By Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: Despite thirty years of efforts by most of the elite institutions of America, US governments have done little to fight climate change. While a bout of awful weather might panic America into enacting activists’ wish list, as of today this is one of the great political failures of modern American history. It is rich with lessons for when scientists warn of the next disaster. The 21st century will give us more such challenges. Let’s try to do better.
The puzzle of the climate change crusade
Since James Hansen brought global warming to the headlines in his 1989 Senate testimony, scientists working for aggressive public policy action have had almost every advantage. They have PR agencies (e.g., the expensive propaganda video by 10:10). They have most of America’s elite institutions supporting them, including government agencies, the news media, academia, foundations, even funding from the energy companies. The majority of scientists in all fields support the program.
The other side, “skeptics”, have some funding from energy companies and conservative groups, with the heavy lifting being done by a small number of scientists and meteorologists, plus volunteer amateurs.
What the Soviet military called the correlation of forces overwhelmingly favored those wanting action. Public policy in America and the West should have gone green many years ago. But America’s governments have done little. Climate change ranks at the bottom of most surveys of what Americans’ see as our greatest challenges? (CEOs, too.) In November, Washington voters decisively defeated an ambitious proposal to fight climate change.
And not just in the USA. Climate change policy toppled Australia’s government. The Yellow Vest protests in France are the death knell for large-scale action in France. What went wrong?
The narrative gives answers
The usual answers use the information deficit model, in which the public’s skepticism about the need for radical action results from a lack of information. Thirty years of providing information at increasing volume and intensity has accomplished nothing. Pouring more water on a rock does not make it wetter.
“Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.”
— Ancient adage of Alcoholics Anonymous. More about that here.
Others give more complex explanations, such as “Between conflation and denial – the politics of climate expertise in Australia” by Peter Tangney in the Australian Journal of Political Science.
“This paper describes an ongoing tension between alternative uses of expert knowledge that unwittingly combines facts with values in ways that inflame polarised climate change debate. Climate politics indicates a need for experts to disentangle disputed facts from identity-defining group commitments.” {See Curry’s article for more about this paper.}
There are simpler and more powerful explanations for the campaign’s failure. Lessons giving us useful lessons for dealing with future threats.
Lesson #1: Standards are high for those sounding the alarm
“Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.”
— A harsh but operationally accurate Roman proverb.
We have seen this played out many times in books and films since the publication of When Worlds Collide
First, the basis for the warnings must be evaluated by an interdisciplinary team of experts outside the community sounding the alarm. Climate models are the core of the warning about climate change. They have never been so examined. Perhaps we can end the climate policy wars by a test of the models. Whatever the costs of such reviews and tests, they would be trivial compared to the need to establish public confidence in these models.
Second, questions from the public must be answered. Of course, such warnings are greeted with skepticism. That is natural given the extraordinary nature of the threat and vast commitment of resources needed to fight it. Of course, many of the questions will be foolish or ignorant. Nevertheless, they all must be answered, with the supporting data made publicly available. Whatever the cost of doing so, it is trivial compared to the need.
Scientists seeking to save the world should never say things like this…
“In response to a request for supporting data, Philip Jones, a prominent researcher {U of East Anglia} said ‘We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?’”
– From the testimony of Stephen McIntyre before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce (the July 2006 hearings which produced the Wegman Report). Jones has not publicly denied this.
Scientists seeking to save the world should not destroy key records, which are required to be kept and made public. They should not force people to file Freedom of Information requests to get key information. And the response to FOIs should never be like this…
“The {climategate} emails reveal repeated and systematic attempts by him and his colleagues to block FOI requests from climate sceptics who wanted access to emails, documents and data. These moves were not only contrary to the spirit of scientific openness, but according to the government body that administers the FOI act were ‘not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation.’” {The Guardian.}
Steve McIntyre has documented the defensive and self-defeating efforts of climate scientists to keep vital information secret, often violating the disclosure policies of journals, universities, and government funding agencies. To many laypeople these actions by scientists scream “something wrong”.
Yet these were common behaviors by climate scientists to requests for information by both scientists and amateurs. This kind of behavior, more than anything else, provoked skepticism. Rightly or not, this lack of transparency suggested that the scientists sounding the alarm were hiding something.
The burden of proof rests on those warning the world about a danger requiring trillions of dollars to mitigate, and perhaps drastic revisions to – or even abandoning – capitalism (as in Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
Lesson #2: don’t get tied to activists
Activists latch onto threats for their own purposes. They exaggerate threats, attack those asking questions, and poison the debate. Scientists who treat them as allies must remember the ancient rule that “silence means assent.” Failure to speak when activists misrepresent the science discredits both groups.
For a sad example, look at “the pause.” Starting in 2006 climate scientists noticed a slowing in the rate of atmospheric warming. By 2009 there were peer-reviewed papers about it (e.g., in GRL), and it was an active focus of research (see links to these 29 papers). In 2013 the UK Met Office published a series of papers about the pause, which shifted the frontier of climate science from discussion about the existence of the “pause” to its causes (see links to these 38 papers). Some scientists gave forecasts of its duration (see links to 17 forecasts) – since a pause is, by definition, temporary.
During this period activists wrote scores, or hundreds, of articles not only denying that there was a pause in warming – but mocking as “deniers” people citing the literature about it. For example, see Phil Plait’s articles at Slate here and here. The leaders of climate science remained silent. Even those writing papers about the pause remained silent while activists ignored their work.
While an impressive display of climate scientists’ message discipline, it blasted away their credibility for those who saw the science behind the curtain of propaganda.
Conclusions
“The time for debate has ended”
— Marcia McNutt (then editor-in-Chief of Science and now President of the NAS) in “The beyond-two-degree inferno“, an editorial in Science, 3 July 2015.
I agree with McNutt: the public policy debate has ended. A critical mass of the US public has lost confidence in climate science as an institution (i.e., rejecting its warnings). As a result, the US probably will take no substantial steps to prepare for possible future climate change, not even preparing for re-occurrence of past extreme weather. The weather will determine how policy evolves, and eventually prove which side was right.
All that remains is to discuss the lessons we can learn from this debacle so that we can do better in the future. More challenges lie ahead in which we will need scientists to evaluate risks and find the best responses. Let’s hope we do better next time.
