivion?
**[THE ITSSD WISHES TO THANK CLIFF KINCAID OF AMERICA'S SURVIVAL (http://www.usasurvival.org ) FOR BRINGING THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT'S PROPOSED FY 2009 BUDGET LINE FUNDING OF THESE UNCLOS BODIES TO OUR ATTENTION]
[1] See U.S. State Department “Summary and Highlights - International Affairs Function 150 Budget Requests”, ‘Contributions to International Organizations’, FY 2009 at p. 92, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/100014.pdf ; FY 2008 at p. 109, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/80151.pdf ; FY 2007 at p. 88, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/60297.pdf ; FY 2006 at p. 90, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/41913.pdf .
[2] See U.S. State Department “Summary and Highlights - International Affairs Function 150 Budget Requests”, ‘Contributions to International Organizations’, FY 2006, supra at p. 92; FY 2009, supra at p. 96.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Reagan Diaries & Ambassador Malone Comments Confirm Concerns About Collectivist UNCLOS Redistributing Wealth & Making New International Economic Order
110th CONGRESS SENATE EXEC. REPT. 110-9
CONVENTION ON THE LAW OF THE SEA DECEMBER 19, 2007.
(pp. 24-25)
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_rpt/lots.pdf
Mr. BIDEN, from the Committee on Foreign Relations, submitted the following REPORT together with MINORITY VIEWS
[To accompany Treaty Doc. 103–39]
IX. MINORITY VIEWS
MINORITY VIEWS OF SENATORS DEMINT AND VITTER
Ronald Reagan Biographer Dinesh D’Souza tells of an incident that occurred only a few weeks after Reagan was elected president:
According to aides who were present at the meeting, Reagan was asked by Alexander Haig, his new Secretary of State, to approve continuing negotiations for the Law of the Sea treaty. Reagan said he would not support the treaty and asked that negotiations be suspended. Incredulous, Haig tried to make him see the light by pointing out that discussions had been ongoing for years
and that every recent president and virtually all leading figures in both Parties accepted the general framework of the treaty.
‘‘Well, yes,’’ Reagan said, ‘‘but you see, Al, that’s what the last election was all about.’’ ‘‘About the Law of the Sea treaty?’’ Haig sneered. ‘‘No,’’ Reagan replied. ‘‘It was about not doing things just because that’s the way they’ve been done before.’’
Since that time, proponents have attempted to paint Reagan’s objections as limited in scope, focused on a few minor changes to the seabed mining section. Meanwhile, key Reagan advisers like Ed Meese, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and James Malone have countered that his concerns were much more broad, relating to the fundamental collectivist philosophy embodied in the treaty. They suggested that even if the seabed mining regime was fixed or even deleted altogether,
Reagan would still not have signed it. Who is correct?
For a quarter century, this question has gone unanswered. However, we now have new insights, with the release of The Reagan Diaries. On page 90, we find the answer in President Reagan’s own hand—
Tuesday, June 29 [1982]. Decided in NSC meeting—will not sign ‘‘Law of the Sea’’ Treaty even without seabed mining provisions.
Reagan’s concerns with the treaty were summed up in a 1984 article written by his chief Law of the Sea Negotiator, James Malone.
"The Law of the Sea Treaty’s provisions establishing the deep seabed mining regime were intentionally designed to promote a new world order—a form of global collectivism known as the new international economic order (NIEO) that seeks ultimately the redistribution of the world’s wealth through a complex system of manipulative central economic planning and bureaucratic coercion."
This applies not only to the seabed mining regime, but to all of the treaty with the exception of a few provisions dealing with navigation.
In 1995, Commenting on the 1994 Agreement, Ambassador Malone reiterated his earlier criticism:
"This remains the case today. All the provisions from the past that make such a [new world order] outcome possible, indeed likely, still stand. It is not true, as argued by some, and frequently mentioned, that the U.S. rejected the Convention in 1982 solely because of technical difficulties with Part XI. The collectivist and redistributionist provisions of the treaty were at the core of the U.S. refusal to sign."
We believe certain provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, particularly those dealing with navigation, have merit. We further appreciate the Navy’s interest in the treaty.
However, the navigation provisions are primarily limited to the first 4 parts—11 pages out of a 188 page treaty. The rest establishes a massive bureaucracy to govern the seas and anything that can be construed to impact the seas—even if the impact is de minimus.
