United States District Court - Us Environmental Protection Agency: Fill & Download for Free

A little history. California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) was established in 1967[1] within an act signed into law by Governor Ronald Reagan. CARB was to set air quality standards for the state of California, including regulations of tailpipe emissions by motor vehicles sold in the state.By the 1960’s, L.A. County had experienced decades of smog.The L.A. County Freeway That Belches the Most Smog Los Angeles MagazineThe US Environmental Protection Agency came into existence in 1970 under President Richard Nixon. The EPA was to set federal emissions standards for all US states under the jurisdiction of the 1970 Clean Air Act.Since CARB had existed before the Clean Air Act, it was allowed to apply for a waiver to the federal regulations, provided that California’s standards were at least as stringent as federal standards.During the Obama administration, a waiver was granted to California to allow it to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (such as CO2) as it had for particulates and other emissions previously.Starting with the 2016 vehicle model year, the EPA agreed to adopt California’s emissions standards as a national standard, and to collaborate on tighter standards for future model years.[2]No other state has adopted its own standard, however states are allowed to choose between the federal standard and California’s. Thirteen states plus the District of Columbia have sided with California, representing about one third of the US market for automobiles.[3]The EPA can revoke California’s waiver again. What is uncertain is whether that revocation can take effect soon enough to have any meaningful impact to the auto industry. Changes to the standard may be impacted by factors including:Timing of automobile design and production—automakers need years to design vehicles for the new specifications, and test and certify to the specifications.California is likely to sue the EPA in federal court, which can tie up any pending regulation changes for many months.The current administration may be replaced by the 2020 presidential election. A new administration is free to replace the staff at the EPA, and reverse any prior decision affecting the CARB waiver.Notably, automakers are opposed to the proposed rollback of emissions standards.[4] They are likely to pressure the administration into maintaining the existing standards set during the Obama administration.In summary—Trump can certainly direct the EPA to revoke California’s waiver. But this action is likely to be ineffective and be accompanied by a great political cost, and may be reversed by either federal courts or a future administration.Footnotes[1] California Air Resources Board[2] United States emission standards - Wikipedia[3] Which states follow California's emission and zero-emission vehicle rules?[4] Trump vs. Automakers, and What's the Deal with Their Bizarre Fuel-Economy Fight

LOL.Oddly, the only people who seem to have noticed this "hoax" are fossil fuel and libertarian lobbyists and their spokespeople, plus a bunch of ideological and political hacks and denier conspiracy blogs and wingnut conservative propaganda blogs poorly drag queened as “newspapers” and their creationist Ship of fools friends who can't seem to understand even the most basic science.There is a dangerous and shameful anti science idiot wind blowing in the US right now. All the extremists have united in a devastating attack on science.No, this is not the Dark ages, this is the (former) science nation USA in 2019!! The Anti science league are still around like a pest. Like a second black death plague:Thats why we see creationists fighting to get creationism into schools,Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District - Wikipediaand attacking science:that’s why we also see anti vaxxers attacking science,Vaccine opponents attack U.S. science panelthat’s why we see mighty polluters industries fighting the science just like tobacco industry did.https://www.washingtonpost.com/n..."As early as the 1950s, the groups shared scientists and publicists to downplay dangers of smoking and climate change".https://www.scientificamerican.c...DENIERS FAVOURITE DENIER THINK TANK THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE ARE STILL TALKING DOWN THE HAZARDS OF TOBACCO SMOKING USING THE VERY SAME ARGUMENTS.You got to see this to believe it:Anthony Watts - SourceWatchDeniers favorite fossil fuel think tank front group, the Heartland Institutes view on tobacco and tobacco smoking. Now where have we heard these arguments before?This is chilling:Heartland Institute 2019:"The public health community's campaign to demonize smokers and all forms of tobacco is based on junk science"."The anti-smoking movement is hardly a grassroots phenomenon: It is largely funded by taxpayers and a few major foundations with left-liberal agendas."Smoker's Lounge | Heartland InstituteTHE WORLD WIDE CONSPIRACY - DENIERS WET DREAMThis is how deniers wet dream of a world wide conspiracy looks like. I just had to write it out for them:climate scientists from all over the world- have for about the last 150 years - contrived the world into believing that people are contributing to climate change by putting plant food into the atmosphere. All the world's governments have paid trillions and trillions of dollars (add as many zeroes you like) to these scientists for this hoaxy conclusion so