For More Information
For more information about this vital issue see the keys to understanding climate change and these posts about ways to end the climate wars…
- Important: climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win.
- Thomas Kuhn tells us what we need to know about climate science.
- Daniel Davies’ insights about predictions can unlock the climate change debate.
- Karl Popper explains how to open the deadlocked climate policy debate.
- Paul Krugman talks about economics. Climate scientists can learn from his insights.
- Milton Friedman’s advice about restarting the climate policy debate.
- A candid climate scientist explains how to fix the debate.
- Roger Pielke Jr.: climate science is a grab for power.
From the article: “The weather will determine how policy evolves, and eventually prove which side was right.”
Yes, the weather will be the final arbiter, and the weather up to now is the reason most people don’t believe in CAGW, because they don’t see drastic changes in the weather they have known all their lives. The alarmists are crying wolf and your average citizen doesn’t see it.
The downside to this is the tempertures will have to get cooler to prove the alarmists wrong. I sure hope it doesn’t get too much cooler. That’s a high price to pay to be correct. 🙂
[Check your email address, Tom. Looks like you’ve typo’d it and it’s bumping your posts to the mod folder. -mod]
Tom,
“the weather will be the final arbiter, and the weather up to now is the reason most people don’t believe in CAGW”
That nails it. Activists have had astonishingly poor luck. The pause in temps. The pause in North Atlantic hurricanes. Plus little in the way of other kinds of extreme weather in developed nations: droughts, tornadoes, etc. The weather has been unkind to them.
With their command of the media, academia, government agencies, and NGOs – a good bout of extreme weather could be used to panic Americans (the cause, natural or anthro, wouldn’t matter). History shows that we’re easily to panic.
They have had poor luck. But luck changes. And they only need to win once. It’s not over yet.
Unfortunately for them, 97% of the public have no more faith in the “media, academia, government agencies, and NGOs ” : )
How exactly is being wrong an example of poor luck?
Is it not instead an example of wrongly deciding on something, of deciding something is true when it is not true?
There are other reasons:
1. inertia and apathy – people don’t change unless they have to and their motivation is strong. Think New Year’s Resolutions.
2. inability to assess risk accurately – most either over-estimate or under-estimate risk. Seeing the way so many drive, I’m taking the “under.”
3. there are more immediate things to worry about – climate is far away, the credit card bill is due.
Gary
1. or is it they dont change unless there is a reason too
2. who is assessing the risk accurately – you think the Climate alarmist are assessing accurately? they are willing to collapse the entire world’s economic structure based on cataclysmic scenarios that have essentially no chance of happen and to achieve results that have zero chance of changing the outcome. The real calamity will happen if they get their way.
3. No, the more immediate thing is opportunist trying to use scare tactics to usher in political change that has nothing to do with climate.
The people that are resisting the Climate change Meme are far and away the more informed and more rational.
Couldn’t have said it better, Bob.
That’s the best paragraph you’ve ever written, Larry. Congratulations.
The solution is to stop the power and funding of the people who have lied to the public (yes, they have lied, claiming things known not to be true).
Get the US out of the UNFCCC, end EPA, DOE, NSF, NOAA, NASA and all federal funding for all climate modeling teams, most academic grants for tendentious studies which marry a weak or vague hypothesis to future predictions by climate models. This must stop. It will stop. The pensions and retirements of public sector employees who have been among the liars must be brought into the public eye, and we need to stop provided fuel for their game-playing. They are elites no longer. They are failures. Stop sending them on fabulous junkets several times per year on the public dime.
+1
Federal funding of research to advance our understanding of the earth’s climate and the factors which affect it is both reasonable and necessary.
Regrettably, much of recent federal funding related to climate has been directed toward studies which use flawed climate data, unverified climate models and unrealistic Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) to produce “scary scenarios” of potential future climate catastrophes. Arguably, such studies contribute nothing to advancing our understanding of the climate. Rather, they are intended solely or primarily to attempt to convince the citizenry to accept the climate science ”consensus” and the actions urged by the consensed climate science community, climate change activists in federal departments and agencies, environmental activist groups, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; and, to provide material to the media to assist in that effort.
I find it difficult to believe that the US Congress authorized and appropriated these funds with the knowledge or intent that they would be used for purposes other than the advancement of the science. Furthermore, I find it difficult to believe that the federal departments and agencies contracting for these studies do not know that these studies are based on flawed data, unverified models, uncertain fundamental inputs and unrealistic RCPs.
“Federal funding of research to advance our understanding of the earth’s climate and the factors which affect it is both reasonable and necessary.”
But not at the scale it’s currently done.
In the current political environment it would be difficult to simply defund climate research. I think it would be much easier to transfer most climate research monies (why spend so much money studying what climate scientists say is settled?) to low-carbon energy research (that climate scientists insist we need). Let most climate scientists go model something else. Spending money on low carbon energy research (not subsidies or a new green deal) is a win-win for everyone. And I’d much rather have that than another study that concludes global warming might increase the severity of migraines, that was published after a previous study that concluded global warming might increase the number of migraines was invalidated by observations.
Government funded “low carbon energy research” is lose-lose, not win-win.
You’ve started with the assumption that we “need” energy that is “low carbon;” we do not, since the notion of “CO-2 driven” climate “catastrophe” is nonsense.
You’ve then compounded that initial error by assuming that if there were a desirable “low carbon” energy source that was actually competitive with “high carbon” energy sources, that government would need to “invest” in it – private capital would break down the door to fund any new competitive energy source, no taxpayer robbing would be needed.
My usage of the term “low carbon” energy sources was simply for political expediency’s sake. Breakthroughs in non-hydrocarbon energy sources would be a win-win for everyone.
“Federal funding of research to advance our understanding of the earth’s climate and the factors which affect it is both reasonable and necessary.”
Something unlawful can hardly be called “reasonable.” The US government has no constitutional authority to do anything like climate research.
Just think of how many border walls could be built out of the money being wasted on climate nonsense. Trump really has missed an opportunity.
Border walls are as foolhardy and unnecessary as most climate research. Border wall is a symbolic project and is not needed to secure the border.
Wrong.
Squared.