CONVENTION ON THE LAW OF THE SEA DECEMBER 19, 2007.
(pp. 24-25)
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_rpt/lots.pdf
Mr. BIDEN, from the Committee on Foreign Relations, submitted the following REPORT together with MINORITY VIEWS
[To accompany Treaty Doc. 103–39]
IX. MINORITY VIEWS
MINORITY VIEWS OF SENATORS DEMINT AND VITTER
Ronald Reagan Biographer Dinesh D’Souza tells of an incident that occurred only a few weeks after Reagan was elected president:
According to aides who were present at the meeting, Reagan was asked by Alexander Haig, his new Secretary of State, to approve continuing negotiations for the Law of the Sea treaty. Reagan said he would not support the treaty and asked that negotiations be suspended. Incredulous, Haig tried to make him see the light by pointing out that discussions had been ongoing for years
and that every recent president and virtually all leading figures in both Parties accepted the general framework of the treaty.
‘‘Well, yes,’’ Reagan said, ‘‘but you see, Al, that’s what the last election was all about.’’ ‘‘About the Law of the Sea treaty?’’ Haig sneered. ‘‘No,’’ Reagan replied. ‘‘It was about not doing things just because that’s the way they’ve been done before.’’
Since that time, proponents have attempted to paint Reagan’s objections as limited in scope, focused on a few minor changes to the seabed mining section. Meanwhile, key Reagan advisers like Ed Meese, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and James Malone have countered that his concerns were much more broad, relating to the fundamental collectivist philosophy embodied in the treaty. They suggested that even if the seabed mining regime was fixed or even deleted altogether,
Reagan would still not have signed it. Who is correct?
For a quarter century, this question has gone unanswered. However, we now have new insights, with the release of The Reagan Diaries. On page 90, we find the answer in President Reagan’s own hand—
Tuesday, June 29 [1982]. Decided in NSC meeting—will not sign ‘‘Law of the Sea’’ Treaty even without seabed mining provisions.
Reagan’s concerns with the treaty were summed up in a 1984 article written by his chief Law of the Sea Negotiator, James Malone.
"The Law of the Sea Treaty’s provisions establishing the deep seabed mining regime were intentionally designed to promote a new world order—a form of global collectivism known as the new international economic order (NIEO) that seeks ultimately the redistribution of the world’s wealth through a complex system of manipulative central economic planning and bureaucratic coercion."
This applies not only to the seabed mining regime, but to all of the treaty with the exception of a few provisions dealing with navigation.
In 1995, Commenting on the 1994 Agreement, Ambassador Malone reiterated his earlier criticism:
"This remains the case today. All the provisions from the past that make such a [new world order] outcome possible, indeed likely, still stand. It is not true, as argued by some, and frequently mentioned, that the U.S. rejected the Convention in 1982 solely because of technical difficulties with Part XI. The collectivist and redistributionist provisions of the treaty were at the core of the U.S. refusal to sign."
We believe certain provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, particularly those dealing with navigation, have merit. We further appreciate the Navy’s interest in the treaty.
However, the navigation provisions are primarily limited to the first 4 parts—11 pages out of a 188 page treaty. The rest establishes a massive bureaucracy to govern the seas and anything that can be construed to impact the seas—even if the impact is de minimus.
Scientists doubt climate change
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071221/NATION/844993096/1002
Washington Times
December 21, 2007
By S.A. Miller - More than 400 scientists challenge claims by former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations about the threat of man-made global warming, a new Senate minority report says.
The scientists — many of whom are current or former members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore for publicizing a climate crisis — cast doubt on the "scientific consensus" that man-made global warming imperils the planet.
"I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting — a six-meter sea level rise, 15 times the IPCC number — entirely without merit," said Dutch atmospheric scientist Hendrik Tennekes, one of the researchers quoted in the report by Republican staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
"I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached," Mr. Tennekes said in the report.
Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the report debunks Mr. Gore's claim that the "debate is over."
"The endless claims of a 'consensus' about man-made global warming grow less-and-less credible every day," he said.
After a quick review of the report, Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said 25 or 30 of the scientists may have received funding from Exxon Mobil Corp.
Exxon Mobil spokesman Gantt H. Walton dismissed the accusation, saying the company is concerned about climate-change issues and does not pay scientists to bash global-warming theories.
