The Week That Was: 2019-02-16 (February 16, 2019)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better” – attributed to Albert Einstein.
Number of the Week: $425 billion plus back-up
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
A Note on Outgoing Longwave Radiation (Infrared Radiation): TWTW is trying to prepare a clear explanation of the effects of greenhouse gases and how the effects can be measured. They cannot be measured from the surface. The theory involves specialized fields such as theoretical molecular physics and mathematics such as integral equations. The physicists who review TWTW requested that TWTW explanations be reviewed by specialists to ensure there are no significant errors. This is being done, but the discussion of outgoing Infrared Radiation has been delayed.
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The Green New Deal: There has been a great deal written about the Green New Deal over the past week. Many criticisms are linked below to include absurd claims by the promoters. Among the more outrageous claims of the proponents not discussed are analogies to the Marshall Plan and to the mobilization for World War II. It is apparent that proponents do not understand either.
The Marshall Plan, the European Recovery Program (ERP), was a great improvement in the attitudes of the victors following World War II, over the attitude of the victors following World War I, with the Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty of Versailles was designed to punish the vanquished and their citizens, the Marshall Plan set out to rebuild the economies of Europe providing prosperity for the citizens. President Truman was a Democrat and Congress was controlled by the Republicans. Much to the credit of the leaders of both groups, they set aside political differences to pass legislation benefiting European recovery from the devastating war.
However, scarcely discussed, the results were very uneven in Western Europe. (The Soviet Union came out with its own plan and implemented it in Eastern Europe.) A student familiar with economic statistics traveling in Western Europe in the early 1970s could note the difference in prosperity between West Germany and the UK. West Germany was thriving, the UK was stagnating, with its citizens facing increasing costs for necessary items. Yet, the UK received more funding from the Marshall Plan than West Germany.
One can attribute part of the difference in prosperity to the way in which the governments treated the funds from the Marshall Plan. The German government distributed the funds to local leaders, with proper accounting controls, as loans, to be repaid. The localities invested the funds accordingly. The UK government used the funds to strengthen control over private industries. It appears the Green New Deal is more along the lines of establishing greater federal control of private industries than promoting prosperity.
The second analogy of mobilizing for WWII is more disturbing. Contrary to what many believe, the original New Deal did not solve unemployment. World War II did. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1939 as the draft was starting, the total labor force was 55,600,000 with 370,000 in the armed services, which was increasing. Unemployment was 9,480,000 and the civilian unemployment rate was about 17%. In 1933, at the depth of the depression, the unemployment rate was 33%. By contrast today’s unemployment rate is about 4%. Further, BLS surveys show the number of job openings exceeds the number of people unemployed by about one million. The nation does not need to mobilize for war.
If there is an analogy to war for the New Green Deal, it is in Vietnam – when the national leaders did not understand the enemy or how to confront the enemy. Many young men and women believed that the Johnson Administration and the “Whiz Kids” in the Pentagon under Robert McNamara would not send hundreds of thousands of combat troops to Southeast Asia without a well-thought-out strategic plan. They were wrong.
As the Pentagon Papers partially show, the planning for Vietnam was inept. The advice of many experienced military leaders was ignored in favor of a “can-do” attitude. That attitude can be important, but needs proper direction, which the Johnson Administration did not give. Why President Nixon tried to suppress the Pentagon Papers containing severe criticism of his political opponents remains a mystery.
The proponents of the Green New Deal do not understand the difference between natural climate change and human-caused climate change. As John Christy has frequently demonstrated, the climate models used by proponents of dire global warming / climate change, greatly overestimate atmospheric temperature trends, where the greenhouse gas effect occurs. This is similar to proponents of the commitment of ground troops into Vietnam greatly overestimating the threat to the United States, particularly since we had the naval and mining capacity to block the key port used to supply North Vietnam.
The Green New Deal ignores the simple fact that wind and solar do not, and cannot, produce consistent, reliable electricity. Thus, these are a completely inadequate replacement for electricity generated by fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydro – unfit for modern civilization. See links under Defending the Orthodoxy, Questioning Green Elsewhere, https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1948/article/pdf/labor-force-employment-and-unemployment-1929-39-estimating-methods.pdf, and https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
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Tale of Two States: Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Robert Bryce brings out the dramatic difference in the political treatment of natural gas drilling between Pennsylvania and New York. Both states sit on the rich Marcellus Shale formation. Pennsylvania is exporting natural gas, via pipeline, then converted to Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) and shipped to Asia or Europe. New York State has virtually banned hydraulic fracturing, needed to extract natural gas from Marcellus Shale.
Consolidated Edison, an energy utility in New York has announced a moratorium on new natural gas connections in its area. Such moratoria were common in the 1970s when it was commonly accepted the country was about to “run-out” of natural gas.
As Bryce states, what make the moratorium even more interesting is that, due to political pressure, New York’s Indian Point Energy Center, a nuclear facility, is scheduled to be shut down in 2021, taking 2,069-megawatts off line. The only current alternative are three gas-fired generators, two of which are in New York State.
The article prompted TWTW to do some further digging into natural gas production in Pennsylvania and New York. In 2006, before the shale revolution, Pennsylvania produced 175,950 mcf of natural gas, in 2017 it produced 5,463,888 mcf, an increase 0f 3100%. In 2006, New York produced 55,980 mcf, in 2017 it produced 11,395 mcf, a decline of 80%. Many New York politicians are promoters of the Green New Deal, this must be what they have in mind. See Article # 2 and https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_prod_sum_a_EPG0_VGM_mmcf_a.htm
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California Rail: Last week’s TWTW discussed the escalating costs of former Governor Brown’s high-speed rail linking San Francisco to Los Angles. The Green New Deal has visions of replacing air travel with high speed rail. This week, the new California Governor, Gavin Newsom, put the brakes on the train. He is proposing to finish the initial planned route from Merced to Bakersfield, with the goal of revitalizing the rural areas harmed by the cut-off of irrigation water. Mr. Newsom stated: “there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to LA.” Perhaps someone showed him a map of the populated areas. See link under California Dreaming.
