Guest rebuttal by David Middleton
Houston can’t afford to accept Trump’s view of climate change [Editorial]
By The Editorial Board Dec. 1, 2018 Updated: Dec. 4, 2018
President Trump frequently acts like he knows what he’s talking about even when it sounds like he doesn’t. That’s a bad trait for anyone, but especially the president of the United States. He’s counted on to provide reliable information that helps the public understand situations and make wise decisions. Instead, Trump’s misstatements put people’s lives in danger. Consider his latest dismissal of climate change.
Confronted with a report issued by 13 federal agencies within his own administration that said climate change left unchecked could ruin the U.S. economy, Trump said he didn’t believe the assessment. Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising, coming from someone who only weeks ago in a 60 Minutes interview said although he didn’t think global warming was a hoax, “I don’t know that it’s man-made.”
It may serve Trump politically to ignore science, but his willful ignorance comes with a price that others will be left to pay. Ignoring climate change means ignoring the role it played in the severity of Hurricane Harvey and other violent storms. It means failing to take steps now that will help limit the loss of lives and property that will occur if Trump’s denial of reality continues to direct this country’s environmental policies.
The Fourth National Climate Assessment said: “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities.”
[…]
The Natural Resources Defense Council lists ways…
[…]
A recent study by two Harvard University researchers…
[…]
We agree with Trump that people need jobs. However, they also need protection from devastating storms…
[…]
Self-serving politicians who suggest the price to slow global warming is too high, or it’s enough that the United States is doing more than China, or insist that climate change isn’t man-made should read the Trump administration’s own report. Then urge your members of Congress to pass new legislation that would fill the dangerous regulation void the president is creating.
Another gem from the Chronicle…
Science, not oil and gas cheerleading, is needed in Texas classrooms. [Editorial]
By The Editorial Board July 25, 2018
ExxonMobil Corp. announced this month that it would join the corporate exodus from an influential conservative nonprofit group following a clash over climate change policy. The nation’s largest oil and gas company provided a strong voice on the green and winning side of a debate over whether or not to push to loosen regulation of greenhouse gases.
Even as ExxonMobil and the world’s other major energy companies have finally started envisioning a lower-carbon world, here in Texas, the Texas Natural Gas Foundation is endorsing a science education curriculum for a future workforce that seems mired in the past. Although industry advocates collaborated with the University of Texas and a state energy office to engage teachers to prepare the curriculum, an investigation by the Austin American-Statesman’s Asher Price found that they worked closely with the curriculum writers and offered edits to the material.
State Rep. Jason Isaac, co-founder and president of the Texas Natural Gas Foundation, told the Statesman he wanted to “get the bias against certain Texas energy resources out of our schools.”
[…]
Here’s the problem: it largely ignores climate change and global warming. By relegating a global environmental crisis to a supplementary teacher’s guide, the curriculum turns its back on the facts. Science, not industry cheerleading, is what is needed in the classroom.
In a ham-handed attempt to sway public opinion, the curriculum describes solar and wind power as “perceived” renewable energy sources and says there is a “debate” about whether using renewable sources is better for the environment. Instead of contemplating a gradual shift to renewable energy, the curriculum describes the ending of nonrenewable energy as “devastating to us socially as well as economically.”
[…]
First off… There’s a scene in the movie Tropic Thunder that perfectly describes the Chronicle’s editorial board… (Warning: this clip may offend sensitive people)…
Now that I finally found a reason to use that clip in a post, let’s move on…
I can understand the fact that the Houston Chronicle editorial board was almost certainly just parroting what they’ve heard about NCA4 and all the other crap they spouted. I have almost no doubt that no one on the editorial board has even looked at NCA4 Volume I or Volume II, much less read or understood it. But… What I can’t understand is the Houston Chronicle’s apparent total ignorance of the city of Houston, Texas.
Aug 22, 2018
Proximity Counts: How Houston Dominates the Oil Industry
University of Houston Energy Fellows
Bill Gilmer, Director of Institute for Regional Forecasting, C.T. Bauer College of Business
Say Detroit, and people think cars. Houston is no different. The city’s oil and gas industry is a broad reflection of the industry as a whole, from the oil and gas extraction, oil services, machinery and fabricated metals that make up the upstream sector to the midstream pipeline construction and management; the Houston Ship Channel is home to a major downstream refining and petrochemical complex. This article focuses narrowly on Houston’s upstream oil business and explains why it stands well apart from other oil-producing cities like Midland, Tulsa or Oklahoma City.
