Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I live in Sonoma County, one of the more “woke” counties in that “woker than you could ever hope to be” state, California. So of course, having solved all other problems, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors has declared a “climate emergency”.
Here’s their justification for saying it is an EMERGENCY!!!
“Climate change is the most critical issue we face today and we universally are not acting fast enough to avert substantial damage to the economy, environment, and human health in the coming decades,” said Board of Supervisors Chair David Rabbitt. “On a local level, we continue to experience extreme climate-related events, including six years of recent droughts, devastating wildfires, and severe flooding.
Oh, please. The weather is NOT the most critical issue we face in Sonoma County, that’s political bloviating. For one example, the county is approaching bankruptcy from paying the salaries and pensions of the ever-multiplying host of pluted bloatocrats holding government sinecures. Let’s see, which is more critical? Going bankrupt tomorrow OR maybe warming by a degree by 2050? Tough choice, I know.
Here’s another critical issue. The county seat is the town of Santa Rosa. It is on the list of the top five cities for total number of homeless—LA, San Francisco, Seattle, San Jose, and Santa Rosa. Seems kinda like a “critical issue” to me, our piss-ant town making the top five in the homelessness sweepstakes …
And in any case, the Supervisors are acting as if California has never had droughts, floods, or wildfires before. This is a joke, as any long-time resident can tell you. California is the home of all of the above in spades and always has been. Geologically, hundred-year droughts are not uncommon, so the whining of the Supes about “six years of recent droughts” merely reveals their ignorance of the subject.
The story continues:
The adopted resolution includes a directive to partner with Sonoma County’s Regional Climate Protection Authority (RCPA) to fight climate change by developing and implementing the 2030 Climate Emergency Mobilization Strategy. The Strategy will identify key local actions, including a list of the most impactful local policies to drive system changes and identify key areas for state level advocacy.
RCPA? Regional Climate Protection Authority? Say what? Never heard of it. But the authors explain it:
Sonoma County remains the only county in the United States to create a regional authority to coordinate and support climate action countywide. Formed in 2009, RCPA collaborates with local agencies on setting goals, pooling resources, and formalizing partnerships to create local solutions that complement state, federal, and private sector actions to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
They say Sonoma is the “only county in the United States” to engage in this kind of feelgood insanity as if that were a good thing …
However, we can’t have unformalized partnerships in Sonoma County, I guess. Here are their mission and vision statements …
MISSION
RCPA leads a local government coalition to mobilize regional climate action in Sonoma County.
VISION
Sonoma County is united in taking bold action to fight the climate crisis.
Whoa, hang on, keep your hands and feet inside the car, we’re taking “bold action” against the “climate crisis” now!
In passing, I do love how “global warming” morphed into “climate change” and then a totally imaginary “climate crisis” and a “climate emergency” … but in any case, here’s a reasonable response for those who believe in such things as a current “climate emergency”:
Data quoted in the graphic above is from “Assessing ICT [Information and Communication Technology] global emissions footprint: Trends to 2040 & recommendations” Available on Sci-Hub here.
But I digress, let me return to Sonoma County. From everything I’ve been able to read about the RCPA, it doesn’t actually PRODUCE anything. Instead, it “coordinates”. It “supports”. It “collaborates”. It “enables”. It “mobilizes”. It “develops strategies”. It “engages in dialog”.
In short, near as I can tell, it’s the usual infinitely expandable bureaucratic climate wankfest, with no measurable deliverables of any kind. The RCPA’s activities seem mostly to be enabling and supporting the predictably endless string of multi-organization quackathons, those get-togethers where everyone drones on interminably, nobody says anything real, people surreptitiously check the time, goals are agreed on that will never be met, the date for the next meeting is chosen, congratulations are solemnly exchanged, and on to the next one.
I foolishly figured that I couldn’t get more depressed or aggravated, so I might as well soldier on to look at the RCPA funding. Ha. Mistake. The RCPA is funded by a combination of money taken from electric ratepayers plus taxpayer dollars and a few private grants. I got to thinking about how much this RCPA was costing me and all of my taxpaying, ratepaying amigos, us local poor schlubs expected to cough up the $ for all of this. So I looked up the RCPA salaries … YIKES!