that these authorities and governments can impose all kinds of taxes and regulations on their citizens and impose further restrictions and obstacles in the way of the fossil fuel industry. (Like they did to the innocent, cool and clean tobacco industry).A secret green industry is very soon ready to get mega rich by doing a global wealth redistribution and turning the world into a large wind farm park where there are all sorts of socialist welfare like silly free health care and education etc, but first, the oil and coal industry and all the kind free marked fundamentalists - who innocently sits in their garden coaches (and blames everything wrong in this world on “poor people and immigrants”) - must be stopped and placed on a remote island north of Greenland.Naturally, it’s the communists in the United Nations Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that manage all this through their headmaster Al Gore and the gay wizard of Dumbledore -all extended through the Illuminati agreement (the Paris agreement).Everything has been kept hidden until now, using the secret PC media (the political cartel), and environmental organizations, which is, of course, governed by the same authorities.but all this is finally exposed by a plucky band ofbloggers, amateur-deniers, boys room conspiracy drivlers, cranks, astroturf front groups, web-trolls, russian troll bots, youtube-videos, denier blog doctored graphs with childish handwritten arrows and comments added, desperate alt-right white supremacy nationalist madcap wingnuts, bible mums, creationists, very old conservative white men, political hacks, conservative propaganda blogs poorly draq queened as “newspapers”, Fox News-hosts, Breitbart blog commentary field readers, corrupt republican politicians, PragerU-sheeples, Ayn Rand-worshippers, government hating free market fundamentalists AND the fossil fuel industry.The leftist alarmist media are naturally pushing the “hoax”:Even without El Nino last year, Earth keeps warmingThe truth;In actuality, the science of AGW is apolitical, being based on credible evidence and physics. The denial of climate science, is based on no credible evidence and no physics, and is all-political.The denial of science is also like a true religion, for its acolytes also deny evidence and physics based on no evidence and no physics.When think tanks and fossil fuel front groups started to lobby for the fossil fuel self interests 75 years ago, the first thing they did was to camouflage those interests as an anti government anti regulation anti tax ideological anti socialist "struggle".“Back in the late 1980s, when it became pretty clear that there was no persistent Soviet threat, conservatives needed a new bogeyman, and they found it in the environmental movement. “Green is the new Red.[…] Cries for environmental regulation were twisted into calls for socialism and the end of economic progress.”The irony of this thinking is hilarious;While the scientific work of agencies like NOAA and NASA is higly respected and acknowledged world wide, in america, they are hated by the denial movement, and in such way, if this was the 50s, climate deniers would been locked away for anti american behaviour by the McCarthy process.Which side has the money?Think about it.Forbes list over richest people of the world shows most of them are from coal and oil industries. Yes, we are talking about one of the wealthiest industries ever.If there ever was such a thing as agovernment conspiracy working globally to turn America into a socialist dictatorship of huge wind mill parks and land of solar panels run by UN leftists:ask yourself these 7 question;1.why then has America and the World been polluted for 120 years with lead, asbestos, DDT, mercury, arsenic, teflon, nicotine and now CO2?Can you spot the “green deal dragon”?Look more like a dirty black deal to me.2. why then is Government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, intended to protect the public from pollution, now being run by former fossil fuel lobbyists of those very polluters and every environmental law demolished?Trump taps former coal lobbyist to lead EPAE.P.A. Plans to Get Thousands of Pollution Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its Math83 Environmental Rules Being Rolled Back Under Trump3. Why then did Senators Not Backing Green New Deal Receive On Average 7 Times As Much Fossil Fuel Cash?Senators Not Backing Green New Deal Received On Average 7 Times As Much Fossil Fuel Cash4. why then are these "green" governments giving out multi billions in socialist subsidies to fossil fuels , not to “green” energy??Green energy feels the heat as subsidies go to fossil fuelsGlobal fossil fuel subsidies totaled $544 billion in 2012, compared to only $101 billion for renewables. The International Monetary Fund estimates fossil fuel subsidies for 2015 to be $5.3 trillion - an amount equal to 6.5% of global GDP. More than 40% of this represents subsidies for coal, the most environmentally damaging of all fossil fuels. Although not good news on its face, the disproportionate funding for fossil fuels represents a tremendous opportunity to shift funding to renewable energy without an overall increase in costs.Global Subsidies - Fossil Fuels vs. Renewables — Environmental Graphiti5. Why are there 180 climate deniers in the Republican party?How US climate machine has left 180 deniers in Congress - Michael West6. Why then is it republicans in 2019 seems to forget or ignore that the 3 main