Bill Nye has a history of pushing bad science, including but not limited to climate change/global warming. Alex Berezow explains at American Council on Science and Health Bill Nye Is A Terrible Spokesman For Science. Excerpts in italics with my bolds
When I was a kid, Bill Nye the Science Guy was a thing. I never watched his show (as I was too busy keeping up with Ren & Stimpy), but he seemed fun enough. If I could go back in time, I’d probably watch.
Some years later, Bill Nye experienced a resurgence in popularity. But instead of the old, nerdy-but-lovable Bill Nye, we got Bill Nye 2.0, a somewhat cantankerous scold who clearly knows less about science than he leads on.
It was clear that something was amiss a few years ago when, amid Nye’s renewed celebrity status, it came to light that he aired an episode of Eyes of Nye that perpetuated anti-GMO propaganda. Nye was subsequently criticized by the scientific and (especially) science writing communities. Not long thereafter, Nye had a change of heart.
Good! Better late than never. But was this “conversion” based on a new understanding of biotechnology or simply a calculated marketing move? Evidence points toward the latter. As late as 2015, Nye was still pushing anti-GMO nonsense. That year, he published a book called Undeniable, which promoted evolution over creationism. The book entirely lacked references (quite bizarre for a science book), and despite GMO technology itself being “undeniable,” Nye wrote this:
“But there is something weird and unnatural about putting fish genes in fruit, in tomatoes. Nobody wanted it, so that research was abandoned.
I’ll grant you, this could be a visceral reaction from ignorant consumers. Emotional responses do not necessarily reflect scientific reality, as is evident in everything from creationism to the anti-vaccine movement. In this case, though, I think science and emotion are on the same side. There are very valid scientific reasons to approach GMOs with caution, and those turn out to dovetail with economic reasons. So far, it’s not clear that investment in GMOs pays off. It is certainly not clear that GMO research should be funded with tax dollars.”
By 2016, however, he was singing a different tune. Call me jaded and curmudgeonly, but his newfound faith in GMOs doesn’t seem authentic.
Bill Nye, Prophet of Doom
In his latest appearance, Bill Nye had a cameo on John Oliver’s show, in which he lit a globe on fire and dropped a few F-bombs. (I guess that passes as comedy.) He also said that Earth’s temperature could rise by 4 to 8 degrees, presumably Fahrenheit, since Nye didn’t indicate which scale he was using. His projection is within the range predicted by the IPCC, so at least he got that right.
But is setting a globe on fire an appropriate analogy to get the message across? Earth’s temperature has gone up 1.4 degrees F since 1880. Undoubtedly, another 4 to 8 degrees is quite a lot in a short period of time. It doesn’t take a master prognosticator to conclude that might cause some problems. But Earth is not — nor will it ever be — a flaming ball of fire. Earth isn’t Venus.
Bill Nye 2.0
Ultimately, it seems that Bill Nye just panders to whatever he thinks the audience wants to hear. He thought (incorrectly) that they wanted to hear why GMOs were bad, so he altered his message when he got pushback. He won’t get pushback for exaggerating climate change, so it’s likely he’ll keep this up for a while.
I don’t think Nye actually believes the climate hysteria. Because if he did, Nye would support whatever means necessary to stop it, like nuclear power. After all, he’s a mechanical engineer. But lo and behold, Nye is opposed to nuclear power. Big surprise. Audiences don’t like nuclear power.
Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne once wrote of Bill Nye, “I’m not a fan of the new Science Guy, and see him as a self-aggrandizing person trying to capture his lost limelight more eagerly than he wants to promulgate science.”
Unfortunately, I think that assessment is accurate. Bring back the old Bill Nye. Version 1.0 was better.
Some recent reports note a disturbing trend in large and influential corporations. Having worked in and for some of these, I believe the incidents show a dangerous virus is mutating from academia to the workplace. The import of these developments is not good for free enterprise or for individual freedoms.
Warning bells in the past concerned punative efforts against some employees to silence their discomforting opinions. For example James Damore was fired by Google for saying that staffing with the most competent techies is more important than gender hiring quotas. Now it appears such events are not atypical, but reflect a systemic takeover of corporate cultures.
Pro tip: whenever you hear a management type talk about “diversity” and “inclusion,” you may be certain that you are about to hear a rationale for creating a more ideologically uniform and ideologically exclusive community.
A reader has sent me internal documents from a leading global corporation having to do with its employee program to create a Diverse and Inclusive culture. I am not allowed to quote from the documents, or to identify the company, so I’m going to be delicate here in what I describe, to honor the reader’s request to protect privacy. The reader said:
It confirms what you have been saying all along. You are absolutely correct about the “soft totalitarianism” that is coming. It’s already happening,and it’s picking up speed.
The documents are pretty shocking to my eyes, because I know what I’m looking at. It is 100 percent, pure, uncut Human Resources Department cant. What’s so amazing about it — truly amazing — is that it is all about coercing people into accepting and participating in a cultural revolution by redefining the revolution’s goals and methods as good for business, and a chance for employees to exercise virtue.
This particular company’s program is far more sophisticated and thorough than anything I’ve seen before. It is totalitarian in the sense that it encompasses nearly every aspect of life in the company. From reading these documents, you would think that the purpose of this company is to shape the cultural politics and behavior of its employees. I’m not kidding you: it’s like a church organization trying to catechize and discipline its employees in true religion — and part of that discipline is urging them to police their own ranks for heretics. It even instructs employees to conduct struggle sessions within themselves to root out false beliefs that undermine Diversity and Inclusion.
Though it’s stated in happy-clappy HR jargon, it’s clear that the company is training its employees to monitor each other for signs of bias, and encouraging them to call out each other. Incredible. It’s the Stasification of the American workplace. And the program instructs employees to think and talk about Diversity and Inclusion all the time, in everything they do. Seriously, it does. If I were an employee there, I would find all this completely unnerving. I would wonder constantly if I were being monitored by my co-workers and judged for not showing enough commitment to Diversity and Inclusion. I would watch what I said, but also worry about what I did not say. It would make me a nervous wreck.
Again, I’m not going to name the company or give identifying details about the program. I am quite confident that what I’ve said here describes the internal culture many corporations are building. I’m sure many of you readers are thinking, “That sounds like where I work.” It is coercive, and it is totalitarian. It is going to create massive suspicion and mistrust within companies that do this, in part because it is going to empower members of particular groups to harass others in the workplace, to inform on others, and even to affect their salaries and impede their career advancement.
Get this: the way this particular program is set up, you don’t have to participate, but failing to do so will be noted, and it’s going to affect your pay. It’s not enough to sign up for the program in a pro forma way, and then simply be quiet about it. You are expected to be an active, vocal advocate of its principles. From what I can tell, it appears that they have the rudiments of a Chinese-style Social Credit System structure to monitor employee enthusiasm.
You might be a first-rate maker of widgets for this corporation, or a superb sales executive, manager, whatever, and you may be a diligent employee who is honest and works well with others. But if you are not 100 percent aboard the Party’s company’s ideological campaign for cultural revolution, it will go down in your employee record, and it will affect your future at the company.
When you see these documents, and realize that this is how it is inside one of the world’s leading corporations, you know perfectly well that this is quickly going to become normative in corporations, if it isn’t already. What kind of future do any of us deplorables (or our kids) have in corporate life when workplaces become communities of coerced wokeness?
What? Have you no respect for diversity?
Let me put it to you like this. If this were the US Government, and it pushed “patriotism” on its employees following the same platform and methods that this corporation is pushing “diversity and inclusion,” people would freak out at the coerciveness and invasion of privacy. And they would be right to! Imagine that you, a US government employee, were told to monitor yourself constantly to root out a lack of patriotism. How … Soviet would that feel? Well, that’s what this corporation is doing to its employees regarding diversity and inclusion.
The familiar left vs. right categories no longer serve as reliable guides to our cultural reality. The cultural left has captured the bureaucracies at American corporations. One thing we hear a lot from our friends on the left is that Big Business is conservative, and would never do anything that would hurt its bottom line. Wrong! I have seen personally how companies will do politically correct things that actually hurt their business model, but that win its management pats on the back among their social cohort. These documents I looked at today assert — assert, do not argue — that the total politicization of the company’s culture is critical to its business success … and then go on to describe a program that is almost certainly going to cause major problems with teamwork, cohesiveness, and conflict. These documents are a recipe for creating intense anxiety and suspicion within the company. It’s as clear as day. You cannot imagine why any sensible company would embrace these principles and techniques, which can only hurt its ability to compete. But there it is, in black and white.
Woke capitalism is a vanguard of unfreedom. It’s happening. We have to be prepared to resist.
My Comment
I have done consulting with enough HR departments to know that they are not power centers in companies, but are seen rather as administrative overhead. The line operations make or break the bottom line, and there the credo of middle managers still holds: “Whatever interests my boss, thrills the hell out of me.” Thus in any company where HR is going viral with social justice, diversity inclusion and the rest of it, it can only happen if HR is carrying water for the CEO and everyone knows it.
A serious issue has gained prominence in modern society the last few years: The executives and/or founders of large companies increasingly consider it their civic and moral duty to use the influences and powers of their businesses to censor or suppress political and/or inconvenient ideas they do not support or find offensive. This mindset is reflected in the following statement from PayPal CEO Daniel Schulman: “Businesses need to be a force for good in those values and issues that they believe in.” Taken in isolation, this is a very good philosophy. However, one needs to also examine the implications of it in practice.
