In 2007, Granholm commissioned the Michigan Climate Action Council that has operated under the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). The charge of this council? To advocate a liberal agenda via global warming alarmism, for a perceived problem that never existed and has been shown in recent months to be an outright fraud. The executive order to form the MCAC
had this:
The world’s scientific community has concluded with a very high level of confidence that emissions of greenhouse gases are causing the Earth’s climate to warm. Throughout the world, business leaders, governments, and the public are all recognizing the potential impacts of climate change on the economy, environment, and our quality of life. The State of Michigan can play an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions through encouraging technology innovation and the adoption of policies that provide net economic and environmental benefits.
The Council is comprised of members representing academia, a broad base of industry, utilities, state and local government, and environmental interest groups. The Council will act in an advisory capacity to:
- Produce an inventory and forecast of greenhouse gas sources and emissions from 1990-2020;
- Consider potential state and multi-state actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change in various sectors including energy supply, energy efficiency and conservation, industrial process and waste management, transportation and land use, and agriculture and forestry.
- Develop a comprehensive climate action plan with specific recommendations for reducing greenhouse gases in Michigan by business, government and the general public.
- Advise state and local government on measures to address climate change.
The council is populated by a majority global warming alarmists, and take the non-existent phenomenon as a given. In essence, global warming has nothing to do with man, but global warming alarmism is entirely man-made. In any case, lest anyone question the MCAC's integrity, they went out and got an "outside" analysis. By outside, they mean of course a biased global warming alarmist outfit that pretends to be both objective and non-partisan. Enter the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS). From the AP via The Detroit News:
Global warming battle could create 129,000 Mich. jobs. Plus $25 billion in economic output for Michigan. Plus lower energy costs. Plus unicorn. Oh yeah - rainbows too.
Michigan could gain a significant economic boost and thousands of new jobs by reducing emissions of gases that cause climate change, according to an analysis released Monday.
The report by the Center for Climate Strategies said a plan devised last year for battling global warming in Michigan would help limit the state's heat-trapping gas emissions over the next 15 years.
But more than the environment would benefit, the nonprofit group said. It projected gains of 129,000 jobs, a $25 billion uptick in the gross state product and lower prices for home energy sources such as electricity, oil and natural gas.
Which is a contradiction entirely as replacing cheap conventional sources with more expensive alternatives by the force of teh state does not lower costs at all. Quite the opposite in fact. As for limited so-called greenhouse gases, have I mentioned that
the CO2 fraction in the atmosphere hasn't changed in more than 160 years? I'm sure teh Center considered that fact too, no? Well, actually no. The Center starts with the assumption that global warming is happening, even though the Earth has been cooling for 12 straight years now, and there is no debate on the science whatsoever. Fact is, CCS has been going around duping state by state to try to push through the liberal agenda of more government control. From the American Spectator:
More Attacks on Jobs in Michigan
If anybody got the idea that Climategate and the Copenhagen failure, and the growing disbelief among the public that global warming catastrophe is around the corner, would accumulate to drive alarmists to repent from their promotion of phony climate data and fraudulent analysis (both economic and scientific), then they don't know them well enough.
Take for example the Center for Climate Strategies, whose deceptive practices in the states I've documented ad nauseum for Spectator and for other publications. CCS is a global warming advocacy group that gets paid millions of dollars by environoiac foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to get states' governors to hire them so they can create their climate change policies. CCS pretends to be an objective, unbiased consultant; they are anything but. CCS produces the same cookie-cutter menu of ideas that increase energy costs and government control for each state, under the guise of a governor-appointed "blue ribbon panel," which is simply a rubber stamp for the alarmists' proposals.
Accompanying most recommendations that these panels produce are bogus claims of economic benefit for the given state -- if they would only implement all of CCS's ideas. Green jobs! Cost savings! Economic growth!
Unicorns and rainbows!