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Additions and Corrections: TWTW reader Christopher Game writes: “In my opinion, your argument, that the earth’s surface is heating faster than the lower atmosphere and that consequently the heating is not due to added CO2, is an important, very good, and valid argument. I think it is one of the few very simple, reliable, and decisive arguments against the IPCC and its acolytes. I would like to see it used widely.”
“I presented it to one local expert here, a man very much on our side, against the IPCC and its acolytes. He wanted not just a comparison of global average temperature rates of increase. He wanted to know that the comparison between surface and lower atmosphere temperature rates of increase is favorable for all, or at least most latitudes or localities.
“Can you offer some help to verify that the comparison between surface and lower atmosphere temperature rates of increase is favorable for all, or at least most latitudes or localities? This would make it much easier to promulgate your excellent argument more widely.”
The request is realistic, but we simply do not have the data. Atmospheric temperature trends are taken by measuring large volumes of air. The closest to any regional data are in the global maps, produced by the University of Alabama in Huntsville, which show 40-year trends covering regions, not locations. Surface measurements are basically pin-pricks.
Carbon dioxide-caused global warming proponents, such as NASA-GISS, try to generalize these pin-pricks. But these generalizations are highly questionable. For example, as mentioned in the Feb 9 TWTW under Measurement Issues – Surface, NOAA does not show surface temperatures for the polar regions where there are no thermometers, NASA-GISS does. NOAA states: “Please Note: Gray areas represent missing data.” In most of these areas NASA-GISS generally shows warming. Also, NASA-GISS shows surface cooling of the Antarctic, where satellite atmospheric trends show warming.
What is particularly disturbing about Antarctica is that the only warming shown in atmospheric data is about 0 to 80 degrees east longitude, yet NASA-GISS shows cooling there and warming over most of the continent and the surrounding seas.
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Number of the Week: $425 billion plus back-up: Wall Street Journal reader wrote a letter estimating that to replace the approximately 850 gigawatts of uranium and fossil-fuel installed electricity capacity in the U.S. as of 2016 would require about $425 billion, without back-up. His calculations assume significant reductions in costs ranging from one-third to one-sixth of current costs. (Highly unlikely in a mature industry.)
Using rough calculations by the late Roger Andrews for California, alone; the cost of battery back-up would be about 20 times that number bringing the total cost to the country to about $9 Trillion. According to the White House Budget Office, the total federal government outlays in 2019 will be $4.4 Trillion with a deficit of $984 Billion. New Deals are not cheap. Perhaps we will have a technological break-through in extracting sun-beams from cucumbers as described by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Science: Is the Sun Rising?
New Findings From German Scientists Show Changes in Precipitation Over Europe Linked To Solar Activity
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Feb 15, 2019
Link to paper: Influence of solar activity changes on European rainfall
By Ludger Laurenz, Horst-Joachim Lüdecke and Sebastian Lüning, Journal of atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, April 2019
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682618305273?via%3Dihub
Challenging the Orthodoxy — NIPCC
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science
Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, 2013
https://www.heartland.org/media-library/pdfs/CCR-II/CCR-II-Full.pdf
Summary: http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/ccr2a/pdf/Summary-for-Policymakers.pdf
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts
Idso, Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, 2014
http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/ccr2b/pdf/Full-Report.pdf
Summary: https://www.heartland.org/media-library/pdfs/CCR-IIb/Summary-for-Policymakers.pdf
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels
By Multiple Authors, Bezdek, Idso, Legates, and Singer eds., Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, Draft Summary for Policymakers, NIPCC, 2019
Click to access Climate-Change-Reconsidered-II-Fossil-Fuels-FULL-Volume-with-covers.pdf
Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming
The NIPCC Report on the Scientific Consensus
By Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer, NIPCC, Nov 23, 2015
http://climatechangereconsidered.org/
Download with no charge
https://www.heartland.org/policy-documents/why-scientists-disagree-about-global-warming
Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate
S. Fred Singer, Editor, NIPCC, 2008
http://www.sepp.org/publications/nipcc_final.pdf
Challenging the Orthodoxy
Old Warmth in the Sea and New Cold in the Living Room
By Prof Fritz Vahrenholt, Achse des Guten, Via GWPF, Feb 12, 2019
https://www.thegwpf.com/old-warmth-in-the-sea-and-new-cold-in-the-living-room/
“In other words, the sensitivity of the climate to CO2 is much smaller than previously assumed.”
“The IPCC report will therefore have to be fundamentally revised. There is much to be said that if CO2 is doubled, the temperature increase will not be 1.85°C (IPCC) but 1.3°C at most. Thus, there is no reason to fear that the 1.5°/2°C targets will be exceeded in this century.”
Global climate change is political not scientific
By Staff Writers, ICECAP, Feb 14, 2019
‘Insect Collapse”: “Hyper-Alarming” Study Was Hype
Press Release, GWPF, Feb 11, 2019
https://www.thegwpf.com/insect-collapse-hyper-alarming-study-was-hype/
[SEPP Comment: Showing the problems in the one set of surface temperature data leading to the alarm. Perhaps another set of data could show how the planet will be overwhelmed by insects.]
What’s Natural? Changing Sea Levels – Part 1
By Jim Steele, WUWT, Feb 13, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/13/whats-natural-changing-sea-levels-part-1/
Defending the Orthodoxy
Bill McKibben: Climate Change Is Scary—Not the Green New Deal
It’s very clear that conservatives have one plan for dealing with the popularity of the Green New Deal: scaring the hell out of people.
By Bill McKibben, Yes, Feb 14, 2019 [H/t Cooler Heads]
“A return to the Dark Ages is what happened in California last fall, when old people burned to death in their cars while stuck in traffic jams trying to flee deadly wildfires.”