I find out that the RCPA is made up of twelve people who have obviously been very successful in getting on the government gravy train. Their average total compensation is just under $140,000 per year. That’s $70 per hour. And the RCPA Executive Director is drawing a cool quarter million bucks per year to be in charge of all of that difficult coordination, support, mobilization, and collaboration.
Seems like it’s all Chiefs and no Indians Native Americans, though. There’s an Executive Director, three Directors, two Senior Planners, one Planner, one Analyst, two Specialists, and two Assistants. The lowest-paid is one of the Assistants, who has to struggle along on $22 per hour.
Consider. Just between just the twelve of them, not counting any other costs, just the salaries and benefits of the twelve RCPA personnel, we’re spending $1,670,000 per year. One million six hundred and seventy thousand dollars spent on people to do coordination, mobilization, support, and collaboration.
PER YEAR! Not just once, but every year!
Not only that, but there is another $ megabuck plus in their annual budget for projects, meetings, computers and office equipment, transportation and the like. Total is about two million seven per year for the entire circus including salaries.
On my planet, that’s not a “Climate Protection Authority”. That’s a “Climate Protection Racket”, as in:
Hey, that’s a real nice climate ya got there!. It’d sure be a shame if something should happen to it. Yeah, that would be a tragedy. But for just a mere few million a year, we can keep that from happening …
I’m sorry, but this is nothing other than the expiation of some liberal guilt allied with the usual financial concupiscence of government rent-seekers. Because one thing is undeniably true:
There’s no way that those twelve people are giving us back anywhere near $2,700,000 in value each and every year …
… and meanwhile, Sonoma County doesn’t even have enough money to fill the potholes. Seriously. A now-retired Sonoma County Supervisor famously said: “We can’t fill the potholes because all the money is going to pay the pensions of one generation of government workers” … doesn’t bode well for the future.
One thing is for sure:
People around here can’t afford to keep spending twenty-seven million hard-earned taxpayer and ratepayer dollars per decade to engage in climate virtue signaling.
And that’s all it is, climate virtue signaling. Here’s why.
Assume for the moment that the whole “CO2 Roolz Temperature!” hypothesis is true, as mainstream climate scientists assume. Using their calculations, if the entire US went to zero CO2 emissions tomorrow, it would only make a difference of a tenth of a degree in 2050.
Sonoma County emissions of CO2 are about 0.05% of US emissions. So if Sonoma County went to zero emissions today, it MIGHT, I repeat might, make the world five ten-thousandths of one degree C (0.0005°C) cooler in the year 2050.
But Sonoma County isn’t going to zero emissions any time soon. The RCPA’s goal is to get local emissions down to 25% of their 1990 values by 2050. That would only produce cooling of about a ten-thousandth of one degree (0.0001°C, or 0.0002°F).
Since governmental bodies never die, we can assume that just on this one climate boondoggle we’ll be paying the $2.7 million per year until 2050. Three decades, 27 million per decade, call it $81 million for a POSSIBLE cooling of 0.0001°C. And the money for the RCPA is only a small fraction of the expense to the common citizen of achieving that CO2-free future fantasy …
Folks say “But we need to be an example for the rest of the world!” Most countries aren’t that stupid. The Chinese and the Indians are gonna do what is best for their people, and more power to them. But they won’t spend $81 million dollars to maybe get 0.0005°C of cooling in 30 years.
Folks also say “Think of it as an insurance policy” … but an insurance policy actually pays off. In this case, the maximum possible return for our $81 million “insurance premium” is a cooling too small to even measure. What kind of “insurance” is that, huge premium, tiny payout?
The ugly news is, in Sonoma County, we’re stuck spending $ twenty-seven million dollars per decade $ for … well … nothing.
Madness … we have plenty of real problems today here in Sonoma County, and not enough money, time, or human resources to engage in this foolish waste.
w.
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Regional Climate Protection Authority
How many new employees does that work out to?
How many of them are actually “new”? How many of them are already siphoning off more blood from some other supervisory board, tackling another “important” issue like keeping giraffes out of CA.
Social Parasites
If you want to actually help that area from wildfires, for goodness sake get rid of the Eucalyptus trees!
12 people, it was further down in the article.
Let the Vitners and farmers of Sonoma county go Horse power as in giddyup!
outlaw all internal combustion. Trains only inside Sonoma borders.
No fossil fuel generated electricty-no atomic either.
come on put your greenie money where your moth is.
Yes. People need to understand the sacrifices being demanded of them. I’m guessing the greenies know but they’re willing to let the population stay ignorant.
