I will testify this morning before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on the controversy over dueling state and federal investigations involving the climate change debate. After various state attorneys general announced investigations of Exxon Company over its opposition to climate change theories (including subpoenas either to or concerning conservation public interest groups), the Committee issued its own subpoenas to the prosecutors and environmental public interest groups involved in the campaign. That has triggered a confrontation as the prosecutors and environmental groups raised constitutional objections to the House subpoenas. The full committee hearing will start at 10 am in 2318 Rayburn House Office Building.
As I explain in my testimony below, I have been a long advocate for action in combating climate change and that I believe the failure to take such action will have dire consequences for our country. Indeed, I agree with President Barack Obama in his effort to pursue remedial measures on climate change and voted for him in 2008 in part due to his position on this issue. However, I have not been called as a scientific but as a constitutional expert. The use of the subpoena authority to compel the disclosure of information from state attorneys general raises a number of novel constitutional issues, and the objections raised by the attorneys general are not frivolous, particularly with regard to federalism and free speech concerns. However, in my view, their threshold challenge of congressional authority to force such disclosure is fundamentally flawed, and this Committee clearly has the authority under Article I of the Constitution to demand compliance with its subpoenas.
Appearing with me are fellow academics and friends. The order of testimony will be the following:
Prof. Jonathan Turley
J.B. & Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law, The George Washington University Law School
Prof. Ronald D. Rotunda
Doy and Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law
Prof. Charles Tiefer
Professor of Law, University of Baltimore; Former Acting General Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives
Prof. Elizabeth Price Foley
Professor of Law, Florida International University College of Law
Here is my testimony: testimony-turley-house-science-final-version
Turley, there is no debate about global warming. It exists. Do you debate the sun rising each morning?
The comments so far are all from the ship of fools.
Xkcd has a fine graphic, cartoon if you will. Study that, fools.
I will reserve my opinion until I get a chance to listen to the hearing. I want to know what a lawyer will contribute.
I thought Professor Turley was intelligent.
I am very disappointed.
TURLEY TESTIFIES IN HOUSE SCIENCE COMMITTEE ON CLIMATE CHANGE CONTROVERSY
The dog and pony show was nothing but a colossal waste of our finite resources. Any person involved should be embarrassed.
Perhaps congress can enact a law that will end precession so that Earth may rotate on a stable axis thus guaranteeing the prescribed amount of insolation?
Or, perhaps congress can legislate what man considers the appropriate amount of albedo effect thus allowing lessor/greater amounts of insolation to reach Earth’s surface?
Or, maybe congress can legislate the appropriate amount of CO2 that is to be present in Earth’s atmosphere at all times?
Or congress could legislate that the star we Earthlings call the sun cease emitting variable amounts of energy and remain constant?
Nature does not give one iota about the laws of man, it never has and it never will.
Thank goodness Earth’s climate is variable otherwise we would be living in a very inhospitable world with large areas of it’s surface covered in miles thick sheets of ice.
Stability in Earth’s climate is a myth that has been foisted upon a scientifically illiterate public by power hungry control freaks keen on controlling every aspect of our lives.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
It’s the new Dred Scott decision. Humans have no rights that a corporation is bound to respect.
I admire your integrity, Professor Turley. Thank you for repeatedly defending our Constitution, regardless of your personal feelings on the matter. You put the rule of law first.
Just think. Soon we may be wondering more intently about the massive asteroid Bennu, which has a 1/2700 chance of hitting Earth and triggering a catastrophe in about 150 years. As long as its course does not change, we’ll be fine and the odds are in our favor. But Bennu Prepping may be the cause celebre for our great great grandchildren with all the cool T-shirts. Because, really, there is always calamity on the horizon – nuclear war, climate change, Zika virus, BLM,…I’m getting crisis fatigue.
http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/nasa-to-study-bennu-a-giant-asteroid-heading-towards-earth-327852.html
Then you should find this article, that just came out, very interesting concerning the global warming/cooling hoax.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/09/14/massive-cover-exposed-lying-alarmists-rebranded-70s-global-cooling-scare-myth/
Reblogged this on Bob's Opinion and commented:
COULD IT BE THAT THIS COMMITTIEE, MAY GET IT? The EPA and the global warming bunch are the catalysts for the UN Agenda 21/2030 global sustainable development. they are behind all the junk science, and joined by major industrial nations… Has your town adopted the sustainable development plans? Look into it, because if so they have sold your rights to the UN…
Yes, the State of Oregon is putting in as much Agenda 21 infrastructure as they can. Temporarily disgraced Governor John Kitzhaber co-opted the Oregon University System to spin out Agenda 21 apparatchiks that vet everything they can find a reason to regulate, into resolutions with Agenda 21 objectives. Government money is the reward.