environmental issues in modern times were all initiated and fulfilled by REPUBLICAN presidents?7. Why then did the US say goodbye to the Kyoto and Paris Accord?8. Why dont climate deniers understand that their undermining and smearing of american institutions like NASA, NAS and The Pentagon would had been seen upon as anti-american back in the 50s, and they would had been locked away for being communists?if there is an ongoing “green conspiracy”,Can someone tell me where this “green conspiracy” is?Now ask yourself a new question;Doesn't it look much more like a fossil fuel industry that uses huge sums of money to bribe everyone they can to protect its cash flow?What’s more plausible?A world wide conspiracy involving tens of thousands of scientists and 200 nations over a period of 200 years?Polluters industries are hiding their self interests in ideology and politics to pander their tribe and bribes anyone they can - because they don’t have any science on their side? Just like tobacco did?Lets look closer at the 7 questions:1 AMERICA THE POLLUTED:America the polluted2. WHY ARE THE EPA NOW A JOKE AND EVERY ENVIRONMENTAL LAW DESTROYED BY THEIR FOSSIL FUEL PUPPETS?The EPA was created to protect citizens from pollutions and environmental hazards. But he EPA is now a joke in Trumps America. It’s been hijacked by fossil fuel puppets and climate deniers. FFS, their new chief is a former coal lobbyist.Trump taps former coal lobbyist to lead EPAAnd when fossil fuel interests get bogged down in the candy store alone, this is what happens:Donald Trump has announced a replacement for the Clean Power Plan, one that would create hundreds of millions more tons of carbon pollutionThe Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions RulesThe Environmental Protection Agency plans to change the way it calculates the health risks of air pollution, a shift that would make it easier to roll back a key climate change rule because it would result in far fewer predicted deaths from pollution, according to five people with knowledge of the agency’s plans.E.P.A. Plans to Get Thousands of Pollution Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its MathMercury Limits on Coal Plants No Longer ‘Appropriate,’ EPA SaysEPA Says Limiting Mercury Pollution From Power Plants Is No Longer 'Appropriate and Necessary'Trump's New Power Plan Comes With a Deadly Price83 Environmental Rules Being Rolled Back Under TrumpThe Trump Administration’s War on Wildlife Should Be a ScandalNational Parks Getting Trashed During Government ShutdownFlorida Court Orders Oil Drilling In Everglades To Move Aheadhttps://www.facebook.com/yearswa...Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate changePublic Citizen report on Koch-Trump connectionsTrumps America is fossil fuels America. How proud deniers must be. Leat them eat mercury, as they did lead, asbestos, DDT, nicotine and C02, you know, those other "hoaxes" science warned about. And as usual, these environmental laws will be renamed "tax scams" by the fossil fuels front group propaganda machine, to pander their bent over tribe of gullibles who, as usual, will swallow any anti-governmental lie they design, just because they believe being pro-government makes you a socialist.3. Senators Not Backing Green New Deal Received On Average 7 Times As Much Fossil Fuel CashSenators Not Backing Green New Deal Received On Average 7 Times As Much Fossil Fuel Cash4. GLOBAL SUBSIDIES FOR FOSSIL FUELSThe United States has spent more subsidizing fossil fuels in recent years than it has on defense spending, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund.The IMF found that direct and indirect subsidies for coal, oil and gas in the U.S. reached $649 billion in 2015. Pentagon spending that same year was $599 billion.Study: U.S. Fossil Fuel Subsidies Exceed Pentagon SpendingIMF Survey : Counting the Cost of Energy SubsidiesWhy are taxpayers subsidising the oil and gas companies that jeopardise our future?Instead of hoping market forces solve the climate crisis, the government needs to stop giving tax breaks to pollutersWhy are taxpayers subsidising the oil and gas companies that jeopardise our future? | Clive LewisGreen energy feels the heat as subsidies go to fossil fuelsGlobal fossil fuel subsidies totaled $544 billion in 2012, compared to only $101 billion for renewables. The International Monetary Fund estimates fossil fuel subsidies for 2015 to be $5.3 trillion - an amount equal to 6.5% of global GDP. More than 40% of this represents subsidies for coal, the most environmentally damaging of all fossil fuels. Although not good news on its face, the disproportionate funding for fossil fuels represents a tremendous opportunity to shift funding to renewable energy without an overall increase in costs.Global Subsidies - Fossil Fuels vs. Renewables — Environmental GraphitiGlobal fossil fuel subsidies totaled $544 billion in 2012, compared to only $101 billion for renewables. The International Monetary Fund estimates fossil fuel subsidies for 2015 to be $5.3 trillion - an amount equal to 6.5% of global GDP.How Big Oil Clings to Billions in Government Giveawayshttps://www.motherjones.com/poli...Fossil fuel subsidies are a staggering $5 tn per yearA new study finds 6.5% of global GDP goes to subsidizing dirty fossil fuelshttps://www.theguardian.com/envi...https://www.sciencedirect.com/sc...Over the past century, the federal government has pumped more than $470 billion into the oil and gas industry in the form of