More Attacks on Jobs in Michigan - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
More Attacks on Jobs in Michigan
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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!

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.”

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 Associated Press reports:

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.

The [Michigan Climate Action Council] recommended an outside analysis of the potential effect on Michigan’s economy. The [Department of Environmental Quality] secured a $75,000 grant from the Troy-based Kresge Foundation for the study.

Economists with Michigan State University and the University of Southern California teamed with the Center for Climate Strategies, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that has helped more than 20 states develop programs to fight global warming.

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. For that, they get the orchestral version of this relevant rock song.

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