Climate Politics

US Federal Court Rules Against Social Cost of Carbon

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Following a Biden Executive Order, in April 2021 several states went to Louisiana District Court to stop implementation of Social Cost of Carbon with respect to federal regulations.  The Memorandum Ruling regarding that case is State of Louisiana et al Versus Joseph R. Biden Jr. et al.  The Plaintiff States are Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.  H/T Francis Menton

The Issues

The Plaintiff States seek injunctive and declaratory relief on three grounds. First, they assert that the SC-GHG Estimates violate the procedural requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) as a substantive rule that did not undergo the requisite notice-and-comment process. See 5 U.S.C. § 553.

Second, the Plaintiff States claim that President Biden, through EO 13990, and the IWG lack the authority to enforce the estimates as they are substantively unlawful under the APA and contravene existing law. See 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A)–(C).

Third, the Plaintiff States maintain that the Government Defendants acted beyond any congressional authority by basing regulatory policy upon global considerations.

The Plaintiff States request a preliminary injunction:
(1) ordering Defendants to disregard the SC-GHG Estimates and prohibiting them from adopting, employing, treating as binding, or relying upon the work product of the Interagency Working Group (“IWG”);
(2) enjoining Defendants from independently relying upon the IWG’s methodology considering global effects, discount rates, and time horizons; and
(3) ordering Defendants to return to the guidance of Circular A-4, explained infra, in conducting regulatory analysis.

To be clear, the Court is ruling only on the actions of the federal agencies and whether the agencies, by implementing the estimates and considering global effects— violate the APA and whether President Biden upon signing EO 13990, violated the separations of powers clause of the United States Constitution. The Court has the authority to enjoin federal agencies from implementing a rule—mandated by an executive order or not—that violates the APA or violates the separation of powers clause. Importantly, the Court is not opining as to the scientific issues regarding greenhouse gas emissions, their effects on the environment, or whether they contribute to global warming.

The Findings

The Court is persuaded that the Biden Administration’s agencies are using the SCGHG. The Court finds that the Plaintiff States have established injury-in-fact.

Plaintiff States argue that the SC-GHG Estimates “affect[] the states’ ‘quasi-sovereign’ interests by imposing substantial pressure on them to change their” practices and laws to remain in compliance with federal standards. Id. at 153. The Court finds that the Plaintiff States also have standing as they are entitled to special solicitude in the standing inquiry.

The Court finds that EO 13990 contradicts Congress’ intent regarding legislative rulemaking by mandating consideration of the global effects. The Court further finds that the President lacks power to promulgate fundamentally transformative legislative rules in Case 2:21-cv-01074-JDC-KK Document 98 Filed 02/11/22 Page 33 of 44 PageID #: 4175 Page 34 of 44 areas of vast political, social, and economic importance, thus, the issuance of EO 13990 violates the major questions doctrine.

The Court finds that EO 13990 was promulgated without complying with the APA’s notice and comment requirements.

The Plaintiff States thus argue that they have demonstrated multiple independently sufficient grounds to vacate the SC-GHG Estimate and therefore have shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits. The Court agrees and finds that the Plaintiff States have shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits.

Plaintiff States have sufficiently identified the kinds of harms to support injunctive relief. Moreover, the Court finds that the Plaintiff States have made a clear showing of an injury-in-fact, and that such injury “cannot be undone through monetary remedies,” Louisiana v. Biden, 2021 WL 2446010, at *21 (W.D. La. June 15, 2021), such that they need immediate relief now, lest they be unable to ever obtain meaningful judicial relief in the future.

The Court finds that the balance of the injuries weighs substantially in favor of the Plaintiff States.

The Court agrees that the public interest and balance of equities weigh heavily in favor of granting a preliminary injunction.

CONCLUSION For the reasons set forth herein above, the Motion for Preliminary Injunction will be granted in its entirety.

Comment from Manhattan Contrarian

On taking office, the Trump administration took steps to neutralize the SCC, so that not much has been heard from it for a while. But Biden’s EO 13990 caused the Obama-era version to get re-instated. The Biden people claim that they are working on further tweaks to the regulations, but meanwhile a large group of Republican-led states went ahead and commenced litigation.

With a regulatory initiative obviously intended to force a gigantic transformation of the economy without statutory basis, the Biden people defended against the Complaint using every shuck and jive and technicality known to man. The SCC rules were not “final” because the administration was still working on a few more tweaks (and then a few more, and then a few more); the state plaintiffs lacked “standing” because the harm was to citizens rather than the state itself; and so forth. The court was having none of it.

