Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
The Wall Street Journal has published yet another article doubling down on its misrepresentations made in a prior article where it implied it would be easy for the U.S. to achieve Biden’s 50% reduction in emissions by year 2030 because of the huge decline in U.S. emissions achieved in the pandemic economic downturn year 2020.
In a recent WUWT article this prior Wall Street Journal articles hugely misleading observations about Biden’s expected plan to push a 50% reduction is U.S. emissions by year 2030 were addressed as follows:
“Biden administration officials have said they plan to unveil a new U.S. target for emissions reductions during a global climate-change summit in Washington next month. It will set a goal for reducing U.S. emissions over the next nine years.”
“In private meetings in recent weeks, according to people involved in the discussions, outside environmental groups and climate data analysts have encouraged the White House to nearly double the emissions reduction target that then-President Barack Obama set in 2014. At the time, Mr. Obama promised to slash U.S. emissions 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2025.”
“The groups have presented modeling to the White House making the case that a target in the range of 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 is achievable, the people said, if it accounts for actions already being taken by cities, states, businesses and local governments. Last year, total U.S. emissions were about 21% lower than in 2005 in part because of the pause in economic activity driven by the pandemic.”
That WUWT article pointed out the distortion and deception in the WSJ article which implied that it was no big deal to achieve this 50% emission reduction scheme as follows:
“The WSJ article grossly understates the huge economic damage that the Covid 19 pandemic played in reducing estimated year 2020 U.S. CO2 emissions from year 2019 levels.
The reality is that between 2005 and 2019 the U.S. GHG reduction level was about 12.5% with that reduction level increasing hugely to 21.5% for the period between 2005 and 2020 when the reductions from pandemic year 2020 are included.
Thus 42% of the 21.5% reduction that occurred between 2005 and 2020 occurred in the pandemic year 2020. This is inappropriately characterized in the WSJ article as the emission reduction between 2005 and 2020 as being 21.5% which was due “in part” to the pandemic.
The average emission reduction of U.S. GHG emissions between 2005 and 2019 was under just 1% per year. The reduction in GHG emissions in the pandemic year of 2020 was over ten times greater (10.3%) than the average in the prior 14-year interval.”
The latest WSJ article makes the same idiotic misguided and misleading comments about the U.S. 21.5% emissions reduction between 2005 and 2020 but further escalates its absurd pronouncements by noting that Biden is calling for “rich nations to shoulder more responsibility” for reducing emissions.
Additionally, the WSJ article once again conceals the fact that over 70% of the emissions reduction in year 2020 occurred in the Transportation, Industrial and Buildings economic sectors all of which will have to increase activity to bring the country back to pre-pandemic economic levels.
Biden’s reduction scheme would about double the proposal by Obama that called for the U.S. to reduce emissions by 26 to 28% by 2025 from 2005. The latest WSJ article highlights the worthless “commitment” by China to reach net zero carbon-dioxide emissions by year 2060 as if that is supposed to have any real-world credibility.
The WSJ article avoids any discussion of actual global emissions data that of course would make the articles happy talk about “shouldering more responsibility” look absolutely stupid.
Let’s look at China and the U.S. with emissions since year 2005 to 2019 where during this period China has increased emissions by 4.4 billion metric tons and the U.S. has reduced emissions by 850 million metrics tons.
U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions from coal declined by more than 50% from 2007 to 2019, a cumulative amount of more than a billion metric tons. In 2019 U.S. emissions are nearly 5 billion metrics tons less than China’s emissions of 10.17 billion metric tons.
How have U.S. emissions reductions done compared to Europe from 2005 to 2019? Let’s look.
U.S. emissions have fallen below Europe which is hyped by the press as leading the world in emissions reduction efforts. U.S. emissions reductions were predominantly driven (62%) by fuel substitution from coal to natural gas.
How have U.S. emissions done compared to Asia?
Asia has increased emissions by nearly 8 billion metric tons.
Let’s look at the U.S. and Europe emissions compared to what the rest of the World is doing in the 2005-2019 time-window.
The U.S. and Europe have reduced emissions by about 1.8 billion metric tons while the rest of the world has increased emissions by over 7 billion metric tons.
