Guest post by David Middleton
Much of the sarcasm in this post, as well as some of the material, was borrowed from previous posts of mine.
At first glance, I thought she was flipping the bird at the camera.
Energy and Environment
EPA chief: Trump can’t halt U.S. shift to clean energy
By Brady Dennis November 21
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday gave an impassioned defense of the Obama administration’s energy and environmental policies and insisted the nation’s shift from fossil fuels will continue no matter who occupies the White House.
“The inevitability of our clean energy future is bigger than any one person or one nation,” Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a speech at the National Press Club that was twice interrupted by protesters.
[…]
“Science tells us that there is no bigger threat to American progress and prosperity than the threat of global climate change,” she said. “And if you take nothing else from my speech today, take this: The train to a global, clean-energy future has already left the station. We have a choice. We can choose to get on board, to lead. Or we can choose to be left behind.”
[…]
“Science tells us that there is no bigger threat to American progress and prosperity than the threat of global climate change”… Good fracking grief!!!
Can you say delusional?
The Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy (DICE) model, developed by William Nordhaus at Yale University, which has the highest climate costs of the Obama administration’s three models, estimates that global GDP in 2100 without climate change would be $510 trillion. That’s 575 percent higher than in 2015. The cost of climate change, the model estimates, will amount to almost 4 percent of GDP in that year. But the remaining GDP of $490 trillion is still 550 percent larger than today. Without climate change, DICE assumes average annual growth of 2.27 percent. With climate change, that rate falls to 2.22 percent; at no point does climate change shave even one-tenth of one point off growth. Indeed, by 2103, the climate-change-afflicted world surpasses the prosperity of the not-warming 2100.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442383/donald-trump-climate-change
Setting aside the facts that the Social Cost of Carbon is 100% mythical and that neither 2.27% nor 2.22% growth are paths to prosperity (2% growth is basically treading water). We’re supposed to gleefully spend $44 trillion over the next couple of decades based on a statistically insignificant difference between two rolls of the DICE?
Even with U.S. “leadership,” the commitments made by other countries under the Paris agreement look almost identical to the paths those countries were on already. Thus the agreement’s impact is at best a few tenths of a degree Celsius. MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, for instance, projected 3.9°C of warming by 2100 without the Paris agreement and 3.7°C with it.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442383/donald-trump-climate-change
If Ms. McCarthy defines “prosperity” as the difference between 2.27% and 2.22% GDP growth, she is fracking delusional.
If Ms. McCarthy thinks that our salvation from the “threat of global climate change” rests on the difference between 3.7°C and 3.9°C from 1850-2100, she is delusional… Particularly since almost all of the actual observation-based data indicate that the total warming in a “business as usual” scenario will be no more than 2°C from 1850-2100.
This bit is priceless…
“The train to a global, clean-energy future has already left the station. We have a choice. We can choose to get on board, to lead. Or we can choose to be left behind.”
“The train to a global, clean-energy future” is the tiny green “hockey stick” at the bottom of the graph. It runs mostly on corporate welfare and the “train” literally “can’t get there from here”…
Despite the investment of over $1 trillion of private capital and billions in corporate welfare since 2008, wind and solar have actually grown at a slower pace than natural gas and are projected to have a slower growth rate through 2040. Renewables, including hydroelectric, have barely gotten back to where they were in 1930.
Draining the Swamp
The swamp draining can’t begin soon enough. This will be a good start:
Donald Trump is poised to eliminate all climate change research conducted by Nasa as part of a crackdown on “politicized science”, his senior adviser on issues relating to the space agency has said.
Nasa’s Earth science division is set to be stripped of funding in favor of exploration of deep space, with the president-elect having set a goal during the campaign to explore the entire solar system by the end of the century.
This would mean the elimination of Nasa’s world-renowned research into temperature, ice, clouds and other climate phenomena. Nasa’s network of satellites provide a wealth of information on climate change, with the Earth science division’s budget set to grow to $2bn next year. By comparison, space exploration has been scaled back somewhat, with a proposed budget of $2.8bn in 2017.
Bob Walker, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said there was no need for Nasa to do what he has previously described as “politically correct environmental monitoring”.
