Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Imagine how different the USA would be if climate laws were decided by the elected representatives of the people, instead of sneaky deep state manoeuvres designed to extend the reach of existing laws.
A landmark climate change ruling could go up in smoke after Justice Kennedy retires
BY MARK KAUFMAN
After 30 years on the Supreme Court bench, Justice Anthony Kennedy will leave the nation’s highest courthouse at the end of July.
With Kennedy’s departure comes much uneasiness. One cause for concern is over the paramount climate decision Massachusetts v. EPA, in which Kennedy proved to be the deciding swing vote, as he often was. The worry is that with him gone, the ruling will be left imperiled.
The case occurred after the EPA decided, in 2003, that it could not regulate heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Twelve states, including Massachusetts, sued the agency. They argued that these gases were pollutants and a danger to the public. Eventually, the case found its way to the Supreme Court.
Settled by a five to four vote in 2007, Massachusetts v. EPA ruled for the first time that heat-trapping greenhouse gases are pollutants, and that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can regulate them, just as the agency reins in pollution emitted by cars and trucks.
“I think Massachusetts v. EPA is the most important environmental decision the Supreme Court has ever decided,” Ann Carlson, the director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law, said in an interview.
President Donald Trump will select the next Supreme Court nominee, and it’s almost certain this individual will, at minimum, find Massachusetts v. EPA flawed or bad law. Trump is openly hostile to widely accepted climate science, and appears not to have even an elementary understanding of how climate works.
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Read more: https://mashable.com/2018/06/30/kennedy-supreme-court-climate-massachusetts-epa/
Massachusetts v. EPA gives the EPA the right to regulate CO2 using existing Clean Air Laws.
What I still find shocking is the utter contempt greens like Kaufman seem to display for democracy.
If greens want to regulate CO2, they should try to convince voters to support politicians who plan to regulate CO2.
Sneaky back door efforts to extend the reach of existing laws are politically dangerous. In my opinion the 2003 EPA vs Massachusetts decision, and many other examples of green contempt for democracy over the years, demonstrates that greens are well aware they don’t have the support they need to pass the draconian laws they would like to pass, but they just don’t care.
Greens are determined to get their way regardless of what the people want.
“heat-trapping greenhouse gases are pollutants”. Putting aside the fact that you can’t trap heat, both water vapour and carbon dioxide are pollutants according to the green idiots.
You couldn’t make up the idiocy.
And, water vapor is a result of Internal combustion!
Don’t know if this tune relates to the topic on hand, but one of my very liberal friends posted this on Facebook. I tend to remember these words from the song but they are hard to discern in this version ” we are stardust, (we are)…billion year old carbon…”
I didn’t realize Joni Mitchell wrote this song, and evidently she was unable to attend Woodstock, so she wrote this song…:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRjQCvfcXn0
JPP
Here’s the version that I remember from the Howard Stern show when he was on live regular radio:
Greens are an emerging Tyranny Eric. They decide what is best for the world, not the citizenry.
‘Trump is openly hostile to widely accepted climate science, and appears not to have even an elementary understanding of how climate works.’
Thats why he has advisers.
democracy is what a majority of government employees say it is…
If President Trump started (S)hitting bars of Pure Gold, the left wing nuts would complain that he was stealing the wealth of the unknown universe !!
It’s time for incumbent Repubs to develop a collective ‘backbone’ — the Greens are gonna howl on this!
Amy Coney Barrett will be the appointee and the left will try and fail to smear her.
She will be confirmed well ahead of the midterms and be a stellar justice making the SCOTUS so fabulous that Ginsburg will feel futile and resign.
I was kind of leaning towards Amy, too. Any nominee Trump picks is going to be attacked savagely.
Mark Kaufman is yet another writer that only thinks he has some idea of how climate works. I doubt he’s done an hour’s research into CO2 and climate… yet he parrots the far left, as if they had better facts than science does. Hey Kaufman, on a micron bandwidth scale of 1 to 100, CO2 is only able to absorb infrared radiation (black body radiation) between 13 – 18 microns, has a diminishing ability to affect temperature the higher CO2 gets… an ALWAYS FOLLOWS temperature rise, as the oceans must warm before CO2 is released from that huge reservoir (raising atmospheric CO2 levels).
Ms. Kristi: You are not evil, just misinformed.
Solar power is only in the energy mix because of government subsidies. Without subsidies, solar is non-starter and will remain non-starter for decades.
Caltech’s Nate Lewis, Argyros Professor of Chemistry, whose work is at the leading edge of research on solar power, has said publicly that “I need to dissuade you up front from one important notion, that some low-cost process is magically going to take us away from fossil energy within the next 20 or 30 years. That’s simply false.” Lewis estimates that population and GDP growth could triple energy demand by 2050. He has concluded that “solar is … far and away the most expensive way we have of making electricity today, with costs ranging from 25 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour for photo-voltaic systems, that is to say solar panels. Solar thermal systems, … run 10 to 15 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is still too expensive. Nobody is going to pay that much for a substitution product, when they can get the original one for four cents a kilowatt-hour.”
The European Organization for Nuclear Research known (CERN) recently predicted a century of non-warming in which CO2 does not play a significant role. CERN says that climate models used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to estimate future temperatures are too high and that the models should be redone. There is no urgency for converting prematurely to renewable energy sources. Labeling CO2 a pollutant is a huge mistake and causes research on climate change to go in the wrong direction.
Expectations of long-term climate studies should be defined before embarking on lifetime projects running down rabbit holes and producing nothing of value. A practical goal is to successfully predict global mean temperatures within a range of values narrow enough to realistically guide public policy decisions. Until then, “What if” studies can be deferred for a few decades until the boundary conditions are known, that is, probability weighted estimates, not hot button “high” or “low” estimates that are, by themselves, useless.
