L A Times article deceptively hides 750 million metric tons of U.S. Greenhouse Gas emission reductions

Guest essay by Larry Hamlin

An April 16, 2017 L A Times article entitled “Climate goal in peril” presents a graph which portrays US greenhouse gas emission reductions as falling short of Obama’s voluntary and unenforceable 2015 Paris agreement pledge.

The L A Times article graph very selectively presents US greenhouse gas emissions data for years 2011 through 2015 along with a projection for year 2025 versus Obama’s Paris agreement voluntary goal for that year.

The graph also shows the minimal role (5%) that California Governor Brown’s massively costly and bureaucratically intrusive (imposed on tens of millions of California citizens) SB 32 greenhouse gas reduction targets play in Obama’s voluntary pledge.

What the Times article carefully conceals from public view is EPA data (https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/inventoryexplorer/#electricitygeneration/allgas/source/all) showing that the US has already reduced its greenhouse gas emissions from peak year 2007 levels through 2015 by 763 million metric tons per year to emission levels below those last recorded in 1994.

The newly released 2017 EIA AEO report (https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/) updates US CO2 emissions through year 2016 and shows emissions declining from 2015 levels as well as continuing to decline from peak year 2007 levels with forecasts of stable CO2 emissions through year 2030 without Obama’s EPA CCP “war on coal” regulations ever being in place.

The 2017 EIA AEO report shows year 2016 US CO2 and future emissions are being achieved as a consequence of the increased use of energy market available low cost natural gas which is driving down the use of coal fuel with the further benefit of lowering CO2 emissions.

Thus free energy market forces provided by fracking of natural gas are driving and controlling the reduction and future stable CO2 emission levels of the U.S. without government imposing unnecessary, costly and bureaucratically burdensome regulations on the public.

In year 2030 US CO2 emissions are forecast by EIA to be 5,210 million metric tons (without Obama’s EPA CCP) which is a reduction of 790 million metric tons and over 14% below peak year 2007 CO2 levels.

During this same period between 2007 and 2030 while the US is reducing CO2 emissions by nearly 800 million metric tons per year EIA IEO 2011 and 2016 report data shows the world’s developing nations increasing CO2 emissions by over 9,900 million metric tons per year with China and India accounting for more than 5,700 million metric tons per year of the developing nations total increase.

The massive increased CO2 emissions of the developing nations including China and India are completely acceptable under Obama’s 2015 Paris agreement.

The L A Times article ignores the huge impact on reducing US CO2 emissions brought about by the increased energy market use of natural gas, deceptively hides from view nearly 800 million metric tons of US CO2 emission reductions between 2007 and 2030 and completely fails to address the nearly 10,000 million metric tons of increased CO2 emissions from the developing nations which occur during this period that are permitted under Obama’s 2015 Paris agreement.

Additionally the Times article fails to address the flawed and failed  climate models which are at the heart of claims by climate alarmists demanding that the world undertake massively costly multi-trillion dollar efforts to reduce future CO2 emissions based on projections from these scientifically troubled and inadequate models.

In testimony provided by Dr. John Christy (https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-115-SY-WState-JChristy-20170329.pdf) to the U.S. House Committee on Science on March 29, 2017 Dr. Christy presented results showing how badly climate models performed in failing to project results of global temperatures compared to actual measured  temperatures.

Dr. Christy presented analysis showing how grossly exaggerated the climate models results were compared to measured global temperatures and his analysis concluded that the theory reflected in these models fails tests against observations with a confidence level of greater than 99%.

He further concludes that based on these tests these models are inappropriate for use in establishing “something truthful about the recent past or the future” about real world climate.

This recent L A Times article is just a continuation of the Times decades long campaign of climate alarmism built upon conjecture and speculation along with heavy use of tactics of deception and deceit in failing to address the major flaws and failures of climate alarmist claims.

The fact that even as long ago as the 2001 3rd Assessment Report the UN IPCC acknowledged that “In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

This extraordinary shortcoming should have been addressed openly by the L A Times but was ignored and concealed. Instead the L A Times and other climate alarmists invented the political contrivance of “consensus” to try and hide from public view the inability of climate models to adequately address global climate issues.

The state of climate models is so inadequate and inept that efforts by climate alarmists to impose upon mankind regulatory mandates on global greenhouse gas emission targets costing trillion of dollars based on projections from such models is completely absurd and should be summarily rejected.