How can you take them seriously when NOTHING they predict EVER comes true?
eg. Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of Al Gore predicting the North Pole would be ice free in 5 years.
Speaking of Al Gore, don’t discount his contribution to the failure. Don’t pick an obnoxious jerk as your primary spokes-jerk.
Personally, I would like to see Al head up a cast of activists and climate scientists for Dancing with the Stars. Then, we could watch them fall on their faces like Bill Nye did, for the nincompoops they are.
Bill Nye bow tie guy.
I never trust a guy who wears one.
I consider it a stroke of good fortune that Gore is the one who grabbed this role for himself. He was not picked, and his position has only helped discredit the climate mafia.
For a variety of reasons, it has not been enough to put an end to the shenanigans, which remains, and it remains an enduring mystery why.
As William F. Buckley said:
Academia and its associated institutions have soiled and disgraced themselves with political correctness, virtue signalling and behaviors that are completely antithetical to the ideals of free inquiry and open-minded learning. Witness the latest in the Cliff Mass witch hunt. If any academic dares question the latest orthodoxy, the “woke” contingent attacks them viciously like a feeding frenzy of sharks.
Falled Hippies, living their ultimate dream of never being responsible for anything, inflicting their failed beliefs on anyone they can.
Yes, and aside from the disagreement over the attempt to draw the line between every “bad weather” event and “climate change,” Cliff Mass actually agrees with the Climate Fascist memes. Which shows you just how intolerant the Climate Fascists are. There will be NO heresy spoken!
People have gotten very tired of the hysteria and hyperbole. Especially when climate change scientists conclude that every comet striking the earth, every earthquake, every lost species, every volcano, every hurricane, etc etc is linked to man made climate change. And President Trump us at fault.
[Please stay with one login_id. .mod]
People have gotten very tired of the hysteria and hyperbole. Especially when climate change scientists conclude that every comet striking the earth, every earthquake, every lost species, every volcano, every hurricane, etc etc is linked to man made climate change. And President Trump us at fault.
Failure of “the climate change crusade”?
Are you kidding me?
I’m about to have expensive, unreliable “renewable” energy crammed down my throat— whether I want it or not.
Correct—it’s walking, so it’s not dead yet. As I say below, state and local action, driven by local activists, is keeping the crusade going, even if it is headless.
But they’ve won – the money-runners have now chimed in:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/10/tackle-climate-or-face-financial-crash-say-worlds-biggest-investors
RIP science and rationality
Of course the financiers are on board: carbon trading will be a huge market. I can smell the money already! That big whooshing sound will be money going from citizens into the carbon trading markets.
After all, if Enron was one of the first to push for carbon trading, what could go wrong?
Science and rationality may be saved by the people on the street puking at all the BS they’re being asked to swallow.
Easy to fix: just have the pensions of anyone in government (or academia) who pushes this stuff be funding 100% by carbon trading credits.
Or, alternatively, take away their guaranteed pensions and give them a small business to run…
“Insanity is repeating the same pithy quote on insanity that everyone else uses until all the readers are insane.”
Seriously, I don’t know how much I have left in me. How many times will I have to read that same thing? And it’s always presented like it’s the first time anyone has ever read it.
Steve,
Just like those Ten Commandment things, and “Know Thyself”, and all that philosophy.
“And it’s always presented like it’s the first time anyone has ever read it.”
You must be loads of fun in church. Do you stand and scream “I”ve heard all this before”?
Hmm, I have to concede that this was funny, LK.
But it made me wonder…are people with really good memories the ones who are less likely to go to church every week?
As usual, Larry Kummer gets it all wrong.
“Despite thirty years of efforts by most of the elite institutions of America, US governments have done little to fight climate change. While a bout of awful weather might panic America into enacting activists’ wish list, as of today this is one of the great political failures of modern American history.”
Not a failure at all. There was nothing to fight. CO2 global warming is a scam. The US is actually one of the few countries that have reduced their CO2 footprint in the last 20 years. Actually since the atmosphere needs more CO2 NOT less, it is actually China and India that are doing the world a favour.
True, this fight isn’t over and insanity prevails in too many places still.
Larry has a curious blind spot on climate change, he sees all the things the climate scientists and associated activists are doing wrong, but he is convinced that the climate scientists are correct and just arguing badly for some inexplicable reason. He refuses to accept the obvious explanation that they are hiding the data because it shows they are lying.
See my comments, and his response over on his blog https://fabiusmaximus.com/2018/12/10/lessons-from-climate-change-crusade/
Bill,
“obvious explanation that they are hiding the data because it shows they are lying.”
I don’t guess about motives, or other things that can’t ever be proven. In my opinion that is just chaff in the debate. It quickly descends to schoolyard name-calling, of which there is already far too much of in US politics.
The lying has been proven Larry. You obviously havent been watching Tony Hellers’ videos that show that 20 years ago, NOAA and or NASA GISS would put out a temperature graph and then 20 years later the data would be all changed to make it look like CAGW is happening. What Tony has shown would certainly stand up in court so I am at a loss as to why no one has taken these agencies to court for fraud. Your blindness continues Larry.
Hansen’s testimony was 1988 not 1989
Now that I’ve read the whole post & comments – Great Post (-:
Steve,
Thanks for catching that! I’ve fixed it in the original post.
I noticed too, many hours after you say it was corrected.
As of 5:00PM EST, it still says 1989.
steve case
Yes, this year was the 30th ‘anniversary’ of his prediction based on scenarios.
Not sure where the author is from but California has doubled-down on “renewables” and the wind farms and solar arrays are clearly visible as you fly in and out of LA. Gov Brown stands in the ashes of a fire and declares, “This is the new abnormal” to great acclaim in the Golden State. When the Dems get the House, Senate and Presidency back it’s Katie bar the door.
I am re-posting a comment I made earlier this morning on Judith Curry’s blog concerning the ongoing persecution of Dr. Cliff Mass here in Washington State:
It has often been said by climate activists that the science of climate change is settled; that the voting public supports quick action against climate change; and that it’s only been the opposition of fossil fuel interests and the politicians who support those interests which keeps America from quickly reducing its carbon emissions.