The heart of the court’s decision is its determination that the SCC falls under the Supreme Court’s “major questions doctrine,” under which the bureaucracy cannot on its own authority impose “new obligations of vast economic and political significance” unless Congress “speaks clearly.” The states had identified some 83 pending projects involving something in the range of $447 and $561 billion dollars as affected by the SCC rule. That impressed the court as easily within the concept of “major questions.”

We are at the beginning of what could be a very long battle. The bureaucracy has many ways to wear down its opponents. For example, a permit can simply be delayed indefinitely, without any reason being stated, as occurred for example with the Keystone XL pipeline. But at least here battle lines have finally been drawn.

Net Zero Makes Zero Sense

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A pumpjack works just south of Cutbank Lake, near Wembley, Alta. Canada should withdraw from all international agreements on global warming, writes Rex Murphy. PHOTO BY RANDY VANDERVEEN/POSTMEDIA NEWS

Rex Murphy writes at National Post: Why is it Canada’s ‘duty’ to destroy its economy and Confederation in the pursuit of net zero? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The Liberals’ obsession with global warming is the most absurd fixation of any government since Sir John A. set us up as a country

Sometimes the best questions are the ones not being asked.  In the Canadian political arena there are a couple or more in that category.

I’ll go to the biggest one right off the bat: Why and how has the “goal” of getting to net-zero emissions become such a doctrine?

Another way of phrasing the same question is: What’s so wrong, what’s so defective in our current energy system that the Liberal government has pledged, as its absolute priority, to replace it?

Having a secure and tested energy system is a very big deal for any nation, but having a secure and tested energy supply is the quintessential necessity for a vast northern country — really vast — that is also the home of a wealthy, modern economy.

A subsidiary question is: Does the government of a Confederation have the right, the legislative competence to declare the central industry of one of the provinces within that Confederation outmoded? And on that premise make it a national policy to destroy the economic well-being of that province?

And on that question, if one steps back just a minute, is it not amazing, incredible even, that shutting down the industrial base of an entire province is declared as the Number one priority, one laden with moral as well as political content by those in Ottawa who have elevated it to national policy — and this is accepted as normal or acceptable or yes, even noble in the context of “our fight against global warming?”

Is it really acceptable in our Confederation to single out one province to bear the majority weight and economic devastation of this “fight?”

The real and overriding question, however, is why does Canada, or more accurately, why does the government of Canada profess we have a “duty” to the world to work towards eradicating the energy supply and system that we already have, that has mostly served us well, that has brought fortune and security to the nation?

Why is the energy future of Canada under the ethos and edicts of the United Nations’ IPCC?

What is this world we have a “duty” towards? Should we ransack our current energy platform because we have a duty to — say, Russia? Or, more tellingly, does Canada have a moral obligation to shut down the oilsands, antagonize all of Alberta (and jeopardize the national economy with its futuristic visions of a “great transition”), because we have a “duty” towards China? Were we to ask the leaders of the great country of India, who are very much not on side with this same IPCC, whether Canada has an obligation, a “duty” to Delhi to shut down Fort McMurray, they would probably throw up their hands in astonishment that the question is even being put to them.

This “duty” that I insist on keeping in quotation marks, as far as I can tell is one self-declared and self-imposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and flows from his obsessive conviction that he — along with previous adviser Gerry Butts, climate crusader/previous environment minister Catherine McKenna, and previous Greenpeace activist/current environment minister Steven Guilbeault — must be a “leader” in the holy war against global warming.

On substance, Canada can do nothing substantial about global warming. Cancelling the economy of Calgary will not stop the disappearance of the glaciers, lower the sea levels off the Maldives, or rescue one skinny polar bear off a well-photographed ice-floe.

You may have noticed Canada has stalled its economy for over two years and has likely seen the immiseration of thousands of small businesses, restaurants and services. We have also piled on gargantuan deficits and debt — they are both at historic levels. We are seeing wealth-destroying inflation at levels unseen since the early ’90s.

We’re still in this mismanaged and liberty-choking COVID crisis playing havoc with the economy.

So there is another not-much-asked question: Is the current state of Canada one in which the government, by fiat, with the assent of every political party, should conduct the greatest re-engineering of the fundamentals of the nation’s most essential and fundamental industry?

The summary question is: Why are we on this useless, damaging crusade?

I know it’s very much in opposition to the current liturgy to put the question, but why does Canada have any special or even routine obligation to the “world” — or more precisely the mandarins who gather in Paris and Rio and Glasgow — to wreck our working economy in pursuit of some wild notion that this country can function on a forest of windmills (parts from China) and glazed hectares of solar panels?

