Spaniards Sue Greenpeace, Judge Orders His Salary Raised and New Hampshire’s Symbolic Initiative
Coastal residents in Spain threaten to sue Greenpeace after the group’s predictions of sea level rise from global warming cause local real estate prices to plummet.
A New York judge orders the state legislature to raise the salaries of every judge in the state, potentially costing taxpayers $700 million.
New Hampshire signs on to a regional greenhouse gas reduction initiative.
1. ENVIRONMENT
Coastal residents in Spain threaten to sue Greenpeace after the group’s predictions of sea level rise from global warming cause local real estate prices to plummet.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis on claims that melting ice sheets will lead to dramatic sea level rise:
“There is no credible evidence of an impending collapse of the great ice sheets. We do have fairly good data on ice mass balance changes and their effects on sea level. NASA scientist Jay Zwally and colleagues found a combined Greenland/Antarctica ice-loss-sealevel-rise equivalent of 0.05 mm per year during 1992-2002. At that rate, it would take a full millennium to raise sea level by just 5 cm.”
2. LEGAL
A New York judge orders the state legislature to raise the salaries of every judge in the state, potentially costing taxpayers $700 million.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Special Projects Counsel Hans Bader responds to the verdict:
“This is just the latest outrage from the New York courts, which foster widespread ‘litigation abuse,’ handle tort and family-law cases poorly, and score badly on tort liability indexes. They deserve no pay raise. The judge who issued the ruling, and Chief Judge Judith Kaye, should be removed from the bench for bringing this outrageous lawsuit that makes a mockery of separation-of-powers safeguards.”
3. ENVIRONMENT
New Hampshire signs on to a regional greenhouse gas reduction initiative.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Energy Policy Analyst William Yeatman on the essentially symbolic nature of New Hampshire’s announcement:
“New Hampshire’s commitment to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is to decrease its emissions by 8 million tons. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, putatively the world’s foremost body of climate scientists, we would have to decrease emissions 38 gigatons (1 gigaton=1 billion tons) by 2050 to halt global warming. So New Hampshire’s contribution will solve .0002% of global warming. Meanwhile, China busily builds three new coal fired power plants every two weeks.”