Recently, PayPal decided to stop processing financial transactions for customers it deemed to have hateful political views. Not long ago, MasterCard and Visa refused to process any donations to David Horowitz’s Freedom Center, a conservative nonprofit. The crime? Horowitz had personal and/or political views that were judged by the credit card companies to be hateful. YouTube has banned some Prager University (PragerU) videos (PragerU is not a higher learning institution, but a nonprofit that promulgates conservative views.) Selected content from conservatives, Christian and some liberal-leaning groups has also been removed from social media and the accounts of the targets were deleted or deactivated.
The motivation for these actions is the desire of the executives of these companies to be “good” by punishing the “bad.” These executives, and their supporters, declare that their actions are protected by the laws of the United States of America, which they claim permit them to run their private businesses any way they deem fit.
Two questions need to be asked. First, does a private business have a boundary? If so, where is it? These are critical questions that need to be answered. Without defining the boundary of the modern business, we are likely going to alter, in negative ways, the civic foundations of our society. I do agree that a business should be allowed to have maximum freedom to be run as its founder sees fit. However, I also believe that the boundary of a business has to be limited to its business charter. PayPal has a charter to process payments for society; it does not have a charter to make society “good.”
I argue that many of the well-intentioned actions taken by executives of large corporations fall under what one could call corporate vigilantism. In a notable academic analysis, Les Johnston identified six criteria that are common to most vigilantism. (1) there is planning and premeditation by those engaged in such actions; (2) the actors are private citizens acting voluntarily; (3) the actors view their actions as “autonomous citizenship”; (4) the actors use or threaten to use force and pressure against targets; (5) the actors go into action to protect an established or new order from actual, potential or imputed transgressions; (6) the actors aim to control crime or other social infractions.
It should be noted that vigilantism is not new. It is likely the most popular form of justice in countries in which there are no mature civil institutions. However, vigilantism is a danger wherever it is found. There are three reasons for this. First is that it violates a basic organizing principle of society — namely, that institutions are only allowed to perform duties for which they have a societal mandate. There is no known societal law or mandate that empowers a corporate executive to be the vanguard of moral actions, choices and speech in society.
Second, vigilantism violates the essential principle of separation of powers, which is so essential to the norms of justice. In most vigilante processes, the same institution or group of people constitutes the judge, jury and executioner. Hence, the vigilante system has, by design, inherent, embedded and systemic biases.
Third, the vigilante process is not equipped to recognize its own biases. When asked about how PayPal, in collaboration with the controversial Southern Poverty Law Center, determines when to decline services to customers, Schulman told the Wall Street Journal: “We don’t always agree. We have our debates with [SPLC]. We are very respectful with everyone coming in. We will do the examination carefully. We’ll talk when we don’t agree with a finding: We understand why you think that way, but it still goes into the realm of free speech for us.” Despite this claim of evenhandedness, however, the majority of blocked customers are right-leaning groups and individuals.
A common protest is raised when one questions corporate vigilantism. People often respond by asking, “But, it is their business, isn’t it?” Yes, it is. But, society still has a role to play if and when the pursuit of private business’s self-interest is in conflict with major interests of its customers or the public. That is why regulations were enacted when we realized that private businesses were polluting rivers and other water resources. That is why the new, and stricter, European General Data Protection Regulation was enacted. That is why there is a process whereby new drugs have to be vetted and approved by a neutral party, such as the Food and Drug Administration, before they can be sold to the public. What do these actions have in common? They all involve the establishment of mechanisms that limit the authority of large organizations to exercise their freedom at the expense of the freedoms of others.
There is no debate that an executive of a company could support a political candidate or give money to any cause she/he pleases to do. The executive can also hire and fire anyone that she/he pleases. But this is quite different from what we see in corporate vigilantism. We hear about an executive of a corporation threatening to withdraw its businesses from a state because of perceived political and/or moral transgressions by people there. Or we read about an executive threatening to abandon or exclude a state from its expansion plans if and when a political organ of the state votes for the “wrong” cause or the “wrong” policy. These are some of the most dangerous kinds of politicization that can occur in a society. There is little difference between such corporate vigilantism and what we call corruption. What would you say if a politician promised to give voters money — if they vote a certain way? What would you think of a company that threatened to punish voters if they dared to vote a certain way?
We have had no laws curbing corporate vigilantism in the United States. This is because most business founders knew and/or believed that one should not mix politics and business. Unfortunately, things have changed. For a large corporation today, there is little or no penalty for using one’s near-monopolistic position to shut down the freedoms of others.
The spirit of vigilantism that makes a restaurant owner eject a customer who holds different political views is the same mindset that prompts executives of some large corporations to punish opinions, choices and actions that they do not like. The only difference is in the type and scope of harm done. Vigilantism corrupts free democratic societies, sooner or later, if action is not taken to curb it.
Nick Dedeke teaches information management courses at Northeastern University.
This post was triggered by noticing an event in April that had escaped my attention. It seems that serial valve turner Ken Ward was granted a new trial by the Washington State Court of Appeals, and he is allowed to present a “necessity defense.” This astonishingly bad ruling is reported approvingly by Kelsey Skaggs at Pacific Standard Why the Necessity Defense is Critical to the Climate Struggle. Excerpt below with my bolds.
A climate activist who was convicted after turning off an oil pipeline won the right in April to argue in a new trial that his actions were justified. The Washington State Court of Appeals ruled that Ken Ward will be permitted to explain to a jury that, while he did illegally stop the flow of tar sands oil from Canada into the United States, his action was necessary to slow catastrophic climate change.
The Skaggs article goes on to cloak energy vandalism with the history of civil disobedience against actual mistreatment and harm. Nowhere is it recognized that the brouhaha over climate change concerns future imaginary harm. How could lawyers and judges get this so wrong? It can only happen when an erroneous legal precedent can be cited to spread a poison in the public square. So I went searching for the tree producing all of this poisonous fruit. The full text of the April 8, 2019, ruling is here.
My perusal of the text led me to the section where the merits are presented.
The typical climate necessity argument is straightforward. The ongoing effects of climate change are not only imminent, they are currently occurring; civil disobedience has been proven to contribute to the mitigation of these harms, and our political and legal systems have proven uniquely ill-equipped to deal with the climate crisis, thus creating the necessity of breaking the law to address it. As opposed to many classic political necessity defendants, such as anti-nuclear power protesters, climate activists can point to the existing (rather than speculative) nature of the targeted harm and can make a more compelling case that their protest activity (for example, blocking fossil fuel extraction) actually prevents some quantum of harm produced by global warming. pg.78
What? On what evidence is such confidence based? Later on (page 80), comes this:
Second, courts’ focus on the politics of climate change distracts from the scientific issues involved in climate necessity cases. There may well be political disagreement over the realities and effects of climate change, but there is little scientific disagreement, as the Supreme Court has noted.131
131 Massachusetts v. E.P.A., 549 U.S. 497, 499 (2007) (“The harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized . . . [T]he relevant science and a strong consensus among qualified experts indicate that global warming threatens, inter alia, a precipitate rise in sea levels by the end of the century, severe and irreversible changes to natural ecosystems, a significant reduction in water storage in winter snowpack in mountainous regions with direct and important economic consequences, and an increase in the spread of disease and the ferocity of weather events.”).
The roots of this poisonous tree are found in citing the famous Massachusetts v. E.P.A. (2007) case decided by a 5-4 opinion of Supreme Court justices (consensus rate: 56%). But let’s see in what context lies that reference and whether it is a quotation from a source or an issue addressed by the court. The majority opinion was written by Justice Stevens, with dissenting opinions from Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia. All these documents are available at sureme.justia.com Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007)
From the Majority Opinion:
A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Respected scientists believe the two trends are related. For when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it acts like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of reflected heat. It is therefore a species—the most important species—of a “greenhouse gas.” Source: National Research Council:
National Research Council 2001 report titled Climate Change: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (NRC Report), which, drawing heavily on the 1995 IPCC report, concluded that “[g]reenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising.” NRC Report 1.
Calling global warming “the most pressing environmental challenge of our time,”[Footnote 1] a group of States,[Footnote 2] local governments,[Footnote 3] and private organizations,[Footnote 4] alleged in a petition for certiorari that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has abdicated its responsibility under the Clean Air Act to regulate the emissions of four greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide. Specifically, petitioners asked us to answer two questions concerning the meaning of §202(a)(1) of the Act: whether EPA has the statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles; and if so, whether its stated reasons for refusing to do so are consistent with the statute.
EPA reasoned that climate change had its own “political history”: Congress designed the original Clean Air Act to address local air pollutants rather than a substance that “is fairly consistent in its concentration throughout the world’s atmosphere,” 68 Fed. Reg. 52927 (emphasis added); declined in 1990 to enact proposed amendments to force EPA to set carbon dioxide emission standards for motor vehicles, ibid. (citing H. R. 5966, 101st Cong., 2d Sess. (1990)); and addressed global climate change in other legislation, 68 Fed. Reg. 52927. Because of this political history, and because imposing emission limitations on greenhouse gases would have even greater economic and political repercussions than regulating tobacco, EPA was persuaded that it lacked the power to do so. Id., at 52928. In essence, EPA concluded that climate change was so important that unless Congress spoke with exacting specificity, it could not have meant the agency to address it.