“We see Nasa in an exploration role, in deep space research,” Walker told the Guardian. “Earth-centric science is better placed at other agencies where it is their prime mission.
[…]
Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said as Nasa provides the scientific community with new instruments and techniques, the elimination of Earth sciences would be “a major setback if not devastating”.
“It could put us back into the ‘dark ages’ of almost the pre-satellite era,” he said. “It would be extremely short sighted.
[…]
“Without the support of Nasa, not only the US but the entire world would be taking a hard hit when it comes to understanding the behavior of our climate and the threats posed by human-caused climate change,” he said.
[…]
Hopefully President Trump’s first budget will zero out some of this…
Federal funding for climate change research, technology, international assistance, and adaptation has increased from $2.4 billion in 1993 to $11.6 billion in 2014, with an additional $26.1 billion for climate change programs and activities provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009. As shown in figure 1, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has reported federal climate change funding in three main categories since 1993:
- technology to reduce emissions,
- science to better understand climate change, and
- international assistance for developing countries.
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The EPA needs to be cleaned out, shut down, and the nest of rats in there charged with crimes against the people and all of them sent to prison.
May well resemble an upcoming scene at EPA, David. This too.
https://youtu.be/MMKFIHRpe7I
Two fingers to you too Gina !
“EPA chief: Trump can’t halt U.S. shift to clean energy”
Neither would he want to, he has always been very clear that he wants clean air and pure water. What he will be able to do is stop the BS misuse of what the words “clean” , “dirty” and “pollution” mean.
The Clear Air Act will get back to being about clean air once anti-science political activists like Gina McCarthy are out of the way.
The problem is this: How clean, is clean enough. Many environmentalists insist that only 100% pure is acceptable, and they don’t care how much of your money they have to spend to reach that goal.
How clean is clean, you ask? Drink a gallon of 100.000% clean water all at once and it can do significant damage to the drinker (due to lack of mineral salts). So achieving the absolute limit isn’t necessarily beneficial; indeed, it is seldom cost effective say nothing of the deleterious collateral consequences.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/dhm1353035/Spencer_ECI_zps16948f96.png
only 100% pure is acceptable
==================
The perfect is the enemy of the good
Voltaire
in striving for perfection we consume all available resources and do more harm than good.
I wonder if she has decided where she will live out her retirement!
@David Middleton
Many years ago I heard that the rule of thumb for abatement was that each decimal point shift was 10X the cost; if 90% is x, 99% is 10x, 99.9% is 100x, and so on.
Well said!
Well, in some countries, two fingers up is a similar gesture to the middle one alone in the US. Still a kind of “Up Yours” especially where sir names begin witn MC or MAC
I think we need to force the Clean Air Act to make our air 100% pure. We need to start making our air 100% pure Oxygen. Can you imagine the health impact that will have?
I sure hope you guys don’t really believe this is about some clean freaks getting carried away . .
How clean is clean? People should realize what conditions were like in the 1950s and 60s. Things were bad, the Great Lakes were dead from pollution – society was using them for a sewer, coal was burned the old fashioned way…, and no one paid attention. When Nixon created the EPA in 1970, it was needed. By the 1980s most of the cleanup was in high gear and only time was needed for it all to take full affect. Since then, the EPA has grown into a totalitarian monster searching for a mission to justify itself. Truth is, the EPA should be dissolved. Let the Dept. of Interior deal with any “accidents”. At this point economic prosperity will keep things in check: A rich nation will demand a clean environment, while a poor one only works to prevent starvation, leaving the environment to fend for itself.
Izzatta she or one of the other 57 (not including hermaphrodites).
Don’t worry Gina, the free clean green renewable energy program will shut down all on its own, without any help at all from PE Donald Trump.
G
Notice how the rats leaving the sinking ship are all getting uppity as they head out to find useful work.
I would think all engineers are familiar with The Law of Diminishing Returns.
Do you suppose they have any over at the EPA?
@ur momisugly Rotor,
There is no real “Law of Diminishing Returns”.
There is however the “Law of Conservation of Energy”. Which is where the concept of diminishing returns comes from.
They should also include in that bunch of rats, LISA JACKSON, who SEPP named their April Fools Award after her. The Trophy is a LUMP of coal.