Hey folks, everything you have and everything you need involves fossil fuels in some way shape or form.
Trains will, in all probability, have diesel-electric locomotives, generating tractive effort as well as electric head-end power.
Willis
You are so right about the wokeness of Sonoma County! We have a new place there, a horse property run by my daughter. When I visit, I have learned to keep my thoughts to myself. There is a universal groupthink on so many issues, not just climate, that an outsider speaks at his peril. I fear it is going to have to get much worse before it gets better.
Btw, this autumn I am in the UK. Woeness is just as bad this side of the pond.
Top post Willis!
Thanks, Scot.
w.
I agree – an excellent post Willis!
Environmental hysteria has been growing exponentially since about 1970.
There is no scientific basis for the global warming/climate change scare – it was disproved decades ago – it is a false crisis.
My question for all of you is this:
“Can all these climate hysterics really have been this stupid for this long?”
I leave you with a quotation from a famous Canadian:
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
– Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme, Rio Climate Summit, 1992
The sad part of this mindlessness… it’s only a tiny part of the waste and malfeasance of our bettors…
This is what the new worlders think about us:
We are better than you.
We are right.
We are tolerant.
We are diverse.
We are intelligent.
We are destroying your memorials.
We are rewriting your history.
We are the future.
We are in lockstep.
You are misogynists.
You are xenophobes.
You are racists.
You are white supremacists.
You are Uncle Toms.
Your flag is offensive.
Your laws are meaningless.
You are uneducated.
You are unwashed.
You stink.
You are less than an animal
You are wrong.
You are guilty.
You are rape apologists.
You are planet polluters.
You are climate deniers.
You are patriarchal dictators.
You deserve incivility.
You deserve to be silenced.
Your opinion is a hate crime
You deserve death.
Outstanding exposure of the climate scam.
There you go again, trying to make sense out of nonsense.
Willis –
Good to hear from you.
I was thinking we might get the benefit of your comments on Pat Frank’s recent posts…..
Cheers
Dave, I both agree and disagree regarding Pat’s claims.
I do think that error accumulates in an iterative computer model as Pat says.
And I also agree with Dr. Roy Spencer that if accumulated error is a problem we’re not seeing in the actual model results.
The question is, how do the models deal with that error?
Back in 2003 or so, Gavin Schmidt said that at the end of each cycle of a climate model, there’s always either excess energy or lost energy. Even if it is just rounding error it is not zero. I asked him what they did about that. He said they added or subtracted that amount of energy evenly over the entire model surface. But when I asked for diagnostics on the error (e.g. histogram of all error amounts) he said they didn’t collect data on that. That’s likely changed since then … or not.
Now, I wrote my first computer program in 1963, over a half century ago. I can tell you one thing I know after building dozens and dozens of iterative models. At the slightest excuse, they’ll go off of the rails and spiral either up or down until they crater. Here are some examples. Look at how many of the ClimatePrediction instances spiraled down and cratered in the cold.
Now, there are a few ways to deal with iterative models that go off the rails. The best way, the right way, is to identify one after another what made it go off the rails, and work to understand why. Once you understand why it is happening you can then fix the underlying code.
The wrong way is using what I call “fences”. These are various kluges designed to prevent some variable from exceeding some value. For example, in reality the relative humidity can never exceed 100%, so this may be hardwired into the model. Or they may involve careful selection of tunable parameters, or they may be direct, blunt-force adjustments of offending values.
However, none of these is the reason that I’m not at all impressed by the current crop of climate models. The issue is that the dynamics of the climate system are hugely affected by the timing and strength of the emergence of various climate phenomena such as tropical cumulus fields, dust devils, thunderstorms, the El Nino/La Nina pump, and the like … and not one of these spontaneously emerges in the models for a variety of reasons.
That’s the reason I pay no attention to the models—not because they have errors, but because they do not include the host of overlapping, interacting emergent climate phenomena that control the global temperature.
Best to all,
w.
Willis: “That’s the reason I pay no attention to the models—not because they have errors, but because they do not include the host of overlapping, interacting emergent climate phenomena that control the global temperature.”
The best short skeptical summary yet.
PS: Those “emergent climate phenomena” are all “outside-the-box” factors. The conformist consensus is dedicated to staying inside the box, where such unknowns have been swept under the carpet. This deliberately blinkered scope has been behind big by-the-book blunders in the past—e.g., stones cannot fall from the sky. The insistence that the “box’s” dimensions are known is also behind scientism.
