It is looking more an more like history will not be kind of President Bush. One more piece of evidence is former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book about the Bush White House. Here’s an interesting article about the book.

When reading McClellan’s complaints about the Bush White House I wonder–why did you stay for so long? If you thought they were playing fast and loose with the facts, then why did you stay to continue to be their puppet and be the face associated with their propaganda? I don’t know, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to me.

The Environmental Editor of the Guardian in the UK reports:

Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN’s carbon offsetting programme.

Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN’s main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify. The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made, undermining assurances by the UK government and others that carbon markets are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, the researchers say.

The criticism centres on the UN’s clean development mechanism (CDM), an international system established by the Kyoto process that allows rich countries to meet emissions targets by funding clean energy projects in developing nations.

Credits from the project are being bought by European companies and governments who are unable to meet their carbon reduction targets.

The market for CDM credits is growing fast. At present it is worth nearly $20bn a year, but this is expected to grow to over $100bn within four years. More than 1,000 projects have so far been approved, and 2,000 more are making their way through the process.

A working paper from two senior Stanford University academics examined more than 3,000 projects applying for or already granted up to $10bn of credits from the UN’s CDM funds over the next four years, and concluded that the majority should not be considered for assistance. “They would be built anyway,” says David Victor, law professor at the Californian university. “It looks like between one and two thirds of all the total CDM offsets do not represent actual emission cuts.”

Governments consider that CDM is vital to reducing global emissions under the terms of the Kyoto treaty. To earn credits under the mechanism, emission reductions must be in addition to those that would have taken place without the project. But critics argue this “additionality” is impossible to prove and open to abuse. The Stanford paper, by Victor and his colleague Michael Wara, found that nearly every new hydro, wind and natural gas-fired plant expected to be built in China in the next four years is applying for CDM credits, even though it is Chinese policy to encourage these industries.

Or so writes Joe Bast:

Smoking bans are usually justified by concern over the health effects of exposure to secondhand smoke. In 2006, U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona said, “the debate is over. The science is clear: Secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance, but a serious health hazard.” He released a massive report — 709 pages — that said “secondhand smoke is a major cause of disease, including lung cancer and coronary heart disease, in healthy nonsmokers.”

But here’s the problem: None of the claims in the Surgeon General’s report would pass muster in a court of law because the studies it relies on have sample sizes that are too small, or the time periods they cover are too brief, or the effects they show on human health are too small to be reliable.

Most of the research cited in this report was rejected by a federal judge in 1993, when EPA first tried to classify secondhand smoke as a human carcinogen. The judge said EPA cherry-picked studies to support its position, misrepresented the findings of the most important studies, and failed to honor scientific standards.

The largest and most credible study ever conducted of spouses of smokers, by James Enstrom and Geoffrey Kabat, was published in the May 12, 2003 issue of the British Medical Journal. They found “the results do not support a causal relationship between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco-related mortality. The association between tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed.”

The study is mentioned just once in the Surgeon General’s report, on page 673, in an appendix listing studies that were too recent to be included in the report. But it was published three years before the Surgeon General’s report, and the report quotes other more recent studies.