[SEPP Comment: After government placed a “road diet” on a key road out?]
Questioning the Orthodoxy
Gates on renewables: How would Tokyo survive a 3 day typhoon with unreliable energy?
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Feb 14, 2019
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World. Guest opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
By Tim Ball, Digital Management, Feb 14, 2019
http://drtimball.ca/2019/its-a-mad-mad-mad-mad-world-guest-opinion-dr-tim-ball/
“What McLuhan didn’t allow was that in a village the most destructive person is the gossip. Before the Internet, the mainstream media were the gossips in the global village.”
Terence Corcoran: Whether Earth’s population booms or busts, the future still looks promising
Two vital new books from Canadian writers on the alleged population crisis suggest we can all relax
By Terence Corcoran, Financial Post, Can, Feb 13, 2019
The GWPF 2019 Temperature Prediction Competition
By Staff Writers, GWPF, Feb 8, 2019
https://www.thegwpf.com/2019-temperature-prediction-competition/
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
China and India Lead the Way in Greening
By Abby Tabor, NASA Ames Research Center Earth Observatory, 2019 [H/t GWPF]
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144540/china-and-india-lead-the-way-in-greening
Link to paper: China and India lead in greening of the world through land-use management, By Chi Chen, et al. Nature Sustainability, Feb 11, 2019
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7
“Once people realize there is a problem, they tend to fix it,” he said. “In the 1970s and 80s in India and China, the situation around vegetation loss was not good. In the 1990s, people realized it, and today things have improved. Humans are incredibly resilient. That’s what we see in the satellite data.”
Seeking a Common Ground
Not so independent IEA
By Donn Dears, Power For USA, Feb 15, 2019
http://ddears.com/2019/02/15/not-so-independent-iea/
Dear EERE: Past Time to Debate “Deep Decarbonization” (Obama program inconsistent with America First energy policy)
By Mark Krebs and Tom Tanton, Master Resource, Feb 14, 2019
https://www.masterresource.org/energy-efficiency/eere-debate-deep-decarbonization/
[SEPP Comment: Far less costly than the Green New Deal?]
Review of Recent Scientific Articles by CO2 Science
Atoll Island Stability in the Face of Climate Change
Duvat, V.K.E. 2019. A global assessment of atoll island platform changes over the past decades. WIREs Climate Change 10: e557. Feb 15, 2019
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V22/feb/a9.php
“In concluding her review, Duvat writes that her work ‘confirms that over the past decades to century, atoll islands exhibited no widespread sign of physical destabilization by sea-level rise,’ adding that, ‘importantly, islands located in ocean regions affected by rapid sea-level rise showed neither contraction nor marked shoreline retreat.’”
The Impact of Elevated CO2 on a Red Macroaglae Under Low Light Conditions
Bao, M., Wang, J., Xu, T., Wu, H., Li, X. and Xu, J. 2019. Rising CO2 levels alter the response of the red macroalga Pyropia yezoensis under light stress. Aquaculture 501: 325-330. Feb 14, 2019
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V22/feb/a8.php
“The results of their analysis revealed, not surprisingly, that the growth rates of P. yezoensis declined as light intensity decreased. However, they also observed that in the lowest light intensity treatment, elevated CO2 significantly enhanced the growth of this macroalgae.”
The Interaction Between Elevated CO2 and Drought on Sweet Potato
Saminathan, T., Alvarado, A., Lopez, C., Shinde, S., Gajanayake, B., Abburi, V.L., Vajja, V.G., Jagadeeswaran, G., Reddy, K.R., Nimmakayala, P. and Reddy, U.K. 2019. Elevated carbon dioxide and drought modulate physiology and storage-root development in sweet potato by regulating microRNAs. Functional & Integrative Genomics 19: 171-190. Feb 13, 2019
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V22/feb/a7.php
“In the combined elevated CO2 and drought treatment, however, the positive effects of elevated CO2 more than sufficiently offset the negative effects of drought…”
Future Forest Response to Rising Atmospheric CO2 and Climate Change in Northwest China
Peng, S., Zhao, C., Chen, Y. and Xu, Z. 2017. Simulating the productivity of a subalpine forest at high elevations under representative concentration pathway scenarios in the Qilian Mountains of northwest China. Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research 32: 166-173. Feb 11, 2019
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V22/feb/a6.php
Measurement Issues — Surface
History keeps getting colder — ACORN2 raises Australia’s warming rate by over 20%
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Feb 16, 2019
Australia’s new hottest day just “discovered”, not Albany or Oodnadatta, but Carnarvon (51 degrees in 1953!)
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Feb 13, 2019
Met Office Decadal Forecasts Running Hot
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 11, 2019
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/02/11/met-office-decadal-forecasts-running-hot/
Measurement Issues — Atmosphere
New intensity scale ranks California’s ‘atmospheric river’ storm events just like hurricanes
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, Feb 12, 2019
Link to article: New Western Storms Scale to Describe Intensity, Potential Impacts of Atmospheric Rivers
By Staff Writers, Ametsoc.org, Feb 4, 2019
Changing Weather
Japan’s Northern Island Of Hokkaido Shock-Freezes…”Coldest Air Mass Ever Recorded”!
Record cold temperatures, transportation disrupted, fire extinguishers freeze as “coldest air mass ever” sweeps over Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido.
By Kirye, No Tricks Zone, Feb 10, 2019
“The agency said a cold air mass with a temperature of minus 24.4, the lowest seen since it began compiling such data in 1957,…”
No, Guardian, Wildfires Are Not Caused By Climate Change
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 11, 2019
[SEPP Comment: Have the California fires shifted to Australia and Tasmania?]