The global-warming obsession of this current government is the most absurd and senseless fixation of any government since Sir John A. set us up as a country.

The greatest part of that absurdity is how easily all bend to it, all speak the pious words of “net zero” as if they were summoning a genie, as our deluded leaders prate in foreign capitals about the brave new world they are about to call into being.

The same leaders who can’t manage a payroll system, dig a few wells and provide clean water, who shut down Parliament but party abroad with maskless faces laughing at jokes — of which I suspect we are the butt.

They do not have the intellectual competence to engineer this “transition.” As a minority government they do not have the mandate either.

Yet witness the ease with which the press, academia and all who might be regarded as “thought leaders” — a dubious category at the best of times, but dismal at the present — are all abundantly, fervidly on board.

Canada has no “duty” to the world in this farcical pursuit of “net zero” and we will gravely injure our county if we don’t desist. And, once again I caution, we will drive a wedge in Confederation if a policy that treats Alberta as a scapegoat and forces it to carry the burden of an Ottawa obsession, is not abandoned.

Conclusion: Canada should take itself out of all international agreements on global warming.

 

Pushback on Corrosive Energy Idiocy

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Congressman Byron Donalds excoriates the House Oversight and Reform Committee for biting the hands that energize the nation in the five minutes allowed him in video below.  (The settings button on the video allows you to turn on subtitles). For those who prefer reading, my transcript (lightly edited) follows in italics with my bolds and added images.

Chair: The gentleman from Florida Mr. Donalds is recognized for five minutes.

Donalds: Thank you Madam Chair and first of all to the witnesses, the the leaders of Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell, I know that the climate activists are in twitter world which Dave Chappelle says doesn’t exist. And he’s right because it’s just people who have nothing better to do but type on their keyboards. And we do it too here in congress.

But let’s be very clear. You deserve an apology, because what I witnessed today was just rank intimidation by the chair of this committee, trying to get you to pledge on what you’re going to spend your money, is a gross violation of the first amendment. Just because we’re members of congress, and we’ve got microphones and we passed laws, does not mean that we also have the ability to infringe on your ability to organize, whether it’s API or anybody else, or what you choose to spend your money on. It is disgusting, absolutely disgusting. Somebody needs to go call Merrick Garland to tell them to get in here and watch the intimidation that came from this very panel today.

Because this is not about defending big oil or defending big anything; it’s about defending the ability of people in our country to be free to say what they want, think what they want, spend their money how they choose. And if we’re not going to be any better than the Chinese, how do we ever expect to beat them on the world stage? When we’re cutting our neck when it comes to energy production, while they are burning more coal, burning more oil. They’re increasing their emissions and they’re not showing up in Scotland. And why not?

Because they’re interested in building an economy; they’re interested in becoming the dominant economic player across the globe, in becoming the dominant military player across the globe.

Meanwhile we joke around and mess around intimidating you guys who frankly heat our homes, you cool our fridges and keep our cars going. This is insane. So I’m sorry for you and I’m sorry for the people in our country who have to witness shenanigans like this and witness circuses like this.

One show on HBO or whatever it is, is called the circus because that’s exactly what this is. Madam Chair, I’m requesting that a letter be entered into the record. This is a letter written by ranking member Comer and the other ranking members on this committee that actually speaks to the chilling effect that has come from you Madam Chair, asking you to stop intimidating companies, requesting information that is their first amendment right to have. I ask that letter be admitted into the record under unanimous consent

Chair: Without objection.

Donalds: Thank you Madam Chair.

I have a question for Mr. Sommers, now that we’re done with that. Mr. Sommers, it was asked of the executives if they believe in electronic vehicles. And it’s a noble goal to have, but Mr. Sommers: Where does the energy for electricity production actually come from?

Mike Sommers, President, American Petroleum Institute: Thank you congressman. Before I address that question, I do want to clear up one thing. Having a difference of views on electric vehicles is not climate disinformation. We as an organization support all forms of energy. We support the rapid advancement of electronic vehicles as well. But at the same time we don’t agree that the federal government should be the ones funding the build out of that infrastructure. As we built out service stations across the country, those service stations have been developed not by the federal government but by private industry. And members on this panel themselves are investing in building out that infrastructure, as is appropriate for the private sector.

First of all your question is very very important, which is: Where does that energy come from? In the United States most of the energy comes from natural gas. It has replaced coal as the primary source of energy in this country.