Having reached that conclusion, EPA believed it followed that greenhouse gases cannot be “air pollutants” within the meaning of the Act. See ibid. (“It follows from this conclusion, that [greenhouse gases], as such, are not air pollutants under the [Clean Air Act’s] regulatory provisions …”).
Even assuming that it had authority over greenhouse gases, EPA explained in detail why it would refuse to exercise that authority. The agency began by recognizing that the concentration of greenhouse gases has dramatically increased as a result of human activities, and acknowledged the attendant increase in global surface air temperatures. Id., at 52930. EPA nevertheless gave controlling importance to the NRC Report’s statement that a causal link between the two “ ‘cannot be unequivocally established.’ ” Ibid. (quoting NRC Report 17). Given that residual uncertainty, EPA concluded that regulating greenhouse gas emissions would be unwise. 68 Fed. Reg. 52930.
The harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized. Indeed, the NRC Report itself—which EPA regards as an “objective and independent assessment of the relevant science,” 68 Fed. Reg. 52930—identifies a number of environmental changes that have already inflicted significant harms, including “the global retreat of mountain glaciers, reduction in snow-cover extent, the earlier spring melting of rivers and lakes, [and] the accelerated rate of rise of sea levels during the 20th century relative to the past few thousand years … .” NRC Report 16.
In sum—at least according to petitioners’ uncontested affidavits—the rise in sea levels associated with global warming has already harmed and will continue to harm Massachusetts. The risk of catastrophic harm, though remote, is nevertheless real. That risk would be reduced to some extent if petitioners received the relief they seek. We therefore hold that petitioners have standing to challenge the EPA’s denial of their rulemaking petition.[Footnote 24]
In short, EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change. Its action was therefore “arbitrary, capricious, … or otherwise not in accordance with law.” 42 U. S. C. §7607(d)(9)(A). We need not and do not reach the question whether on remand EPA must make an endangerment finding, or whether policy concerns can inform EPA’s actions in the event that it makes such a finding. Cf. Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 843–844 (1984). We hold only that EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute.
My Comment: Note that the citations of scientific proof were uncontested assertions by petitioners. Note also that the majority did not rule that EPA must make an endangerment finding: “We hold only that EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute.”
From the Minority Dissenting Opinion
It is not at all clear how the Court’s “special solicitude” for Massachusetts plays out in the standing analysis, except as an implicit concession that petitioners cannot establish standing on traditional terms. But the status of Massachusetts as a State cannot compensate for petitioners’ failure to demonstrate injury in fact, causation, and redressability.
When the Court actually applies the three-part test, it focuses, as did the dissent below, see 415 F. 3d 50, 64 (CADC 2005) (opinion of Tatel, J.), on the State’s asserted loss of coastal land as the injury in fact. If petitioners rely on loss of land as the Article III injury, however, they must ground the rest of the standing analysis in that specific injury. That alleged injury must be “concrete and particularized,” Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S., at 560, and “distinct and palpable,” Allen, 468 U. S., at 751 (internal quotation marks omitted). Central to this concept of “particularized” injury is the requirement that a plaintiff be affected in a “personal and individual way,” Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S., at 560, n. 1, and seek relief that “directly and tangibly benefits him” in a manner distinct from its impact on “the public at large,” id., at 573–574. Without “particularized injury, there can be no confidence of ‘a real need to exercise the power of judicial review’ or that relief can be framed ‘no broader than required by the precise facts to which the court’s ruling would be applied.’ ” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 508 (1975) (quoting Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U. S. 208, 221–222 (1974)).
The very concept of global warming seems inconsistent with this particularization requirement. Global warming is a phenomenon “harmful to humanity at large,” 415 F. 3d, at 60 (Sentelle, J., dissenting in part and concurring in judgment), and the redress petitioners seek is focused no more on them than on the public generally—it is literally to change the atmosphere around the world.
If petitioners’ particularized injury is loss of coastal land, it is also that injury that must be “actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical,” Defenders of Wildlife, supra, at 560 (internal quotation marks omitted), “real and immediate,” Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 102 (1983) (internal quotation marks omitted), and “certainly impending,” Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U. S. 149, 158 (1990) (internal quotation marks omitted).
As to “actual” injury, the Court observes that “global sea levels rose somewhere between 10 and 20 centimeters over the 20th century as a result of global warming” and that “[t]hese rising seas have already begun to swallow Massachusetts’ coastal land.” Ante, at 19. But none of petitioners’ declarations supports that connection. One declaration states that “a rise in sea level due to climate change is occurring on the coast of Massachusetts, in the metropolitan Boston area,” but there is no elaboration. Petitioners’ Standing Appendix in No. 03–1361, etc. (CADC), p. 196 (Stdg. App.). And the declarant goes on to identify a “significan[t]” non-global-warming cause of Boston’s rising sea level: land subsidence. Id., at 197; see also id., at 216. Thus, aside from a single conclusory statement, there is nothing in petitioners’ 43 standing declarations and accompanying exhibits to support an inference of actual loss of Massachusetts coastal land from 20th century global sea level increases. It is pure conjecture.
The Court ignores the complexities of global warming, and does so by now disregarding the “particularized” injury it relied on in step one, and using the dire nature of global warming itself as a bootstrap for finding causation and redressability.
Petitioners are never able to trace their alleged injuries back through this complex web to the fractional amount of global emissions that might have been limited with EPA standards. In light of the bit-part domestic new motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions have played in what petitioners describe as a 150-year global phenomenon, and the myriad additional factors bearing on petitioners’ alleged injury—the loss of Massachusetts coastal land—the connection is far too speculative to establish causation.
From Justice Scalia’s Dissenting Opinion
Even on the Court’s own terms, however, the same conclusion follows. As mentioned above, the Court gives EPA the option of determining that the science is too uncertain to allow it to form a “judgment” as to whether greenhouse gases endanger public welfare. Attached to this option (on what basis is unclear) is an essay requirement: “If,” the Court says, “the scientific uncertainty is so profound that it precludes EPA from making a reasoned judgment as to whether greenhouse gases contribute to global warming, EPA must say so.” Ante, at 31. But EPA has said precisely that—and at great length, based on information contained in a 2001 report by the National Research Council (NRC) entitled Climate Change Science:
“As the NRC noted in its report, concentrations of [greenhouse gases (GHGs)] are increasing in the atmosphere as a result of human activities (pp. 9–12). It also noted that ‘[a] diverse array of evidence points to a warming of global surface air temperatures’ (p. 16). The report goes on to state, however, that ‘[b]ecause of the large and still uncertain level of natural variability inherent in the climate record and the uncertainties in the time histories of the various forcing agents (and particularly aerosols), a [causal] linkage between the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the observed climate changes during the 20th century cannot be unequivocally established. The fact that the magnitude of the observed warming is large in comparison to natural variability as simulated in climate models is suggestive of such a linkage, but it does not constitute proof of one because the model simulations could be deficient in natural variability on the decadal to century time scale’ (p. 17).
“The NRC also observed that ‘there is considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and reacts to emissions of [GHGs] and aerosols’ (p. 1). As a result of that uncertainty, the NRC cautioned that ‘current estimate of the magnitude of future warming should be regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments (either upward or downward).’ Id. It further advised that ‘[r]educing the wide range of uncertainty inherent in current model predictions of global climate change will require major advances in understanding and modeling of both (1) the factors that determine atmospheric concentrations of [GHGs] and aerosols and (2) the so-called “feedbacks” that determine the sensitivity of the climate system to a prescribed increase in [GHGs].’ Id.
“The science of climate change is extraordinarily complex and still evolving. Although there have been substantial advances in climate change science, there continue to be important uncertainties in our understanding of the factors that may affect future climate change and how it should be addressed. As the NRC explained, predicting future climate change necessarily involves a complex web of economic and physical factors including: Our ability to predict future global anthropogenic emissions of GHGs and aerosols; the fate of these emissions once they enter the atmosphere (e.g., what percentage are absorbed by vegetation or are taken up by the oceans); the impact of those emissions that remain in the atmosphere on the radiative properties of the atmosphere; changes in critically important climate feedbacks (e.g., changes in cloud cover and ocean circulation); changes in temperature characteristics (e.g., average temperatures, shifts in daytime and evening temperatures); changes in other climatic parameters (e.g., shifts in precipitation, storms); and ultimately the impact of such changes on human health and welfare (e.g., increases or decreases in agricultural productivity, human health impacts). The NRC noted, in particular, that ‘[t]he understanding of the relationships between weather/climate and human health is in its infancy and therefore the health consequences of climate change are poorly understood’ (p. 20). Substantial scientific uncertainties limit our ability to assess each of these factors and to separate out those changes resulting from natural variability from those that are directly the result of increases in anthropogenic GHGs.
“Reducing the wide range of uncertainty inherent in current model predictions will require major advances in understanding and modeling of the factors that determine atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and the processes that determine the sensitivity of the climate system.” 68 Fed. Reg. 52930.
I simply cannot conceive of what else the Court would like EPA to say.
Conclusion
Justice Scalia lays the axe to the roots of this poisonous tree. Even the scientific source document relied on by the majority admits that claims of man made warming are conjecture without certain evidence. This case does not prove CAGW despite it being repeatedly cited as though it did.
Footnote:
Taking the sea level rise projected by Sea Change Boston, and through the magic of CAI (Computer-Aided Imagining), we can compare to tidal gauge observations at Boston:
Our nation’s capital, always in search of the latest in political progressivism, has now joined the sky-is-dying crowd by having its city council officially declare Ottawa to be in a climate emergency.
