OPINION:
President Obama was sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution, but his oath of office shouldn’t be confused with the courtroom oath requiring witnesses to “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
With every passing week, the whoppers served up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue grow ever more supersized, and in sheer size, nothing tops the fib about global warming.
In his State of the Union speech, Mr. Obama said that “the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.” He knows better. Climate has never been static, even before the conveniences and machinery of the Industrial Revolution provoked an increase in the now reviled carbon dioxide.
From earliest history, man has suffered harsh winters and mild winters, heat waves and cold waves, and drenching, damaging rains and severe droughts, and everything between. Weather is a cruel master.
“Global warming” is what’s new. Environmentalists were forced several years ago to substitute the term “climate change” for “global warming” because the planet stubbornly refuses to behave as the climate models predicted it would.
While the president and his allies fudged the facts on Capitol Hill the other day, a blanket of ice was steadily forming across the Potomac River a mile away.
This winter has not been kind to the “warmists.” A “polar vortex” has swooped down twice from the North Pole and left Americans in its wake shivering and wishing for a little global warming.
Chicagoans, known for stout indifference to winter’s chill, suffered through a January in which the average Illinois temperature of 18 degrees fell 8 degrees below normal. O’Hare International Airport has recorded more than 60 inches of snow so far, nearly double the average for an entire winter.
Environmentalists argue, correctly, that a snapshot of weather in Washington or Chicago cannot be used to make accurate conclusions about the earth’s changing climate.
It’s the longer trend showing that global temperatures have remained flat for the better part of two decades that suggests the theory that carbon dioxide causes global warming relies on a liberal dose of fiction rather than fact.
Mr. Obama nevertheless expects Americans to believe that bearing the steep cost of reducing the tiny fraction of global carbon-dioxide emissions in the United States will significantly ease warming around the world.
At an Environmental Protection Agency hearing last Thursday on carbon-dioxide “pollution” standards for new power plants, environmental policy analyst Bonner Cohen pointed out that the total U.S. contribution of atmospheric carbon dioxide is a tiny 0.01 percent: “The contribution of coal-fired power plants to the U.S., much less global, CO2 emissions is so minuscule that it cannot be measured with any degree of accuracy.”
Inaccuracy notwithstanding, the new EPA rule would limit carbon-dioxide emissions to 1,100 pounds per megawatt hour, a level the coal industry says is unattainable.
Note that this is not a reduction in soot, pollution or anything actually harmful. Carbon dioxide is what all humans exhale. By squeezing coal power plants out of existence, Mr. Obama would require Americans to pay billions more for energy served up by cronies heavily invested in trendy solar panels, windmills and algae.
The president imposes an agenda more political than functional, and not just about the weather. He has subjected Americans to an “Affordable Care Act” that makes health care less affordable, a National Security Agency that chases foreign terrorists by spying on Americans, and a military establishment ordered to attack traditional values rather than foreign enemies.
With the latest Gallup poll showing Mr. Obama’s approval rating stuck in the basement at 42 percent, the president’s fudge factory is beginning to make Americans sick.