Changing Seas
Study Pours Cold Water on Sea-Rise Apocalypse
By Ben Webster, The Times, Via GWPF, Feb 8, 2019
https://www.thegwpf.com/study-pours-cold-water-on-sea-rise-apocalypse/
“The revised prediction challenges a study in 2016 by Penn State University claiming that Antarctic melting alone could contribute more than a metre to the rise in sea level.”
Changing Cryosphere – Land / Sea Ice
A Plane That Landed On Greenland’s Surface In 1942 Was Found In 2018…Buried Under 104 Meters Of Ice
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Feb 11, 2019
[SEPP Comment: The amount of ice added since WWII, seems to contradict those claim significant ice loss in Greenland.]
Comprehensive Study: Glacier Melt Estimates In Tropics Of South America OVERSTATED BY 10 TIMES!
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Feb 12, 2019
Polar bears have been terrorizing a Russian town on the Barents Sea since December
By Susan Crockford, Polar Bear Science, Feb 9, 2019
Polar bears walking the streets on Novaya Zemlya are habituated garbage bears, not victims of climate change
By Susan Crockford, Polar Bear Science, Feb 14, 2019
Acidic Waters
Analysis Finds Oceans Have Become LESS ‘Acidic’ With Rising CO2, Challenging The ‘Acidification’ Narrative
By Kenneth Richard, No tricks Zone, Feb 14, 2019
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
IPPR Disaster Story
By Andrew Montford, GWPF, Feb 12, 2019
https://www.thegwpf.com/disaster-story/
“There has been much huffing and puffing in the media today about a new report from the Institute of Public Policy Research, which claims that the environment is facing multiple disasters, all at once.”
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda on Children
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: It’s anarchy in the UK classrooms as middle-class ‘green’ militants encourage children as young as nine to play truant
By Richard Littlejohn, Daily Mail, Feb 11, 2019 [H/t GWPF]
Kids protesting to change weather are “heroic” but grownups in yellow vests are unnewsworthy
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Feb 15, 2019
Start-up used teen climate activist to raise millions: Swedish paper
By Staff Writers, The Local, Sweden, Feb 9, 2019 [H/t GWPF]
https://www.thelocal.se/20190209/start-up-used-child-climate-activist-to-raise-millions
“We want to build a platform with modern technology. This is not free, a lot of money is needed. We have so far received just over SEK 20 million from 500 investors through two new issues, of which 10 million was from the last one in December.” [According to company founder Svante Thunberg.]
Questioning European Green
Sir Jim Radcliffe: Open Letter to the European Commission President Jean-Claude Junker
Via GWPF, Feb 13, 2019
“The USA is fully in the process of renewal. Immense building programmes are installing the world’s finest chemical technology which has a fraction of the emissions we saw a generation ago. Old units are being shut down. The USA doesn’t have green taxes but it does insist on the very highest environmental standards before it issues permits for new builds.”
Green Costs Partly Responsible For Increased Energy Price Cap
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 14, 2019
“While higher wholesale costs explain £74 of the increase, network, policy and operating costs, all affected by govt climate policies, are responsible for an extra £32.”
Questioning Green Elsewhere
The Green New Deal
By Norman Rogers, American Thinker, Feb 14, 2019
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/02/the_green_new_deal.html
“The Green New Deal mostly has nothing to do with climate change. The program has a strong resemblance to the Fundamental Rights and Duties of Citizens found in the 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union (the “Stalin” constitution).”
[SEPP Comment: At the time, the Soviet Union was lauded as the most democratic country on earth. The Constitution included economic rights and abolished unemployment!]
http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/1936toc.html
Five Reasons the Green New Deal Is Worse Than You Thought
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal isn’t even serious about environmentalism, let alone economics.
By Steven Hayward, The Bulwark, Feb 12, 2018
https://thebulwark.com/five-reasons-the-green-new-deal-is-worse-than-you-thought/
Green New Deal Would Kill Almost Everyone, Warns Greenpeace Co-Founder
By Alex Newman, New American, Feb 11, 2019 [H/t ICECAP]
“By the time I left Greenpeace, it had drifted into a situation in which all they had left was the green. They kind of dropped the peace, which was the human side of the situation. And now they were characterizing people as the enemies of the Earth — the human species as the enemies of nature, as if we were the only evil species.”
[SEPP Comment: Interviews with Patrick Moore and Craig Rucker.]
The Laughable Fantasy Of 100% Renewable Energy
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Feb 12, 2019
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-2-12-the-laughable-fantasy-of-100-renewable-energy
The Green New Deal’s toughest transition will be returning its supporters to reality
Opinion: Eliminating greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 is virtually impossible. Pivoting even by 2090 is optimistic
By Robert Lyman, Financial Post, Feb 14, 2019
The Green New Deal Is Make Believe
By Robert J. Samuelson, IBD, Feb 15, 2019
https://www.investors.com/politics/columnists/green-new-deal-make-believe-robert-samuelson/
Green New Deal: “Air Travel Stops Becoming Necessary”
By Michael Palicz, Americans for Tax Reform, Feb 7, 2019
https://www.atr.org/green-new-deal-air-travel-stops-becoming-necessary
“But as Ocasio-Cortez says, ‘the question isn’t how will we pay for it, but what will we do with our new shared prosperity’”.
