Reposted from Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
Posted on May 2, 2021 by curryja |
by Judith Curry
. . . according to the cover story of April 26 issue of Time Magazine. How have we have fooled ourselves into thinking that manmade climate change is the dominant cause of societal problems?
Some excerpts from the Time Magazine article:
<begin quote>
From her perch in the West Wing, McCarthy has been charged by Biden with overseeing a dramatic shift in the way the U.S. pursues action on climate change. Instead of turning to a select few environment-focused agencies to make climate policy, McCarthy and her office are working to infuse climate considerations into everything the Administration does. The task force she runs includes everyone from the Secretary of Defense, who is evaluating the climate threat to national security, to the Treasury Secretary, who is working to stem the risk that climate change poses to the financial system.
For decades, the idea that climate change touches everything has grown behind the scenes. Leaders from small island countries have pleaded with the rest of the world to notice how climate change has begun to uproot their lives, in areas from health care to schooling. Social scientists have crunched the data, illuminating how climate change will ripple across society, contributing to a surge in migration, reduced productivity and a spike in crime. And advocates and thinkers have proposed everything from a conscious move to economic degrowth to eco-capitalism to make climate the government’s driving force.
Now, spurred by alarming science, growing public fury and a deadly pandemic, government officials, corporate bosses and civil-society leaders are finally waking up to a simple idea whose time has come: climate is everything. It’s out of this recognition that the E.U. has allocated hundreds of billions of euros to put climate at the center of its economic plans, seemingly unrelated activist groups have embraced environmental goals, and investors have flooded firms advancing the energy transition with trillions of dollars. “The world is crossing the long-awaited political tipping point on climate right now,” says Al Gore, a former U.S. Vice President who won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his climate activism. “We are seeing the beginning of a new era.”
The course of climatization—the process by which climate change will transform society—will play out in the coming years in every corner of society. Whether it leads to a more resilient world or exacerbates the worst elements of our society depends on whether we adjust or just stumble through. “We are at the point where climate change means systems change—and almost every system will change,” says Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a longtime climate leader. “That understanding is long overdue, but I don’t think we know exactly what it means yet. It’s a moment of maximum hope; it’s also a moment of high risk.”
<end quote>
How climate became ‘everything’
A changing climate has been the norm throughout the Earth’s 4.6 billion year history. The Earth’s temperature and weather patterns change naturally over time scales ranging from decades to millions of years. Natural variations in climate originate in two ways. Internal climate fluctuations exchange energy, water and carbon between the atmosphere, oceans, land and ice, which changes the surface climate. External influences on the climate system include variations in the energy received from the sun and the effects of volcanic eruptions. Human activities also influence climate by changing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, altering the concentrations of aerosol particles in the atmosphere, and through land use and changing land cover.
Over the past several decades, the definition of ‘climate change’ has shifted away from the broader geological interpretation. Article 1 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) defines ‘climate change’ as:
“a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.”
The UNFCCC thus makes a distinction between climate change attributable to human activities altering the atmospheric composition, versus climate variability attributable to natural causes. This redefinition of ‘climate change’ to refer only to manmade climate change has effectively eliminated natural climate change from the public discussion on climate change. Any change that is observed over the past century, on whatever time scale, is implicitly assumed to be manmade. This assumption leads to connecting every unusual weather or climate event to manmade climate change from fossil fuel emissions.
The UNFCCC definition of ‘climate change’ engenders two logical fallacies. The fallacy of the single cause occurs when it is assumed that there is a single, simple cause of an outcome, when in reality it may have been caused by a number of jointly sufficient causes. Climate variability and change are influenced both by natural climate processes and human activity. A jingle fallacy is based on the assumption that two things that are called by the same name capture the same construct. ‘Climate change’ under the UNFCCC definition is a much narrower construct than climate change in the geological sense. Use of the term becomes a jingle fallacy when it is inferred that all climate change – recent and future – is manmade.
The ubiquitous jingle fallacy surrounding the UNFCC definition of climate change introduces a framing bias. Framesact as organizing principles that shape how people conceptualize an issue. Frames can direct how a problem is stated, what is excluded from consideration, what questions are relevant, and what answers might be appropriate. A framing bias occurs when a narrow approach is employed that pre-ordains the conclusion to a much more complex problem. The narrow framing of climate change as manmade global warming has marginalized natural climate variability. This narrow framing also dominates our understanding of the relationships of humans and society with climate. An assumption is made that future climate change is controlled by the amount of manmade greenhouse gas emissions. Regional causes of climate variability, their impacts and their local solutions are marginalized by the assumption that the causes of climate change and its solution are irreducibly global.