This is in the nick of time, of course, but not because of the serious flooding currently ravaging the region, but because our country’s climate conscience Environment Minister Catherine McKenna keeps telling us that the planet has only 12 years left to sustain life.
There is no doubt the outlying burbs of Ottawa are again fending off rising flood waters because of a very snowy winter followed by a very rainy spring, but that is not the big-picture stuff, although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last week while filling sandbags for a photo-op that the current crisis is a direct result of climate change.
So, this wasn’t just a freak year. This was the new norm.
No, the real big-picture stuff is McKenna’s doomsday scenario that has her believing and preaching we’ll all be snuffed out by 2029 unless critical changes are made to ensure our planet’s orbit continues with us still aboard.
In Ontario, the successive Liberal governments of McGuinty and Wynne bragged about how they had at least saved their own province by shutting down all coal-fired power generation, tossing $2 billion down the toilet to cancel two gas-fired power plants, and spending multi-billions more on green-energy projects backed by influential friends who saw renewable energy as their licence to print money.
And they weren’t far wrong. Lots of former backroom types got rich, but it wasn’t the beleaguered taxpayer, because it was he who found himself having to choose between feeding his family or heating his home, and not how he was going to count all the money rolling in.
Or has everyone forgotten those stories? A lot of ink was spilled to report them, and a lot of fossil-fuel petrol was burned by television outlets dashing off to Smalltown, Ont., for first-hand coverage of outraged citizens living through trying times in homes without heat or light.
So, what good has green energy done for Ontario if cities like Ottawa, Kingston and Hamilton find it necessary to declare a climate emergency?
Renewable energy, despite costing billions of taxpayer dollars, is the source of less than 10% of Ontario’s electricity. Those vast fields of solar panels tilted towards the sun? Less than 2%. Wind power, towering winged turbines that also drive countless nearby residents crazy with mysterious brain worms? Less than 8%.
A little over 90% of Ontario’s power sources — from nuclear plants to hydro dams — are environmentally friendly and without emissions.
Yet our nation’s capital has declared itself to be in the midst of a climate emergency, and spare us all if we sit idly by.
Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson was quick to point out that council’s climate emergency declaration is “no empty gesture,” although it came days prior to calling a real state of emergency over extreme flooding and getting assistance from 400 members of the armed forces to help cope with the crisis.
No, along with its specific climate emergency declaration, the city will prove it is “no empty gesture” by ponying up $250,000 out of its annual Hydro One dividend to do … what?
Why, to study the city moving to renewable energy, of course.
There is an epidemic of cities in North America declaring that the city is in a “climate emergency”. This, below, is my recent submission to Committee opposing such a motion for Canada’s capital, Ottawa. There is no evidence that supports such a declaration. We should discourage our politicians from engaging in nonsense.
[The motion in Ottawa passed: 6 (for), 2 (against). Ottawa is therefore now in the throes of a “climate emergency”? The media refused to cover my scientific arguments and did not seek the views of the other side, whatsoever, despite several neighbours and Ottawa residents who agree with me.]
Summation
In conclusion, the Committee should take notice of the following facts when it considers this Motion:
(1) There is no conclusive scientific evidence that climate change (unnatural increased extreme-weather incidence) has occurred since the surge in use of fossil fuel that started in the 1950s. There is only tenuous theoretical conjecture that such might occur.
(2) Not a single death on Earth has been scientifically attributed to “climate change”, which includes Ottawa.
(3) Not a single animal or plant species has been scientifically established to have become extinct from climate change. There is no scientific demonstration of such a thing.
(4) Weather data for Ottawa does not show increased incidence of weather extremes, or any statistically meaningful deviations from the known natural variability (ENSO).
(5) Changes in Ottawa canal skating-season schedules result from ice-management and safety protocol changes, not from (empirically known) weather data.
(6) There is no rational reason, based on empirical data, to believe that Ottawa is at risk of climate change or is susceptible to anomalous future extreme weather events.
The Motion, in my opinion, is what can be termed “goodness propaganda”, which appears intended to convince citizens of being looked after. In fact, this Motion is a waste of resources and political attention.
It is verging on the ridiculous to think that the reality that 87% of world energy from fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) can be changed by policy statements or taxation.[4] The only significant alternative contributors, as now demonstrated by decades of publicly funded adventures, are nuclear and hydro, both requiring massive structural investments, and both having large environmental consequences.
Climate Lemmings
Footnote
The Canoe article talks about the renewables small contribution to electrical supply in Canada. The proportion of Canadian total primary energy shows wind and solar are far from being the solution.
In the Canadian Energy Fact Book, energy supply is equivalent to energy consumed, since it is calculated after adjusting for energy imports and exports. Note that 17.7% is the amount of energy from renewables, and hydro is 11.6%. Let’s see how much of renewable energy comes from wind and solar:
So Canadians actually consume 4.35% of their renewable energy from wind and solar. 92% of Canadian renewable energy comes from the traditional sources: Hydro dams and burning wood.
Combining the two tables, we see that 80% of the Other Renewables is solid biomass (wood), which leaves at most 1% of Canadian total energy supply coming from wind and solar.
Ninety-five percent of the population needs to be vaccinated to stave off an outbreak of a very contagious disease, such as one that broke out at Disneyland in 2014.
Doctors say just 3 percent of children at most should be exempt, due to serious health complications, such as a child undergoing chemotherapy.
There is currently no authority in the state that decides on the validity of issued medical exemptions for vaccines.
California kindergartens with the highest medical exemption rates include:
58 percent: Sebastopol Independent Charter – Sonoma County 52 percent: Yuba River Charter – Nevada County 51 percent: Sunridge Charter – Sonoma County 43 percent: Live Oak Charter – Sonoma County 38 percent: Berkeley Rose School – Alameda County 38 percent: The New Village School – Marin County 37 percent: Coastal Grove Charter – Humboldt County 37 percent: The Waldorf School of Mendocino County – Mendocino County 35 percent: Summerfield Waldorf School & Farm – Sonoma County 33 percent: Santa Cruz Waldorf School – Santa Cruz County
Linking Fear of Vaccines with Fear of Fossil Fuels
Nearly everyone complains about the poor science literacy of the American public, but all too often they are referring to citizens’ refusal to believe what they want them to, whether its about climate change, vaccines, peak oil, or homeopathic medicine. The public has no problem accepting science (broadly defined) when it is to their benefit. Proposals to ban disposable diapers were popular briefly, before it was pointed out that the life-cycle effects of cotton diapers were not significantly better and possibly worse for the environment, after which the bans were quietly abandoned.
But the recent measles outbreak demonstrates a very important element of science literacy, namely the cost-benefit equation. People are relatively inattentive and more likely to adopt populist ideas when the impact on their lives is minimal, but employ more skepticism when the impact on their lives is significant. Although there are numerous cases of irrational fears driving policy, there are others where the public thinks more carefully.
Which is where the anti-vaccination movement can be a teachable moment. Until recently, criticism was primarily from those in the medical community. If the occasional child wasn’t vaccinated, it had little impact on others. But with this winter’s outbreak of measles, it has become obvious that there is a significant cost to the loss of herd immunity, and scrutiny of the science behind the anti-vaccination movement made it clear to many more people that it is somewhere between flawed and non-existent. Governments have put aside the passionate objections and demanded that vaccination be more widespread with much less resistance than would have appeared a few years ago.
Could this lesson prove valuable to the petroleum industry? There are two strong advocacy groups that are primarily passionate, not rational, with lots of overlap. Some oppose pipelines, thinking that will mean oil and gas will stay in the ground and not be consume, and others oppose fracking, in the belief that it is, well, scary or something.
Notice that no one discarded their cell phones when it was suggested they might cause brain tumors. Two elements seem to have come into play. First, the widespread use of cellphones without obvious negative health consequences encouraged skepticism about the possibility that there was a clear and present danger, as the saying goes. But also, giving up cellphones seemed like an unacceptable cost to most of the public.
Which is problematic for the petroleum industry. Banning fracking or pipeline construction appears much less contentious, especially where it is perceived as only affecting oil companies, or as many call them, “Big Oil.” In other words, such opposition is seen as cost-free and therefore easier to support, or at least ignore.
But familiarity is another element leading to acceptance. A couple of decades ago, I heard Michael Golay of M.I.T.’s nuclear engineering department talk about how new technologies were often resisted, but gradually became accepted as more and more people were familiar with them. (Railroads, cars, etc.) This certainly appears to be the case where nuclear power is concerned, as the operation of hundreds of reactors for decades has seen a total of two serious accidents (I don’t consider Three Mile Island a serious accident), but with two generations who have lived through operations of nuclear power with problems only under the most unusual of circumstances (a 1000-year tsunami), the early warnings of heavy death counts from nuclear power appear foolish.
The industry has tried to emphasize the fact is that both involve pipelines and fracking, while not ubiquitous like cellphones, have a long-standing provenance. There are 2.4 million miles of oil and gas pipelines in the United States, and over 2 million oil and gas wells have been hydraulically fractured. The industry has regularly pointed out these facts and they appear to have gained some traction, where mainstream politicians sometimes argue for tighter regulation, but few have embraced opponents.
Neither activity is completely safe, because nothing is completely safe. Having heavy trucks on highways increases fatalities, but no one suggests banning them, merely regulating them to improve safety. Banning cellphones would reduce deaths from distracted driving, but governments (with public support) have chosen to regulate them instead. Banning pipelines or fracking is not too dissimilar from those cases, except that it would not appear to have costs for the average citizen.