generous, never-expiring tax breaks. Once intended to jump-start struggling domestic drillers, these incentives have become a tidy bonus for some of the world’s most profitable companies.Taxpayers currently subsidize the oil industry by as much as $4.8 billion a year, with about half of that going to the big five oil companies—ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips—which get an average tax break of $3.34 on every barrel of domestic crude they produce. With Washington looking under the couch cushions for sources of new revenue, oil prices topping $100 a barrel, and the world feeling the heat from its dependence on fossil fuels, there’s been a renewed push to close these decades-old loopholes. But history suggests that Big Oil won’t let go of its perks without a brawl.https://www.sciencedirect.com/sc...A new paper published in Climatic Change estimates that when we account for the pollution costs associated with our energy sources, gasoline costs an extra $3.80 per gallon, diesel an additional $4.80 per gallon, coal a further 24 cents per kilowatt-hour, and natural gas another 11 cents per kilowatt-hour that we don’t see in our fuel or energy bills.https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-ene...5. Most republican politicians are puppets for the fossil fuel interests.In the US, at least 180 congressional members and senators are declared climate deniers. They’ve received more than US$82 million in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry and its partners.How US climate machine has left 180 deniers in Congress - Michael West6. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTS WERE BEHIND ALL THE MAYOR ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN MODERN TIMES:The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency.), founded by President Richard Nixon in 1970, was created to protect citizens from pollutions and environmental hazards.1987: Reagan signed the Montreal Protocol (to ban ozone-depleting pollutants), and created a huge climate report in 1989:Ronald Reagan’s 1989 EPA REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGEPage 28: http://bit.ly/2w8YMuVGeorge H W Bush introduce cap-and-trade (to deal with the acid rain problem).The Political History of Cap and TradeAnd what about George W Bush?Well Dubbya of course ran against the single politician--Al Gore--who is most closely associated with the cause of climate action in modern U.S. history.So I suppose it isn't too surprising that we heard lines like this spoken on the campaign trail:“As we promote electricity and renewable energy, we will work to make our air cleaner. With the help of Congress, environmental groups and industry, we will require all power plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide within a reasonable period of time. And we will provide market-based incentives, such as emissions trading, to help industry achieve the required reductions.”What might be surprising for you to learn, however, is that it wasn't Al Gore--but George W Bush--who made that statement in the run-up to the election. It was Bush who had committed to combat climate change through the regulation of carbon emissions.Vice: A Commentary on the Politics of Climate DenialGeorge W. Bush administration 2001 National Academies report:Committee on the Science of Climate ChangeDivision on Earth and Life StudiesNational Research Council“Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.[…] Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century[….] The predicted warming of 3°C (5.4°F) by the end of the 21st century is consistent with the assumptions about how clouds and atmospheric relative humidity will react to global warming.The National Academies PressTRUMP?Trump's 2018 National Climate Assessment. ️Based on extensive evidence … it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,”For the warming over the last century,“there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”Climate Science Special Report: Executive Summary7. If there ever was a “powerful leftist green side” in the USA, why did they not enter the Kyoto and the Paris accord?Senators who urged Trump to leave Paris climate accord took millions from oil companiesThe corruption knows no limits:When Mother Jones first reported in December 2017 that the Environmental Protection Agency had hired a hyper-partisan GOP opposition research firm known for its aggressive tactics to handle the agency’s news-clipping work, the politically appointed flacks in the agency’s press office insisted the decision was about saving money and the hiring had been handled through normal procurement channels. As we reported Thursday, we now know that was not the case. Internal emails obtained by FOIA show that political appointees in the EPA press office demanded career staff push through the hiring of Definers Public Affairs—best known for its work for Republican campaigns and recently for its role as Facebook’s attack dog on Capitol Hill, which included attempts to smear George Soros for his critiques of the social media network.Now, thanks to another batch of internal emails, we have even more evidence that the motivation for hiring Definers came from the top agency political appointees who were ticked off at the old service, because it was collecting too many news clips that portrayed then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt negatively.