"Recycling of that kind of discredited conspiracy theory is nothing more than a distraction from the real challenge facing society and the energy industry," he said. "And that challenge is how are we going to provide the energy needed to support economic and social development while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions."
The Republican report comes on the heels of Saturday's United Nations climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, where conferees adopted a plan to negotiate a new pact to create verifiable measurements to fight global warming in two years.
In the Senate report, environmental scientist David W. Schnare of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said he was skeptical because "conclusions about the cause of the apparent warming stand on the shoulders of incredibly uncertain data and models. ... As a policy matter, one has to be less willing to take extreme actions when data are highly uncertain."
The hundreds of others in the report — climatologists, oceanographers, geologists, glaciologists, physicists and paleoclimatologists — voice varying degrees of criticism of the popular global-warming theory. Their testimony challenges the idea that the climate-change debate is "settled" and runs counter to the claim that the number of skeptical scientists is dwindling.
The report's authors expect some of the scientists will recant their remarks under intense pressure from the public and from within professional circles to conform to the global-warming theory, a committee staffer said.
Several scientists in the report said many colleagues share their skepticism about man-made climate change but don't speak out publicly for fear of retribution, according to the report.
"Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media," atmospheric scientist Nathan Paldor, professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said in the report.
The IPCC has about 2,500 members.
HEATED DEBATE
The following are comments from some of the more than 400 scientists in a Republican report on global warming:
•"Even if the concentration of 'greenhouse gases' double, man would not perceive the temperature impact."
Oleg Sorochtin of the Institute of Oceanology at the Russian Academy of Sciences
•"I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting — a six-meter sea level rise, 15 times the [U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] number — entirely without merit. ... I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached."
Atmospheric scientist Hendrik Tennekes, former research director at the Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute
•"The hypothesis that solar variability and not human activity is warming the oceans goes a long way to explain the puzzling idea that the Earth's surface may be warming while the atmosphere is not. The [greenhouse-gas] hypothesis does not do this. ... The public is not well served by this constant drumbeat of false alarms fed by computer models manipulated by advocates."
David Wojick, expert reviewer for U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
•"The media is promoting an unprecedented hyping related to global warming. The media and many scientists are ignoring very important facts that point to a natural variation in the climate system as the cause of the recent global warming."
Chief Meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart of the MetSul Meteorologia Weather Center in Sao Leopoldo-Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
•"There's no need to be worried. It's very interesting to study [climate change], but there's no need to be worried."
Anton Uriarte, a professor of physical geography at the University of the Basque Country in Spain
Source: Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee
Washington Times
December 21, 2007
By S.A. Miller - More than 400 scientists challenge claims by former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations about the threat of man-made global warming, a new Senate minority report says.
The scientists — many of whom are current or former members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore for publicizing a climate crisis — cast doubt on the "scientific consensus" that man-made global warming imperils the planet.
"I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting — a six-meter sea level rise, 15 times the IPCC number — entirely without merit," said Dutch atmospheric scientist Hendrik Tennekes, one of the researchers quoted in the report by Republican staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
"I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached," Mr. Tennekes said in the report.
Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the report debunks Mr. Gore's claim that the "debate is over."
"The endless claims of a 'consensus' about man-made global warming grow less-and-less credible every day," he said.
After a quick review of the report, Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said 25 or 30 of the scientists may have received funding from Exxon Mobil Corp.
Exxon Mobil spokesman Gantt H. Walton dismissed the accusation, saying the company is concerned about climate-change issues and does not pay scientists to bash global-warming theories.
"Recycling of that kind of discredited conspiracy theory is nothing more than a distraction from the real challenge facing society and the energy industry," he said. "And that challenge is how are we going to provide the energy needed to support economic and social development while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions."
The Republican report comes on the heels of Saturday's United Nations climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, where conferees adopted a plan to negotiate a new pact to create verifiable measurements to fight global warming in two years.
In the Senate report, environmental scientist David W. Schnare of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said he was skeptical because "conclusions about the cause of the apparent warming stand on the shoulders of incredibly uncertain data and models. ... As a policy matter, one has to be less willing to take extreme actions when data are highly uncertain."