Because relatively few people were affected by bans on either (land-owners in western New York the most obvious exception), but as some gas companies cease new hookups because of lack of pipeline capacity, that could change. Unfortunately, the number of people affected will be minimal compared to, say, the threat from measles due to the anti-vaccine movement, however some of those will be small businesses that have more clout than home-owners.
Similarly, while the impact of any given shale well on world oil and gas prices is minimal, a slowing of fracking for oil could mean higher prices for consumers generally, especially given the current geopolitical situation. Which is not to say that the public should throw caution to the wind and allow both pipeline construction and fracking to occur without oversight, but merely that a more rational estimate of the costs and benefits should be made. This may seem like a vain hope, but remember, you can still buy disposable diapers.
Michael Lynch: I spent nearly 30 years at MIT as a student and then researcher at the Energy Laboratory and Center for International Studies. I then spent several years at what is now IHS Global Insight and was chief energy economist. Currently, I am president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research, Inc., and I lecture MBA students at Vienna University. I’ve been president of the US Association for Energy Economics, I serve on the editorial boards of three publications, and I’ve had my writing translated into six languages. My book, “The Peak Oil Scare and the Coming Oil Flood” was just published by Praeger.
Footnote:
One of the arguments by those fearing fossil fuels is that their use must stop now since we will soon run out of them. Lynch rebuts this notion (“peak oil”) in the video below. He addresses why people are mistaken to believe the following points of conventional “wisdom”:
Oil is finite and must run out.
Pundits are optimists, either conucopians or industry shills.
This proverb from the bible draws an analogy from farming: The seeds you choose to put in the soil lead to different crops. Humans are responsible for the effects of their actions. If the action is based on goodness, it will churn out only goodness in the long run. If the action has been evil, the outcome also tends to be evil. The Holy Gita and Koran also emphasize the same. Goodness is the child of good deeds and misfortune and calamities are the children of evil.
Bringing this into the present, we are seeing the effects of environmental evangelists sowing seeds of fear into generations of children. The climate change movement has morphed into a doomsday cult, with those who have been duped taking to the streets like so many zombies with minds totally captured by fear. Could it be that the alarmists are ramping up fears of the climate boogyman just now, when indications of a cooler future are gaining strength?
We Have Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself.
Parents know that small children at some point become afraid of the boogeyman under the bed. Each child must confront the fear in order to go beyond it. Hank Aaron, #2 all-time home run hitter, said he was cured after his father pulled Hank’s mattress off the bed, putting it directly on the floor. In some way, every child must come to recognize the difference between figments of a fearful imagination, and realities to be faced and overcome. Sometimes people are consumed with doubt and fear as were Americans following the Great Depression. In 1932 Franklin D Roosevelt famously said upon taking office, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” He went on to say: “Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Where, oh where is there such leadership today?
Bjørn Lomborg wrote about the overheated discourse that has children taking to the streets on the advice of adults who should know better. Overheating About Global Warming was published at Project Syndicate. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and images.
Decades of climate-change exaggeration in the West have produced frightened children, febrile headlines, and unrealistic political promises. The world needs a cooler approach that addresses climate change smartly without scaring us needlessly and that pays heed to the many other challenges facing the planet.
Across the rich world, school students have walked out of classrooms and taken to the streets to call for action against climate change. They are inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who blasts the media and political leaders for ignoring global warming and wants us to “panic.” A global day of action is planned for March 15.
Although the students’ passion is admirable, their focus is misguided. This is largely the fault of adults, who must take responsibility for frightening children unnecessarily about climate change. It is little wonder that kids are scared when grown-ups paint such a horrific picture of global warming.
For starters, leading politicians and much of the media have prioritized climate change over other issues facing the planet. Last September, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres described climate change as a “direct existential threat” that may become a “runaway” problem. Just last month, The New York Times ran a front-page commentary on the issue with the headline “Time to Panic.” And some prominent politicians, as well as many activists, have taken the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to suggest the world will come to an end in just 12 years.
This normalization of extreme language reflects decades of climate-change alarmism. The most famous clip from Al Gore’s 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth showed how a 20-foot rise in sea level would flood Florida, New York, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, and Shanghai – omitting the fact that this was seven times worse than the worst-case scenario.
A separate report that year described how such alarmism “might even become secretly thrilling – effectively a form of ‘climate porn.’” And in 2007, The Washington Post reported that “for many children and young adults, global warming is the atomic bomb of today.”
When the language stops being scary, it gets ramped up again. British environmental campaigner George Monbiot, for example, has suggested that the term “climate change” is no longer adequate and should be replaced by “catastrophic climate breakdown.”
Educational materials often don’t help, either. One officially endorsed geography textbook in the United Kingdom suggests that global warming will be worse than famine, plague, or nuclear war, while Education Scotland has recommended The Day After Tomorrow as suitable for climate-change education. This is the film, remember, in which climate change leads to a global freeze and a 50-foot wall of water flooding New York, man-eating wolves escape from the zoo, and – spoiler alert – Queen Elizabeth II’s frozen helicopter falls from the sky.
Reality would sell far fewer newspapers. Yes, global warming is a problem, but it is nowhere near a catastrophe. The IPCC estimates that the total impact of global warming by the 2070s will be equivalent to an average loss of income of 0.2-2% – similar to one recession over the next half-century. The panel also says that climate change will have a “small” economic impact compared to changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, and governance.
And while media showcase the terrifying impacts of every hurricane, the IPCC finds that “globally, there is low confidence in attribution of changes in [hurricanes] to human influence.” What’s more, the number of hurricanes that make landfall in the United States has decreased, as has the number of strong hurricanes. Adjusted for population and wealth, hurricane costs show “no trend,” according to a new study published in Nature.
Another Nature study shows that although climate change will increase hurricane damage, greater wealth will make us even more resilient. Today, hurricanes cost the world 0.04% of GDP, but in 2100, even with global warming, they will cost half as much, or 0.02% of GDP. And, contrary to breathless media reports, the relative global cost of all extreme weather since 1990 has been declining, not increasing.
Perhaps even more astoundingly, the number of people dying each year from weather-related catastrophes has plummeted 95% over the past century, from almost a half-million to under 20,000 today – while the world’s population has quadrupled.
Meanwhile, decades of fearmongering have gotten us almost nowhere. What they have done is prompt grand political gestures, such as the unrealistic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions that almost every country has promised under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. In total, these cuts will cost $1-2 trillion per year. But the sum total of all these promises is less than 1% of what is needed, and recent analysis shows that very few countries are actually meeting their commitments.
In this regard, the young protesters have a point: the world is failing to solve climate change. But the policy being pushed – even bigger promises of faster carbon cuts – will also fail,because green energy still isn’t ready. Solar and wind currently provide less than 1% of the world’s energy, and already require subsidies of $129 billion per year. The world must invest more in green-energy research and development eventually to bring the prices of renewables below those of fossil fuels, so that everyone will switch.
And although media reports describe the youth climate protests as “global,” they have taken place almost exclusively in wealthy countries that have overcome more pressing issues of survival. A truly global poll shows that climate change is people’s lowest priority, far behind health, education, and jobs.
In the Western world, decades of climate-change exaggeration have produced frightened children, febrile headlines, and grand political promises that aren’t being delivered. We need a calmer approach that addresses climate change without scaring us needlessly and that pays heed to the many other challenges facing the planet.
Bjørn Lomborg, a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School, is Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. His books include The Skeptical Environmentalist, Cool It, How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place, The Nobel Laureates’ Guide to the Smartest Targets for the World, and, most recently, Prioritizing Development. In 2004, he was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people for his research on the smartest ways to help the world.
Program Statement October 23, 2018:Canada’s plan ensures that polluters pay for their carbon emissions in every province
Justin Trudeau justified the federal carbon tax this way:
“The core of putting a price on pollution is exactly that. Making sure that pollution is no longer free. You’re making something you don’t want more expensive. We don’t want pollution, so we’re putting a price on it.”
Last week the Ontario and federal governments battled it out in court on the carbon tax and it was the tale of two very different stories.
The opening arguments laid out by lawyers representing the opposing sides showed where they wanted to put their emphasis.
The lawyer for the Government of Ontario argued that the law was unconstitutional while the lawyer for the Government of Canada argued climate change was real, urgent and needed action taken.
One was a legal argument, the other emotional.
Given that judges are human, either could carry the day and anyone saying they know which side will win is fooling you.
Decades of following court cases have taught me that judges are unpredictable.
When he opened his arguments, Josh Hunter, deputy director for the constitutional law branch for Ontario, argued that the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act violated federalism and the constitution.
Hunter was clear to say the Ontario government was not challenging whether climate change was real or action needed to be taken, they were challenging how the federal government was attempting to reach their goals.
“What this reference is about is whether Parliament can impose its solution to the problem on the provinces,” Hunter said. “Or whether in a federal country, the provinces have the flexibility under the constitution to choose what best meets their local circumstances as they work together to combat climate change.”
The argument from Ontario is pretty simple and rooted in legal concepts. Whether the judges buy those legal concepts remains to be seen, though I think they should.
The federal act imposing a carbon tax on some provinces and not others is a violation of our federal system, as well as an attempt by the federal government to encroach on provincial jurisdiction and, effectively, a violation of the “no taxation without representation” concept that has been part of our system dating back to Magna Carta.