When we think of Houston and oil, the better economic model is an oil city, in the same way other cities operate as headquarters and technical centers for their respective industries, such as Detroit and the auto industry, San Jose and tech, New York and finance, and Hollywood as home to the movie industry.
Houston stands apart from other oil-producing cities in both its scale and its daily operations. There are 175,000 Houston-based employees working directly in production, oil services and machinery and fabricated metals, and tens of thousands more serve as suppliers or contractors. Measured statewide, oil-extraction workers based in Houston earn 64.5% of the sector’s payroll in Texas, and almost half of the U.S. total. For oil services, Houston’s share of Texas extraction payrolls is 45.3% and 32.0% for the U.S. (See Table 1 for details on this and other comparisons.)
[…]
Historical Accident
The best way to think of Houston’s upstream oil sector is as a cluster of headquarters and technical companies like Wall Street, San Jose, Detroit or Hollywood. All these cities operate on similar fundamentals, driven by key decision makers, major suppliers and a deep concentration of technical talent. Once these cities form, the proximity of hundreds of industry-specific companies generates large cost savings for every company that join the cluster, and these lower operating costs becomes the glue that binds these cities together for decades.
Historical accident often plays an important role in the formation of these cities.
[…]
For Houston, the historical trigger was Spindletop in 1900, serving as the first of a string of salt dome discoveries in southeast Texas that would bring a huge new wave of American oil production. A series of new discoveries led from Beaumont to Batson, to Sour Lake and on to the Humble oilfield near Houston. Houston emerged as the closest big city with good telegraph and rail connections, the economic development equivalent of today’s internet and big airport.
Inside Houston’s Oil Cluster
As any industrial cluster forms, the key actors are a group of decision makers. For Houston and the oil industry these are the oil producers, who decide whether to drill for oil or gas, where to drill, arrange the financing and share the profit or loss. These local producers can be large integrated oil companies like BP, Shell, Chevron or ExxonMobil, or independents like Anadarko, Apache, Burlington Resources or EOG.
Suppliers then join the cluster to be near the decision makers. Chief among Houston’s local suppliers are the big three oil service companies of Baker Hughes, Halliburton and Schlumberger. The service providers work with the producers at the wellhead on each project, carrying out the geology, drilling, downhole testing and ultimately delivering hydrocarbons to wellhead. Houston has long been the heart of a global oil services industry. In the 1960s, when oil was discovered in the North Sea, for example, the British set a public policy goal of becoming a major oil-service provider. When the oil was gone, they could would carry these skills forward to future discoveries. Unfortunately for the British, the Texan lead in experience, patents and a history of work in frontier oil horizons simply could not be overcome.
Closely related to oil services, and often overlapping with services in many companies, is a large local machinery and fabricated metal industry that specializes in oil products. Howard Hughes, for example, patented the rotary bit in 1909, and founded the Sharp Hughes Tool Company on Houston’s Second and Girard Streets. And Houston’s “machine shop row” on Hardy Street was in full swing by the 1920s.
[…]
Bill Gilmer is director of the Institute for Regional Forecasting at the University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business. The Institute monitors the Houston and Gulf Coast business cycle, analyzing how oil markets, the national economy and global expansion influence the regional economy. Gilmer previously served the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas for 23 years, retiring from the bank as a Senior Economist and Vice President.University of Houston Energy Fellows
We are thought leaders in energy from the University of Houston.We represent University of Houston students and faculty, appointed as UH Energy Fellows from across the energy-related colleges to ensure the subject is covered from a wide array of viewpoints as we seek to engage the public, other thought leaders and policymakers in a national conversation about energy. The University offers expertise in a range of energy-related areas, including international natural resource law and development, research into the science, engineering, economics, logistics and policy surrounding hydraulic fracturing and unconventional resources, offshore drilling, alternative energy, sustainability and energy conservation. In addition, UH offers the nation’s first subsea engineering program, a minor in Energy and Sustainability and is a research powerhouse with two energy related federally funded national research centers – one researching high-temperature superconductivity and electric energy storage and one concerned with the sustainable and safe development of energy resources in the Gulf of Mexico.