Over on the Cliff Mass blog, this has been a recurrent theme for those climate activists who make a sport of denouncing his opinions. I’ve made the point there on that blog that the only possible means of substantially reducing America’s carbon emissions within the timeframe climate activists are now seeking is to put a stiff price on all carbon fuels.
And even this won’t be enough. If America is to achieve an 80% reduction in our GHG emissions by 2050, a program of government-mandated carbon fuel rationing combined with strictly enforced energy conservation measures covering all sectors of the American economy must eventually be adopted.
It is simply impossible to compress a hundred year’s worth of technological and economic transition away from carbon fuels into a thirty year time span without experiencing major collateral impacts.
The question arises, is new legislation from the Congress needed to pursue this kind of highly aggressive, nationally-enforced anti-carbon program?
The answer is no. The Supreme Court has ruled that the EPA has full authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate America’s carbon emissions; and further, that the process used by the EPA in 2009 to determine that CO2 is a pollutant was properly followed.
The President and the EPA now have all the authority needed to pursue a highly aggressive anti-carbon policy, if they choose to do so.
Here is a plan to reduce America’s GHG emissions 80% by 2050 using the existing legal authorities of the President as enabled by the Clean Air Act and by existing national security legislation. This plan is similar to the one that was being pushed by 350.org and by other environmental groups in 2009.
In this version, the original 350.org plan is augmented by a system of carbon pollution fines which is the functional equivalent of a legislated tax on carbon. Moreover, the plan adds a provisional system for imposing direct government control over production and distribution of all carbon fuels, if carbon pricing doesn’t prove to be fully effective.
Phase I: Establish a legal basis for regulating carbon dioxide and other carbon GHG’s as pollutants. (2007-2012)
— File and win lawsuits to allow regulation of CO2 and other carbon GHG’s as pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
— Publish a CAA Section 202 Endangerment Finding as a prototype test case for regulation of carbon GHG’s.
— Defend the Section 202 Endangerment Finding in the courts.
Phase II: Expand and extend EPA regulation of carbon GHG’s to all major sources of America’s carbon emissions. (2021-2022)
— Issue a presidential executive order declaring a carbon pollution emergency.
— Publish a CAA Section 108 Endangerment Finding which complements 2009’s Section 202 finding.
— Establish a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for carbon pollution.
— Use the NAAQS for carbon pollution as America’s tie-in to international climate change agreements.
— Defend the Section 108 Endangerment Finding and the NAAQS in the courts.
Phase III: Establish a fully comprehensive EPA-managed regulatory framework for carbon. (2023-2025)
— Publish a regulatory framework for carbon pollution under Clean Air Act sections 108, 111, and 202.
— Establish cooperative agreements with the states to enforce the EPA’s anti-carbon regulations.
— Establish a system of carbon pollution fines which is the functional equivalent of a legislated tax on carbon.
— Establish the legal basis for assigning all revenues collected from carbon pollution fines to the states.
— Research and publish a provisional system of direct carbon fuel rationing as a backup to the carbon fine system.
— Defend the EPA’s comprehensive system of carbon pollution regulations in the courts.
Phase IV: Implement the EPA’s carbon pollution regulatory framework. (2026-2050)
— Commence operation of prior agreements with the states for enforcement of the EPA’s anti-carbon regulations.
— Commence the collection of carbon pollution fines and the distribution of fine revenues to the states.
— Monitor the effectiveness of the carbon regulatory framework in reducing America’s GHG emissions.
— Adjust the schedule of carbon pollution fines upward if progress in reducing America’s GHG emissions lags.
— Assess the possible need for invoking the provisional system of direct carbon fuel rationing.
— Defend the EPA’s system of carbon pollution regulations against emerging lawsuits.
Phase V: Implement the provisional system for direct carbon fuel rationing. (Start/End contingent upon Phase IV progress.)
— Issue a presidential proclamation declaring that Phase IV anti-carbon measures cannot meet the 80% by 2050 target.
— Initiate the provisionally established system for imposing direct government control over production and distribution of all carbon fuels.
— Apply the Phase IV system of carbon pollution fines in escalating steps as needed to incentivize Phase V compliance.
— Defend the government-mandated carbon fuel rationing program in the courts.
Phase VI: Declare success in reducing America’s carbon emissions 80% by 2050. (If complete by 2050 or earlier.)
— Assess the need for continuing the EPA’s anti-carbon regulations and the US Government’s mandatory fuel rationing program beyond 2050.
— Defend the government’s anti-carbon measures against emerging lawsuits if these measures continue beyond 2050.
Remarks:
Phase I of this plan was complete in 2012. The legal foundation needed to impose aggressive across-the-board regulation of all major sources of America’s carbon emissions remains in place awaiting the appearance of a president willing to use it.
When Barack Obama was Chief Executive, his Clean Power Plan and his other anti-carbon measures might have achieved possibly one-third of his Year 2050 GHG reduction goal. But the remainder depended upon a highly uncertain combination of accelerated technological advancement and raw unvarnished hope.
And yet, when Barack Obama had the opportunity and the means to move forward with the 350.org plan, he refused to go through with it. Nor were 350.org itself and the other AGW activist groups willing to push hard for adoption of their 2009 plan after their initial victories in the courts. From 2012 onward, those activist groups could have worked closely with the EPA using the ‘sue and settle’ process to put their 2009 plan into effect. Why didn’t they do it?
Could it be that in 2012, President Obama, 350.org, and all the other anti-carbon environmental groups were afraid of massive political blowback if they had pushed for a program which can be highly effective in quickly reducing America’s carbon emissions — but at the expense of imposing great personal and economic sacrifice on most Americans?
“…the only possible means of substantially reducing America’s carbon emissions within the timeframe climate activists are now seeking is to put a stiff price on all carbon fuels.”
— For completeness, you need to include carbon capture as an alternative. If the money spent on windmills had instead been allocated to carbon capture, it would be further down the cost reduction curve. The Green world could have also reversed their longstanding positions on nuclear energy. And nuclear energy doesn’t have to be as expensive as it is today.
A global implementation of this combination could have addressed enough CO2 emissions to make CAGW a non-issue. So why does the IPCC propose a mitigation strategy that they already know in advance is guaranteed to fail?
Well, if a solution exists, what justification do they have for hundreds of billions of dollars in transfer payments?