The people of the U.S. are being sold down the river by clueless Democrat climate alarmists who want trillions in costs to be spent on further U.S. emissions reductions so the rest of the world can continue to increase emissions as they have been doing for decades as shown below.
The Wall Street Journal has apparently gone off the deep end and become just another irrational climate alarmist proponent.
During the on-line “climate summit”, Dementia Zhou goes off into the weeds, rambling about his wife in front of scores of other countries’ leaders:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/04/let-wife-come-home-joe-biden-super-awkward-exchange-navajo-nation-climate-summit-video/
Biden was the only national leader to wear a mask at the virtual summit. Can it get any more ridiculous? Biden has been vaccinated and yet he still wears two masks even when noone is near him.
In my local newspaper a couple of days ago, they ran an article about various students in the area, and showed pictures of them and every kid was wearing a mask for the picture. This wasn’t a group picture, it was a single individual, yet the moron taking the pictures had them wear their mask and their faces could not be seen. Ridiculous! Why even have a picture in the paper if you are unrecognizable due to wearing a mask?
Some people do some really dumb things sometimes.
Indeed not.
Some have speculated they keep a mask on Biden as much as possible so they can dub in rational words when he goes off-prompter. Probably farcical, but an indication of how bad it is getting.
It’s almost like Biden is hidin’
Time for the lid and basement.
Most of you know about the WSJ item by Steve Koonin, a warmist who sees no emergency. He was just interviewed by Alex Epstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f15DWccid4I
The following is the description under the title of this video.
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On this week’s Power Hour, Alex Epstein interviews Steve Koonin, a highly accomplished physicist and author of the new bestselling book “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t and Why It Matters” In 2014, Koonin, who had worked in the Obama administration, began to question climate catastrophism when he led a panel of physicists assessing the current state of climate science. In his new book he summarizes what he regards as the actual state of climate science–which does not support claims of climate catastrophe at all. In this interview, Koonin discusses: – His conclusion that “Humans exert a growing, but physically small, warming influence on the climate.” – Why “The net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century.” – Why “Government and UN press releases and summaries do not accurately reflect” scientific research reports. – How the US National Climate Assessment manipulated data to create an extreme heat pattern in the US that doesn’t exist. – Why “the working scientists are often embarrassed by the way the IPCC winds up describing the state of the science.” – Why “many of the senior climate scientists think that by the time now we’ve gotten to the sixth [IPCC] assessment report, it’s no longer the A team that is preparing the reports.” – How Koonin’s career has enabled him to do a deep dive both into climate science and into energy economics. – The private response Koonin has gotten from other scientists. – What Koonin thinks of Bill Gates’s book (“I think Bill wrote a pretty good energy book…but I think Bill’s discussion of the climate is wrong and I would relish the chance to point out to him at some point.”) – Why Koonin is eager to debate any climate scientists who disagree with him.
The US is to be the obedient and small pekingese puppy in the room while ignoring the fire breathing Chinese dragon. Wall Street Journal would have us in permanent pandemic mode to keep the dragon alive. The question is how much of the reduction was a result of job loss.
Is it just me, or is the graph missing a left-hand scale? If so, do please consider including one.
Pay to play reporting is an integral part of official climate events. I still remember the depth and breadth of the paid news across all media leading up to the the signing of Paris Agreement. How much did that cost? It should have been labeled as such.
Another Murdoch owned and Murdoch sons’ managed news vehicle falls further into the pit of doomed despair.
I dropped a thirty year old subscription back in 2015 when more an more articles were slanted irrationally.
Within a couple of years, WSJ confirmed the sense of my saving money instead of paying them for misinformation.
The entire Predator Class (“left” and “right”) are united around a New Dark Ages agenda to de-populate and de-industrialize the West. They may be crazy but they’re not stupid. The Pred-Class knows exactly what it’s doing.
One immediate spinoff of Biden’s Green Assault on the US economy is to turn the country into High-Cost producers, completely unable to compete on international markets.
China and her allies are naturally delighted to see their erstwhile rival self-euthanize what’s left of US productive capacity. The rest of the century will just be an afterthought.