The term ‘climate change’ doesn’t just connote the science of manmade global warming, but also an entire worldview of society. Hulme (2010) identifies the fallacy of climate reductionism, a form of analysis and prediction in which the interdependencies that shape human life within the physical world are correlated with climate change. Manmade climate change is then elevated to the role of the dominant predictor of societal change. Multiple possibilities of the future are effectively closed off as climate predictions assert their influence over food production, health, tourism and recreation, human migration, violent conflict, etc. Other environmental, economic and social factors that influence these societal problems become marginalized.
An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation that triggers a self-perpetuating chain reaction: the more attention a danger gets, the more worried people become, leading to more news coverage and greater alarm. Because slowly increasing temperatures do not seem alarming, ‘availability entrepreneurs’ push extreme weather events, public health problems, human migration, etc. as being caused by manmade global warming – more of which is in store if we don’t quickly act to reduce fossil fuel emissions.
The ever-expanding narrative of climate change entrains a range of social values into the proposed solutions. The momentum of the climate change narrative leads to claims that there is a solution to many other societal problems within the climate change cause – an example is social justice in the context of the U.S. Green New Deal. This link acts to energize both causes, and leverages the climate change narrative to blame or attack those opposed to the separate cause.
Climate change has thus become a grand narrative in which human-caused climate change has become a dominant cause of societal problems. Everything that goes wrong then reinforces the conviction that that there is only one thing we can do prevent societal problems – stop burning fossil fuels. This grand narrative misleads us to think that if we solve the problem of manmade climate change, then these other problems would also be solved. This belief leads us away from a deeper investigation of the true causes of these problems. The end result is narrowing of the viewpoints and policy options that we are willing to consider in dealing with complex issues such as public health, weather disasters and national security.
And so, climate becomes everything.
The March issue of National Geographic highlighting interesting section on Mars, we seem fixated on it, has a three page article on “When ‘Natural’ Disasters Aren’t.” Starts with these should all be called man-made natural disasters. Gulf warming up, Death Valley set new record. About the virus “But for most of human history such ‘spillover events’ were limited in their impact.” It does mention the faster spread, ended up everywhere. Was just telling my daughter that older generations as one of few benefits always could make fun of idiot (mostly inexperienced) youngsters. For most of human history maybe never been such a great amount of material available.
We’ve been there and done all that over and over again. (Excuse me while I go burn some witches and offer up a few human sacrifices.) This is the modern version and the sane voice that describes it so dispassionately that they will not burn her..
This is Lysenkoism and that produced epic famine and suffering. That was just in China and the Soviet Union. This new ‘Lysenkoism’ has gone global which means humanity is in grave danger.
Too truly depressing to upvote it, even though you’re 100% correct. But the “…epic famine and suffering…” is considered a feature, not a bug (see above)
“We have been at war with Eastasia since 1985”
Chicken Little
A European folk tale with a moral in the form of a cumulative tale about a chicken who believes that the world is coming to an end. The phrase “The sky is falling!” features prominently in the story, and has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. Similar stories go back more than 25 centuries
A person who constantly warns that a calamity is imminent; a vociferous pessimist. A confirmed pessimist, particularly one who warns of impending disaster. A person who spreads baseless or exaggerated reports of danger; alarmist.
Fearmongering – whether justified or not – can sometimes elicit a societal response called Chicken Little syndrome, described as “inferring catastrophic conclusions possibly resulting in paralysis”. It has also been defined as “a sense of despair or passivity which blocks the audience from actions”.
“The moral of the traditional Chicken Little story is to have courage, even when it feels like the sky is falling. … It could well be a cautionary political tale: The Chicken jumps to a conclusion and whips the populace into mass hysteria, which the unscrupulous fox uses to manipulate them for his own benefit.
However in the 2005 Disney version Chicken Little is proved to be correct and a hero. There’s a nice link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Little_(2005_film)#Plot
at Wikipedia to the movie plot showing how Disney turned to moral of the story on its head. It’s as if those wonderful Disney storytellers were well aware of Global Warming being painted as a modern day Chicken Little example and were working overtime to plant the seeds towards undermining the effectiveness of that criticism.
chickens are smarter than progressives…
take it from me, I should know.
Definitely damning with faint praise!
no, actually quite serious.
Quoting Al Gore tells you everything you need to know about the credibility of this article.
When a society rejects God–stops fearing (respecting) Him–it looks for something else to fear. Climate change is a handy one, and it looks more and more like the behavior of stone age tribes that sacrifice their children to appease the weather and crop gods.
If one looks at the ten most prosperous countries, one soon sees that nine of them were founded largely on Judeo-Christian principles, which teach respect for fellow humans. The tenth is Japan. It is no mystery why our society is declining; just read the sad Biblical stories of the nation of Israel as they repeatedly replaced God with idols and every evil practice, and the neighboring powers would defeat and enslave them.