Implementing Phase III and beyond, or perhaps implementing Phase II fully, will require fighting and winning a civil war.
KT66 -Yup. See yellow vest direct street action.
Phase III and beyond would require a cooperative Congress. I don’t agree with Beta Blocker’s view that the plan can all be done through executive action. Particularly once you get into controlling the production of fossil fuels – that would require a civil war since Congress would never have anything to do with such a thing.
THIS IS ALL MADNESS. COMPLETE UTTER MADNESS.
You bet it is! If the activists are really proposing this, they have a lot in common with Major Kong! Whaahwooo!
Responding to Steve O, KT66, a_scientist, spalding craft. and Alan Tomalty:
We have to ask the question, do climate activists honestly want America’s GHG emissions to be sharply reduced over the next thirty years?
To put a hard number on it, let’s again use President Obama’s target of an 80% reduction by 2050 as the goal. If this is what climate activists really want, then working through the EPA and the Clean Air Act (CAA) is the only possible means of getting from here to there. It can’t be done any other way.
Point 1: The CAA assigns responsibility for managing nationally-focused pollution abatement actions to the Executive Branch working in cooperation with the states, thus shielding the EPA’s pollution abatement efforts from outside political interference such as might come from the Congress.
Point 2: The CAA assigns clear lines of authority for identifying which substances represent a significant danger to human health and the environment and then for managing their reduction once those substances have identified through approved EPA procedures as being ‘pollutants.”
Point 3: The CAA and its EPA-managed processes include mechanisms for balancing costs against danger reduction benefits in evaluating the worth of emerging pollution abatement technologies, and in deciding what specific mitigating measures are useful and appropriate for reducing emissions of a specific pollutant.
Point 4: The CAA and its EPA-managed processes have a forty-year record of success in greatly reducing America’s air and water pollution problems.
Point 5: Because the EPA has successfully defended its 2009 Section 202 Endangerment Finding for carbon in the courts, the agency has already laid a strong legal foundation for building on its past experience with other classes of pollutants in taking on GHG’s as its most ambitious pollution reduction project ever.
Using the Clean Air Act as the main policy agent in reducing America’s GHG emissions would be the greatest challenge the EPA and the state governments have ever faced. Apart from the expected public resistance when the plan becomes fully operative in about 2026, among the more important challenges would be to defend the plan against lawsuits in the courts.
This is how the plan described in my earlier post can be successfully defended against legal action:
A: Recognizing that carbon emissions are everywhere ubiquitous in the American economy, the plan must treat all major sources of America’s GHG emissions equally. All major sources of carbon emissions must be directly and fairly regulated, and the burdens of compliance spread equitably across all emission sources.
B: In setting a NAAQS for carbon, the plan must explicitly acknowledge that CO2 is a well mixed gas on a worldwide scale and that America’s contributions to GHG reduction must be part of a worldwide anti-carbon effort.
C: In managing the transition away from carbon fuels, the EPA must use past practice to the maximum extent possible in its anti-carbon strategies, while at the same time recognizing that sharply reducing greenhouse gases in as short a time span as thirty years will require creative use of existing law.
D: In using carbon fines and fees as the functional equivalent of a legislated tax on carbon, past precedent in applying fines and fees to pollutant abatement strategies must be followed. Where past practice can’t be followed, justification for an expanded application of fines and penalties as a pollution abatement strategy must be explicitly documented and justified.
E: In developing a provisional option for enforcing a program of direct carbon fuel rationing — because other aspects of the plan might not prove effective in reducing GHG emissions fast enough — past precedence in America’s response to serious national emergencies must be properly cited and referenced.
F: The provisional carbon fuel rationing program must be backed by defensible evidence that anthropogenic global warming will be catastrophic if it continues, but also preventable through aggressive anti-carbon government action.
Specific responses to reader comments follow:
Steve O: “For completeness, you need to include carbon capture as an alternative. If the money spent on windmills had instead been allocated to carbon capture, it would be further down the cost reduction curve. The Green world could have also reversed their longstanding positions on nuclear energy. And nuclear energy doesn’t have to be as expensive as it is today.”
Here in the US, including the options of nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro in the power generation mix is strictly a public policy decision. Left to its own devices, the power market in the US would swing decisively towards gas-fired generation given that among all the choices available for the next several decades, gas-fired generation has the least technical, environmental, and financial risks. It also has the highest profit making potential for private investors.
The plan described in my original post would follow past EPA practice which encourages the states, the polluters, and the engaged public to cooperate in deciding what approach works best for reducing a specific pollutant.
However, given that the short thirty-year timeframe limits the usefulness of highly uncertain technological remedies such as carbon capture and sequestration, seriously aggressive energy conservation measures will be necessary to stay on schedule. Raising the price of all carbon energy sources is by far the most effective way to incentivize these conservation measures.
As someone who has worked in nuclear construction and operations for the past thirty-five years, it’s also my opinion that nuclear power has no future in the United States unless the federal government puts a stiff price on all carbon fuels, bringing the total life-cycle costs of natural gas into much closer alignment with the costs of nuclear.
Steve O: “A global implementation of this combination could have addressed enough CO2 emissions to make CAGW a non-issue. So why does the IPCC propose a mitigation strategy that they already know in advance is guaranteed to fail? Well, if a solution exists, what justification do they have for hundreds of billions of dollars in transfer payments?”
A hundred years from now, nuclear power is likely to be all pervasive throughout the world even while carbon fuels in the form of limited quantities of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel will still remain available for some applications such as for military aircraft.
On the other hand, it is possible, but maybe not probable, that we will find some way of efficiently extracting massive quantities of CO2 from the air and then recycling it through the world’s carbon fuel management system as a high-density energy carrying medium for our larger aircraft and for our larger land vehicles.
Anything is possible if you have enough time and can spend enough money.
KT66: “Implementing Phase III and beyond, or perhaps implementing Phase II fully, will require fighting and winning a civil war.”
a_scientist: “KT66 -Yup. See yellow vest direct street action.”
Let’s remember that the basic plan described in my original post was first proposed by 350.org in 2009, and that Phase I of their plan was complete in 2012. At which point Barack Obama and the EPA abandoned the 350.org plan and went with the Clean Power Plan, a carbon reduction policy which, in my opinion, had the seeds of its own failure deliberately implanted within it.