Donalds: Let me ask you this question as a follow-up. So if we don’t have natural gas, and obviously the democrats are against coal, where would we actually get the electricity to power all of these electric cars?

Sommers: Well congressman for most countries, and certainly for the United States, there would be likely be a fuel switch back from natural gas to coal.

Donalds: So real quick Mr. Sommers, I don’t mean to cut you off, because you make a great point, but I have 30 seconds. It is important for the American people to understand that if you follow the idiocy that’s in the bipartisan infrastructure agreement, it is going to make natural gas harder to procure. We’re actually not going to have lower emissions we’re going to have higher emissions because you’re going to have to switch back to coal fire plants.

And just for the record let’s also say the world will always demand energy. if you’re not getting it from us, where we actually do it more safely and more cleanly, you’ll get it from Russia or from China. And they don’t care what the climate activists have to say on twitter.

I yield the floor.

 

Brits Run Con Game at Glasgow COP

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Doomsday was predicted but failed to happen at midnight.

Vijay Jayaraj explains in his Real Clear Energy article COP26’s UK Hosts Peddle Climate Misinformation.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

As hosts of the Glasgow COP26 climate conference, UK leaders were models for the meeting’s steady stream of misinformation and fearmongering that came from the likes of Barack Obama and Greta Thunberg.

“The clock on the doomsday device is still ticking, but we’ve got a bomb disposal team on site,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “They’re starting to snip the wires – I hope some of the right ones.” If the specter of catastrophic global warming is not sufficiently scary, how about the image of an explosion?

As for misinformation, Boris claimed that “India (is) keeping a billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere by switching half its power grid to renewable sources.”

Actually, India is increasing emissions, not reducing them.

The country is determined to raise coal production by 50 percent — from 700 million tons to 1 billion tons a year. The country has invested heavily in the coal sector and is asking coal utilities to implement fresh strategies to achieve the new target.

Also, the claim of India’s power grid being 50 percent renewables is misleading. While the total installed renewable capacity is around 40 percent out of the total installed power generation systems in the country, only nine percent of all electricity consumed comes from wind and solar because the so-called green technologies are available much less than are baseload sources. Seventy percent of all electricity comes from coal, followed by hydroelectric and nuclear. Even if wind and solar ever achieve 80 percent of total installed capacity, the actual generation from them would be less than 20 percent.

Also, there is no imminent threat from the climate as Boris so dramatically claims. Certainly not anything thing like a ticking bomb. Antarctica has been colder during the last four years, polar bears have thrived, islands are gaining land mass, and fewer people die from climate disasters than ever before.

Of course, understanding these realities requires unbiased research of data, which seems to be too much of a bother for Boris Johnson. Perhaps, the prime minister’s aides could read him page 256 of the United Nation’s special report, “Global Warming of 1.5°C.”

The report states that if we do nothing on climate, the subsequent theoretical increase of 3.66°C in temperature by the year 2100 will cost a meager 2.6 percent of the global gross domestic product — a loss that gives no reason to panic nor any justification to declare a climate emergency. And that is assuming UN projections are not overstated, which they often are.

To balance the scare tactics of the prime minister, UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak employed alluring cliches to promote the financing of climate polices. “We’re talking about making a tangible difference to people’s lives,” said the chancellor. “About cheap, reliable and clean electricity to power schools and hospitals in rural Africa. About better coastal defenses in the Philippines and the pacific islands to protect people from storm surges. About everyone, everywhere having fresher water to drink…cleaner air to breathe.”

Instead of real-world data, the chancellor uses high-sounding language as poetic musical prelude and endnote to sell his vision of spending money on climate policies for a supposedly better world. He ignores that more people in the world have better access to clean water than ever before in modern history. The share of global population with access to safe drinking water went up from around 60 percent in the year 2000 to around 73 percent in 2020 despite a rapid increase in population and growing groundwater problems in cities.

Our World in DataImage: Improvement in access to clean water globally, Source: https://ourworldindata.org/water-access

Western economies — Europe, UK, and U.S. — that have been dependent on fossil fuels boast some of the cleanest air in the world today. This is because fossil fuels provide the fastest creation of wealth, which can be spent on reducing pollution. Average life expectancy in the world went up from just 45 in 1950 to 71 in recent years. These are all markers of improvement, not degradation.

When it comes to extreme weather events, there has been no increase in the global tropical hurricane frequency, a fact that is conveniently overlooked by leaders like Sunak when they bemoan storms in cyclone-prone regions of the world.

