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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“… it’s the usual infinitely expandable bureaucratic climate wankfest, with no measurable deliverables of any kind.”
They are being groomed for a comfortable retirement at the public’s expense.
Mr Eschenbach, you are showing the tip of an absolutely massive Financial iceberg.
Have a quick read of this from Jabuary
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/01/20/uk-govt-feeding-the-climate-gravy-train/
We are talking about over 2Billion Euros for controlling “Climate Charity” money.
Green & Climate are probably one of the biggest “businesses” in the world
>>
It is on the list of the top five cities for total number of homeless—LA, San Francisco, Seattle, San Jose, and Santa Rosa.
<<
I believe Seattle is trying for number one on that list. At least Seattle leaders can claim one thing they’re competent in–more homelessness.
Jim
Regional Climate Protection Authority? The climate doesn’t need protecting.
BTW, I’d like to go on the record as being totally on board with Climate Change so long as they can change my climate to a tropical paradise. Otherwise I’ll have to pay good money to relocate to a tropical paradise.
Hey, wait! Maybe I could get some Climate Refugee money to help with the move.
I really liked the Climate Emergency: children must give up mobile phones message. That should be a big hit with the kids, and I am sure they will toss out the phones so they can do their bit for the climate. What hypocrites those little kiddies would be if they kept on using their cell phones. That message should be preached far and wide across the planet.
The other interesting point in this post was the retirement extortion paid to the retired county workers. When you extrapolate that across every Gov’t bureaucracy and agency across the land, it is obvious those retirement benefits can’t last without raising taxes so high as to bankrupt the nation. And we think it is only little shithole countries like the Philippines for example, that is corrupt. Our corruption is legalized and sanctioned in law by the very people who benefit the most. In terms of dollar amounts, we are by orders of magnitude more corrupt per capita than most third world despot countries. We have been living very well off the fat of the land for a few centuries, but that is soon coming to an end with unlimited corruption such as this. And the whole climate charade is the most corrupt of all. The climate is about the last thing we need to be worried about.
Incompetent counties are not rare, but that’s a big and diverse habitat county with a weird eastern border. Do you have navigation district that can’t handle mountains? Or do they not know about the water?
I liked the part about the green jobs. Rake in the green without even having to rake.
Willis,
Great article, many years ago I used to work for a State highway DOT as well as regional and federal planning agencies. At least the state DOT occasionally built something.
The planning agencies spent a lot of time in meetings and producing reports, where generally the forecasts were wrong.
Bureaucratic costs typically inflate about 4-8% per year. Somehow, the budgets are ALWAYS spent.
So it’s not like $2.7M/year, but more like $4M/year after the first decade and by 2050 almost $9M/year.
That’s at only 4%/year, turf expansion would add another couple of percent/year, pretty soon you’re talking real money.
Y
Great post, Willis. This is a clear case of Cranial-Rectal-Inversion!
Willis
I was amazed that the Sonoma County Regional Climate Protection Authority was 10 years old! The county is certainly on the forefront of Climate Bureaucracy. However, since Trump got the U.S. out of the Paris Accord, every local jurisdiction in the U.S. is forming it’s own “Climate Action Plan,” so I doubt that Sonoma County is currently the only county in the U.S. with a county-wide plan. Note that the Sonoma County plan calls for an 80% reduction in county CO2 emission by 2050. You are lucky. The San Antonio, Tx plan calls for being “carbon neutral’ (which I assume means net carbon emissions = 0) by 2050.
There is apparently nothing that can be done to stem this tide. Time will tell whether the U.S. will be come a third world failed state by following these “Climate Action Plans”, or people will come to their senses and vote out any elected official who supports the plans.
more power to them.
Just so.
“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. ”
Willis, presumably they base their gloomy predictions on climate models.
These have been extensively discussed recently here at WUWT after Pat Frank’s and Roy Spencer’s interesting posts on uncertainty propagation. A lot of your posts deal with statistics and I for one know very little about this field…do you have any comments on the discussions and points that Frank and Spencer have raised recently?
I’m sure I’m not the only one here who would be interested in your take on this…if you have the time or interest to get involved that is!
This is the rationale for my local council (sunny South Australia where I am still running the heating) voting ‘aye’ on declaring a climate emergency. My seething level has almost reached a sufficient level for me to demand an audience with the Mayor in order to point out the inaccuracies, false rhetoric and outright lies.
would this be Mt Barker?
shes an utter dill
what poultry died? why? power cuts due to greenies scams made the water system for cooling inoperable Id guess?
if theyd stop aerial spraying of chem and the homeowners using the neonic bayer plant pills in home gardens it would help bees far more than her stupid ideas ever will.
Yes, Mt Barking mad
Since Sonoma County is so worried about CO2 they should place a limit on the amount of grape juice that can be fermented in the county. They could also impose a CO2 capture and storage program or carbon tax on the wine producers.