UH Energy is the University of Houston’s hub for energy education, research and technology incubation, working to shape the energy future and forge new business approaches in the energy industry.
Here are the tables from Dr. Gilmer’s article:
The Houston Chronicle is essentially calling for the destruction of the city of Houston in order to save it from climate change. They literally want to “destroy the village in order to save it.”
On top of the fact that oil industry jobs are among the highest paying in Houston, eight of Houston’s top twenty-five employers are oil, oilfield service or petrochemical companies.
| Houston’s Largest Employers | Employees | Industry | |
| Memorial Hermann Health System | 24,000 | 9.5% | Health |
| The University of Texas MD Anderson | 20,000 | 7.9% | Health |
| United Airlines | 15,000 | 5.9% | Transportation |
| The Methodist Hospital System | 14,985 | 5.9% | Health |
| Exxon Mobil Corporation | 13,000 | 5.2% | Oil |
| UTMB Health | 12,448 | 4.9% | Health |
| Kroger Company | 12,000 | 4.8% | Grocery |
| Shell Oil Company | 11,892 | 4.7% | Oil |
| National Oilwell Varco | 11,563 | 4.6% | Oil |
| Schlumberger Limited | 10,000 | 4.0% | Oil |
| Chevron | 9,000 | 3.6% | Oil |
| Baylor College of Medicine | 8,924 | 3.5% | Health |
| ARAMARK Corp. | 8,500 | 3.4% | Food Service |
| Haliburton | 8,000 | 3.2% | Oil |
| Pappas Restaurants, Inc. | 8,000 | 3.2% | Restaurants |
| HCA | 7,855 | 3.1% | Health |
| Hewlett Packard Enterprise | 7,500 | 3.0% | Tech |
| The Dow Chemical Company | 7,000 | 2.8% | Oil |
| AT&T | 6,900 | 2.7% | Tech |
| CHI St.Luke’sHealth | 6,800 | 2.7% | Health |
| Jacobs | 6,220 | 2.5% | Construction |
| H.E.B. | 6,000 | 2.4% | Grocery |
| Texas Children’s Hospital | 6,000 | 2.4% | Health |
| BPAmerica, Inc. | 5,500 | 2.2% | Oil |
| KBR | 5,089 | 2.0% | Construction |
| 252,176 | 100.0% |
Note that The Houston Chronicle is not on this list. Houston clearly could afford to lose the Chronicle and cannot afford to accept most of the alternatives to President Trump’s view of climate change.
From the article: “President Trump frequently acts like he knows what he’s talking about even when it sounds like he doesn’t. That’s a bad trait for anyone, but especially the president of the United States. He’s counted on to provide reliable information that helps the public understand situations and make wise decisions. Instead, Trump’s misstatements put people’s lives in danger.”
Well, I think it is the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board who are acting like they know what they are talking about when they really don’t.
The Houston Chronicle Editorial Board is counted on to provide reliable information that helps the public, but here they are presenting baseless claims as established fact. Here’s an example
From the article: “Ignoring climate change means ignoring the role it played in the severity of Hurricane Harvey and other violent storms.”
Human-caused climate change (that’s what they mean when they say climate change) cannot be shown to have played a role in any extreme weather. The Houston Chronicle Editorial Board should show us the evidence on which they base this claim. Since there is no such evidence, the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board is feeding the public a bunch of disinformation.
Trump has it right and the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board has it wrong, and they cannot show otherwise.
And if we do as they say…merely give up many of our freedoms and fork over $10 – $50Trillion.
Then…..according to their own inflated numbers….
THE PROBLEM WILL STILL NOT BE FIXED…hardly affected at all. Maybe 0.01C.
Makes one suspect other motives….No?
The Age of Information is the Age of Dizinformation.
When all the schools and universities are tilted leftward.
when all the press is manically leftist,
when all the dolts of Hollywood proclaim socialism,
when all the newspapers trumpet collective policies,
when many of the social media giants are committed fellow travelers,
What in the Hell do you think is going on?
‘President Trump frequently acts like he knows what he’s talking about even when it sounds like he doesn’t. That’s a bad trait for anyone’
Now THAT’s Progressive projection is I’ve EVER seen it.