I think the people of the county would count themselves lucky for the money if indeed, all this council did was to bloviate endlessly.
What is the chance that this Emergency Declaration by this council ultimately confers greater Emergency Powers upon this council so this council may take Emergency Actions as deemed required by this council to combat this Crisis.
At that point, the people of the county will sore wish the council had restricted itself to endless bloviating.
Your WX is too good there. Hence the many homeless.
Great sarcasm for a Saturday morning read, Willis. Born of frustration. I know you are mocking gaseous pronouncements like “bold action”, but just look at the nearby photograph and then tell me Greta ain’t taking the bull by the horn, so to speak.
The new, fashionable term “woke”, like all word-revisions done nowadays by the cultural marxists, is opposite to its real meaning (1984-style), in this case “brainwashed”.
just a wild guess here, Willis, but when Sonoma County says “the county is united to fight the climate crisis” they have somehow overlooked you? This is virtue signaling run amok!
They gonna change and control the climate and weather there in your county are they? Naive leftist pigs all.
The most frightening part of this is that the people associated with establishing and staffing the RCPA actually believe they are doing the right thing. It would actually be better if they were just in it for the money. Thieves limit their theft to avoid being caught. Crusaders such as the Sanoma County Board of Supervisors have no limit.
Any bureaucrat worth his salt would grow his department each year. By year 10, it will be a 50 plus headcount, new buildings, other counties will copy its success (at growing).
Bernie talks about population control, seemingly in love a One Child Policy like the Chicomms have (had?).
And reducing and then eliminating meat consumption is a top priority for the Watermelons.
And saving birds, even as they build more bird choppers, is a stated priority for the Econutters.
And since the Lunatic Left loves the Chinese model of being able to direct the economy in such matters, then it follows Fluffy and Fido will end up on the menu like they do in many places in China. After all cats are carnivores and feral cats eat lots of birds. And I know my two big dogs eat lots of animal protein and freeze-dried raw meat chunks in their dog food I buy.
So Willis, you should go to one of the Sonoma Regional Climate meetings and propose to the Lunatic Left Climate Nutters the need to get in bed with the PETA-nutjobs and declare that pet ownership is harmful to the climate, and thus people need to give up their dogs and cats and put them on the menu instead like the Chinese. We need to help them alienate the entire population of sane people, because that is where their policies ultimately lead.
On a related note:
Bernie the Commie mentioned in his CNN Climate Town Hall that people might need to be paid not to have children. How does that square with the fact we have for a long time incentivized low-income families to have 3 (or more) children via the tax code with cash payments when they file their annual IRS 1040?
The Congressionally-mandated Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) pays more money to families with 1, 2 or 3 children and less than $49,194 joint income, and EITC cash payment goes up if with each child up to 3 kids. A single person with no kids can’t qualify for the EITC unless they make less than $15,720/yr and then its only $529.
The EITC cash payment:
The maximum credit amounts for 2019 are:
$6,557 with three or more qualifying children
$5,828 with two qualifying children
$3,526 with one qualifying child
$529 with no qualifying children.
Just in case you don’t know: The EITC is a cash payment in the annual tax return check on top of whatever tax refund you are due. (My 78 yr old mother didn’t know that, she thought the EITC was a deduction on income to reduce taxes. It is not. It is a pure cash payment as long as the family made any money for the year.)
I wonder if Bernie would propose eliminating that EITC incentive for low income families to have 3 children to help meet his population control goals? Let’s see how that proposal would go over with the Left in love of government hand-outs.
“then it follows Fluffy and Fido will end up on the menu like they do in many places in China.”
Gives Hot Dog a whole new meaning. Meow Fried Rice? Would you like some GreenSlime on that? All for climate change.
scamming [deleted per Sunny’s request]!!! Its all about the new green money!! They don’t give two shits about the planet… if local people found out about the big wages, I’m sure They would have some to say about it I hate seeing the co2 seeing child.
I find out that the RCPA is made up of twelve people who have obviously been very successful in getting on the government gravy train. Their average total compensation is just under $140,000 per year. That’s $70 per hour. And the RCPA Executive Director is drawing a cool quarter million bucks per year to be in charge of all of that difficult coordination, support, mobilization, and collaboration.