Ms. Kristi:
The technology to economically produce solar power has yet to be developed on a commercial scale and will likely not be ready for prime time for many decades. Wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal power sources will never be significant sources of power because of the limited locations where they can be developed.
The premature shut-down of hydrocarbon energy sources will deprive the poor in energy limited countries a chance to lift themselves out of a certain life of poverty. LNG is available now to increase the quality of life of the poor in underdeveloped countries all over the world in the shortest possible time-frame, if developed countries decide to do so. Paradoxically, labeling CO2 a pollutant is the worst action the EPA could take. That action will significantly delay development of the already available technology that could significantly increase the quality of life of people all over the world.
Think about it and tell your friends.
Lewis is assuming a transition from fossil fuels to solar. I’m not talking about “premature shut-down of hydrocarbon energy sources,” I’m talking about giving some of the impoverished in the developing world access to electricity as quickly as possible in a way that is economically viable. The situation in countries in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, is much different from the one in the developed world. In many areas there aren’t power plants and grids and reserves of fossil fuels or the infrastructure to get them where they need to be. That takes time and enormous investment. Many countries would have to import fuel, and access and costs are not predictable. Some countries are war-torn; many have corrupt governments. Helping those villages least likely to get connected to a grid anytime soon through installation of solar panels would at least allow them to run a pump and a few computers and charge cell phones. Information and education are a big part of getting out of poverty and improving health and productivity. Keep in mind, too, that they are closer to the equator, and have more even year-round sun than those in the U.S. or Europe.
There is no best answer for everyone, it all depends on the situation.
“The European Organization for Nuclear Research known (CERN) recently predicted a century of non-warming in which CO2 does not play a significant role.”
Based on what??? A whole century? It is not unlikely that we could go through a few decades of low/no increase due to changes in solar radiation, but a century? Dubious. Regardless, CO2 plays a significant role, even if it is to limit the cooling effect.
“A practical goal is to successfully predict global mean temperatures within a range of values narrow enough to realistically guide public policy decisions.” It depends on what you mean by a narrow enough range. I don’t think that is practical to expect it to narrow much when you’re talking about “predicting” 100 years in the future – not any time soon, anyway. The models might be able to cut a degree or two off the expected range, but I think it’s more likely that they will be better able to predict regional differences, not only in temperature but in rainfall patterns and possibly storms. Prediction of global temps is too dependent on chaotic factors, how the oceans and biotic world respond to increased CO2 and changes in climate and land use to ever get very precise. I think the whole way of looking at it is wrong. Average global temperature will rise with increased CO2. The RATE and not just the amount will going to determine how humans and other organisms can adapt. Indirect effects of temperature change (e.g. precipitation patterns, sea level rise, biotic responses) may be as important as temperature itself. The regional variation in effects will play a big role politically, economically and in human welfare.
There are ways to decrease the rate without converting to renewables, such as energy conservation, high efficiency products and processes, land use changes, and CO2 uptake through technological/biological processes.
“Until then, ‘What if’ studies can be deferred for a few decades until the boundary conditions are known, that is, probability weighted estimates, not hot button “high” or “low” estimates that are, by themselves, useless.”
Energy conservation is in general a good thing. Reserves are limited, especially if they remain the primary energy source as the rest of the world develops. Cheap energy means more waste. There are things we can do now to both extend global energy reserves and limit CO2 emissions. Delaying action for a few decades is just going to increase the risks of detrimental climate change and running out of (cheap, accessible) oil and natural gas within the lifetimes of today’s children.
“Greens are determined to get their way regardless of what the people want.”
Call them what they really are – watermelons: green on the outside, (commie) red on the inside.
How the heck did we ever allow the MSM to assign _red_ for Republican? It’s the Dems who are overwhelmingly red these days.
If President Trump started (S)hitting whole bars of Pure Gold, the left wing nuts would complain that he was stealing the wealth of the unknown universe !!
Could the EPA force the US to go to war with a major polluting country?
What if the President says, as he should, go to hell courts?
What if there is a show down of forces?
What if most people think that the US Constitution is an experiment that failed, if though it took an considerable amount of time to fail, unlike similar attempts that failed in a trivial amount of time?
If CO2 was indeed a heat trapping gas in miniscule quantities, we would be pumping a few gallons into our houses in winter to help heat our homes.
The reason we do not, is because it is not true that miniscule amounts of CO2 miraculously produce and store heat.
If it did store heat like Al Gore or James Hanson says, we would be selling CO2 at $20 a gallon all winter long instead of banning it in automobile exhaust.
The EPA has no “right” to regulate anything. They have legal powers, ultimately enforced by armed might. Whether or not these powers are legitimate is a legal question. Whether or not they should exist is a moral question.
Carbon dioxide does not, indeed, can not, cause global warming. According to MODTRAN6, it absorbs/emits significantly only within the waveband from 13 to 17 microns, with a maximum at 14.95 microns, and like all gases, it emits EMR as a line spectrum. It’s unclear that line spectra can actually cause warming, but they probably can if the spectral lines are sufficiently pressure-broadened in the lower atmosphere. Assuming this is the case, the maximum of the CO2 emission spectrum of 14.95 microns can be taken as an approximation to a blackbody (or Wien) temperature of atmospheric CO2, but that temperature happens to be -79 C, which is well below normal Earth surface temperatures, except for occasional cold snaps at the South Pole. As is well-known, cooler objects (here, atmospheric CO2) don’t/can’t transfer heat to warmer ones (here, Earth’s surface) so any back-radiation from CO2 will simply be reflected by Earth’s surface rather than absorbed