Global Hurricane Frequency — 12-month running sums. The top time series is the number of global tropical cyclones that reached at least hurricane-force (maximum lifetime wind speed exceeds 64 knots). The bottom time series is the number of global tropical cyclones that reached major hurricane strength (96 knots+). Source: http://climatlas.com/tropical/

If the chancellor really intends to provide affordable and reliable energy to the poor in Africa, then fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydro are the only probable solutions. Wind and solar are unreliable, and available battery technologies are simply not viable for on-demand baseload.

For those who care about facts, it is frustrating to have media-enabled leaders utter absurdities with few holding them to account. Billions of energy-starved people deserve better.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.

Trudeau: Let’s Limit How Far You can Drive

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Brad Salzberg writes Trudeau Considers Restricting Distance of Vehicle Travel For Canadian Citizens.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

During the recent COP26 summit, Justin Trudeau hosted a carbon pricing conference showcasing Canada’s carbon policy. He referred to it as “one of the most stringent and ambitious in the world.”

In terms of a domestic carbon program, no emission reduction mandates had thus far been established beyond an agreement between Alberta and Ottawa to limit output at 100 megatonnes per year. Canada emits roughly 730 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent annually. The Trudeau government has now mandated a specific 100-megatonne reduction for our oil and gas sector by the year 2030.

This in itself is not a surprise. What should make the ears of Canadians perk up is one of the proposed restrictions to accomplish the goal. Among other current considerations in the Liberal government’s proposal, we discover the following, as reported by the Calgary Sun this week:

“Limit personal consumption of hydrocarbons by individual Canadians, in terms of allowable miles travelled by motor vehicle, train or air.”

My, my– Canada is certainly filled with surprises these days. Last week delivered another zinger:
“Deliberately coughing at someone during the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a criminal assault.”

Applying our math skills, that’s two examples of unprecedented forms of draconian social measures in the past two weeks. Not that mainstream media will present it as such. In both cases, the information was ever-so-casually tucked into news articles on a larger theme.Let us understand the potential what is being proposed. There may come a time when the distance Canadians can travel in their vehicles includes a hard cap on mileage. Not only would this apply to their personal vehicle, but also to the time they spend idly reading a newspaper while riding a bus.

All of which conjures up a collective yawn from legacy media. As a result, they will likely never juxtapose this “progressive” policy with what Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms has to say about the matter.

6. (1) Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.

(2) Every citizen of Canada and every person who has the status of a permanent resident of Canada has the right:

to move to and take up residence in any province; and
to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province.

What would occur in a case where Charter-based mobility rights were violated by Trudeau’s restriction on distance of travel?

A simple question it is. The answer, of course, is nothing at all. Just as it applies to current Charter breaches that result from Covid mandates.

Result: a loss of personal freedom. Predicted extend of exposure from establishment media? Nothing.

Witness as Canada continues to morph into a reasonable facsimile of authoritarian nations of the world.

Footnote:  See also Uh Oh Canada

 

 

Climatist Insurrection Enters New Phase

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Previously the insurrection by climate anti-fossil fuel acitvists took the form of sabotaging oil and gas infrastructure, led notably by the “valve turners”, who were arrested and mostly let off the hook in a series of high profile trials.  This phase broke down after numerous states enacted serious penalties for attacks on energy projects and infrastructure. Also, with the Biden administration climatists hoped for swift federal action to shut down oil and gas production and supply. See Securing Pipelines Against Disrupters

Disappointed with lack of progress on their “leave it in the ground” agenda, activists are now attempting to occupy federal buildings to intimidate public officials into action.  This could be a precursor of more insurrection events far more serious than anything happening on Jan.6, 2021.

Michael Austin reports at The Western Journal  ‘Insurrection’? Climate Change Protesters Attempt to Storm Interior Department Building.  H/T John Ray.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The Jan. 6 Capitol incursion was not an insurrection, as many left-wing politicians and pundits have claimed.  Sure, some of those present during the incursion were rioters who broke the law. They should be punished accordingly.

 On Thursday, Oct. 14,  a large group of climate change protesters tried to enter the Department of the Interior, according to Ellie Silverman, a reporter for The Washington Post.

“Climate protesters are now rallying outside the Department of the Interior. They’re trying to get inside but police are blocking the entrance. I can see a few Indigenous women through the doorway who are sitting on the floor inside the building and linking arms,” Silverman tweeted.

She further noted that “protesters are remaining on the steps and won’t move out of the doorway where several police are blocking passage into the building.”

If these activists happened to be conservatives protesting against vaccine mandates or Bidenflation, the media would be covering it ad nauseam.