The Green New Deal Is Communist Manifesto, 21st Century
By Jason Pye, Real Clear Markets, Feb 9, 2019
CON: Green New Deal will be all pain and no gain
By Myron Ebell, LA Times, Feb 14, 2019
https://www.latimes.com/sns-tns-bc-green-newdeal-con-20190214-story.html
About the Green New Deal, dreams given form
By Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website, Via WUWT, Feb 11, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/11/about-the-green-new-deal-dreams-given-form/
Rex Murphy: Social-justice Democrats’ ‘Green New Deal’ will turn America into Venezuela
The Green New Deal uses environmentalism as a lever to pursue a far-larger, more sinister, agenda, a mad leap to a socialist nightworld
By Rex Murphy, National Post, Feb 11, 2019
The Green New Deal’s Disastrous First Week
By Kyle Smith, National Review, Feb 13, 2019
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/green-new-deal-disastrous-first-week-for-democrats/
Non-Green Jobs
Labor unions fear Democrats’ Green New Deal poses job threat
By Valerie Volcovici, Reuters, Feb 12, 2019
Litigation Issues
Miss. sues federal government over flooding
By Staff Writers, E & E, Feb 12, 2019
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/02/12/stories/1060120335
[SEPP Comment: Not certain if readers can open the link. Strange litigation considering controlling the Mississippi became a major task for the federal government after the Great Flood of 1927 that left thousands homeless in Mississippi for months. Of course, the flood was not caused by “climate change” then.]
Cap-and-Trade and Carbon Taxes
Ineos founder Sir Jim Ratcliffe blasts EU over ‘stupid’ taxes
By Staff Writer, Energy Voice, Feb 13, 2019 [H/t GWPF]
“He added the EU is ‘scaring away investment with heavy green taxes’, with Europe’s share of the world chemical market having halved to just 15% in the last 10 years.
“’Europe reminds me somewhat of the Charge of the Light Brigade immortalised in Tennyson’s wonderful poem, full of valour and good intention but the outcome will not be pretty.’”
Subsidies and Mandates Forever
Offshore Wind Costs–Facts v Propaganda
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 14, 2019
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/02/14/offshore-wind-costs-facts-v-propaganda/
“Based on 39% loading, output from these projects, both operational and planned, amounts to 47 TWh, meaning the annual subsidy will total £3478m.” [Or 3.5 billion pounds.]
Energy Issues – Non-US
SHAKING WITH FEAR Government accused of killing fracking by forcing drilling firms to suspend work over tiny tremors
A group of 49 scientists urged ministers to urgently review the tremor limit which is comparable to bouncing a football
By Greg Willford, The Sun, UK, Feb 11, 2019
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8399422/government-killing-fracking-tremors-suspend-drilling/
“Tony Bosworth, fossil-free campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: ‘It was expert advice that led to the government and fracking companies agreeing these safety regulations.’” [Boldface added]
Theresa May has been urged to back fracking as company says it has found ’30 years worth of gas’ in East Midlands
Chemical giant Ineos claims the gas field in Nottinghamshire is the richest in UK history
By Steve Hakes, The Sun, Feb 15, 2019
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8432323/theresa-may-fracking-30-years-gas/
The Times View on Shale Gas: Franck On!
Editorial, The Times, Via GWPF, Feb 9, 2019
https://www.thegwpf.com/the-times-view-on-fracking-frack-on/
B.C. government putting alternative energy sector on ice
By Randy Shore, WUWT, Feb 14, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/15/b-c-government-putting-alternative-energy-sector-on-ice/
Energy Issues – Australia
Australians: destroying their grid faster than any country on Earth
Australians are the Renewable crash Test Dummies
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Feb 12, 2019
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/02/australians-destroying-their-grid-faster-than-any-country-on-earth/
Energy Issues — US
Grid Energy Storage
By Staff Writers, U.S. Department of Energy, December 2013
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/09/f18/Grid%20Energy%20Storage%20December%202013.pdf
Oil and Natural Gas – the Future or the Past?
Report: Texas crude oil production breaks 1970s record
By Sergio Chapa, Houston Chronicle, Feb 11, 2019
EIA adds new play production data to shale gas and tight oil reports
By Jack Perrin, Emily Geary, EIA, Feb 15, 2019 [H/t Cooler Heads]
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=38372
Easing the logjam in pipeline infrastructure
By Craig Rucker, Washington Times, Feb 14, 2019
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/feb/14/easing-the-logjam-in-pipeline-infrastructure/
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
Biggest offshore windfarm to start UK supply this week
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 12, 2019
“My eyes are obviously failing me! Nowhere in this Guardian piece can I find a mention of how much we will all be paying for Hornsea.
“So, just for those who also have poor eyesight, here is the confirmation that the price is £155.53/MWh, triple the market price:”
Energy & Environmental Newsletter: February 11, 2019
By John Droz, Jr. Master Resource, Feb 11, 2019
California Dreaming
This Train Won’t Leave the Station
If high-speed rail can’t make it in California, it can’t make it anywhere.
By Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox, City Journal, Feb 13, 2019
https://www.city-journal.org/high-speed-rail-projects
Oh Mann!
Michael Mann’s quantum climate pseudoscience
By Luboš Motl, The Reference Frame, Feb 9, 2019
https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/02/michael-manns-quantum-climate.html
Other News that May Be of Interest
Lords sleaze watchdog launches probe into claims Tory peer and climate change chief John Gummer failed to declare more than £600,000 of payments made to his family firm from ‘green’ businesses
Five MPs lodged complaint with Standards Commissioner Lucy Scott-Moncrieff
She later announced inquiry into allegations Gummer breached code of conduct
It follows last week’s Mail on Sunday revelations about the business interests of the Tory peer
By David Rose, Sunday Mail, UK, Feb 9, 2019
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE:
If blind lead the blind, both fall in the …
By Staff Writers, Climate Change Predictions.org, Feb 15, 2019
http://climatechangepredictions.org/uncategorized/7874
“As temperatures rise due to global warming the UK will have to be prepared for ‘monsoon style’ storms by building open drainage ditches beside urban roads, pourous pavements and storing water in reservoirs under car parks.
“Lord Smith, Chairman of the Environment Agency, said Britain is experiencing a “new kind of rain” in the summer that is putting cities at increasing risk, especially London.” The Telegraph (UK), 14/10/09 “Monsoon style floods to hit Britain
Tipping point passed
By Staff Writers, Climate Change Predictions.org, Feb 10, 2019
http://climatechangepredictions.org/uncategorized/5829
“Today I testified to Congress about global warming, 20 years after my June 23, 1988 testimony, which alerted the public that global warming was underway. There are striking similarities between then and now, but one big difference. The difference is that now we have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb.