Did you know the act setting up this system grants to cabinet and cabinet alone the ability to set the rate of the carbon tax and to adjust it as they see fit without passing another vote in Parliament?
Whatever you think of the carbon tax or climate change, that should be enough to have this act and the tax that goes with it declared unconstitutional.
For their part the feds admitted this act does infringe on provincial jurisdiction but then said that it does so minimally and therefore should be allowed.
Besides, they argued, against no one in the room, climate change is real!
“We know that climate change is an urgent threat to humanity,” said federal lawyer Sharlene Telles-Langdon.
“The accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere causes global warming which is causing climate change and the associated national and international risks to human health and well-being.”
I’m not saying that Telles-Langdon, the general counsel for Justice Canada, didn’t argue constitutional reasons for upholding the law, but she put the urgency of climate change front and centre at every turn.
That is a policy discussion and not a constitutional one, which tells me that even the feds think they have a weak argument on the constitution and want to win on emotion.
What didn’t help the federal argument was the release of the annual report from the federal government on greenhouse gas emissions by the province.
It showed Ontario had reduced GHG emissions by 22% since 2005. Without a carbon tax Ontario is most of the way to meeting its part of Canada’s target of 30% below 2005 levels by 2030.
British Columbia, the province that has had a carbon tax since 2008 and we are told is the model all should follow, is only down 1.5% since 2005.
As a whole Canada is up by 2%.
The question before the court is not one of the impact of climate change or the best way for governments to combat it — those are policy discussions.
The question before the court is one of constitutionality and on that front Justin Trudeau and his Liberals have failed.
Let’s hope the courts are guided by law and the constitution and not emotion or political inclination.
Footnote:
Ross McKitrick explains that economists do favor carbon taxes over cap-and-trade schemes, but on the condition that the tax replaces other fees, taxes and regulations intended to reduce emissions. That condition is never respected by Canada and other nations enacting such. McKitrick writes at Fraser Institute: Trudeau government carbon-pricing plan not in line with Nobel Prize-winning analysis
Canada has a patchwork of highly inefficient regulations with marginal compliance costs, in many cases well in excess of the conventional estimates of the benefits of greenhouse gas emission reductions. But rather than repealing the inefficient regulations and replacing them with a carbon tax, the federal plan involves adding even more regulations to the mix—then sticking a carbon tax on top. This looks nothing like what economists have recommended.
In fact the economics literature provides no evidence this would be an efficient approach, and some evidence it would be worse than regulations alone.
A few months ago I was with a group of Kenyan politicians in Abu Dhabi. Hosting us for a cup of coffee was my good friend Abdalla Nassir. Abdalla is a serial entrepreneur who owns 94 businesses, including the coffee shop. His 95th business is a steel mill that he was going to open in Djibouti, targeting the Ethiopian market of 80 million people.
I asked him why not in Kenya; the gateway to the Comesa market of 150 million people, to which he replied that the cost of power in Kenya is more than twice that of Djibouti and Ethiopia. One week later, I read that a glass company in Mtwapa had just closed down, with the loss of over 400 jobs. The reason? The high cost of power.
So what do we do? The quickest solution that everyone would like to come up with is solar or wind power. Both, ‘clean energy’. The problem is, what do you do when it doesn’t shine for three days? Or if there is no wind? You cannot run a hospital hoping for the sun to shine. Those baby incubators or that poor patient being operated on cannot depend on the weather being conveniently agreeable.
We are forced to look for dependable energy or, to use the lingo of the industry, ‘base load’. That leaves you with two energy sources – coal or gas. Coal is the cheapest. Gas prices are closely correlated to oil prices, which are very volatile and expensive. Remember that we have fewer industries and jobs because of cost. We have little choice but to go for the cheaper option. But the world doesn’t like coal. Why?
Affecting forests
In 2004, the world met in Copenhagen and came to the conclusion that global warming was a real threat to the planet. The world resolved not to allow global temperatures to rise above another 2 degrees.
Anything more would lead to catastrophic changes affecting forests, air, water and the environment. All true so far. No one doubts the disaster of global warming. The solution was either for the world to stop making any new coal plants or for the developed world to reduce their emissions by 10 per cent.
The developed world categorically refused. Such a drastic drop in emission would lead to loss of livelihoods and jobs, something they were not willing to take. So, let us force the poor Third World to stop starting such plants. Let the poor make the sacrifices. Who cares if they lose jobs or new companies? That’s why we have such a strong opposition to our coal power.
Shiekh Mohamed Al Maktoum is considered one of the most visionary leaders in the world. After all, he took the desert and transformed it into one of the world’s leading cities. He has all the gas and oil in the world, but he chose to build the Hassyn Coal Power Plant of 5,000 Megawatt. That is five times the one proposed in Kenya.
Do you think he is unwise to use coal when he has all the other alternatives? Turkey, one of Europe’s major economies, gets over 70 per cent of its power from coal and it is building a new one called Karabiga plant of over 1,500 megawatts. South Africa gets over 90 per cent of its power from coal. Do you think all these people are unwise?
Acceptable levels
Golda Meir, former Prime Minister of Israel once said: “there comes a time in every nation when they have to make sacrifices with their conscience and to make hard choices’’. Kenya is now at that cross point. Either we make that difficult choice and use the cheaper coal and create those jobs – or spend another 20 years dreaming of industralisation and job creation. Fortunately for Kenya, over 90 per cent of our power is from clean energy, mainly geothermal and hydro so the world can forgive us for trying to create jobs.
Chemicals can be deadly if used in excess. For example, 500mg of paracetamol (Panadol) will cure you, but 5,000 grams will kill you. That is the logic of chemistry. The same logic applies to all emissions from a coal plant, whether it be sulphur, carbon-dioxide or nitrogen. What is acceptable and what is not? The World Bank has set the standards that are acceptable and the proposed coal plant in Lamu meets all the requirements – and the day they don’t meet those standards then shut it down. No point arguing about the chemicals without stating the acceptable levels.
I am writing this in Lamu and I have to admit that I am one of the promoters of the coal plant. I am from Lamu, my family lives here and no one can claim to love this place more than I do. I would never do anything that would harm my people. However, there is no greater pollution than having millions of our youth remaining jobless and having their ambitions crushed through loss of hope. To quote Golda Meir, we need to make sacrifices with our conscience and bring the cheap power. Even if this annoys our rich friends.
Mr Shahbal is Chairman of Gulf Group of Companies
Summary
So wealthy elites in Europe and North America get to take virtuous postures on the imaginary problem of global warming, while Africans pay the price. Racism anyone? They are not asking for reparations, just letting them play by the same rules other nations used to build prosperous and healthy societies.
Family Farmed is proud of the blossoming Good Food movement in their hometown of Chicago
Activists are directing school children to the streets to protest for more action against CO2 and their fear of global warming/climate change. In their desire to feel good about saving the planet, they ignore what is being done, and they march rather than picking up shovels and hoes and literally caring for the earth under their feet.
Overlooked is our potential to enhance the performance of the biosphere in capturing CO2 and greening the land. The soil itself is second only to the oceans, and the plant biomass is an additional sink for CO2. Below is an overview of the win-win proposition for humans to sequester carbon in the soil and restore its health and productivity at the same time. H/T Mark Krebs for suggesting this topic and providing resources from his own research and teaching.
The role of soil organic carbon in global carbon cycles is receiving increasing attention both as a potentially large and uncertain source of CO2 emissions in response to predicted global temperature rises, and as a natural sink for carbon able to reduce atmospheric CO2. There is general agreement that the technical potential for sequestration of carbon in soil is significant, and some consensus on the magnitude of that potential. Croplands worldwide could sequester between 0.90 and 1.85 Pg C/yr, i.e. 26–53% of the target of the “4p1000 Initiative: Soils for Food Security and Climate”. The importance of intensively cultivated regions such as North America, Europe, India and intensively cultivated areas in Africa, such as Ethiopia, is highlighted. Soil carbon sequestration and the conservation of existing soil carbon stocks, given its multiple benefits including improved food production, is an important mitigation pathway to achieve the less than 2 °C global target of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Soil as Both Sink and Source
Soils, however, can act as both sources and sinks of carbon, depending upon management, biomass input levels, micro-climatic conditions, and bioclimatic change. Substantially more carbon is stored in the world’s soils than is present in the atmosphere. The global soil carbon (C) pool to one-meter depth, estimated at 2500 Pg C, of which about 1500 Pg C is soil organic carbon (SOC), is about 3.2 times the size of the atmospheric pool and 4 times that of the biotic pool. An extensive body of research has shown that land management practices can increase soil carbon stocks on agricultural lands with practices including addition of organic manures, cover cropping, mulching, conservation tillage, fertility management, agroforestry, and rotational grazing. There is general agreement that the technical potential for sequestration of carbon in soil is significant, and some consensus on the magnitude of that potential.
This diagram of the fast carbon cycle shows the movement of carbon between land, atmosphere, and oceans in billions of tons per year. Yellow numbers are natural fluxes, red are human contributions, white indicate stored carbon.
Croplands Are Key
On this basis, the 4p1000 initiative on Soil for Food Security and Climate, officially launched by the French Ministry of Agriculture at the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change: Conference of the Parties (UNFCCC COP 21) in Paris, aims to sequester approximately 3.5Gt C annually in soils. Croplands will be extremely important in this effort, as these lands are already being actively managed, and so amenable to implementation of improved practices. Furthermore, because almost all cropped soils have lost a large percentage of their pre-cultivation SOC, they potentially represent a large sink to re-absorb carbon through the introduction and adoption of improved or proper management aimed towards increased SOC.