The hundreds of others in the report — climatologists, oceanographers, geologists, glaciologists, physicists and paleoclimatologists — voice varying degrees of criticism of the popular global-warming theory. Their testimony challenges the idea that the climate-change debate is "settled" and runs counter to the claim that the number of skeptical scientists is dwindling.
The report's authors expect some of the scientists will recant their remarks under intense pressure from the public and from within professional circles to conform to the global-warming theory, a committee staffer said.
Several scientists in the report said many colleagues share their skepticism about man-made climate change but don't speak out publicly for fear of retribution, according to the report.
"Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media," atmospheric scientist Nathan Paldor, professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said in the report.
The IPCC has about 2,500 members.
HEATED DEBATE
The following are comments from some of the more than 400 scientists in a Republican report on global warming:
•"Even if the concentration of 'greenhouse gases' double, man would not perceive the temperature impact."
Oleg Sorochtin of the Institute of Oceanology at the Russian Academy of Sciences
•"I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting — a six-meter sea level rise, 15 times the [U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] number — entirely without merit. ... I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached."
Atmospheric scientist Hendrik Tennekes, former research director at the Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute
•"The hypothesis that solar variability and not human activity is warming the oceans goes a long way to explain the puzzling idea that the Earth's surface may be warming while the atmosphere is not. The [greenhouse-gas] hypothesis does not do this. ... The public is not well served by this constant drumbeat of false alarms fed by computer models manipulated by advocates."
David Wojick, expert reviewer for U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
•"The media is promoting an unprecedented hyping related to global warming. The media and many scientists are ignoring very important facts that point to a natural variation in the climate system as the cause of the recent global warming."
Chief Meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart of the MetSul Meteorologia Weather Center in Sao Leopoldo-Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
•"There's no need to be worried. It's very interesting to study [climate change], but there's no need to be worried."
Anton Uriarte, a professor of physical geography at the University of the Basque Country in Spain
Source: Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee
Why Europe’s National Politicians Sign Away National Sovereignty
Brussels Journal
By John Laughland
Created 2007-12-19 15:15
I have often compared the European Union to a cartel – a cartel of governments, engaged in a permanent conspiracy against their own electorates and parliaments. This analysis seems to have been dramatically confirmed by the Lisbon Treaty, signed last week, which replaces the defunct “constitution” rejected in referenda in France and the Netherlands in 2005.
Although a lot of anti-EU rhetoric rightly concentrates on the overweening power of the unelected European Commission – which indeed generates far too many laws and has an institutional self-interest in augmenting its own power – what many Eurosceptics overlook is that European integration also, and crucially, favours the power of national governments over that of their respective national parliaments. Because laws in the EU are made by the Council of Ministers, i.e. the committee of 27 ministers for whichever subject is being voted on, EU integration means that governments receive wide-ranging law-making powers.
This is, of course, incompatible with the principle of the separation of powers. According to that principle, the executive power (the government) should be separate from, and accountable to, the legislature (the national parliament) and of course the judiciary. Dictatorship is precisely the form of government in which the executive is not so constrained, and this is also the case in the EU.
Because the EU represents a dramatic and constant transfer of legislative power from national legislatures to national executives (sitting in the Council of Ministers), it can also be dubbed “a permanent coup d’état” (to use the phrase François Mitterrand used in 1965 to attack the powers of the Fifth Republic, long before he was happy to wield them himself). The fact that the Council of Ministers, the EU’s legislature, meets and votes in secret only makes the fundamentally anti-democratic character of the European construction even clearer.
It is for this simple reason that all establishment politicians, whether of Left or Right, are in favour of the EU. It increases their power and their room for manoeuvre. How much easier it is to pass laws in a quiet and secret meeting with your twenty-seven colleagues, than it is to do so in front of a fractious parliament where there is usually an in-built opposition which will attack whatever you do! How much more comfortable to engage in a bit of mild horse-trading with like-minded politicians from other countries, than to have to argue your case in the glare of public criticism! How much better to be able to vote an unpopular law and then blame “Europe” for it instead!
For many decades, this conspiracy worked wonderfully, mainly because Europe adopted and stuck to the so-called “Monnet method”. Named after the European Community’s brilliant if vain founder, Jean Monnet, the Monnet method consists in sapping power away from national parliaments on the quiet. This is achieved by pretending that the powers thus alienated are non-political – technical things like coal and steel, the common market, the single currency. This impression that the powers transferred are merely technical is reinforced by the fact that the transfers are usually effected by means of impenetrable treaties written in a language no one can understand.
