The Spectacle Blog
Post’s Robinson Partly Right About Palin’s ‘Climategate’
Liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson today writes about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s policy flip-flop on global warming and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson today writes about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s policy flip-flop on global warming and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He notes her current recommendation — expressed in her own Post op-ed last week — that President Obama boycott Copenhagen, citing the Climategate scandal as reason enough to skip the climate conference. But while she was governor she held a slightly different view, as Robinson explained:
Back then, Palin was the governor of a state where “coastal erosion, thawing permafrost, retreating sea ice, record forest fires, and other changes are affecting, and will continue to affect, the lifestyles and livelihoods of Alaskans,” as she wrote (in a 2007 administrative order creating the state’s Climate Change Sub-Cabinet). Faced with that reality, she sensibly formed the high-level working group to chart a course of action.
“Climate change is not just an environmental issue,” wrote Palin. “It is also a social, cultural, and economic issue important to all Alaskans….”
In her administrative order, Palin instructed the sub-Cabinet group to develop recommendations on “the opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Alaska sources, including the expanded use of alternative fuels, energy conservation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, land use management, and transportation planning.” She also instructed the group to look into “carbon-trading markets.”
Robinson is right about Palin’s seeming switch, but he leaves out context and cuts no slack on how the Climategate scandal has been a game-changer. For context, the idea of setting up a blue-ribbon panel to study climate issues likely came from Tom Chapple, a greenie envirocrat in her administration who left not long after she created the Subcabinet. The responsibility for managing the project fell to his successor, Larry Hartig, who has had to juggle the interests of environmentalists and the oil industry up there.
As director of Climate Strategies Watch I studied how the Subcabinet was put together, and specifically how and why they hired the global warming alarmist Center for Climate Strategies as technical advisers and consultants to run all the Subcabinet’s activities. I had written a long narrative — linking public documents and emails — explaining the developments and the less-than-transparent process, for the CSWatch Web site last year. However, that project has been folded into the activities of the Heartland Institute — my current employer — as CSWatch (we believe the site was victimized by a hacker) was only planned to last a year (it lasted about 18 months).
For those who want to plow through the story, I reproduced the original CSWatch narrative at Globalwarming.org with links (some of which may not work) to documents embedded. You’ll see at the end that I tend to believe that then-Gov. Palin was doing the politically correct thing at the time by signing the administrative order, but left the major decisions to Chapple, Hartig, and the Subcabinet itself. I think the views she’s expressed now only serve to confirm that theory, but I could be wrong.
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Ken (Old Texican)| 12.15.09 @ 8:02PM
Bottom line...
Every executive has "advisor specialists". Had Sarah not been "raped" by the communist media, she would probably have taken the time to refine her choices of advisors.
Frank | 2.19.11 @ 10:37AM
Communist media? That's almost definitely an exaggeration there, and even if she has refined her choice of advisors, in the end it's she who will be in the running, not her advisors, and they will be advising HER. It's New York SEO and it's crucial
Pingback| 12.15.09 @ 8:03PM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Post's Robinson Partly links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Johnna| 12.15.09 @ 9:02PM
What a load of BS. She probably doesn't remember what she said as governor. If she does, she doesn't care. She obviously has no problem with hypocrisy. And apparently her "fans" don't either.
Terry| 12.15.09 @ 11:09PM
Someone told me about American Spectator so I thought I would check it out. I was told it was a conservative blog. Oops, guess they were wrong.
It appears it is more Sarah bashing. Well, I guess it goes to show we need to check things out for ourselves and WE should be the judge of what we read.
bluecollarbytes| 12.16.09 @ 10:00AM
I wouldn't call this 'Palin bashing' anymore than I would call it Palin's Climategate.
Since when is there a uniform view of various conservative leaders By conservatives? All conservative leaders have their weak spots. But there are factions backing their own horse, which evidently requires killing off true loyal opposition. For me the future of the Republican Party is contingent on whether the younger "upstarts" manage to wrest control away from the older failures what brought us to Obama's party. I don't expect the current failed leadership to simply step aside.
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Allen Goodner| 12.15.09 @ 11:50PM
Paul, Terry is right. Check out the C4P site- they have a pretty good takedown of this there. Short version- their is a huge difference between setting up a panel to investigate and provide advice, and engaging in negotiations which would cede some of our sovereignty.
Jaay Leffler| 12.16.09 @ 9:27AM
There's a large gap between 'looking into' and 'implementation'. I've 'looked into' many ideas and sought opinions on matters that I absolutely do not believe in, simply to educated myself as to what others are thinking...
Only in the liberal press does any investigation equate to total acceptance. "Gee, she looked! She must buy into everything we say! It's a flip-flop - omg, we got her!"
Jacob| 12.16.09 @ 9:36AM
I think she's probably a normal human being like the rest of us with flaws and strengths.
I love a lot of people who have done a lot worse than her..and so does every leftist who engages in sin every time they write their damning words about her. Real criticism is perfectly acceptable, but what they've done is condemned by God and they'll know that when they're finally forced to believe in Him--when they meet Him!
I only hope they'll finally repent like most the rest of us (70-80%) do on a regular basis.
Jacob | 12.16.09 @ 9:41AM
By the way, as far as my perspective goes, the right wing nuts are no better or worse. Even babykillers like Obama do not somehow turn the universe in on itself and make a tool of Satan--violent murder--acceptable, especially when justice is possible.
Anyone calling for another human being's death should be put on a list of people who can't vote or work with children until they publicly recant their bloodlust.
ken| 12.16.09 @ 4:53PM
Now that Russia has accused Hadley of only using 25% of the Russian temperature data to prove warming, will the world wake up to fraud? Using all of the Russian data shows no warming over the last decade. This is consistent with research reports from the "deniers". This is just another data point showing that the AGW folks are fraudsters. The science of climate has been captured by the fraudulent researchers, the corrupt politicians who fund them and support them, and the corrupt or ignorant news media who only told the scam side of the story. When corrupt politicians work with a corrupt media, the world suffers!
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