- Russ Choma & Rebecca Leber, Politics, Mother Jones, Jan 7, 2019The EPA hired GOP oppo firm because it was sick of "fake news"“If the internet had been around in the 60s and 70s, climate deniers would be arguing against the health effects of smoking, and dredging up historical/anecdotal examples to insist that lung cancer was "natural", while warning that smoking cessation efforts were all part of a global conspiracy of taxation and socio-economic control.”"As early as the 1950s, the groups shared scientists and publicists to downplay dangers of smoking and climate change".Tobacco and Oil Industries Used Same Researchers to Sway PublicThe goal of the fossil fuel industry is to keep its profits rolling in without interference by government or by new, competing energy sources. The polluters know they dont have any science to back up their arguments. So instead they use the best defence method they can. Which is to polarize and politicize the science.To keep their money flow going they need the public embroiled in doubt and suspicion; they need to degrade public confidence in science and scientists; they need to harm America’s future—and the world’s future—so that one of the wealthiest industries on Earth can engorge itself in even more wealth.Keep the people dumb and fogged in fear rethoric.College is Bad for America, Say Majority of RepublicansRead more at: College is Bad for America, Say Majority of RepublicansEducation for the masses is bad for the assesEducation leads to socialism and democracy. Socialism and democracy leads to communism.The difference between capitalism and socialism, is equivalent to the difference between freedom for the asses and freedom for the masses.To pander their gullible bent over “people on the streets” its often enough for the polluters to label environmental laws for “tax scams”. This will trigger their tribe into believing its about them and some (imaginary) battle against the “evil” government (who is only out to protect its citizens from environmental hazards).Libertarian and free-market ideology has traditionally had difficulty dealing with negative externalities, as detailed in the non-libertarian FAQ; denial allows a person to simply ignore the limitations of their ideology. American conservatives in particular tend to distrust government, dislike regulations and hate taxes, so that any problem whose solution is a tax or a regulation naturally attracts distrust.When think tanks and fossil fuel front groups started to lobby for the fossil fuel self interests 70 years ago, the first thing they did was to camouflage those interests as an anti government anti regulation anti tax ideological anti socialist "struggle".Climate Science Denial Explained: The Denial Personality“They connected their audience’s underlying ideologies to climate change: Because cutting GHG emissions requires intervention regulation or increased taxation of carbon emissions—that curtail free market economics, people whose identity and worldview centers around free markets became particularly likely to reject the findings from climate science when the logic was laid bare.”“Back in the late 1980s, when it became pretty clear that there was no persistent Soviet threat, conservatives needed a new bogeyman, and they found it in the environmental movement. “Green is the new Red,” became a common phrase in the conservative magazines of that era. Rather than suggesting that America strip away protections designed to keep air and water clean, commentators and pols railed against controls on less visible threats, like pesticides, ozone holes, and global warming. Cries for environmental regulation were twisted into calls for socialism and the end of economic progress.”“It’s not surprising that high-profile deniers are almost exclusively conservative white men, since they have most benefited from the industrial capitalist system, and therefore have the most skin in the game when it comes to protecting the powers that be — even if they aren’t those powers."[...] “conservative white males are likely to favour protection of the current industrial capitalist order which has historically served them well”. It added that “heightened emotional and psychic investment in defending in-group claims may translate into misperceived understanding about problems like climate change that threaten the continued order of the system.”Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United StatesClimate change denial strongly linked to right-wing nationalismHow Is Climate Change Denial Still a Thing?LETS LOOK AT THE MONEY SPENT ON LOBBYISM:Increasingly they are using social media to successfully push their agenda to weaken and oppose any meaningful legislation to tackle global warming.In the run-up to the US midterm elections last year (2018) $2m was spent on targeted Facebook and Instagram ads by global oil giants and their industry bodies, promoting the benefits of increased fossil fuel production, according to the report published by InfluenceMap.Top oil firms spending millions lobbying to block climate change policies, says reportA study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that over the last 20 years, private funding has had an important influence on the overall polarization of climate change as a topic in the United States.Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate changeTruth is these interests are spending billions on lobbying officials:"Lobbying is conducted away from the public eye," explained Brulle. "There is no open debate or refutation of viewpoints offered by professional lobbyists meeting in private with government officials. Control over the nature and flow of information to government decision-makers can be significantly altered by the lobbying process and creates a situation of systematically distorted communication. This process may limit the communication of accurate scientific information in the decision-making process."As the study concludes, “the environmental organization and the renewable energy sectors were outspent by the corporate sectors involved in the production or use of fossil fuels by a ratio of approximately 10 to 1.”How lobbyists buy climate change legislationhttp://www.drexel.edu/~/media/Fi...About $2 billion USD was spent between 2000 and 2016 by a variety of fossil-fuel related actors on US lobbying alone to confuse the issue on climate change, deny the science and prevent action. This is according to a peer-reviewed study published in the Springer journal Climatic Change, a long-lasting interdisciplinary journal with a solid impact factor of 3.537. The study is The climate lobby: a sectoral analysis of lobbying spending on climate change in the USA, 2000 to 2016 by Robert Brulle of Drexel University.As Brulle points out in his abstract,Major sectors involved in lobbying were fossil fuel and transportation corporations, utilities, and affiliated trade associations. Expenditures by these sectors dwarf those of environmental organizations and renewable energy corporations.https://phys.org/news/2013-12-ko...https://cleantechnica.com/2016/0...Exclusive: Billionaires secretly fund attacks on climate science’IT WAS ALL BIPARTISAN UNTIL FOSSIL FUEL MONEY FLOODED THE REPUBLICAN PART CA 20 YEARS AGO.Even the oil giants knew:http://iopscience.iop.org/articl...Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years AgoBonus: Our CO2 IS causing the warming:As confirmed by GOVERNMENT founded scientist and denier darling Roy Spencer:"Greenhouse components in the atmosphere (mostly water vapor, clouds, carbon dioxide, and methane) exert strong controls over how fast the Earth loses IR energy to outer space. Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels creates more atmospheric carbon dioxide. As we add more CO2, more infrared energy is trapped, strengthing the Earth’s greenhouse effect. This causes a warming tendency in the lower atmosphere and at the surface”He even calls out for deniers to stop questioning the GHE because it makes them look like idiots....hilarious:"Please stop the “no greenhouse effect” stuff. It’s making us skeptics look bad. "http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/04/skeptical-arguments-that-dont-hold-water/Roger Fjellstad Olsen's answer to Why is opposition to climate science more common in the United States than other countries?

With so many untruths it is important that I take care because Quora is supposed to be about answering questions with the best answers. So the first thing - all of the Canadian dick swagger that somehow had infected this thread must be ignored as being hopelessly inaccurate.Part One: International LawThe United States, and indeed any country, may designate any place in the world as a jurisdictional boundary for its own law enforcement operations. Canadians on Quora who get butt hurt over this, sorry, but it is true. Believe it or not, Canada is a designated law enforcement district assigned to the FBI. Want that to end? Become a US citizen, contact your representative, and rattle those sabres to change Canada to an undesignated region. As a rule of thumb though the FBI by mandate operates in any and all regions where the United States has military forces, significant economic and political interests, or where people of any stripe may be contemplating breaking US laws. US Federal laws except those restricted to issues of citizenship, by the way, apply to the entire globe, which is a concept that was championed by the UK in the 19th Century. If the US has an embassy there, it has the FBI also.The US and CanadaNow, this is going to cause a lot of butt hurt in the Canadians, for which I am sorry, but this second part is an aside to develop the case for how this works accurately and allow the reader a chance to understand how the world really works. The United States has designated Canada as two air defense regions, jurisdiction assigned to the United States Air Force, designated its territorial oceans and three naval districts and assigned these to the US Navy, designated and integrated her coasts as rescue operations district assigned to Home Land Security, designated her a weather region assigned to the National Weather Association, and iff you track this, has various regions of Canada designated a whole lot of other things. These designations give, by US law, US forces the right to operate and engage in work, including enforcement of laws, in the territorial limits of Canada.Technically, Canada can do nothing about this except refuse our people entry into their nation, which would in this case limit operations to the embassy staff who would take over as feet on the ground in a case of such hostility.However, it has agreed to a lot of this. Go to Sudbury in Ontario. Operating in that city there are about forty United States Federal workers of the Environmental Protection Agency. It turns out that Canadian smelting operations here caused major destruction in the United States, and under Clinton, in 1995, the EPA was given jurisdiction to monitor industrial output of sulphur dioxide. The move about the region