Except, as with Climategate, every economic study is crafted by CCS's chosen researchers and experts, with no independent analysis sought. For example, in North Carolina CCS enlisted the Energy Center at Appalachian State University to promote their rosy scenario, saying their blue-ribbon ideas in the Tar Heel state would generate 32,000 new jobs by 2020 and boost gross state product by $2.2 billion. You know -- just like higher taxes, more costs, and increased regulations always do. A peer-review study commissioned by the conservative John Locke Foundation, conducted by the PhD economists at the Beacon Hill Institute, found the following:
Rigorous testing using standard economic analysis yielded far more pessimistic results than those used to support the policies, (BHI President David) Tuerck said in an interview. “There’s an attempt to put a happy face on this...,” he said. “And the attempt is made by trying to show that implementing this legislation would create jobs and would expand economic activity in the state, rather than contract it. And the trouble with that particular representation is that it doesn’t make any sense.”
Of course it doesn't. Replacing the economically feasible with that which is not increases cost and thus will drive the economy into the ground. America has prospered throughout its history largely due to a single factor - cheap available energy. Writer Paul Chesser then gets onto Michigan and the sham study that every MSM outlet in the state - The Detroit News, Oakland Press, Detroit Free Press, et al - have glommed onto like a magnet:
BHI has done similar truth-telling analyses for other states victimized by CCS's disinformation. That brings us to today, where Michigan -- the state hit the hardest by the current recession (plus union excesses and government mismanagement, but that's another story) -- is CCS's latest target for fantasy economic research.
...The problem is, the economic analysis secured by Michigan's DEQ was not "outside," independent, or competent. Instead it was a carefully orchestrated effort to buttress the blue ribbon panel's recommendations -- using CCS's own people! Two of the three authors are USC's Dan Wei and Adam Rose, who also happen to be CCS staffers. Rose was part of a similar sham effort to legitimize glowing economic projections in North Carolina. And like CCS/Rose/Wei, Michigan State's Steven Miller also has a reputation for overlooking costs when conducting economic analyses.
It's not surprising that the Kresge Foundation would fund the study either, considering that the goal of their climate program is to "cultivate solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, accelerate renewable energy technologies, and support efforts to help society adapt to the impacts of climate change." Kresge, as well as several other global warming activist foundations, also funded the work of the Climate Action Council in Michigan.
The Center for Climate Strategies has perpetrated their fraudulent work -- clothed as a "consultant" and hiding their true origins -- in more than half the states now. Like the Climategaters, they forbid discussion and debate about climate science in their proceedings. They are now at work building regional agreements among the states, in case federal action fails.
For CCS to burden Michigan, which has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, with more schemes to kill jobs is especially egregious. These global warming fearmongers have no shame.
It's all one big fat lie, and the MSM are drinking the kool-aid laced with it due to their own biases, leading to the equivalent of mass-suicide for a state that has been in the dumps since at least 2003. Our very own lost decade. If you google the bogus Center, there is no shortage of information on their shenanigans. Here's some more info from
Kansas Progress that references a prior Paul Chesser piece, and reflects precisely the sham that is happening in Michigan:
In his piece Separate But Still the Same, climate change alarmist watchdog Paul Chesser writes “A global warming alarmist group that masqueraded for the last few years as an objective consultant for many states announced this week that it has been disowned by its global warming alarmist parents.”
This article describes changes made at the Center for Climate Strategies. This is of interest to us in Kansas for at least one reason. Here’s Chesser’s paraphrasing of CCS’ pitch made to states:
There is a human-caused global warming crisis and the states must do something about it, because the federal government is not. We ask the governor to issue an executive order that confirms this crisis and creates a commission to study greenhouse gas emissions — but call it a “climate commission.” Appoint members who buy into the anthropogenic global warming crisis, and include some representatives from utilities and business, but not too many or they might screw things up. Once you hire CCS, we will take care of everything for you from then on: run the meetings, set the agendas, write the meeting minutes, provide technical analysis, maintain the website, and establish the voting rules. Oh, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and other global warming alarmist foundations have provided the funding for our work, so don’t you worry! Just let CCS do its thing.
Kansas, by way of Governor Kathleen Sebelius’s executive order establishing Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group (KEEP), fell for this sales pitch — con job, really — and we’ll be paying for this mistake for years to come.
Déjà vu! Give up your liberties, let the government control your lives and all will be well! Welcome to Obamaland! Jump right in!