Let’s not forget another EPA lost cause who was convicted of fraud, super CIA spy John Beale, now out of jail and enjoying a lucrative retirement on the taxpayer’s dime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Beale
..Hmmm, I think the “Alarmists” are in the last stages of “Trump D’nile” !!
Science tells us that there is no bigger threat to American progress and prosperity than……the alt left
No, Science doesn’t tell us that – science may provide an answer to why things happen, but it tells us nothing.
It is our previous experience that tells us that the alt left is the biggest threat to progress and prosperity. And based on this previous experience, the sooner we get such deluded people out of positions of power the better.
The left does seem to attract a certain personality type.
“The inevitability of our clean energy future is bigger than any one person or one nation,” Administrator Gina McCarthy said…
This is not alt left. The “inevitability” is the same inevitability we can find in Marx’s Das Kapital – and criticized by Karl Popper under the term historicism. The Don is forcing the leopard to show its spots – is the hunt on?
Observation: A correlation between Leftists in power and a sluggish economy, social disorder, racial tensions, foreign encroachments.
Hypothesis: Leftists in power are bad for the country.
Experiment: Allow Leftists to have complete power for eight years. Almost, but not quite, a destruction test…
Experimental result: An even more sluggish economy, more social disorder, racial tensions at the breaking point, foreign encroachments that extend even into the sovereign territory of the country.
Conclusion: Hypothesis is highly likely to be true – experiment did not demonstrate the null in any way, shape, or form. Advance former hypothesis to the status of theory – or even law of nature.
too funny….they claim the science is settled
“Without the support of Nasa, not only the US but the entire world would be taking a hard hit when it comes to understanding the behavior of our climate and the threats posed by human-caused climate change,” he said.
NOAA can take over any climate duties NASA has at this time.
NASA can still build and launch the satellites.
there is no bigger threat to American progress and prosperity than the anti-science, anti-progress RESPONSE to the farce of global climate change..
USA has to get away from the going down the massively costly, environmental and economically destructive “climate change™” agenda if it is going to survive as the USA.
Trump will be marked as the saviour of the USA IFF he sticks to his promises.
Latitude November 23, 2016 at 7:37 am,
True and how easy things move left: Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics.
1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
Closely related is the Iron law of oligarchy.
From McCarthy’s NPC speech:
“We’re in a spectacularly different place today than we were when President Obama took office.”
Well, at least she got one thing right.
Yes we are now almost $20 Trillion dollars in debt without anything to show for the doubling except a stagnant economy, the EPA is out of control, destroying the economy and frequently required to step down by the Judiciary with wild undocumented requirements. I have listened to her testify before Congress and I have never heard anyone less competent and unable to answer questions intelligently, while being arrogant toward the people she is supposed to answer to.
Much of the “progress” made during the previous 8 years was due to EPA going after small increments of emissions that cost more and more to remove. The economic justification for the mercury and air toxics rule (MATS) was not due to benefits in reducing mercury, it was from reducing particulates that were already being reduced by other regulations. And even those “benefits” were suspect, being based on, you guessed it, models.
And progress being made at the state level on CO2 is based on 2 factors: 1) greenies in charge of the state government willing to spend other people’s money on the renewables that would not exist without subsidies, and 2) power companies and state regulators trying to get a jump on the CPP. In spite of what many think, planning a whole new way to run and supply the grid takes a considerable amount of time. Beginning to comply in 2022 was a real crunch. If the return on investment is only based on state goals, then many projects will evaporate, I have already seen one do just that.
When the bigs like Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook wake up and see their shareholder value being squandered on paying too much for renewables then a lot of this business will dry up.
Yes and we need answers about the “ILLEGAL HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION” conducted by EPA and exposed on Steve Milloy’s website JUNK SCIENCE. Click the features button and take a walk on the wild side.
Gina, you’re fired.
“It could put us back into the ‘dark ages’ of almost the pre-satellite era,” he said.
They are already there. NASA, our space agency, has long touted the manipulated surface data for global temperature, ignoring the satellite date which wasn’t giving them the answer they wanted. Close down Gavin’s department for sure. It is just a free office and staff for “realclimate anyway.
Trump’s needs to have explained the difference between climate monitoring and all the alarmist climate modelling BS done by GISS.