I’m not a Puritan by any means. But IMO the “c” word has no place here or in any conversation I want to be a part of Sunny. If I were a moderator (I’m not), I’d put you on permanent moderation for that.
Joel o’bryan. Full apologises sir, I am so tired of the constant “world is ending” and today climate people glued themselves to a road near dover In England… But its no excuse for bad language. If a moderator can delete the comment then please do so
Sunny, I deleted the word I assumed was being discussed, though I’m not a moderator.
Regards,
Bob
Thanks Bob.
As someone who posts with their real name, I won’t hang around a blog that allows those words in comments. Using the F word or calling someone an Ahole (or such) are equal opportunity without discrimination curses, so those don’t bother me.
It would be a nice project in sociology to map relationships between RCPA employees and county officials.
Why don’t we borrow a trick from Climate Protectionists? There are 3,141 counties in the U.S., if everybody follows the good folks of Sonoma at $2.7M per year, it is $8.48 billion a year, spent on sinecures. Forget a border fence. Aren’t sinecures for friends and family more important?
Exactly mirrored in the UK where the lunatic Climate Change Committee under the financially-to-be-examined- by -the-House of Lords Lord Gummer tries to wreck our economy for about one per cent of global CO2 emissions. Supported by the corrupt BBC which criticised itself (wow!) for failing to call Gummer out over a couple of straight lies but seems incapable of mentioning the ONE PER CENT trope. What are we to do? Sometimes I despair
Perhaps it is time to join the bandwagon. Go to meetings and propose bold changes to save the climate. Then challenge them to make the changes, then demand them.
I’m sure we could offer some proposals. I would suggest:
Ban the sale of gasoline and diesel in the county.
Require all electricity to be provided only by renewables.
Ban the use of barbecues and fireplaces
Ban the sale of both new and used internal combustion vehicles.
Ban the sale of meat.
If they attempt any of this, you need do nothing. Others will quickly put an end to it. If they fail to take action, raise a complaint to either replace or disband the council for refusing to fulfill their charter.
Ban the sale – you mean meat will be free?
Great write-up, Willis! My first question is, why are YOU not on the RCPA? You’re probably the most climate-knowledgeable person in Sonoma County. Second question, what are the qualifications and backgrounds of the top people at RCPA, and how did they get these jobs (my presumption it was on a who-knows-who basis). Your presumption that the RCPA people are actually WORKING a standard 2000 hour work-year for those salaries may be a gross over-estimate. It probably takes only a small fraction of that time to achieve all the non-deliverables required, and have plenty of time left for other political activities.
RCPA and bureaucratic bloat are the inevitable outcome of a Leftist “big government good” political monoculture and by extension 1 party rule that exists in most places in Cal.
There’s a climate emergency!
Translation:
We want more of your money.
“Let’s see, which is more critical? Going bankrupt tomorrow OR maybe warming by a degree by 2050? Tough choice, I know.“
Willis, I think this is the key to understanding the long game being played. If using energy is a necessity, it’s immoral to charge exorbitant taxes on it. If using energy is a vice it’s fair game to charge onerous taxes on it (I.e. cigarettes). Nothing they do will change the climate but making energy a vice allows them to charge a hefty fee for it.
Ah, but what is the emergency?
Many CA municipalities (and the state itself) will likely go bankrupt come the next ecomonic downturn (economist have predicted five of the last three recessions…). Consequently, it is imperative to milk the cash cow before it goes to slaughter.
Did you think this was about warming?
“top five cities for total number of homeless—LA, San Francisco, Seattle, San Jose, and Santa Rosa”
Seattle isn’t in Calif.
At the city level, four of the five cities with the highest rate of unsheltered homelessness are in California: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Rosa and San Jose. Seattle joins the California municipalities in the top five.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-state-is-home-to-nearly-half-of-all-people-living-on-the-streets-in-the-us-2019-09-18
Presumably “rate” means percent of population, not “total number of homeless.”
I see ‘2030’ slyly inserted into one of RCPA paras above. ‘Slyly’, because they left off the Agenda part, as in Agenda 2030. Cities and municipalities across the land are declaring ‘climate emergencies’ on paper, which allows them to enact new regulations – or tighten old ones – around energy use, land development, consumerism, and so on, to ‘fight climate change’. This is Agenda 2030 implementation from the bottom up, right under our noses.