pudge's Journal: UN Scientist Claims Veto Power Over U.S. Government

This is extremely scary if true. Thankfully, there's no way it possibly could be true, since they have no such legal authority. But they are apparently claiming the authority nontheless:

JOEL SMITH: Well, that remains to be seen, but a key part of this process is that -- it's a report of the governments. So they can't just simply say, "It is a report of the scientists," and walk away from it. They have bought into it. ...

And I should say, in terms of the process, in most cases, we do get to give our views about how far the interpretations of the science should be taken. And if things have been taken farther than we're comfortable, we get to let the governments know and then try to work things out.

MICHAEL OPPENHEIMER: You know, I was going to say, in fact, we have a veto power, in some sense. If a government tries to introduce something which is clearly at odds with the science, we can stop it right there.

As anyone who has taken U.S. Civics 101 -- which apparently does not include Mr. Oppenheimer -- can tell you, they have no such veto power, in any sense. They cannot stop anything the U.S. government wants to do. They are nothing more than geeks in labcoats who wrote a paper. Maybe the U.S. signed off on it, but that doesn't make it binding U.S. law, and it doesn't give you any power of any kind whatsoever over the U.S. government.

Smith said it better: they can talk to the governments. Good. But they cannot stop or veto anything. That would be unconstitutional, unless this were a treaty ratified by the Senate that gave them such power.

read it again

[Bill Dog]

Note that the section these quotes fall under is "Assessing the report's language". They're talking about interpretation and weighting of studies, and how to frame estimates and confidence levels. They're saying they can stop a govt. from mucking with the language in this IPCC report, or throwing garbage into it. The UN doesn't need an act of the U.S. Congress to referee their (the UN's) own undertakings.

Re:

[pudge]

Note that the section these quotes fall under is "Assessing the report's language". They're talking about interpretation and weighting of studies, and how to frame estimates and confidence levels. They're saying they can stop a govt. from mucking with the language in this IPCC report, or throwing garbage into it. The UN doesn't need an act of the U.S. Congress to referee their (the UN's) own undertakings.

The section name was added arbitrarily by an editor at NewsHour. And UN reports always need approval from some body if they are going to be changed; individual governments cannot go in and just change them.

So, color me skeptical about your explanation.