There have been only two occasions when this principle has been abandoned, and on both occasions it had led to failure. The first was after the signature of the Maastricht treaty in December 1991. That treaty was conceived as a geopolitical quid pro quo for German unification: France agreed to the reunification of Germany on the basis that it would subsume its deutsche mark hegemony into that of the euro. In other words, it was a big political project which was presented to the electorate as such and as a great leap forward for European unification in general. It was rejected by Danish voters in June 1992. France responded by declaring that she too would hold a referendum, which in turn was very nearly rejected in September of that year. The Danes were forced to vote again in 1993, and so Europe’s pet project, the euro, passed by only a whisker.
The second time that Europe announced a big political project was when it drew up the constitution. However little interest people took in the details of treaty law, the word “constitution” was politically resonant. It focussed attention on the federal vocation of the EU, hitherto hidden from view by the Monnet method. People understood that it meant the permanent alienation of power from their nation-states, but it also allowed people to project their other worries clearly onto the EU, especially about excessive deregulation, competition from cheap labour countries in Eastern Europe, and of course the prospect of a new wave of immigration from Turkey if ever that country is admitted as an EU member.
Voters in France and the Netherlands, two founder members of the EU, therefore rejected the proposed constitution.
As a result of that rejection, Europe’s leaders have now decided to put behind them their foolish flirtation with democracy and return instead to the tried and tested method of doing things behind closed doors. Rather than announcing a big political project in a language which most people can understand, the new Lisbon Treaty goes back to the old method of formulating only amendments to previous treaties. You simply cannot understand the text unless you go back through the previous treaties to see what articles are amended, which few people have the time or the inclination to do.
Whereas the constitution at least had the merit of clarity, the new treaty displays all the old EU vices of opacity and legalese. This is quite deliberate. Europe’s leaders know that such a difficult text will never attract the same hostility as the old constitution because it is simply too difficult to understand.
How do we know that this is deliberate? We know because the author of the defunct constitution, the former French president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, has told us so. In an article in Le Monde in October, Giscard wrote that the new treaty had been composed “by jurists” who had taken the content of the old constitution and simply re-formulated it in terms of amendments to existing treaties. “They started with the text of the constitution,” he wrote, “took its elements apart one by one, and made them correspond by means of amendments to the two existing treaties, Rome (1957) and Maastricht (1992) […] What is the purpose of this subtle manoeuvre? First and above all to escape from the constraint of having to hold a referendum by dispersing the articles and by renouncing the constitutional vocabulary.”
As I say, the EU is a cartel of governments and a conspiracy by them against their electorates. It is an affront to democracy and should be dissolved.
By John Laughland
Created 2007-12-19 15:15
I have often compared the European Union to a cartel – a cartel of governments, engaged in a permanent conspiracy against their own electorates and parliaments. This analysis seems to have been dramatically confirmed by the Lisbon Treaty, signed last week, which replaces the defunct “constitution” rejected in referenda in France and the Netherlands in 2005.
Although a lot of anti-EU rhetoric rightly concentrates on the overweening power of the unelected European Commission – which indeed generates far too many laws and has an institutional self-interest in augmenting its own power – what many Eurosceptics overlook is that European integration also, and crucially, favours the power of national governments over that of their respective national parliaments. Because laws in the EU are made by the Council of Ministers, i.e. the committee of 27 ministers for whichever subject is being voted on, EU integration means that governments receive wide-ranging law-making powers.
This is, of course, incompatible with the principle of the separation of powers. According to that principle, the executive power (the government) should be separate from, and accountable to, the legislature (the national parliament) and of course the judiciary. Dictatorship is precisely the form of government in which the executive is not so constrained, and this is also the case in the EU.
Because the EU represents a dramatic and constant transfer of legislative power from national legislatures to national executives (sitting in the Council of Ministers), it can also be dubbed “a permanent coup d’état” (to use the phrase François Mitterrand used in 1965 to attack the powers of the Fifth Republic, long before he was happy to wield them himself). The fact that the Council of Ministers, the EU’s legislature, meets and votes in secret only makes the fundamentally anti-democratic character of the European construction even clearer.