It would seem appropriate for NASA to be launching satellites : that is “space” and they are a space agency. What they need to defund is the worthless, politicised climate modelling and the IPCC
BTW it is also worth noting that much of the useful climate data has come from the military Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, once that data was declassified and made publicly available.
This is an very interesting point here : Who does actually pay for the GOES satellites? Isn’t that the NOAA as opposed to NASA? The satellite monitoring and data collection are vital for any studies on meteorology, but since there are many agencies (public and – essentially – private) who can build and deliver the satellites (and do the analysis) just what does NASA provide for their funding?
When NASA was the only agency that could put up a satellite, of course they had a role (although their role on the data analysis of terrestrial temperatures has always seemed a bit tenuous to me). Now that they don’t have a monopoly on near earth orbits, they really need to stop their mission-creep and re-focus their goals.
Let us all hope that Mr Trump’s administration realizes that the first A in NASA is aeronautics, and reverses some of the reductions in that part of NASA’s budget.
There is a simple misconception in Ms McCarthy’s statement. In general, NASA neither builds the satellites, nor the instruments. The satellites are built by contractors for NASA, and the instruments are developed either by contractors, universities or labs. NASA manages the satellite development, test and evaluation, launch, on-orbit checkout and operations of the satellites. However, much of the work is contracted out. Deleting the Earth sciences budget and moving some of the work to NOAA will not really change this – NASA can be involved in the satellite work. NOAA can specify what the satellites have to do and handle the data
@Retired_Engineer_Jim
Good points, I doubt very many people understand how that system works.
BTW I am a “Retired Engineer Jim” as well.
If Yale is so sure the DICE model works, let it invest its entire endowment for 10 years based on the model. After ten years we can see if the model actually works.
Well,
Trump + a Republican Congress + a Republican Senate + Trump Court appointments + a ball point pen + a castrated Main Stream Media + EPA over reach + Elon Musks’ coal powered cars + Solyndra
=
an end to “clean energy” boondoggles funded by the taxpayer.
It won’t be the end to “clean energy” boondoggles funded by the taxpayer. There is a lot of inertia built it. I think the best we can expect is for Trump to put a big dent in it.
True…Any that are as a consequence of exec order are over.
Also.. consider the chilling effect Trump et al as above with have on investment speculators. Shorting Clean Energy companies will be high risk….Investment money (with the exception of Gates etc) will go elsewhere.
Trump is not into dents!!!!
Yes, Mr Middleton – lots of inertia. For example, next year’s budget is pretty much ready for submittal to the Congress – the new Administration can adjust it (for example, take Earth sciences away from GISS and transfer soem of it to NOAA), but there won’t be major changes. The US Government “… maneuvers with the stately grace of a battleship.”
And thanks for the article – sarcasm enjoyed.
I have to interject and offer evidence that significant government programs can be stopped cold: the B-2 and the F-22, for example. Both programs were terminated abruptly, even though neither had reached the intended production quantity. The Seawolf-class submarine program was stopped cold after only 4 were produced. The Future Combat System was ultimately canceled after 10 years of no results (which is why I always referred to it as the Futile Combat System). Yes, other programs linger, but the point is to demonstrate that programs can be killed immediately.
All it takes is to pull out the financial plug. Lights out. Flat-line. Room Temperature.
I would also point out that if programs are canceled WITHOUT ANY REPLACEMENT, the program staff will be in a great stir and tizzy to find gainful employment. They will probably not have much time available to run blogs or posture before news cameras. They will probably have to align their careers with actual space or aeronautical science in order to remain on payroll.
Let us remember, we are talking about a president who made his reputation by saying “You’re Fired.”
“Science tells us that there is no bigger threat to American progress and prosperity than the threat of global climate change,” she said
————————————————–
until you look at the data
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2873672
Semantics.
The world will shift to energy sources with lower CO2 output over time as fossil fuel resources become rare and expensive and the costs of other energy sources fall. But the massive taxpayer “incentives” will stop and much of that money will find more productive uses.
Natural gas to nuclear (N2N) is the fastest, most cost-effective pathway.
Currently. 5 years from now it could be different.
I don’t believe in trying to solve future problems with current technology.