While Phase II of this extended version of the 350.org plan is under development in the early 2020’s, its future impacts will be merely an abstraction to the average voter, much as the future impacts of Obamacare were an abstraction while the ACA was being debated in 2010.
Once the extended plan begins to be aggressively implemented after 2026, its economic and social impacts will then begin to be felt. At that point, probably in the late 2020’s, a robust and well-informed public debate over the validity of today’s climate science will commence, replacing the largely inconsequential debates now occurring hither and yon in the backwater alleys of the Internet.
Once that public debate is concluded, and if the same pattern happens with aggressive EPA action against carbon as has happened with the aggressive rollout of Obamacare, the voting public will eventually come to accept the social and economic burdens imposed by taking strong government action against carbon.
Moreover, the revenue-positive carbon fines and fees imposed by this plan are intended to become a large source of revenue for the states. It is conceivable that in the period beyond 2030, revenues from carbon fines and fees could become a significant fraction of the total income collected by state governments nationwide.
The state governments, all of them, would be stupid not to take the money. And take it they will. After all, the anti-carbon regulations were legally and constitutionally mandated by the president and the EPA acting under long-established Executive Branch authorities.
spalding craft: “Phase III and beyond would require a cooperative Congress. I don’t agree with Beta Blocker’s view that the plan can all be done through executive action. Particularly once you get into controlling the production of fossil fuels – that would require a civil war since Congress would never have anything to do with such a thing.”
When Congress crafted the Clean Air Act more than forty years ago, it deliberately removed itself from the process of deciding what substances might eventually be classified as pollutants requiring strong government regulation to control and to reduce. This responsibility was assigned by law to the President and to the appropriate agencies within the Executive Branch.
Now that excessive concentrations of CO2 and other GHG’s in the atmosphere have been determined by the EPA to represent a danger to human health and the environment; and now that the EPA’s scientific determination has been successfully defended in the courts, the EPA and the Clean Air Act are the only appropriate public policy tools for successfully managing the long and difficult process of greatly reducing America’s carbon emissions.
As for what Congress might do in the late 2020’s if the national debate over today’s climate science goes critical mass, our Senators and Representatives will be more than happy to let the president, the EPA, and the cooperating states do what current environmental law and what past precedent require that they do.
Alan Tomalty: “THIS IS ALL MADNESS. COMPLETE UTTER MADNESS.”
Doing what has to be done if America is to reach President Obama’s goal of an 80% GHG reduction by 2050 requires electing a series of US presidents who are willing and able to walk their talk of addressing the dangers of climate change. This means using the EPA and the Clean Air Act to their maximum possible effectiveness in reducing our GHG emissions.
Everyone should recognize that Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016 was an aberration in the long term ebb and flow of American politics, one that won’t last long. A Democrat will certainly be elected president in 2021, and the Democrats will probably take control of the Senate as well. Everything Trump did while he was in office will be quickly overturned and erased.
That said, if the Democrat who follows Donald Trump as president doesn’t use the EPA to its maximum possible effectiveness in controlling America’s carbon emissions, it will become obviously apparent that climate activists have an agenda which doesn’t necessarily include saving the earth from climate change.
There are a good number of politicians and scientists that do not believe that most of the warming is man made.
Their main objective is money. Because they would be demoted or suspended as we have seen in Australia, a good number of academics toe the line. We will hear from these when they retire. I know of some.
I do not think that Suzuki believes it all, but the money is good. You can tell he cannot explain it as he avoids direct questions and debates. He is not a climate scientist, he is a biologist or zoologist(does not matter which one)
I spoke to some politicians a few years ago who know it is a scam, but did not do much as it would cost votes from the uninformed public.
The only one who has stood up is Trump and we may see something from Brazil.
SKY News in Australia and the One Nation party in Australia know that it is a scam.
Larry,
Your article implies that mistakes were made and lessons can be learned, but I do not believe that is the case. What was done, including the lack of transparency, the demonization of critics, the refusal to answer questions and debate those with different opinions, the refusal to test the models, the silence around outrageous claims and so on, was done deliberately and would be done again, only more so.
The murderer who gets caught, does not regret the murder, but regrets getting caught. They do not suddenly learn that murder is bad. They are not looking for spiritual enlightenment on how not to murder. They have justification, in their minds, for what they did.
I am sure that James Hansen does not regret turning off the air conditioning during his Senate testimony. He regrets not being able to turn on the heat! Those who use to debate climate crisis skeptics do not wish they had done more debates. They regret ever doing any it at all! Those withholding or manipulating data do not feel bad about doing it. They just wish they had done it better!
If this movement had done what you suggest to persuade the public, it would already be a forgotten movement. They have no desire to learn your lessons. They are not interested in being honest brokers. They have a movement to fight for, and the ends justify the means, even if their means guarantee failure.
(+42 x 10^42)^42
Spot on James.
I agree James
John Endicott
December 14, 2018 at 12:20 pm
(+42 x 10^42)^42
———–
John, as per my position, I can only say;
this;
(+42 x 10 and42)M
will be good enough for me, mathematically…which mathematically may stand for 462M, kinda
of like 462 million… 🙂
Life and everything conundrum in the meaning… 😉
cheers
James,
“was done deliberately and would be done again, only more so.”
Actions were taken. After 30 years we see the results. That allows us to evaluate the actions, and identify mistakes.
Lacking telepathic power, I don’t guess about motives of the hundreds or thousands of scientists involved.
You do not have any opinion or any way of inferring the motives of those who falsify historical records, lie about their own research, and say nothing while the work they do is blown out of proportion, misrepresented and hyped and used to declare imminent Armageddon is upon us, etc?
I do not have to be psychic to know that people who make stuff up are liars and not to be trusted.
Yup, what Menicholas said.
I agree Menicholas. Larry Kummer is trying to say that climate scientists have not been able to get their message across. That is preposterous. In the last 30 years they were able to lie and deceive their way into billions of $ of useless and fraudulent climate model studies and were able to convince 99 % of the world main stream media and keep in line 1000’s of obedient groupthink colleagues and 97% of the world’s politicians. I would say that their success has been a Joseph Goebbels dream. THE BIG LIE OF CAGW HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST AND MOST SUCCESSFUL LIE OF ALL TIME. So in reality it is the opposite of what Larry Kummer is trying to tell us. What Larry is really complaining about is the intelligence of skeptics who see through this lie.
