US scientist says UN IPCC reports 'dictate' US policy, gov. shutdown impedes 'critical' interaction between IPCC personnel, Obama, and congress. No shutdown for glamorous US climate personnel who continue jet setting to climate talks. In Clinton shutdown they had to come home

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10/2/13, "Washington's climate -- hot rhetoric, cold comfort as a few good employees struggle on," Elizabeth Harball, E&E reporter, ClimateWire

"'A slap in the face' to science" (subhead)

"The shutdown comes at an especially inconvenient time for climate research; a number of scientists with NOAA were co-authors of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which was released in full Monday (ClimateWire, Oct. 1).

Since the shutdown, these experts are no longer available to help interpret the 2,000-page document for journalists or policymakers.

"The scientists involved in that, by and large, will not be helpful to the administration or to Congress in terms of formulating what new policies or approaches that might be dictated by that information ... which is very critical," said Steven Murawski, formerly the chief scientist of the National Marine Fisheries Service under NOAA and now a professor of marine science at the University of South Florida. "Without scientific information, this becomes an exercise in belief rather than fact."...

"Every day, this shutdown is having adverse effects on a wide range of climate research across the federal agencies," said Rick Piltz, director of the Climate Science Watch program at the Government Accountability Project.

Piltz served in senior positions in the coordination office of the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1995 to 2005 and had just started there during the last shutdown in 1995. Then, he said, "in terms of global change research, no fatal damage [was] done. People were able to pick back up."

But Piltz added that furloughing what he called the "intelligence community of climate science" sends a "terrible" message to both the researchers and the American people: "What a slap in the face it is to the science community, to just shut them down."" (end of article)

"Climate change talks and disaster aid continue (subhead)

On the climate diplomacy scene, little is changing in the short run. Meetings are scheduled around the world, and officials say international travel approved early in the year won't be affected by the shutdown.

Todd Stern, U.S. special envoy for climate change, remains at the International Civil Aviation Organization meeting in Montreal negotiating a deal to address aviation emissions. The following week, senior State Department negotiator Trigg Talley will head the U.S. delegation in Warsaw, Poland, for what is known as a pre-COP, or early sessions to prepare for the 19th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change formal negotiations at the end of the year.

It's a far cry from the shutdown scene in 1995-96, when then-State Department Undersecretary for Global Affairs Tim Wirth was told to head home from a biodiversity conference in Jakarta, Indonesia.

"I was chairing a meeting in Indonesia, and the secretary's office called and said, 'You have to come home.' I said, 'OK,' and then I thought about it and said, this is not going to last more than a day or two," Wirth, now vice chairman of the U.N. Foundation, recalled before the narrowly averted 2011 shutdown. The Clinton-era furloughs lasted 21 days and sent 800,000 workers home without paychecks (ClimateWire, Feb. 28, 2011)." via Tom Nelson, "Bummer: Shutdown might hinder policy-neutral IPCC members from talking to politicians about "formulating what new policies or approaches that might be dictated" by the IPCC report"
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Comment: The shutdown is about one thing, defunding ObamaCare. John Boehner has had complete freedom to bring a stand alone ObamaCare defunding measure to the House floor for two and a half years. He knows this is what the American people want. He knows it's why we gave him a big majority in Nov. 2010. But he won't do it. The Beltway political class loves ObamaCare. They couldn't care less what the country wants. If Boehner would bring a clean measure to the floor, this could all be over very quickly:

10/2/13, "Obamacare can be defunded without Senate approval," Examiner, Christopher Collins

"When the House passed legislation to defund ObamaCare but would keep the government running through mid-December, the Senate, led by Senate Majority Leader, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) stated that they would not budge on Obamacare and the legislation was defeated.

On Monday, Dr. Harold Pease, an expert on the United States Constitution, stated that the authority in dealing with Obamacare funding belongs to the U.S. House, not the U.S. Senate and that the House is doing this all wrong.

Pease said, “Everything hinged upon funding which was given exclusively to the House of Representatives, the only power that they alone had.”

Pease went on to say, “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills. To fund anything, in this case Obamacare, first approval is required by the House of Representatives.”

“If that does not happen taxpayer money cannot be spent. The people, through their representatives to Congress, have determined, after a three-year closer scrutiny of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), that it does not protect the patient, is not affordable and is not even workable; hence in the interests of the vast majority of the people needs to be defunded.”"...



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