Multiple Benefits of Soil Organic Carbon (SOC)
However, carbon is rarely stored in soils in its elemental form, but rather in the form of organic matter which contains significant amounts of other nutrients, above all nitrogen. Nutrients, biomass productivity, the type of vegetation and water availability, among other constraints therefore can be major limiting factors inhibiting increases in soil carbon sequestration. Further imperative to sequester carbon in soils arises from the multiple co-benefits that are obtained from sequestration of carbon in soils that have been depleted of their organic matter. Soil fertility, health, and functioning are immediate consequences of the amount of soil organic matter (and hence carbon) a soil contains; this is even more important for highly weathered soils, as is the case for the majority of soils in the humid lowland tropics. Increasing carbon in soils also means improving its physical properties and related ecosystems services, such as better water infiltration, water holding capacity, as well as potentially increasing agricultural productivity and ecological resilience.
Reversing Lost SOC
An implicit basic assumption is that in general, 50 to 70% of soil carbon stocks have been lost in cultivated soils, such that the SOC status of almost all cultivated soils can be increased. It is expected that these cropped soils will be able to sequester carbon for at least 20 years before reaching saturation points and new SOC equilibriums, while meta-analysis of field studies suggests that in some instances significant sequestration can continue for 30 or even up to 40 years before reaching new equilibriums.
Where Lies the Greatest Potential
The regions of North America, Eurasia (Russia) and Europe currently store the greatest amount of carbon on cropland, each with more than 21 Pg C, and all together accounting for over 50% of all SOC stocks on cropland globally. By contrast, Central America, North Africa, and the Australian/Pacific region have very low amounts of stored SOC, together comprising 6.48 Pg C or just over 4.6% of the global total. Western Asia, South Asia, Southeast East Asia and East Asia each have moderate amount ranging from 4.38 Pg C to 9.14 Pg C, but together accounting for just less than 2% of global total.
The Top 30 cm are Vital
On these croplands adoption of improved management practices offers the opportunity to sequester significant amounts of carbon in the near term, and potentially to make an important contribution to global mitigation efforts. The 4p1000 Initiative has identified an aspirational sequestration target of 3.5 Pg C/yr to provide substantive global mitigation. Our estimates suggest that from 26% up to 53% (0.90–1.85 Pg C) of this target could be reached in the top 30 cm of cropland soils alone, and continue over at least 20 years after adoption of SOC enhancing management, such as incorporation of organic manures, cover cropping, mulching, conservation tillage, some types for agroforestry practices, rotational grazing, or other practices known to increase soil carbon at the decadal scale.
Carbon Smart Agriculture
Given the large amount of cropland potentially available, sequestering carbon via increases in the soil component on agricultural land is an achievable and potentially effective route to quickly increasing CO2 sequestration in the near term. For comparison, above-ground losses due to tropical land use conversion are currently estimated at 0.6–1.2 Pg C yr-1. A strategy of enhancing agriculture with soil carbon enriching improved practices, e.g. via appropriate policy mechanisms, thus offers significant potential to mitigate land use related carbon emissions and provide an opportunity for agricultural production to positively contribute to global mitigation efforts. SOC may be either enhanced by, or enhance above- and below-ground biomass carbon on agricultural land, allowing for synergistic increases in on-farm carbon stocks. Agroforestry systems and planting trees, for example, may increase soil carbon sequestration.
Productivity and Resilience as well
The benefits of increasing soil organic matter in croplands goes far beyond climate change mitigation potential. Facilitation of increased SOC through improved farming and soil conservation practices, enhancing resilience through improved fertility status and water holding capacity, also provide important adaptation benefits. It is generally recognized that changes in the moisture regime (e.g. drought or heavy precipitation events) can significantly impact crop productivity. These climatic conditions are mitigated by SOC, which adds structure, improves water infiltration and holding capacity, increases cation exchange capacity, and impacts soil fertility, a major controlling factor of agricultural productivity and both regional and household food security. Soil conditions have dramatic effects on the abundance and efficiency of N-fixing bacteria, which are vitally important in cropping systems that lack fertilizer inputs. Thus increased SOC through improved management practices is likely to add substantial resilience to croplands and farming systems, particularly during drought years or increased seasonal variability, helping to avoid edaphic (soil related) droughts that result from land degradation.
Better than the Alternatives
For the most part, agricultural practices that increase soil organic matter are supportive of enhanced food production and other ecosystem services. This is in contrast to other proposed negative emission strategies, such as afforestation (plantations of fast growing trees) and BECCS (bioenergy and carbon capture and storage) that will entail destruction of huge amounts of natural ecosystems or productive agriculture land if implemented at scales large enough to impact CO2 in the atmosphere. Given that hundreds of millions of small farmers for their subsistence depend upon croplands around the world, mitigation benefits of enhanced SOC storage must be recognized as only one significant component of an array of multiple benefits to achieve.
It Won’t be Easy, But We Can Do This
Despite the large technical potential to sequester carbon in soils, there are often significant limitations to achieving that potential in any particular place and within specific farming systems, including lack of biomass and other inputs. In addition, there may be tradeoffs with productivity, food security or hydrologic balances, as well as concerns regarding other GHGs, such as N2O. As with any efforts to sustain notable changes in practice significant understanding of cultural, political and socioeconomic contexts are required.
Humans Should Maximize the Benefits of Global Warming and Rising CO2
Numerous studies are referenced at the NIPCC chapter on CO2, Plants and Soils.While our knowledge of the biosphere CO2 sink is incomplete, much is known to scientists and the information points not to alarm but to opportunity. The surplus CO2 from burning fossil fuels represents an occasion for us to assist nature to replenish soils depleted of the carbon content plants need to achieve their potential. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Assist Forests to benefit even more from rising CO2.
1.2.1 Forests pg. 45
Forests contain perennial trees that remove CO2 from the atmosphere during the process of photosynthesis and store its carbon within their woody tissues for decades to periods of sometimes more than a thousand years. It is important to understand how increases in the air’s CO2 content affect forest productivity and carbon sequestration, which has a great impact on the rate of rise of the air’s CO2 concentration.
Where tropical forests have not been decimated by the targeted and direct destructive actions of human society, such as the felling and burning of trees, forest productivity has been growing ever greater with the passing of time, rising with the increasing CO2 content of the air. This has occurred despite all concomitant changes in atmospheric, soil, and water chemistry, including twentieth century global warming, which IPCC claims to have been unprecedented over the past one to two millennia.
The planet is greener with the rise in CO2.
Forest growth rates throughout the world have gradually accelerated over the years in concert with, and in response to, the historical increase in the air’s CO2 concentration. As the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration rises, forests likely will respond by exhibiting significant increases in biomass production, and thus likely will grow much more robustly and significantly expand their ranges, as is already being documented in many parts of the world.
As the air’s CO2 content rises, therefore, saplings growing beneath the canopies of larger trees will likely increase their rates of photosynthesis under both high and low light conditions characteristic of intermittent shading and illumination by sunflecks. Moreover, because elevated CO2 concentrations allow saplings to maintain higher rates of photosynthesis for longer periods of time when going from lighted to shaded conditions, such trees should be able to sequester greater quantities of carbon than they do now. So powerful is this phenomenon, in fact, the two researchers state current estimates of the enhancement of long-term carbon gains by forests under conditions of elevated atmospheric CO2 “could be underestimated by steady-state photosynthetic measures.”
In contrast to frequently stated assumptions, old growth forests can be significant carbon sinks, and their capacity to sequester carbon in the future will be enhanced as the air’s CO2 content rises.pg 75
What has put the planet’s trees on this healthier trajectory of being able to sequester significant amounts of carbon in their old age, when past theory (based on past observations) decreed they should be in a state of no-net-growth or even negative growth? The answer is rather simple. For any tree of age 250 years or more, the greater portion of its life (at least two-thirds of it) was spent in an atmosphere of much reduced CO2 content.
Zhou et al. (2006), “conducted a study to measure the long-term (1979 to 2003) dynamics of soil organic carbon stock in old-growth forests (age > 400 years) at the Dinghushan Biosphere Reserve in Guangdong Province, China.” and “measurements on a total of 230 composite soil samples collected between 1979 and 2003 suggested that soil organic carbon stock in the top 20-cm soil layer increased significantly during that time (P < 0.0001), with an average rate of 0.61 Mg C ha-1 year-1.”
Manage the land to enhance soil health and productivity
As the CO2 content of the air increases, nearly all plants, including those of various forest ecosystems, respond by increasing their photosynthetic rates and producing more biomass. These phenomena allow long-lived perennial species characteristic of forest ecosystems to sequester large amounts of carbon within their trunks and branches aboveground and their roots below ground for extended periods of time. These processes, in turn, significantly counterbalance CO2 emissions produced by mankind’s use of fossil fuels.
Elevated CO2 enhances photosynthetic rates and biomass production in forest trees, and both of these phenomena lead to greater amounts of carbon sequestration. Elevated CO2 also enhances carbon sequestration by reducing carbon losses arising from plant respiration and in some cases from decomposition. Thus, as the air’s CO2 content rises, the ability of forests to sequester carbon rises along with it, appropriately tempering the rate of rise of the air’s CO2 content.