Panicky headlines declaring the return of the Jan. 6 “insurrectionists” would spread like wildfire across social media.

But instead, since the protesters happen to be supporting a cause backed by the establishment elite, the media has remained largely silent.

P.S. I don’t think of these protesters or those at the capital 6/1/21 as “insurrectionists.” But if that is the term used to imprison 6/1/21 participants and remove their civil rights, then it should also be applied here. We do not know whether these disturbances will evolve into riots like those in Portland where the Federal Courthouse was vandalized by insurrectionists, never held accountable.

Glasgow COP Has Fleet of Teslas To Be Diesel-Charged

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Tyler Durden reports at zerohedge  UN Climate Change Conference Reportedly Using Diesel Generators To Charge Teslas Being Used As Shuttles. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

We’re not sure we can think of a better analogue for the lunacy behind the climate change hysteria that what is reportedly going on in Glasgow.

As many people know, the Conference of the Parties (COP) Climate Change Conference, hosted by the UK in partnership with Italy, is taking place in Glasgow from October 31 to November 12.

One blogger from Brighton wrote this week that attendees from the conference will be staying at Gleneagles Hotel.

He wrote that there’s 20 Teslas at the hotel to shuttle people back and forth to and from the convention, which is about 75km.

Then, the kicker. Since the hotel only has one Tesla charging station, diesel generators were contracted to help recharge the Teslas overnight.

The stated purpose of the conference is, among other things, “to review the implementation of the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.”

The climate change conferences now count themselves, according to the UNFCCC’s website, as “among the largest international meetings in the world.”

“The intergovernmental negotiations have likewise become increasingly complex and involve an ever-increasing number of officials from governments all over the world, at all levels, as well as huge numbers of representatives from civil society and the global news media,” the conference’s website says.

Maybe since we’re gathered to talk about the negative effect on the climate, we could at least start by finding a carbon neutral way to shuttle yourself back and forth to the event.

It’s almost like these meetings aren’t really about climate change after all…

 

So Called “Climate Science”

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Norman Rogers writes at American Thinker The ‘Science’ of Climate Change.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The science surrounding COVID has been hijacked for political purposes. People who recovered from the disease are pushed to get vaccinated, even though they have a natural immunity that is stronger than vaccine immunity. People are required to wear masks even though masks are essentially useless for preventing infection. People that die are reported as dying of COVID even though they died of something else. The government demands that children be vaccinated even though they are naturally resistant to the disease and suffer disturbing side effects from the vaccine. Schools are closed for no good reason.

The “science” of climate change is also BS. That should be easier to accept after seeing what the government did to COVID science. Why do politicians want to hype a nonexistent climate crisis? In a word: power. By claiming that there is an urgent climate crisis the politicians can spend billions to fight the imaginary foe. Those billions create political allies and reward friends. H.L. Mencken put it nicely in 1918:

The parade of imaginary environmental catastrophes during the last 70 years is very long. Here are some books predicting this or that environmental disaster: Our Plundered Planet (1948), Road to Survival (1948), Silent Spring (1962), Famine 1975! (1967), The Population Bomb (1968), The Limits to Growth (1972), An Inconvenient Truth (2006), This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. Climate (2014), The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (2019).

Richard Lindzen, one of the most accomplished climate scientists in the world by virtue of his discoveries, does not have to kowtow to the global warming mob. In an essay, he pointed out that scientific data that challenge the global warming hypothesis are simply changed. He cites examples of how environmental extremists have infiltrated scientific organizations. [See Climate Science Was Broken]

Tony Heller, an engineer and geologist, operates a long-running website, Real Climate Science. He specializes in exposing the changed data mentioned by Richard Lindzen. The promoters of climate change cherry-pick data when they are not changing it. Heller exposes the lie in the National Climate Assessment that heatwaves are becoming more common. He exposes “adjustments” to the U.S. temperature record to bring it into line with climate change predictions.[See Man Made Warming from Adjusting Data]

In her book The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert, Donna Laframboise exposes the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN organization that pretends to produce very careful and serious reports on the Earth’s climate. Most climate hysteria traces back to the IPCC’s reports. The IPCC does not follow its own procedures and is populated by environmental activists with limited scientific credentials. Its reports are masterful examples of wordy expositions that circle around scientific problems rather than presenting solid ideas backed by facts. The IPCC is a political organization, not a scientific one.

Amusingly, the longtime head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian railroad engineer, is also the author of a porn novel: Return to Almora. The 75-year-old bureaucrat was forced out of an Indian environmental organization for making persistent and improper advances to young women that worked for him. But, of course, that is irrelevant to his accomplishments as head of the IPCC.