It is for this simple reason that all establishment politicians, whether of Left or Right, are in favour of the EU. It increases their power and their room for manoeuvre. How much easier it is to pass laws in a quiet and secret meeting with your twenty-seven colleagues, than it is to do so in front of a fractious parliament where there is usually an in-built opposition which will attack whatever you do! How much more comfortable to engage in a bit of mild horse-trading with like-minded politicians from other countries, than to have to argue your case in the glare of public criticism! How much better to be able to vote an unpopular law and then blame “Europe” for it instead!
For many decades, this conspiracy worked wonderfully, mainly because Europe adopted and stuck to the so-called “Monnet method”. Named after the European Community’s brilliant if vain founder, Jean Monnet, the Monnet method consists in sapping power away from national parliaments on the quiet. This is achieved by pretending that the powers thus alienated are non-political – technical things like coal and steel, the common market, the single currency. This impression that the powers transferred are merely technical is reinforced by the fact that the transfers are usually effected by means of impenetrable treaties written in a language no one can understand.
There have been only two occasions when this principle has been abandoned, and on both occasions it had led to failure. The first was after the signature of the Maastricht treaty in December 1991. That treaty was conceived as a geopolitical quid pro quo for German unification: France agreed to the reunification of Germany on the basis that it would subsume its deutsche mark hegemony into that of the euro. In other words, it was a big political project which was presented to the electorate as such and as a great leap forward for European unification in general. It was rejected by Danish voters in June 1992. France responded by declaring that she too would hold a referendum, which in turn was very nearly rejected in September of that year. The Danes were forced to vote again in 1993, and so Europe’s pet project, the euro, passed by only a whisker.
The second time that Europe announced a big political project was when it drew up the constitution. However little interest people took in the details of treaty law, the word “constitution” was politically resonant. It focussed attention on the federal vocation of the EU, hitherto hidden from view by the Monnet method. People understood that it meant the permanent alienation of power from their nation-states, but it also allowed people to project their other worries clearly onto the EU, especially about excessive deregulation, competition from cheap labour countries in Eastern Europe, and of course the prospect of a new wave of immigration from Turkey if ever that country is admitted as an EU member.
Voters in France and the Netherlands, two founder members of the EU, therefore rejected the proposed constitution.
As a result of that rejection, Europe’s leaders have now decided to put behind them their foolish flirtation with democracy and return instead to the tried and tested method of doing things behind closed doors. Rather than announcing a big political project in a language which most people can understand, the new Lisbon Treaty goes back to the old method of formulating only amendments to previous treaties. You simply cannot understand the text unless you go back through the previous treaties to see what articles are amended, which few people have the time or the inclination to do.
Whereas the constitution at least had the merit of clarity, the new treaty displays all the old EU vices of opacity and legalese. This is quite deliberate. Europe’s leaders know that such a difficult text will never attract the same hostility as the old constitution because it is simply too difficult to understand.
How do we know that this is deliberate? We know because the author of the defunct constitution, the former French president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, has told us so. In an article in Le Monde in October, Giscard wrote that the new treaty had been composed “by jurists” who had taken the content of the old constitution and simply re-formulated it in terms of amendments to existing treaties. “They started with the text of the constitution,” he wrote, “took its elements apart one by one, and made them correspond by means of amendments to the two existing treaties, Rome (1957) and Maastricht (1992) […] What is the purpose of this subtle manoeuvre? First and above all to escape from the constraint of having to hold a referendum by dispersing the articles and by renouncing the constitutional vocabulary.”
As I say, the EU is a cartel of governments and a conspiracy by them against their electorates. It is an affront to democracy and should be dissolved.
The UNCLOS Battle
UN Dispatch
October 11, 2007
http://www.undispatch.com/archives/2007/10/the_unclos_batt.php
At the Heritage Foundation's in house blog, Andrew Grossman admits ignorance to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Nothing wrong about that--you have to be fairly plugged in to know what the Convention is all about.
The problem is, he looks to Doug Bandow for enlightenment. Bandow, you may recall, was the syndicated columnist who resigned from CATO last year after it was revealed he was secretly on the take from Jack Abramoff, who paid Bandow $2,000 per column to shill on behalf of his clients. Bandow was picked up by an outfit called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which apparently does not mind if one its "experts" used to accept cash to promote the clients of a now convicted felon.