“The next president and Congress must define a course next year in which the United States exerts leadership commensurate with our responsibility for the present dangerous situation.
“Otherwise it will become impractical to constrain atmospheric carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas produced in burning fossil fuels, to a level that prevents the climate system from passing tipping points that lead to disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity’s control.” Dr James Hansen, Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near on Global Warming, Huffington Post, 07/01/2008 , Updated May 25, 2011
ARTICLES:
1. Green New Deal Encounters Red Sea of Debt
To replace 850 gigawatts (850,000,000 kilowatts) of installed fossil fuel and nuclear capacity would cost around $425 billion.
Letters, WSJ, Feb 13, 2019
https://www.wsj.com/articles/green-new-deal-encounters-red-sea-of-debt-11550091094
“Regarding Kimberley Strassel’s “The Socialist That Could” (Potomac Watch, Feb. 8): There are two primary concerns I have with the Green New Deal. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), there was approximately 850 gigawatts of uranium and fossil-fuel installed electricity capacity in the U.S. as of 2016. Also, according to the EIA, as of January 2019, total capital costs per kilowatt for onshore wind range from $1,455 a kilowatt to $2,773 a kilowatt. Solar is $1,759-$3,212 a kilowatt. Let’s assume there is amazing innovation and costs decline to $500 a kilowatt for both of them. To replace 850 gigawatts (850,000,000 kilowatts) of capacity would cost $425 billion, give or take a few dozen billion. That’s my first concern. My second concern is what happens to my frequent-flier miles if there are no more airplanes?”
Darin Milmeister
New York
****************
2. Gas Shortages Give New York an Early Taste of the Green New Deal
The state is dependent on imports even though it sits atop the abundant Marcellus Shale.
By Robert Bryce, WSJ, Feb 15, 2019
SUMMARY: The Manhattan Institute senior fellow writers:
“The combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling—sometimes known as the ‘shale revolution’—has enabled Texas, Pennsylvania and other states to produce record quantities of natural gas, some of which is being frozen [sic, liquified], loaded onto giant ships, and transported to customers in places like Chile, China and India. Thanks to the environmental policies of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York has missed out on this windfall.
“Now, in a preview of what life might be like under the Democrats’ proposed Green New Deal, some New Yorkers are about to face a natural-gas shortage. Consolidated Edison , an energy utility that provides gas and power to the New York City area, announced last month that beginning in mid-March it would ‘no longer be accepting applications for natural gas connections from new customers in most of our Westchester County service area.’ The reason for the shortage is obvious: The Cuomo administration has repeatedly blocked or delayed new pipeline projects. As a Con Ed spokesman put it, there is a ‘lot of natural gas around the country, but getting it to New York has been the strain.’
“New York policy makers have also killed the state’s natural-gas-drilling business. In 2008 New York drillers produced about 150 million cubic feet of natural gas a day—not enough to meet all the state’s needs, but still a substantial amount. That same year legislators in Albany passed a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, the process used to wring oil and gas out of underground rock formations. In 2015 the Cuomo administration made the moratorium permanent. By 2018 New York’s gas production had declined so much that the Energy Information Administration quit publishing numbers on it.
“New York now imports nearly all of its gas even though part of the Marcellus Shale, one of the biggest and most prolific sources of natural gas in the country, extends into the state’s Southern Tier region. To get an idea of how much gas the state might have been able to produce from the Marcellus, New Yorkers can look across the state line to Pennsylvania, which now supplies about two-thirds of the gas consumed in New York. At the end of 2018, Pennsylvania drillers were producing about 18 billion cubic feet of gas a day. That’s more gas than Canada now produces.
“By keeping its natural gas in the ground, New York has lost out on jobs and tax revenue. By 2015, some 106,000 people were directly employed by Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry, making it a bigger employer than the state’s famous steel sector. This year Pennsylvania’s state government is expected to take in some $247 million in gas-related fees.”
After a discussion of the closing of Indian Point power plant and no viable back-up other than natural gas, Bryce continues:
“The gas shortage means more bad news for Westchester County, which is already wobbling at the prospect of losing about 1,000 jobs when Indian Point closes. Last month Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, a Democrat from Scarsdale, told a local newspaper that the moratorium on new gas connections would ‘devastate’ development in her district. She said the gas shortage would pose a particular problem for the development of affordable housing units.
“‘This probably represents a billion dollars of development that will just stop,’ said Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano in an interview with the local CBS affiliate. ‘These big-pocketed developers are just going to move their developments to other communities.’
“Less than two weeks after Con Ed announced the moratorium on new gas connections, the utility announced it would seek an 11% hike in residential natural-gas rates and a nearly 6% increase in residential electricity rates.
“Policies have consequences. The moratorium on gas connections in Westchester is one of the knock-on effects of the anti-hydrocarbon policies of the Cuomo administration, and consumers will be forced to pay the bill.”
****************
3. All You Need Is a Congress and a Dream
Green New Dealer Edward Markey vows: ‘We will save all of creation by engaging in massive job creation.’
By Barton Swaim, WSJ, Feb 10, 2019
https://www.wsj.com/articles/all-you-need-is-a-congress-and-a-dream-11549829073?mod=hp_opin_pos1
SUMMARY: The reviewer of political books for the Wall Street Journal writes:
“It’s hard to know what to make of the ‘Green New Deal’ put forward last week by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Sen. Edward Markey (D., Mass.). The pair’s nonbinding resolution calls for, among many other things, a 10-year plan to meet ‘100 percent of the power demand of the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources,’ and to upgrade ‘all existing buildings in the United States . . . to achieve maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability.’ It also aims to ‘promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities and youth.’