Now, if they actually wanted to mitigate drought, they might ‘collaborate! With other nearby wine-producing counties to put in a desal plant, output of which might help mitigate fire risk as well.
Fine article, Willis. I celebrated my birthday there several years ago, touring the wineries…
Willis – it is not like you to become “more depressed or aggravated”. Courageous, intelligent human beings traditionally faced the multitudes of problems and challenges which life used to present to each helpless little human individual – here I mean before the Enlightenment in Europe which first awakened us to the fantastic possibility that human beings could actually understand and manipulate their existence through science.
This has changed our civilisation – but we must not delude ourselves that for an individual human being life’s challenges and unexpected problems are much different from those times, 500 years ago. Don’t become despondent, Willis. “Pack up your troubles in your old kitbag and smile, smile, smile”.
For the last 100 years or so the pluted bloatocrats (indeed most all the residents) of Sonoma County sat on their fat cans while photosynthetic fuels built up to catastrophic levels — right in front of everyone’s faces, plain to see, barkingly obvious, you’d have to be a blind dummy not to notice.
But notice they did not. No one caught the clue, or if they did, didn’t act on it. Then two years ago the fuel caught fire and burned Santa Rosa to ashes in one of the most devastating and deadly suburban holocausts in history.
The dumbfounded bloatocrats and blind residents blamed the power company, but it wasn’t an electrical fire. A hundred years of accumulated plant biomass is what burned — the very same biomass that leered down on the braindead residents day after day after week after month after year.
So what have the (remaining) residents of Sonoma County learned from their experiences? Not a damn thing. Not one iota of a spark of a clue has crept into their foggy noggins. They carry on as if nothing at all happened.
People who are that stupid deserve whatever they get, including pluted arsonocrats tooling around in their chauffeured limousines not noticing the scrub oak and tick brush sprouting from the ashes.
Thanks for an excellent article, Willis.
Here in Australia, local authorities are joining the “climate emergency” like lemmings.
Fortunately my home City, Brisbane, declined to join Sydney and Melbourne recently when a local Green BCC member moved such a motion.
So there is no climate emergency here but if you stray into Sydney or Melbourne, beware!
Knowing little about Santa Rosa, I searched online and found this question posed about Santa Rosa-
“Is Santa Rosa safe?”
A: The chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime in Santa Rosa is about 1 in 43.Based on FBI crime data, Santa Rosa is not one of the safest communities in America. Relative to California, Santa Rosa has a crime rate that is higher than 59% of the state’s cities and towns of all sizes.”
I am not qualified to advise Santa Rosa on where to direct its funding but the “ climate emergency” should be low on its priorities.
Great article Willis and I’m sure your reduction in temp would be very accurate or Sweet F — All after WASTING all those millions for decades to come.
BTW I would also like to know your thoughts on Pat Frank’s paper and updates etc. Any chance? Just asking.
BTW have you read the Concordia Uni study apportioning blame for warming since the start of the Ind Rev? Australia is blamed for about 0.006 c over that period of time.
Study is known as Mathews et al.
If you, Willis, know of any organization against this travesty, I’m ready to support it. Where are the ‘publicans?
Willis, would it be possible to do a mass mailing/letterbox drop of the salient facts you list,
or even a letter to editor of a less woke, more sane local paper?
once people did realise whats being payed for sfa Id think theyd(hopefully) have some input TO the councils on the matter.
Assuming one buys int the whole C-scam, how many minutes does it take the Chinese to negate Sonoma going to zero C?
With the US contributing 15% of total C, and we assume the US goes to zero C, same question.
Consider that the US has done more to reduce C than any other nation. Why do we continue to self-flagilate?
When I was a kid growing up in the Sonoma Valley, we were represented by Republicans, for the most part. Of course, all the Bay Area lefties hadn’t arrived yet.
The climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control and that includes Sonoma County. The vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions in Sonoma County is that of H2O which is in itself a much stronger absorber of IR than is CO2. Unless Sonoma County can significantly reduce H2O emissions they cannot significantly reduce over all greenhouse gas emissions. Even if Sonoma County eliminated all of their greenhouse gas emissions and hence turning the entire county into a lifeless, waterless desert, the effort would have virtually no effect on global greenhouse gas levels. Sonoma County would be far better off if instead of wasting more money they wasted less money.
Yes, all good points.
1) if the entire US went to zero CO2 emissions tomorrow, it would only make a difference of a tenth of a degree in 2050.
2) 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.
Whatever this is about, it is not about the global climate.
You notice that Ms Thunberg in Washington carefully avoided telling the lawmakers what they should do, what specific measures they need to do. There was a reason for that.
Its the doctrine of salvation by faith. Works are irrelevant…
It’s brilliant when you think about it: At tne same time, “Climate Change” is both the excuse for the results of bad Progressive policy, and the excuse for more bad Progressive policy.