The predictions of climate doom are based on complex computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere. Kevin E. Trenberth, an accomplished climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research said this about these models:

“None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate. In particular, the state of the oceans, sea ice, and soil moisture has no relationship to the observed state at any recent time in any of the IPCC models.”

The method of the IPCC is to average together the results from dozens of computer models to make their predictions. They don’t actually say “predictions,” they say “projections,” but the rest of the world sees predictions. The model developers try to make their models fit climate history on the assumption that if they fit the past, the models might have predictive value for the future. There are a few problems. The models are so complex and have so many adjustable parameters, that fitting the past becomes an exercise in curve fitting. Further, the modelers are each permitted to have their own climate history. Parts of climate history that are poorly known, such as aerosols, can be fiddled to make a particular model fit better. [See Climate Models: Good, Bad and Ugly]

Figure 8: Warming in the tropical troposphere according to the CMIP6 models. Trends 1979–2014 (except the rightmost model, which is to 2007), for 20°N–20°S, 300–200 hPa. John Christy et al. (2019)

This method, applied to the stock market, would be to make a model and adjust it so that it explains past gyrations of the market. Then wahoo… the modeler can make billions. It doesn’t work, as the scarcity of mathematicians that are billionaires testifies.

I spent 10 years going to the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union. I spoke with many climate scientists including many who freely admitted in private that global warming is a very dubious enterprise.

I remember a Danish guy who visited beaches in northern Greenland by dog sled. He discovered 6,000-year-old driftwood on a beach always blocked by ice, year-round. That was clear evidence that the Arctic Ocean was summer ice-free during a time called the Holocene Optimum. Present-day global warmers claim that our coming climate disaster will again make the Arctic Ocean summer ice-free, something that happened 6,000 years ago with no help from SUVs or belching cows. Of course, the guy was afraid to make too much of his discovery because it challenges the climate doom theory.

There is no such thing as an early career climate scientist that is skeptical concerning global warming. I actually tried to find one and did a poster at a scientific meeting on the subject. The reason is simple. It is not because the science is so clear that only an idiot would question it. It is because our early-career climate scientist would soon be looking for a new job. Interfering with the flow of money from Washington is grounds for dismissal.

I still believe in science and I feel sorry for all the closeted climate scientists. Like the Soviet geneticists forced to cheer for Lysenkoism, these academics must cheer the global warming racket. They have wives, children, and mortgages.

Twin Failed Projects: Afghanistan and Climate Change

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Rupert Darwall explains the similarity in his Spectator article Afghanistan and climate change: the West’s twin failures. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and some added images.

Both have the same cause: a failure to accept reality

The West’s humiliation in Afghanistan has an older brother: climate change.

As siblings, the two share characteristics, most obviously an inability to confront unwelcome facts. In Afghanistan, there was a large constituency led by the Pentagon invested in the mantra of proclaiming progress in the fight against the Taliban. Climate has its own industrial complex of NGOs, climate scientists, renewable energy lobbyists profiting from the energy transition, eager helpers in the media, and politicians posing as world saviors.

Energy experts tell us renewable energy is cheaper than building new fossil fuel power stations. If they’re right, why did China build the equivalent of more than one large coal plant a week last year? Its slave labor camps help produce materials for Chinese solar panels, which make them the cheapest in the world. This led the Biden administration to ban their importation. In 10 years, India — a country more susceptible to Western fads — increased the amount of electricity it generated from coal nearly six times faster than from wind and solar. In 2020, fossil fuels accounted for almost 90 percent of India’s primary energy consumption.

These facts help explain the biggest fact of all. The first 20 years after the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change saw carbon dioxide emissions rise 60 percent. From 2012 to 2019, they rose a further 5.4 percent. However this is dressed up, it’s failure. Meanwhile, the West’s energy emissions have been more or less flat for nearly three decades and on a downward trend since 2007. Emissions from the Rest of the World account for all the growth in global emissions, suddenly accelerating in 2002 from an average of around 1 percent a year to nearly 5 percent a year in the 12 years until 2014.

As a matter of simple arithmetic, the West’s declining share of global emissions means that whatever it does or doesn’t do is of diminishing relevance to the future of climate change. The West’s solipsism of ‘we’ — as in ‘we must act’ — is a profound self-deception.

