Paul Chesser

The panel, appointed by Gov. Jon Huntsman, was not tasked to evaluate whether global warming is occurring, or if it is, what might be causing it. Instead BRAC was "charged with identifying proactive measures that Utah might take to mitigate the impacts of greenhouse gases." So call it what it is: an emissions commission, rather than a climate panel, since only that one contributing factor to the earth's temperature was considered.

To the extent that any science was discussed, it has been from a one-sided perspective, without any balance from credentialed, well-regarded authorities that aren't in the catastrophist camp. Among those on the so-called "skeptic" side who could have been called upon are Joseph D'Aleo, the first director of meteorology for The Weather Channel; John Coleman, the network's founder and now a meteorologist for a San Diego television station; or George Taylor, until recently Oregon's state climatologist. I could go on, as the numbers of scientists who challenge anthropogenic global warming theory are vast.

But instead of engaging in healthy debate, Gov. Huntsman instead appointed Jim Steenburgh, chair of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Utah, to lead BRAC's science panel. A peek at Steenburgh's Web page on the college's site reveals his embrace of such unique views as those held by journalist Bill Bryson, who said, "If you were designing an organism to look after life in our lonely cosmos, to monitor where it is going and keep a record of where it has been, you wouldn't choose human beings for the job." Another people-disdaining perspective, that of author E.B. White, is also proudly cited by Steenburgh: "I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better change of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially."

The Steenburgh-led science panel -- whose members he chose -- concluded, "There is no longer any scientific doubt that the Earth's average surface temperature is increasing and that changes in ocean temperature, ice and snow cover, and sea level are consistent with this global warming." Their unsurprising conclusion: it's the humans' fault.

With the alarmist fear-mongering over fossil fuel emissions validated, the main BRAC panel was given cover to propose ideas that will dramatically raise costs of driving gasoline-powered vehicles and heating your homes with coal. If you think $4-per-gallon gasoline is bad, the worst is yet to come. But that is good news to the BRAC majority, who embrace Schwarzeneggar-style energy rationing.

On top of this arrogance is the BRAC leadership's idea that they came up with their "solutions" to global warming all on their own. In reality they stole the ideas, and the limited technical analysis of those ideas, from the Center for Climate Strategies, a nonprofit that advises at least two dozen other states with commissions similar to BRAC.

Not that CCS, who themselves are an alarmist environmental advocacy group masquerading as consultants, had any serious economic analysis that stands up to the scrutiny of those who know what they are doing. Economic experts at the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University in Boston have called CCS's work "purely fictitious analysis" and "wildly optimistic." Yet it is this deeply flawed basis that BRAC determined should be the foundation for Utah's climate change policy development.

Utahns' access to the little bit of their own energy resources and freedom is in jeopardy thanks to BRAC, and they ought to act before the rest is also put off limits by their state government and by environmental extremist powerbrokers.

• Paul Chesser is director of Climate Strategies Watch, a free-market, limited-government project that assesses global warming commissions in the states.