Texas has more installed wind generation capacity than any other state. Over 21,000 MW. The max load on the Texas grid in 2017 was 69599 MW. Max load wind production in 2017 was 16080 MW. These peaks did not occur at the same time. Without natural gas and coal. We would not have electricity in Houston, or any other part of Texas.
http://mis.ercot.com/misapp/GetReports.do?reportTypeId=13424&reportTitle=Hourly%20Aggregated%20Wind%20Output&showHTMLView=&mimicKey
Wind doesn’t totally suck in Texas… It works pretty well in Spring and Fall, when demand is lowest.
Enron and wind power in Texas. Google it.
Enron, carbon credits, carbon credit futures, Ross Perot, wind power, wind power utility power line easements and right-of-way (billions).
Before Lisa Falkenberg was named the Chronicle’s vice president/editor of opinion this year, she wrote a column about taking a Trump yard sign out of her father’s yard during the 2016 campaign so her young daughter wouldn’t see it. Today, one of their columnists, Erica Grieder, wrote about a Socialist Democrat Judge the editorial board endorsed in this years midterm election. Here’s an excerpt from her column:
“But beyond that, the endorsement noted, Bynum, 36, has a reputation as an impressive criminal defense lawyer who cares deeply about his clients.
Plus, my colleagues thought his election might be a fun experiment.
“He offers a clear alternative to the status quo, and even people wary of his socialist credentials should be curious to see if he can deliver,” the Chronicle’s editorial board said.”
Yes, just like you (not me) should be curious to see what a convicted murder is going to do when…
(inappropriate metaphor. mod)
WSJ Columnist takes press to task over climate reporting, cites facts, uses numbers:
“Press Is the Enemy of Climate: It’s easier to tell a story of good vs. evil than to understand the science.” By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. on Dec. 4, 2018.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/press-is-the-enemy-of-climate-1543966906
There are lessons in the media’s psychiatric moment last week over the newly published U.S. National Climate Assessment. Let’s give the New York Times credit. It was braver than just about every other news organization when it said, in its lead sentence, the “damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end.”
I can’t figure out where the Times got this, but it’s the difference between, say, 2% and 1.86% annual growth over the next 82 years and happens to be about right. How does this justify the dire adjectives it was swathed in? It doesn’t. I suspect that’s why every other news report, including the Journal’s, relied on adjectives alone rather than giving numbers—because the numbers just aren’t that alarming.
What does the National Climate Assessment actually say? In 2090 the U.S. will experience annual climate-related costs of $500 billion. Notice that $500 billion, to echo a widespread misinterpretation of the Times report, is not 10% even of today’s economy (it’s 2.5%). It’s 10% of 1971’s economy.
Steven Koonin, a former Obama administration official and physicist, made a similar point last week on these pages. He calculates that, after climate costs and modest assumptions about growth, 2090’s economy would still be 3.8 times larger than today’s. If so, $500 billion in annual costs would amount to just 0.6% of GDP. Understand too that many costs enumerated in the report are not detractors from gross domestic product but contributors to it. Building a sea wall adds to GDP. Constructing a house to withstand 2090’s weather adds to GDP.
Weirder still, I saw not one news report that ventured to say what the expected temperature would be in 2090. Maybe that’s because doing so would reveal that these relatively bearable costs arise under a worst-case scenario for emissions, known as RCP 8.5, which would further undercut the media’s hysterical adjectives. This is a shame because all such studies, including the new U.S. assessment, show that the biggest threat to climate is a lack of prosperity.
* * *
Put aside scientific uncertainties, which we haven’t talked about. The clear lesson of last week’s U.S. government report and every other official assessment is that climate change is not the end of the world. We can handle the cost and we can also handle the cost of avoiding a portion of climate change through sensible tax policy. …
Unfortunately the U.S. media have become a positive hindrance to public understanding. Consider that systemization of banality known as Axios. Last week it told its presumably politically engaged readership that the way to “be smart” about climate change is to understand that “In climate science, one side is the scientific consensus, and the other is a small but vocal faction of people trying to fight it.”
In other words, reduce everything to a binary question of believers vs. deniers, good guys vs. bad guys. Here’s the sad truth: This narrative is mostly an invention of journalists for their own convenience. It relieves them of having to understand a complicated subject.