Foolishly, the West swallowed the claims of small island states that they would sink beneath the waves unless the rise in global temperature was kept below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. This was how ‘pursuing efforts’ to meet the 1.5°C limit ended up in the Paris agreement. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) later confirmed, there was no scientific basis for this. ‘Observations, models and other evidence indicate that unconstrained Pacific atolls have kept pace with S[ea] L[evel] R[ise], with little reduction in size or net gain in land,’ the IPCC said. Instead, the IPCC argued that the 1.5°C target and net zero emissions by 2050 — a target set by the IPCC and not in the Paris agreement — provide the opportunity for ‘intentional societal transformation’.

Stamped all over the West’s two decades of failure in Afghanistan are the words ‘societal transformation’.

‘It has been the hubristic belief that Western values should be universally applied that has led to the folly of nation-building in Afghanistan,’ Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain’s former ambassador in Washington, has written. Climate involves a double dose of hubris. Western politicians expect other countries to turn their backs on the development paths that made the West wealthy. Yet the same politicians seek to transform their own societies in ways that will make many people — especially the middle class and working families — poorer without having won an honest, democratic mandate to do so. They will thereby invite a populist backlash.

Realism disappears on the shoreline of climate change on the presumption that other nations share the Western belief that climate transcends geopolitics.

It wasn’t a pretty sight when John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, met China’s gimlet-eyed realists earlier this month. In a blunt statement, they told Kerry that Washington should correct its ‘wrong policies’ on China if the US wanted a dialogue on climate. The requirement to appease China could not have been clearer.

In all likelihood, Kerry will probably get off more lightly than Boris Johnson and the British government, the hosts of this year’s UN climate conference in Glasgow. They naively built up expectations that the talks would produce a deal to save the planet. It showed great ignorance of three decades of UN climate diplomacy: there was never going to be a deal to cut emissions at Glasgow. The last time that happened was at the Kyoto climate conference 24 years ago.

The UN climate convention was a product of a different era. Nato’s Afghanistan operation occurred at the apex of the America’s unipolar moment. The short era of George H.W. Bush’s new world order is over. We live in a time of renewed great power rivalry. China and Russia act in ways Otto von Bismarck would recognize. Of the great powers, they are the principal winners from the West’s humiliation in Afghanistan and they are the biggest winners from the Paris agreement. China keeps its coal-based economy while America runs down its oil and gas industries, only recently having become the world’s largest producer of hydrocarbons.

As Europe phases out coal, so too does it becomes more dependent on the Kremlin for natural gas. The lessons of Afghanistan and climate are the same: the West won’t be defeated by its enemies, but by its refusal to see the world as it is.

Biden Preaches Climatism

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Spencer Brown reports at TownHall Biden Declares Climate Change a Pressing Issue After 48 Years in Government.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Flanked by New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), and other local officials, President Biden stood atop Ida’s flotsam to call for radical policies allegedly aimed at addressing climate change.

Beginning with some confusion as to whose congressional district he was in, Biden said “It’s about time we step up” to confront climate change, despite his more than four decades serving in the Senate and White House that apparently failed to accomplish anything meaningful on the climate change front.

“People are beginning to realize this is much much bigger,” he explained of the weather that he says is the result of climate change before he criticized “a whole segment of our population” that he believes is denying climate change. “They don’t understand,” he added. “I think we’ve all seen even the climate skeptics are seeing” that so-called extreme weather is proof of climate change.

“Climate change poses an existential threat,” said Biden, raising his voice. “It’s here, it’s not going to get any better,” he added while insisting “we can stop it from getting worse.” If the Left’s climate agenda isn’t accomplished, Biden threatened, “the storms are gonna get worse and worse and worse.”

For his own record, then-Senator Biden voted against more stringent fuel efficiency standards a handful of times. And Biden’s words Tuesday suggest his time as Vice President in the Obama administration accomplished little to nothing. After all, if American policy could save the planet, wouldn’t eight years of Obama and Biden in the White House — which included negotiating the Paris Climate Agreement — have mitigated damage like that he spent Tuesday surveying?

“We’ve gotta listen to the scientists and economists,” Biden admonished. “They tell us this is code red.”  “The world is in peril,” Biden claimed, insisting “that’s not hyperbole.”

Among Biden’s recommendations to solve the climate change he lamented is to, “by 2020, make sure all of our electricity is zero emissions,” a deadline we passed nine months ago.

“We’re here, we’re not going home until this gets done, we’re not leaving,” said Biden shortly before departing to board Air Force One to travel home to the White House.

Earlier during his Tuesday tour of damage from the remnants of Hurricane Ida, Biden was heckled by a local resident who yelled “Resign, you tyrant” as Biden walked nearby.