“However, I have not been called as a scientific but as a constitutional expert.”
If only the rule of law mattered to the mad scientists on Capitol Hill; your testimony will likely fall on deaf ears. They have a planet to save after all.
Scientists are trying to steal you mind! Listen to the clear understanding of science offered by Don the Con. ‘It’s just weather!’ Am I going to trust the scientific data or Don the Clown? He says on a cold day in NY, ‘we could use some global warming folks!’ Now that is advice I can trust! Those damn scientists are a lying bunch of one world order promoters and we all know, as republican brainchild Lying Don has said, ‘China invested global warming!’ And republicans and Trumpsters don’t even want to discuss evolution. Another scientific conspiracy!
And, Professor, can you ask these republicans why they have taken on the role of prosecutors and have totally abandoned legislation? GOP has accomplished absolutely zero legislatively over the past 6 years – they can’t even pass Zika funding without cutting women’s healthcare and Ebola funding – but they can play prosecutor continuously. These GOP clowns have failed miserably at governing and have become ‘ambulance chasers’ except they are actively causing the accidents.
Indeed, those who inhabit the planet are charged with functioning as good stewards of the earth.
That being said, climate has changed, historically, of its own accord, without influence from man.
The current hysteria is man made. It’s agenda is misguided. Those in charge have at times misrepresented fact.
Truth is truth and should not be hidden.
“I have been a long advocate for action in combating climate change and that I believe the failure to take such action will have dire consequences for our country. ”
This tells me everything I need to know about JT. One, why is climate change bad? I’m sure glad we are not still in the ice age. Two, he even uses the word “believe”. This is a religion, not science.
Well, not everything.
JT is a principled scholar who has unfortunately accepted the religion of ClimateChange™.
I don’t fully blame him as we usually don’t have time to investigate the intricate details of a complex scientific theory, and will accept what the ‘experts’ tell us is true.
But Nature doesn’t care about our theories, and will do what she will do.
Alternate theories say that ClimateChange™ theory is flawed at a fundamental level, but there is a doomsday hysteria associated with it that is both appealing and righteous, and much like many other apocalypticism religions of the past, its appeal is driven by the exigent, emergency, “we-gotta-do-something-NOW” characterization blasts through our intellectual skepticism.
To them literally, the sky is falling, and that swamps every other thought.
Our nanny govt. has told us that the “Science is settled” on all of this. There’s nothing more to discuss. Now I need to get my 12th Obama phone.
Reblogged this on Matthews' Blog.
The congress that now represents the will of any corporation ready to pay them is a disgrace. Their attempt to invade the investigations now being conducted by various attorneys general is clearly and abuse of power. These members of Congress don’t care about climate change or anything else except making sure Exxon doesn’t get investigated by someone who might actually do something about their massive decades long fraud.
The one thing I have always admired about you is your integrity. A rare thing these days, especially where law and government is concerned.
Ah yes, those too clever by half House Republicans. If they would actually do some productive work instead of running interference for oil companies, chasing ghosts in Benghazi, and pursuing impeachment of the IRS Commissioner, they might gain some respect and even accomplish something. Sadly as a group they appear incapable of doing anything other than starring in their own version of the movie “Sideways.” (Not that I’m singing great praises about the Democrats, but as a group they do appear to be marginally more useful to society. )
Professor Turley, you actually represent these swamp creatures who hang out in the lagoon of lobbyists. They know you, hopefully respect you, and may even listen to you, notwithstanding the fact that you don’t run around with a check book in your left hand and a pen in your right hand and don’t look like Marilyn Monroe.
Can you please, PLEASE do us all a favor and, once you are done with your testimony, lock your clients in a large closet and not let them out until they demonstrate that they are capable of doing something useful over a sustained period of time?
Sincerely,
Oliver Clozoff
May I say with all due respect mans role in climate and global temp is probably less than 1 %. With this I agree with energy efficiency reducing waste we waste 58% of energy we produce. But I do not agree with. The co2 hammer.
It is a known and accepted fact that only 6% of all CO2 in the atmosphere is anthropogenic, the rest comes from natural sources — and that does not count all the other ‘greenhouse’ gases coming from natural sources which are far more potent in the purported heat opacity.
Yet that 6% is supposed to be a tipping point where positive feedback will supposedly take over in a runaway self increasing reaction. This notwithstanding that Earth has had much higher levels and there was no such reaction.
The calculations they use in the models presume a linear feedback, but in fact it is a logarithmic function, where the response becomes progressively smaller.