Since you can never currently have future technology, how do you solve future problems now?
/Sarc
Try Combined Cycle Gas Turbine over PWR Nuclear Steam. Do it NOW! (And no cooling towers allowed – they waste large quantities of drinking water!)
You are sadly misinformed. I suggest you read Nuclear Scientist Robert Zubrin’s “Merchants of Despair”.
We will never run out of carbon fuels as they are by-products of nuclear daughter reactions.
OH YES WE ARE SITTING ON TOP OF THE NUCLEAR REACTOR IN THE EARTH”S CORE. WITH A VIRTUALLY INEXHAUSTABLE FUEL IN URANIUM & THORIUM .
Who is Ms McCarthy putting up her two fingers towards? The American people, perhaps?
Maybe a bit harsh to all left wing ladies but why do I think they are all trying to look like men and are so unattractive? I had to take a look twice before I saw a woman in the picture ( and it was the finger thing that gave it away).
“The train to a global, clean-energy future has already left the station”
Which platform did it leave from? Platform 9 3/4?
It is actually a hearse, not a train.
One of Hansen’s death trains?
SteveT
Yes, and that train would have never left the station without diesel fuel made from petroleum.
Gonna be that way for a long time, too.
There are electrically powered trains – but the power probably comes from nasty old coal-fired power plants.
If clean energy is inevitable, we can do away with the subsidies.
Exactly! The private sector will embrace and commercialize them when they’re economically viable, and not a moment sooner.
Rocky
Spot on.
My one huge hope for PE Trump, and for Brexit Britain.
If quasi socialist states choose to waste tax-payers’ [yes, other peoples’] money – that is their look-out.
Auto.
If the “train” that Gina McCarthy is driving ever gains steam, we will all be looking at $3,000 per month electric bills. She is indeed “delusional.”
Take a look at this piece that was just published by CBC a few hours ago re: Ontario’s situation.
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/opinion/ontario-hydro-bills-1.3862838
Maybe Josh should do a solar-windmill powered train leaving the station puffing steam, the “greenhouse gas” called “water vapor”, with Gina on the caboose’s rear platform having “the vapors”?
Just a thought. 😎
To see the likes of Gina McCarthy put firmly back in her little box will be one of the great treats of Trumps presidency. It will be priceless. Ta-ta Gina, sweet cheeks.
Draining the swamp should not be confused with mine draining, right Gina?
She should go to jail for that decision.
…with the released drainage as her only water source.
Without subsidies that train will be climbing an ever increasing grade until the wheels are spinning in place.
Alter the Wetlands Act also.
It is merely typical watermelon power-madness. If we had a few more back-bones, they would simply be ignored, their crony socialist budgets cut or eradicated while the rest of us get on with productive, prosperous living.
If SO CALLED “clean energy” is VIABLE, we can do away with the subsidies, because nobody needs subsidies for something that is economically viable.
The swamp is vast and costly. All those enviro degree grads had better bone up on paid protesting, sign making, and troll services.
In a way she is right: “Science tells us that there is no bigger threat to American progress and prosperity than the threat of global climate change,”
Except that the threat is the measures imposed by the EPA to combat an invented problem.
Be sure and fire Gina before she leaves the building and call in security to escort her out. Then start the email searches including the private email accounts.
Regarding 2% (annual) economic growth being “trading water”: That was when population growth was great enough for per-capita GDP growth rate to be no more than 1%. Global population is slowing and expected to be near zero in a few decades.
Another thing in the past few decades, at least in the US: 1% annual growth of per capita GDP being insufficient to cause inflation-adjusted median income to grow is due to increasing income disparity. Mean inflation-adjusted income has been growing while the median has not.
You, Sir are a fool!!!!!
Lame duck EPA chief Gina McCarthy says —
“The train to a global clean-energy future has already left the station. We have a choice. We can choose to get on board, to lead or we can choose to be left behind.”
This is a woman who does not think clearly. The train has already left the station. How can you get on board? Go chasing after a moving train? Well, I guess this is just one of her minor illogics but I thought I would point it out.
This woman has beliefs not backed by reality. I say — as go the subsidies so goes clean energy. And the subsidies are going to go.
Eugene WR Gallun