Meanwhile, over at the Washington Note, Scott Paul offers some smart commentary on what is really at stake with the UNCLOS ratification battle:
The conventional wisdom is that multilateral treaties are dead on arrival in the Senate. If we're interested in promoting the International Criminal Court, a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, or the Conventions on women's rights, children's rights, landmines, or biological diversity, we've got to get the Law of the Sea done.
My colleague Don Kraus sums it up:
"Think about it. If a Senate with a Democratic majority can not muster the 66 votes to pass a treaty supported by a Republican president, what is the possibility of doing so under a potential Democratic president who will face much stiffer Republican opposition?
"If the U.S, cannot join an agreement supported by environmental groups, petroleum trade associations, peace groups, the Coast Guard, Navy, departments of State, Commerce, and the Interior (just to name a few) -- what is the chance that we engage on other agreements?
"One senate staffer I talked to recently has been yelling at groups coming to talk with him about climate change. He's been telling them that he doesn't want to talk to them unless the first words out of their mouth are "Law of the Sea," because "if we can't get this one through, none of the other agreements are going to get through."
The stars are aligning on UNCLOS' behalf. As Scott and Don like to say UNCLOS is "low hanging fruit." Perhaps this helps explain why folks like Bandow and Frank Gaffney are on a mission to make UNCLOS into a boogey monster. (To wit: this ad, flagged by Matt Yglesias, from "America's Survivial," which is an outfit dedicated to opposing international treaties.) The stakes are high for the knee-jerk anti-UN crowd. UNCLOS' wide support from diverse constituencies could mean ratification. And from there it is only a slippery slope to the moment when UN tax collectors come knocking at their door the United States becomes more positively engaged in multilateral institutions that advance American interests by promoting the rule of law.
Posted by Mark Leon Goldberg - October 11, 2007 10:04 AM - Critic Watch
October 11, 2007
http://www.undispatch.com/archives/2007/10/the_unclos_batt.php
At the Heritage Foundation's in house blog, Andrew Grossman admits ignorance to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Nothing wrong about that--you have to be fairly plugged in to know what the Convention is all about.
The problem is, he looks to Doug Bandow for enlightenment. Bandow, you may recall, was the syndicated columnist who resigned from CATO last year after it was revealed he was secretly on the take from Jack Abramoff, who paid Bandow $2,000 per column to shill on behalf of his clients. Bandow was picked up by an outfit called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which apparently does not mind if one its "experts" used to accept cash to promote the clients of a now convicted felon.
Meanwhile, over at the Washington Note, Scott Paul offers some smart commentary on what is really at stake with the UNCLOS ratification battle:
The conventional wisdom is that multilateral treaties are dead on arrival in the Senate. If we're interested in promoting the International Criminal Court, a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, or the Conventions on women's rights, children's rights, landmines, or biological diversity, we've got to get the Law of the Sea done.
My colleague Don Kraus sums it up:
"Think about it. If a Senate with a Democratic majority can not muster the 66 votes to pass a treaty supported by a Republican president, what is the possibility of doing so under a potential Democratic president who will face much stiffer Republican opposition?
"If the U.S, cannot join an agreement supported by environmental groups, petroleum trade associations, peace groups, the Coast Guard, Navy, departments of State, Commerce, and the Interior (just to name a few) -- what is the chance that we engage on other agreements?
"One senate staffer I talked to recently has been yelling at groups coming to talk with him about climate change. He's been telling them that he doesn't want to talk to them unless the first words out of their mouth are "Law of the Sea," because "if we can't get this one through, none of the other agreements are going to get through."
The stars are aligning on UNCLOS' behalf. As Scott and Don like to say UNCLOS is "low hanging fruit." Perhaps this helps explain why folks like Bandow and Frank Gaffney are on a mission to make UNCLOS into a boogey monster. (To wit: this ad, flagged by Matt Yglesias, from "America's Survivial," which is an outfit dedicated to opposing international treaties.) The stakes are high for the knee-jerk anti-UN crowd. UNCLOS' wide support from diverse constituencies could mean ratification. And from there it is only a slippery slope to the moment when UN tax collectors come knocking at their door the United States becomes more positively engaged in multilateral institutions that advance American interests by promoting the rule of law.
Posted by Mark Leon Goldberg - October 11, 2007 10:04 AM - Critic Watch
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