Actions speak louder than words. Actions speak louder than intentions. I am not making a judgement on their motives. I am making a judgement on their actions (or inactions).
A couple of old truisms come to mind in regards to this:
‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’
And,
‘Fool me once…shame on you. Fool me twice…shame on me!’
The reason why I wrote: “…was done deliberately and would be done again, only more so.”, is because it has been done for decades. When it didn’t get the results they wanted, they doubled-down on their methods, and the escalation of those methods continues to this day.
These are not stupid people. Their decisions are not made from ignorance. They have created a paradigm and now they must live by it, or allow a paradigm shift that will result in the end of a way of life for themselves and their piers.
They cannot do the things you suggest. They cannot admit that the burden of proof is theirs, and that they need to answer all questions honestly. Early on, they adopted the Precautionary Principle and the idea that ignorance of the problem should not be grounds for inaction. It is a founding aspect of the paradigm that absolves them from the responsibility to make a powerful case for a climate change catastrophe and answer all objections. Since they cannot make that case or give sufficient answers to the myriad of objections, they cannot do as you suggest. In fact, they clearly feel no need or responsibility to be transparent.
The paradigm also collapses if the scientists disavow the activists. The activists are the life-blood of the paradigm. Without them, the grant money shrivels. The scientists know this, so they walk the fine line of feeding the activists with scientific ambiguity, while avoiding directly saying what they know is untrue or unfounded. In the current climate change paradigm there is a symbiotic relationship between scientists and activists. Neither can survive long without the other, and the paradigm cannot survive without both.
I completely agree with you Larry, when you recommend that the scientific community take heed of these lessons and implement them ASAP. In the long run, it would be the best thing for science. But I disagree with the idea that it is ‘ignorance’ that restrains them from doing what is best. Long ago, they made the choice that the ends justify the means. Having made that choice, they are now trapped in their own web. They cannot choose otherwise without destroying their web, their paradigm, their livelihood.
Cliff Mass is the perfect example of what I am saying. He embodies the lessons that you are recommending and, consequently, the paradigm is mobilizing to destroy him, as it has many others before. It is just naive to think that this is done out of ignorance. Individuals supporting the paradigm can try and claim ignorance, but it is a willful kind of ignorance. The paradigm itself has a terrible intelligence and awareness. It knows what you are saying, and has willfully rejected it a long time ago.
That is why it acts they way it does.
Ignorance is no excuse.
Perhaps someone mentioned this, but I missed it. True advocates should lives their lives accordingly… Those who believe the sea is rising should sell their seafront properties. Those who believe CO2 is killing the world, should decrease their CO2 footprint and not fly the globe burning jet fuel and live in mansions set at 70 degrees year-round. Those who believe in green energy should be promoting safe nuclear power plants using Thorium…
Dan,
” True advocates should lives their lives accordingly …”
While you logic is sound, people are weak. Jefferson gave us some of the most powerful calls for human liberty and equality ever made. He did not live by his rhetoric, to state it kindly.
But that didn’t diminish the gifts he gave us.
I don’t believe personalizing debates about science or public policy helps. It it is just chaff. Of course, everybody sees these things differently.
I remember having a discussion with a scientist who thought that the world should follow the directives of the scientific community. I told him how it worked at the pharmaceutical company where I worked as finance exec:
Leaders from R&D present ideas to a management team, who provide minimal funding to continue exploration, increased funding to speed development, or zero funding to kill the project.
Spending decisions depend on other things besides the pizzazz of the project. How much money does the company even have to spend? What are the other priorities? Maybe expanding the salesforce to maximize last year’s product launch is more important. Maybe the company is about to be sold. These decisions are properly in the realm of managers who are responsible for the overall enterprise.
It’s the same with climate alarmism. It’s up to them to present a business case and it’s up to politicians to decide what actions to take based on what is known. Lots of areas compete for taxpayer funds. Roads. Healthcare. National defense. Retirement. Welfare. And so on. It’s up to the politicians to balance all the competing priorities on behalf of the electorate. Economics, and Decision-making under uncertainty are also relevant practice areas.
It’s inconceivable that an R&D manager would simply demand that a project move forward, while declining to show the supporting data, or to accuse the managers of bad faith for being unconvinced, or to refuse an open discussion, but many climate scientists seem to feel entitled.
The essential point is that nobody has presented a convincing business case for radical, extremely expensive actions in order to reduce the risks associated with climate change. They may have done a poor job of presenting themselves, but I believe if they had done a better job of making things clear, it would be even more obvious that we should simply wait and see.
“Pouring more water on a rock does not make it wetter.”
This statement blames the failure of the masses to accept CAGW on the masses being as dumb as a rock: We are too dense to receive wisdom.
I think the public has not received their “wisdom’ because it is not wisdom, it is selfserving, baseless propaganda.
SR
Yes, this reminds me of a former boss (who management FINALLY sacked when she started to pull the same crap on them): if she didn’t get what you were telling her (and she always had the air of someone who thought she was the smartest person on the room), it OBVIOUSLY had to be your fault for not explaining it better to her.
Hard to argue with that logic.
Steve,
“We are too dense to receive wisdom.”
Please re-read the post. You have totally missed the point. I describe the “information deficit model” and then say:
I then describe two kinds of mistakes by scientists’ that produced the result:
I’d accept Climate Science:
If climate science wasn’t pushed as an absolute in schools.
If the predictions from climate science seemed to be true.
If climate science didn’t confuse accuracy and precision.
If climate scientists didn’t rig the peer review process.
If climate scientists didn’t sabotage scientific careers.
If IPCC reports weren’t re-written after final approval.
If climate scientists didn’t try to sue the opposition.
If climate scientists didn’t appear to fudge the data.
If climate scientists didn’t resort to name-calling.
If climate scientists complied with FOI requests.
If climate scientists agreed to debate the issue.
If climate scientists didn’t exaggerate findings.
If climate scientists didn’t rig grant programs.
Canards bullshit & lies:
Methane is 86 times more powerful than CO2 at trapping heat.