aiding Crown authorities but also working on their own, and they can levy US fines on Canadian companies. Interestingly enough Canadian produce inspectors are positioned in Iowa and Minnesota checking on Mad Cow disease with a similar authority.The US Over CanadaNow, this will make some of the poor Canadians friends scream and tear apart their hair, but there is no need for the United States to ask permission for much of what we do in Canada. We already have permission. Almost every North American country has a significant and ongoing defense agreement with the United States where the United States takes on a portion of their sovereign defense. In fact, the US and Canada are tied very heavily by two legally binding military agreements, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the world's only binational military command.See this guy? His second in command is Canadian. He can, and does, order US assets to move through Canada, and orders Canadian assets to move when he feels it is needed. He has investigators for both branches with aspects of law enforcement that move between services and across both nations. He can order the a plane shot down without calling the civilian chain of command in Canada.The reason this happened was simple. When NORAD first formed - the worlds only bilateral agreement, it was supposed to be equal commitment and equal force structure, and a rotation between a four star US General and a specially breveted three star (to four star) General from Canada. However, there occurred two issues. Canada never could get its financial ducks in a row for an equal command, and Canadian leaders worried that if the time came to shoot down a Russian plane they could never politically do it even if Canadian citizens were being bombed. This became a little bit of political trickery - NO ONE doubted that the US would do what was needed. So to save money and political cost, Canada is subordinated to the United States.Meet Vice Admiral Barnes. In the 1960s Canada did a study on Naval assets needed to meet the needs of coastal defense and to participate in international efforts of the Commonwealth. The study did not make people happy at a time when Canada was trying to save money by complete integration of assets. It said that Canada, to protect its huge coastal regions, even assuming that Cold War issues were moot, needed to have a Navy at least as large as Australia, and would have to maintain a carrier.This was their carrier, the beloved Bonaventure. The study said that, unless they had two small carriers, possibly landing carriers, Canadian sovereignty would be increasingly dependent on United States and United Kingdom charity, and with the war in Vietnam raging and the UK turned to Ireland, if Canada was going to have the ability to dictate its own terms in the world, it needed 50 ships and 25,000 people. The parliament balked, and Canada become what is known as an ancillary world Naval power.Vice Admiral Barnes knows this. For Canada to operate, it must have the United States or the United Kingdom at its side. With two large coasts, it must also use the United States for patrol aircraft, search and rescue, and even coastal protection. Canada’s next-generation frigate is a sign of this subordination. They are being ordered with a sensor suite that will operate with US standards and in a US fleet structure, at the cost of being independent. In a shooting war Canada has few assets that can move without US or UK logistics and fleet integration, unlike Australia who can and does work on its own as a fleet.The FBINow for the fun stuff. There are hundreds of FBI agents working in Canada, they are armed, they make arrests, and Canada knows all about them.They even have their own building for operations in Toronto and own secret operational points across the nation, as well as having resident agents in the embassy system. Canada not only allows this, they welcome these agents in a time of tight budgets. During the Desilsle case, most of the investigation was done by the FBI, with a last minute pass off to RCMP, even though no aspect of the case was American.The main issue is that agreements are in place that make the process of cooperation easy. When serving a US warrant in Canada the FBI agents moves through a Crown attorney - it requires no special legislation or approval. In some cases the prosecution is even handled in a US court, although the USDOJ has Canadian trained and certified legal staffs. Armed US agents are under special seal, and generally must qualify both for US law enforcement but also in Canada.US FBI agents, as permanently stationed assets, are required to carry proper ID and abide buy Canadian law, but they must also follow stricter US law even with Canadian citizens. Unlike many nations, an FBI agent mirandizes a Canadian citizen even though Canada has a different process and Miranda would not be used in Brazil.What our Canadian brothers here, steeped in television and not having close working relations with law enforcement, is that there is simply no big deal about being an FBI agent assigned to Canada. Both nations have their rules, you cannot simply arrest anyone you like, and you follow the rules. FBI agents having seen a robbery in progress have moved to stop it in Canada. They can do this because a tourist in Canada could do the same thing. On the other hand, an FBI agent might call in their liaison number for a crime they are not completely sure about and then act as trained eyes.