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You Ought to Have a Look is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science posted by Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. (Chip) Knappenberger. While this section will feature all of the areas of interest that we are emphasizing, the prominence of the climate issue is driving a tremendous amount of web traffic. Here we post a few of the best in recent days, along with our color commentary.

In case you missed it the House Natural Resources Committee, this week, held a hearing examining the Administrations determination of the social cost of carbonthat is, how much future damage (out to the year 2300) the Administration deems is caused by the climate change that results from each emitted (metric) ton of carbon dioxide.

As you may imagine from this description, determining a value of the social cost of carbon is an extremely contentious issue, made more so by the fact that the Obama Administration requires that the social cost of carbon, or SCC, be included in the cost/benefit analysis of all federal actions (under National environmental Protection Act, NEPA) and proposed regulations.

Years ago, we warned about how powerful a tool the SCC was in the Administrations hands and have worked to raise the level of public awareness. To summarize our concerns:

The administrations SCC is a devious tool designed to justify more and more expensive rules and regulations impacting virtually every aspects of our lives, and it is developed by violating federal guidelines and ignoring the best science.

The more people know about this the better.

Our participation in the Natural Resources Committee hearing helped further our goal.

That the hearing was informative, contentious, and well-attended by both the committee members and the general public is a testament to the fact that we have been at least partly successful elevating the SCC from an esoteric wonky subject to one that is, thankfully, starting getting the attention it deserves.

In this edition of You Ought to Have a Look, we highlight excerpts from the hearing witnesses, which along with our Dr. Patrick Michaels, included Dr. Kevin Dayaratna (from The Heritage Foundation), Scott Segal (from the Policy Resolution Group) and Dr. Michael Dorsey (from US Climate Plan). The full written submissions by the witness are available here.

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