“Good thing it’s nonbinding.
“Is President Trump’s attack on socialism a preview of his 2020 campaign strategy? And how did the Democratic Party, which has just unveiled outlines for a Green New Deal, move so far to the left so quickly?
“Maybe the resolution is a starting point in a negotiation, but its sponsors don’t seem in a mood to bargain. Their aims are total. They seem to believe that the Trump presidency’s illegitimacy and all-around awfulness (as they see it) have radicalized the public and made possible the fulfillment of progressive longings.
“The Green New Deal is an expression of dreams, but that doesn’t make it pointless or merely comical. Take it seriously, not literally. Much of it reads like a leftist manifesto from half a century ago—I thought of the Port Huron Statement, issued by the founders of Students for a Democratic Society in 1962, which crammed scores of hopelessly vague and muddled objectives into a single document for the purpose of movement cohesion: ‘The economy itself is of such social importance that its major resources and means of production should be open to democratic participation and subject to democratic social regulation,’ and so on.
After a brief discussion of the cap-and-trade bill, on which Nancy Pelosi spent significant political capital, the journalist continues:
“The imperturbable Ms. Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t offended by the word ‘dream.’ ‘I don’t consider that to be a dismissive term,’ she said. ‘I think it’s a great term.’ It’s certainly an apt one, and makes sense of the resolution’s weirdly vatic language. Mr. Markey, sounding a little like the prophet Isaiah, said: ‘We will save all of creation by engaging in massive job creation.’
“The word ‘dream’ almost always has a happy connotation in American politics. To dream is to desire worthy and noble ends. Sometimes the ends really are worthy and noble, as in the most famous dream in American politics, Martin Luther King’s. But mostly they are not. Communism was always a dream, always a future state toward which its adherents had to struggle. Recall the haunting line of the political philosopher Michael Oakeshott: ‘The conjunction of dreaming and ruling generates tyranny.’
“The political dream, Oakeshott wrote, ‘is a vision of a condition of human circumstance from which the occasion of conflict has been removed, a vision of human activity coordinated and set going in a single direction and of every resource being used to the full.’ That is just about a perfect description of the progressive outlook. What else could inspire two members of Congress, one a neophyte and one with more than 40 years’ experience, to write a bill mandating—all at once, as if they could bring about paradise through legislation—clean water and air, affordable housing, access to healthy food, and ‘millions of high-wage jobs’?
“American progressives are fond of the word ‘democracy,’ but it is not democracy they want, because democracy is messy. What they want—and it is Mr. Trump’s strange genius to make them say it—is the noumenal perfection of a dream.”
In three days, another snowstorm will reach California.
Index Nino 3.4 has declined since January.
The cyclone is slowly approaching eastern Australia.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=ausf×pan=24hrs&anim=html5&fbclid=IwAR3Y9oLB5a9_WkhPC1R1uVitjI–Ptjn7d_SlNeOtQXkCPV_XrXOhjn8tf4
Temperature anomalies in North America.
Number of Changes to GISSTEMP’s LOTI for 2018:
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
467 426 458 953 879 429 595 281 439 405 755 789
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
Good Morning
How wonderful to wake up in an abundant world created by smart people. So many great choices so little to fear. This is a great time to be alive.
To those living in less ideal conditions I can only say come get you some. Venezuela comes to mind where the people are attempting to reverse the murderous New Deal of Chavismo. Keep pushing.
Venezuelans, take your shopping bags and get what you need from the border.
The UK did not get any money from the USA after the war instead we had to pay for all the military goods they had supplied to us during the war , in the post war years Britain was very poor they had to keep rationing on food so that what they produced could be exported . Keynes persuaded the USA to give the UK a loan but they were not happy about doing this. I have heard that government documents revealed that we were preparing for a famine after the cold winter of 1947. It took a long time for the UK to recover from the second world war my parents who were born in Scotland had to move to England to find work. I feel that the idea that we were being giving aid by the USA after WW2 is very strange.
“He told the Shropshire Star newspaper: “It has been pointed out to me by eminent academics/professors and senior researchers in the House of Commons Library that Britain did receive aid under the Marshall Plan.
“The line in my tweet which stated that Britain did not benefit was therefore inaccurate.”
The precise amount Britain received was £3bn, making the country the single biggest recipient” The Independent
This was a Tory MP who made a claim similar to yours apologizing after being schooled by historians. The UK can rightly claim to have been first in the worst and that is as an old politician said “your finest hour” Nobody should minimize your contribution but lets keep the facts straight. Some was direct aid some was made as loans.
We gave the USA radar, the magnetron, the technology to make computers, the jet engine, the design for a supersonic aircraft, and repaid the last of the war debt around 2000.
We were the major military presence in Europe around the cold war. We spent trillions on defense.
Germany contributed nothing to its defense. Never repaid any war debts to anyone or any reparation.
Rationing in Britain did not stop until around 1955, ten years after the end of the war.
Like Japan, Germany found that losing to the USA is far more profitable then being allies…
You left out the 7 Years War debt the colonists owed you leading to the unfortunate acts of taxation and the resulting unpleasantness.
Blaming your post war socialist mismanagement on your ally requires some serious mental gymnastics. The “Special Relationship” petered out in the sands of Iraq but there’s no reason we can’t maintain a close and mutually beneficial relationship.
As to Germany my family worked for the Americans in various low level jobs from washing laundry, distributing aid to refugees, and accompanying young GI’s to cafes. I grew up eating black market american food flitched from their bases. Vanilla ice cream was my favorite.
In the 1930s GB drew up plans for war with the US. The US also drew up plans for a possible war with GB.
“Germany contributed nothing to its defense. Never repaid any war debts to anyone or any reparation.”
They did in the 1920s. How’d that work out for you?