I’m not trying to be funny. Over the past 15 or 20 years, the climate beat has been handed over to reporter-activists who’ve decided that climate science is impenetrable but at least nobody ever got fired for exaggerating the risks of climate change.
Their ignorant crisis-babble is why electorates everywhere now believe climate and prosperity are necessarily at odds. Every study, including the U.S. government’s latest, shows the opposite: Continued prosperity is essential to mitigating the risks of climate change.
How come the USA Federal government agencies are anti TRUMP regarding Climate Change. Who controls them ?
MJE
I would think you are probably not a resident of the US. The bureaucracy is semi-permanent, and mostly tends to adhere to the Democratic Party. Firing a so-called civil servant is usually not worth the trouble.
The Republican Party can blame it’s earlier incarnation in the 1880’s for the “reform” of civil service, rather than the previous “spoils system” , where positions were truly political appointees.
Michael, have you heard the term “Deep State”? Well what you are commenting on is the Deep State in action. The Deep State is entrenched bureaucrats (who were there long before the current president was elected and will be there long after he is gone).
“Self-serving politicians”
If Trump only cared about being loved he would spout green platitudes. His skepticism is the politically risky route. And exactly what you’d expect from a man who couldn’t care less if he is loooooved.
“Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization,”
When was the start of modern civilization? Was it 1880, perhaps? Does anyone really believe there has been more climate change during the last 20 years than in any other 20 year period since 1880? (Pick your own year for the start of modern civilization, it won’t change anything.)
Did somebody never hear of the climate hiatus we just went through?
Or, are they speaking of the El Nino period we just went through? Is an El Nino event now climate instead of weather?
Yes, an El Niño event is climate since biblical times:
https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&biw=360&bih=288&ei=INcJXIKpG5GasAfQzKSwCA&q=the+pharaoh%27s+dream+of+the+seven&oq=the+pharao%27s+dream+of+the+seven&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
how could it be otherwise – climate since biblical times!
El Niño events have existed before the Neolithic Age.
and of course the Pacific Decadal Oscillation too.
Climate!
I will echo your call of B$. You think this is bad try this on for size.
“Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’” By Ann Gibbons on Nov. 15, 2018
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive
Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he’s got an answer: “536.” Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. In Europe, “It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year,” says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past.
A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. “For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year,” wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record “a failure of bread from the years 536–539.” Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.
536 Icelandic volcano erupts, dimming the sun for 18 months, records say. Summer temperatures drop by 1.5°C to 2.5°C.
536–545 Coldest decade on record in 2000 years. Crops fail in Ireland, Scandinavia, Mesopotamia, and China.
540–541 Second volcanic eruption. Summer temperatures drop again by 1.4°C–2.7°C in Europe.
541–543 The “Justinian” bubonic plague spreads through the Mediterranean, killing 35%–55% of the population and speeding the collapse of the eastern Roman Empire.
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (The Princeton History of the Ancient World) Kindle Edition
by Kyle Harper
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071SLPWVL/
Here is the monumental retelling of one of the most consequential chapters of human history: the fall of the Roman Empire. The Fate of Rome is the first book to examine the catastrophic role that climate change and infectious diseases played in the collapse of Rome’s power—a story of nature’s triumph over human ambition.
Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes readers from Rome’s pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted. Harper describes how the Romans were resilient in the face of enormous environmental stress, until the besieged empire could no longer withstand the combined challenges of a “little ice age” and recurrent outbreaks of bubonic plague.
Tropic Thunder? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
People like the reporters (let’s not call them journalists, because journalism implies a degree of integrity and editorial standard that 99% of them today do not live up to) simply parrot a belief, mostly based on the new priesthood’s edicts—the new priests are called “experts”, although I have yet to see one proven to be expert at anything in particular.
The approach, mindlessness and tools of intimidation, used by the church and by socialists for many years, are in common use today. And why not? They work. They work especially when the population is intellectually lazy, and when the schools and media are under control.
I thought it might take longer for the US to devolve into a socialist cesspool, but the process seems to have accelerated.
Houston can’t afford to accept Trump’s view of climate change:
OK, Houston Chronicle – urge your members of Congress to pass new legislation that would fill the dangerous regulation void you trapped yourself.
Houston Chronicle. Pity!