It would appear the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content will not materially alter the rate of decomposition of the world’s soil organic matter. This means the rate at which carbon is sequestered in forest soils should continue to increase as the productivity of Earth’s plants is increased by the aerial fertilization effect of the rising atmospheric CO2 concentration.
“The accumulation of refractory organic carbon in soils that developed after the deglaciation of the American Pacific Northwest is ongoing and may still be far from equilibrium with mineralization and erosion rates.” This further suggests, in their words, “the turnover time of this carbon pool is 10,000 to 100,000 years or more and not 1,000 to 10,000 years as is often used in soil carbon models.” Smittenberg et al.
These independent experimental observations suggest claims to the contrary have no backing in empirical science. Both the aerial fertilization effect of atmospheric CO2 enrichment and the soil fertilization effect of the increase in nitrogen mineralization induced by global warming increase carbon sequestration in forest ecosystems, providing a strong, double-barreled, negative-feedback brake on the impetus for warming created by the enhanced greenhouse effect of the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content. Pg 98
Warming has produced bumper crops most everywhere.
Grasslands
Most of Earth’s terrestrial plant life evolved around 500 to 400 million years ago, when the katmospheric CO2 concentration was possibly 10 to 20 times higher than it is today. As a consequence, the biochemical pathways and enzymes involved in carbon fixation should be better adapted to significantly higher-than-present atmospheric CO2 levels, which has in fact been demonstrated to be the case. As the atmosphere’s CO2 content has dropped from that early point in time, it has caused most of Earth’s vegetation to become less efficient at extracting carbon dioxide from the air. However, the recent ongoing rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is gradually increasing photosynthetic rates and stimulating vegetative productivity and the terrestrial sequestration of carbon around the globe.
In a five-year study of a grassland growing on a moderately fertile soil at Stanford University’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve in central California— which utilized 20 open-top chambers (ten each at 360 and 720 ppm CO2)—Hu et al. (2001) found a doubling of the air’s CO2 content increased both soil microbial biomass and plant nitrogen uptake. With less nitrogen left in the soil to be used by a larger number of microbes, microbial respiration per unit of soil microbe biomass significantly declined in the elevated CO2 environments; with this decrease in microbial decomposition, there was an increase in carbon accumulation in the soil.pg.114
Jasper Ridge outdoor laboratory at Stanford.
Thus, as the atmosphere’s CO2 content rises, carbon sequestration in the soils of Mediterranean grasslands likely will increase for two reasons.First, it should rise as a consequence of the greater retention times conferred upon the carbon in older soil organic carbon pools, which represent the largest reservoir of terrestrial carbon on Earth. Second, even though soil microbes exhibit a preference for newer carbon under CO2-enriched conditions, it should rise because of the great increase in the amount of carbon going into newer soil carbon pools due to CO2-enhanced root exudation, root turnover, and other types of litter production. Pg.115
How much extra carbon can be sequestered in the planet’s grassland soils as a result of a doubling of the air’s CO2 content? A good first approximation at an answer is provided by Williams et al. (2000), who studied this phenomenon for eight years in a Kansas (USA) tallgrass prairie. . . Extrapolating this value to all of Earth’s temperate grasslands, which make up about 10% of the land area of the globe, Williams et al. calculate the CO2-induced increase in soil carbon sequestration could amount to an additional 1.3 Pg of carbon being sequestered in just the top 15 cm of the world’s grassland soils over the next century. Pg 114
Restore barren land to natural or managed productivity.
1.2.5 Soils 1.2.5.1 Bacteria • Rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations likely will allow greater numbers of beneficial bacteria (those that help sequester carbon and nitrogen) to exist in soils and anaerobic water environments. This two-pronged phenomenon would be a great boon to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Pg.132
Nearly all of Earth’s plant life responds favorably to increases in the air’s CO2 content by exhibiting enhanced rates of photosynthesis and biomass production. Consequently, these phenomena tend to increase soil carbon contents by increasing root exudation of organic compounds and the amount of plant litter returned to the soil. Thus, it can be expected that CO2-mediated increases in soil carbon content will affect soil bacterial communities.
The great deserts of Africa and Asia have a huge potential for sequestering carbon, because they are currently so barren their soil carbon contents have essentially nowhere to go but up. The problem with this scenario, however, is that their soils blow away with every wisp of wind that disturbs their surfaces. The ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content could do much to reverse this trend. At higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations, nearly all plants are more efficient at utilizing water
The end result of all these phenomena working together is greater carbon storage, both above- and below-ground, in what was previously little more than a source of dust for the rest of the world. And therein lies one of the great unanticipated benefits of the CO2-induced greening of the globe’s deserts: less airborne dust to spread havoc across Earth.
“It’s possible to rehabilitate large-scale damaged ecosystems.” Environmental film maker John D. Liu documents large-scale ecosystem restoration projects in China, Africa, South America and the Middle East, highlighting the enormous benefits for people and planet of undertaking these efforts globally.
Educate and enable gardeners and farmers to apply practices that sequester CO2 and enhance soil healthand productivity.
Various programs and initiatives are underway promoting land management practices that improve soil health by enhancing its storage of carbon. One example comes from Mark Krebs, master gardener, who conducts seminars encouraging people to apply these principles to plots of land on their property or publicly available for such care. They educate the public on how soil is degraded and how it can be regenerated.
As well practical methods are recommended to restore the health and productiviy of the soil, as well as increase its carbon storage. Various associations offer resources, for example:
Rather than protesting the use of fossil fuels essential to modern life and to social and economic development in our age, people who want to make a difference should get down in the dirt. The soil is starved for carbon and it is more and more available in the air. Nature is already accessing this renewed source of CO2, We humans should claim this unique opportunity to help the land regenerate and recover its productivity.
The groups have accused Shell of “deliberately obstructing” efforts to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, the key goal of the Paris agreement. Pressure on companies has been building since the UN warned last year that the world has only 12 years to avert a climate disaster.
“The company has no concrete plans to align its business strategy with the commitments contained in the agreement,” Joris Thijssen, the director of Greenpeace Netherlands, said in a statement.
“Shell spends billions on oil and gas exploration each year, with current plans to invest just 5 percent of its budget in sustainable energy and 95 percent in exploiting fossil fuels,” the groups said.
Seven environmental and human rights organizations in the Netherlands have filed suit against Royal Dutch Shell for failing to align its business model with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.
The suit, which is the first to directly challenge an oil company’s business model, was filed Friday in The Hague by Friends of the Earth Netherlands/ Milieudefensie, Greenpeace Netherlands, five other organizations and more than 17,000 Dutch citizens.
The plaintiffs are not seeking financial compensation, but are asking Shell to adjust its business model in order to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius, as recommended by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They allege that by following a business model that it knows will not reach these goals, Shell is violating a Dutch law prohibiting “unlawful endangerment” and is violating human rights by taking insufficient action against climate change.
“If successful, the uniqueness of the case would be that Shell – as one of the largest multinational corporations in the world – would be legally obligated to change its business operations,” said Milieudefensie attorney Roger Cox, who also represented plaintiffs in the landmark Urgenda suit.
Urgenda was the first case in which a court ordered a government to reduce its emissions and the first time a court ruled that not taking sufficient action on climate change is a human rights violation.
Plaintiffs allege Shell’s current business model threatens human rights because the oil giant is knowingly undermining the world’s chances to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. They maintain that rather than guarantee emission reductions, Shell’s current plan would contribute to a much larger global temperature increase.
Shell did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but in a Dec. 2018 press release said it “aims to reduce the net carbon footprint of its energy products by around half by 2050, and by around 20% by 2035, in step with society’s drive to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.”
Plaintiffs maintain that a reduction of the company’s carbon footprint is not the same as a reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions because the carbon footprint involves a relative reduction in carbon emissions per unit of energy produced for the market, not an absolute reduction. Shell could reach its goals by producing as many units of renewable energy as it does oil and gas and could therefore reduce its carbon intensity by half without ever having to reduce its production or trade of fossil fuels.
By using this formula, plaintiffs contend that Shell – which has announced plans to link executive pay to the targets – could reach its stated goals without reducing its carbon emissions.
They say even if Shell’s goals were specific to emission reductions, the company’s target of a 50 percent reduction by 2050 still falls short of the IPCC recommendation that carbon emissions reach net zero by mid-century.
If successful, the lawsuit will be the first in which a company is ordered to reduce emissions.
The suit should come as no surprise to Shell. As required by the Dutch legal system, the defendant organizations sent the company a liability letter last year, demanding it cut back on its oil and gas production and align its business strategy with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Shell rejected those demands, saying it “strongly supports” the goals of the Paris Agreement and pointing to the company’s Sky scenario, as “a technically possible but challenging pathway” toward achieving those goals. The groups, which encouraged Dutch citizens to sign on to the suit, announced in February they intended to sue the oil giant.
According to the Carbon Majors report, which was compiled and released in 2017 by the Climate Accountability Institute, Shell ranked sixth in the world in cumulative greenhouse gas emissions between 1854 and 2010.
Plaintiffs maintain it is still possible to limit global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius, but doing so will require immediate large-scale changes, including a transition to renewable energy and drastic emission reductions by Shell and other carbon polluters.
“We also expect that this [case] would have an effect on other fossil fuel companies, raising the pressure on them to change,” Cox also said that unlike previous cases which sought financial compensation for the effects of climate change, this one involves asking the judge to order Shell to ensure its activities have zero percent carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.
Methinks these folks should beware their wishes coming true:
Science Matters 