The marshal plan money was not wasted by the socialists it seems but the treasury in the UK.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/marshall_01.shtml
England’s stagnation after the War, when North America boomed, could be mainly due to the central planners not giving up power. They demanded to keep “running” everything. Otherwise something bad would happen.
Will Durant wrote that one of the contributors to Rome’s hellish century, the Third, was that there were two major wars and the bureaucracy did not surrender power in between.
Seem familiar?
Also, H.J. Haskell published “The New Deal in Old Rome” in 1939. He was a Pulitzer-winning journalist.
Governments, then, responding to inflation the same way as in our times. Soaring price? Wage and Price Controls, but won’t stop depreciatiing the currency.
Post-boom contraction? Subsidize grain farmers. Too much wine–pay the vintners to tear out grape vines.
There really is nothing new in the world of politics and intrusion.
There really is nothing new in the world of politics and intrusion. Bob Hoye
Could not agree more Bob
WWII only solved unemployment issues because it gave an excuse for austerity. Low pay (for soldiers), rationing (food, coffee, gasoline, rubber, steel, etc), all of that was the antithesis of most New Deal programs.
Austerity solved the Great Depression, as it did ever panic prior.
WWII was an unfortunate excuse to allow austerity, whereas FDR’s government actively opposed it previously.
I wonder why there’s no data about unemployment before WWII in the BLS? Could it be the New Deal was a New Dud?
Analysis Finds Oceans Have Become LESS ‘Acidic’ With Rising CO2, Challenging The ‘Acidification’ Narrative.
http://notrickszone.com/2019/02/14/analysis-finds-oceans-have-become-less-acidic-with-rising-co2-challenging-the-acidification-narrative/
The No Tricks Zone has tricked Ken Haapala. The data they cite is local seawater hP, not a global record. The other dozen sites analyzed using the same technics as Wei 2015 used show pH dropping significantly with time. Some did Wei 2015, but the No Tricks Zone looked at the more recent half of the period studied by Wei (2015) and somehow claims the pH was rising. The authors of Wei actually stress decadal variability and other complications when interpreting in records of ocean pH measured by B11 in coral.
Similar to previous seawater pH records, seawater pH off eastern Hainan Island in the northern SCS showed large decadal variability over the past 159 years. The activity of the Qiongdong upwelling system, driven by the summer monsoon, primarily controlled the decadal variability by regulating nutrient supplies and surface water productivity. Terrestrial inputs likely did not affect the decadal pH variability significantly, and the influence of the PDO and ENSO system was apparently not significant either.
The influence of the PDO on the decadal pH variability in the northern GBR was significant over most of the past 200 years. However, precipitation driven terrestrial runoff appeared not the intermediate process linking the PDO and seawater pH variations in the middle shelf of the GBR. The variations of seawater pH off Guam did not response to the PDO and the ENSO directly, but the response to the PDO likely existed and exhibited decadal variations. However, the mechanisms are still not known.
The rates of decrease in pH estimated from seawater pH records reconstructed from coral δ11B were significantly different among different regions and during different time spans or in different resolution. The combination of the natural interannual to decadal variability in seawater pH and the long‐term variations may have contributed to the uncertainty of these estimates. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms causing the interannual to decadal variability in seawater pH is essential for better estimates of ocean acidification rates driven by anthropogenic emissions.
Analysis Finds Oceans Have Become LESS ‘Acidic’ With Rising CO2, Challenging The ‘Acidification’ Narrative.
http://notrickszone.com/2019/02/14/analysis-finds-oceans-have-become-less-acidic-with-rising-co2-challenging-the-acidification-narrative/
The NoTricksZone has tricked Ken Haapala. The data they cite is local seawater hP, not a global record. The other dozen sites analyzed using the same technics as Wei 2015 used show pH dropping significantly with time. Some did Wei 2015, but the No Tricks Zone looked at the more recent half of the period studied by Wei (2015) and somehow claims the pH was rising. The authors of Wei actually stress decadal variability and other complications when interpreting in records of ocean pH measured by B11 in coral.
Similar to previous seawater pH records, seawater pH off eastern Hainan Island in the northern SCS showed large decadal variability over the past 159 years. The activity of the Qiongdong upwelling system, driven by the summer monsoon, primarily controlled the decadal variability by regulating nutrient supplies and surface water productivity. Terrestrial inputs likely did not affect the decadal pH variability significantly, and the influence of the PDO and ENSO system was apparently not significant either.
The influence of the PDO on the decadal pH variability in the northern GBR was significant over most of the past 200 years. However, precipitation driven terrestrial runoff appeared not the intermediate process linking the PDO and seawater pH variations in the middle shelf of the GBR. The variations of seawater pH off Guam did not response to the PDO and the ENSO directly, but the response to the PDO likely existed and exhibited decadal variations. However, the mechanisms are still not known.
The rates of decrease in pH estimated from seawater pH records reconstructed from coral δ11B were significantly different among different regions and during different time spans or in different resolution. The combination of the natural interannual to decadal variability in seawater pH and the long‐term variations may have contributed to the uncertainty of these estimates. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms causing the interannual to decadal variability in seawater pH is essential for better estimates of ocean acidification rates driven by anthropogenic emissions.
“A Plane That Landed On Greenland’s Surface In 1942 Was Found In 2018…Buried Under 104 Meters Of Ice
[SEPP Comment: The amount of ice added since WWII, seems to contradict those claim significant ice loss in Greenland.]
Mr. Haapala seems ignorant of the fact that ice caps accumulate many layers if snow. compress them into ice and squeeze ice out the sides of the ice cap, leaving layers that are much thinner than they were when they were first compressed into ice. The 104 m of ice on top of a WWII plane provides no evidence that the GIS is growing or shrinking.
‘It appears the Green New Deal is more along the lines of establishing greater federal control of private industries than promoting prosperity.’
Not really. The U.S. government already has unlimited control over private industries. Don’t confuse their not using the power with not having the power.