Why Kentucky Governor Beshear should dump phony climate panel

Ignoring both economic reality and perhaps the greatest scientific fraud of all time, Gov. Stephen Beshear’s administration has blundered badly by creating the Kentucky Climate Action Plan Council.

What timing: As the Bluegrass State wrestled (and still does) late last year with a double-digit unemployment rate, the Climategate scandal exposed the attitudes and advocacy of global warming scientists worldwide. In the ensuing months so much bias, error and outright data manipulation have been discovered in the 2007 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Global Climate Change (IPCC) report that both Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson recently distanced themselves from it.

This is no small issue, as the EPA grounded its decision to regulate greenhouse gases based on the alleged “consensus” science that the IPCC report contained. Similarly, KCAPC also cites the UN group’s “expertise” on the science page of its Web site (www.kyclimatechange.us): “The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, released in November of 2007, states, ‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observation of increases in average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.’”

It doesn’t stop there – KCAPC’s science page rambles for five lengthy paragraphs with “IPCC says this, IPCC says that”-type authoritative statements. Terms like “unequivocal” attached to falsehoods about increasing temperatures (there’s been no warming during the last 15 years) and rising sea levels (scientists have retracted that claim) should induce laughter rather than buttress the need for a blue ribbon panel to study climate. And “widespread melting of snow and ice?” Gov. Beshear’s special posse must be locked up somewhere, isolated from this winter’s cruelty, watching “An Inconvenient Truth” on a continuous loop.

Compounding the error, KCAPC hired the Center for Climate Strategies – a warmism advocacy group that was founded in Pennsylvania – to manage its meetings, set its agenda, provide all its ideas, and write all its reports. CCS brings hundreds of thousands of dollars, raised from wealthy environmental extremist foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, to every state that hires it for this work. As a result these global warming zealots get to ram through their initiatives to replace efficient, inexpensive fossil fuels with more costly, unreliable energy sources such as wind and solar. Thus CCS’s loyalty is to their funders, not to Kentuckians.

KCAPC’s recommendations will inevitably push the state toward steep hikes in electricity and gasoline prices, all for a fraudulent cause. Remember when presidential candidate Obama said in January 2008 that his carbon-reduction plans would cause electricity rates to “necessarily skyrocket?” KCAPC apparently plans to fulfill his promise since his cap-and-trade plan is in trouble. Meanwhile the global thermometer won’t budge one tick if they implement their plans.

Gov. Beshear, pull the plug on KCAPC.

Paul Chesser is a special correspondent for The Heartland Institute.