Warm sea water is melting Antarctica from below.
Thermal expansion affects world-wide sea level.
Water vapor rains out after a few days.
People depend on glaciers for water.
Burning biomass is carbon neutral.
Methane from Cattle is a problem.
Sea level rise is accelerating.
Polar bears are going extinct.
CFCs caused the Ozone Hole.
The deep ocean is warming.
Average world temperature.
97% of scientists agree.
Coral reefs are dying.
Drought is increasing.
Antarctica is melting.
Greenland is melting.
Ocean acidification.
Well said, Steve!
“I’d accept Climate Science:
If climate science wasn’t pushed as an absolute in schools.
If the predictions from climate science seemed to be true.
If climate science didn’t confuse accuracy and precision.
If climate scientists didn’t rig the peer review process.
If climate scientists didn’t sabotage scientific careers.
If IPCC reports weren’t re-written after final approval.
If climate scientists didn’t try to sue the opposition.
If climate scientists didn’t appear to fudge the data.
If climate scientists didn’t resort to name-calling.
If climate scientists complied with FOI requests.
If climate scientists agreed to debate the issue.
If climate scientists didn’t exaggerate findings.
If climate scientists didn’t rig grant programs.”
Not me.
I would accept it if it was a real science instead of a religion, AND the findings were correct.
The second section is true enough…those are all lies and made up BS.
+1, Mr Case.
It is interesting to compare the handling of climate science press releases with that of Pons and Fleischmann’s publication regarding what has come to be termed cold fusion – Although they never called it that, the press did.
Pons and Fleischmann have since been vindicated. The effect they described is still not well understood, nor is it even certain that it is nuclear in origin.. but it certainly exists. Yet, they were subjected to a horrific and totally undeserved denouncement by the scientific press, simply because their honestly and accurately presented findings seemed too preposterous to be true.
Peer groups like MIT set out to repeat their experiment with the deliberate intention to find a null result… and unsurprisingly they did just that. Other less biased researchers found a positive result, though!
Meanwhile the climate scientists have shown a total cowboy attitude to science, yet even when they are caught red-handed stating an intention to hide results from the public, they get whitewashed. When we examine their findings without bias, we find that they seem to contain deliberate misrepresentations of data. This just doesn’t add up. By the standards applied to Pons and Fleischmann, these guys should have been kicked right out of the science community, and then some.
Instead, we have a situation where in academic circles, anyone who questions their work is likely to lose their job.
Ian,
“we have a situation where in academic circles, anyone who questions their work is likely to lose their job.”
That’s a powerful insight, about something I’ve often written about. Skeptics of mainstream climate science (e.g., Judith Curry, Roger Pielke Sr.) are attacking the ruling paradigm. As Thomas Kuhn said in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, mainstream scientists push back hard against those who attack the paradigm in their field. It is a cruel process, but that’s how modern science works. The great physicist Max Planck described the result (circa 1906):
There are no easy fixes to this. Science institutions have no interest in changing. As with biomedicine, where the government funds research it can insist on higher standards. But we’ve seen that a GOP Congress has no interest in doing so with climate scientists. Two GOP presidents during the past 30 years have had no interest in doing so.
Perhaps the replication crisis will produce institutional changes. Perhaps eventually the weather will prove climate crusade to be the largest and most significant example of the replication crisis – and that big splash will force change. We can only guess at how this will all play out.
About low energy nuclear reactions (aka “cold fusion) – there is some interesting work being done on it by quasi-commercial firms. See this post for details:
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2018/09/13/update-on-fusion-power/
Please go away.
No.
Hunter not yet, as Mr Kummer has not answered
the question of whether he is or not an AGW.
There is a remarkable parallel in the banning of DDT because of a false (but convenient) understanding of the science. The crusade was led by environmental NGOs, implemented by the UN WHO and supported by the left wing media. They managed to keep it up for 60 years, killing tens of millions of mainly poor people in the third world and sentencing hundreds of millions to diseases from which they ultimately recovered. Another triumph for dumb environmentalism. I wonder how many they will kill this time.
Reference: The Excellent Powder – Donald Roberts and Robert Tren.
Indeed.
In fact, one can also raise the issue of AIDS alarmism as well.
– In 2017, 380 000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses in the Eastern and Southern Africa Region, corresponding to 42% decrease since 2010. Adolescents both sex contributed to 22,000 among these deaths (6%)
– In 2017, 280 000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses in the West and Central Africa Region, corresponding to 24% decrease since 2010. Adolescents both sex contributed 13,000 of these deaths.
– Malaria deaths reached 435 000 in 2017.
– The WHO African Region carries a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden. In 2017, the region was home to 92% of malaria cases and 93% of malaria deaths.
But, hey, the narrative…
Is it over?
We will see,the gullible citizens of Canada will make the best test of the CAGW memes strength in 2019.
Academic,Bureaucratic and Media Canada has been all in on CAGW propaganda for the duration.
Finally the politicians feel brave enough to impose a tax on everything,in the name of saving us from Catastrophe.
Taxing the only viable transport fuels in a country where everything is transported vast distances =A tax on everything.
So if we passively accept this tax,then meme has not been a failure, for in Canada it will have accomplished the goal.
Supposedly we have a “very high level “of education…
Yet the average Canadian cannot do their own tax filings.
Now if the country is ripped assunder by this final straw, well I will guess some Canadians can still do math…and the meme has failed.
email me via twitter and we can get a Yellow vest program started in Canada.
Go to the gas station and look for “low carbon” fuel. That fuel is cheaper than all the others because it is free of the carbon tax.
Oh wait. That fuel doesn’t exist. The public is paying the tax but are given no alternative.
Governments are trying to force people to go green by whipping them, not by helping them. Eventually people rise up against those holding the whip.
“…the only possible means of substantially reducing America’s carbon emissions within the timeframe climate activists are now seeking is to put a stiff price on all carbon fuels.”
=========
That is complete and utter nonsense because there is no alternative product.
Would people stop eating if you put a tax on all food. Of course not because there is no alternative.
If you make the tax on food high enough all that happens is an increase in the death rate which reduces the food eaten.
The same will happen as you increase the carbon tax. People will die and thus fuel use will decrease.
+