Most of us have to learn stuff the hard way.
And now the enviros fight among themselves over the impacts of “green” energy.
“Clean megaprojects divide surprise group: environmentalists”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/clean-megaprojects-divide-surprise-group-environmentalists/ar-BB1gjI8M
Finally, some enviros are learning that green energy is often destructive of the environment. I’ve been yelling that here in MA for years- to the enviros- and they just ignored me. They’re stuck now- between having green energy and a wasted environment- maybe they’ll have an epiphany and realize that the solution is to give up green energy! Maybe I’ll have to slip them some powerful psychedelics- then take them out on a nice day and ask them, “where the hell is the emergency?”
The Emperor has no clothes…
The Supply Side Carbon Emission Control Plan (SSCECP) — a fast track approach for reaching President Biden’s 50% by 2030 GHG reduction target
On April 22nd — Earth Day 2021 — the Biden Administration announced a goal of a 50% reduction in America’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 over a 2005 baseline. The rapid electrification of the nation’s entire energy infrastructure through a massive commitment to wind and solar energy is the primary means the administration is selling to achieve that goal. But here’s the rub. Building enough wind, solar, and even nuclear to replace even half of our carbon energy resources by 2030 is completely impossible.
The only practical means of fully achieving the emission reductions President Biden says are necessary by 2030 is to impose strictly-enforced energy conservation measures on the American public. If we are to achieve Biden’s target, Americans must be consuming roughly half as much energy per capita in the year 2030 as we do today in the year 2021.
In any case, going with more wind, solar, and nuclear is strictly a public policy decision. Left alone to make its own technology decisions, America’s power generation market would move decisively towards natural gas. In the absence of direct government intervention in the energy marketplace, natural gas offers the best combination of lowest final cost to the energy consumer, quickest real-time response to the ups and downs in electricity demand, and the greatest potential for investor profit.
However, within a strictly interpreted vision for a Green New Deal world, one where reliance on fossil fuel energy must be quickly reduced and eventually eliminated altogether, greater reliance on natural gas is not an option, not even on a temporary basis. Energy conservation is the only means to close the wide gap between Biden’s highly ambitious 50% by 2030 target and what new-build wind, solar, and nuclear can actually deliver.
Any fast-track greenhouse gas reduction strategy must achieve these goals:
1 — Be highly effective in quickly reducing America’s GHG emissions.
2 — Be conceptually and operationally simple to implement, relatively speaking.
3 — Be in alignment with past regulatory practice and past legal precedent.
4 — Be constitutionally and legally defensible in the courts.
5 — Be formulated and written in a way which discourages lawsuits.
6 — Motivate all energy consumers to quickly reduce their energy consumption.
7 — Incentivize the participation of the fifty state governments in regulating GHG emissions.
8 — Incentivize private sector corporations to cooperate in reducing GHG emissions.
If climate change is indeed the existential threat to life on earth President Biden and his climate czar John Kerry claim that it is, then they are morally obligated to act in accordance with their claims and to quickly reduce America’s carbon emissions just as far and as fast as current law allows. More important, under current law, President Biden and the Executive Branch can do it unilaterally without the need for any new legislation from Congress.
The fact remains that through a declaration of a carbon pollution emergency, the Executive Branch has all the authority it needs to quickly reduce America’s carbon emissions on a highly aggressive fast-track schedule. What remains to be seen is whether or not Joe Biden and John Kerry will use that authority.
Every action listed under the following five-point GHG reduction program — the Supply Side Carbon Emission Control Plan (SSCECP) — has a past historical precedent in the application of environmental regulations and in the area of national security law, as these would apply to a declared national emergency.
The SSCECP imposes an artificial shortage of fossil fuels on the American economy while greatly increasing the price of all forms of energy for all energy consumers. The plan employs a carbon fuel rationing scheme combined with a system of EPA-administered carbon pollution fines which is the functional equivalent of a legislated tax on carbon. These fines are collected through cooperative agreements with the state governments; which, in return for their cooperation, receive the bulk of the revenues collected from the EPA’s carbon pollution fines.
The plan eliminates price competition from the energy marketplace by suspending the application of anti-trust laws to private sector energy corporations and by enlisting those corporations as the government’s paid agents in imposing a hard-target schedule for reducing America’s consumption of fossil fuels. In return for their cooperation in reducing their production of carbon fuels, energy corporations are granted levels of profit on their reduced levels of output which equal or even exceed those they were making prior to 2021.
The SSCECP incentivizes energy conservation by imposing higher prices on all forms of energy and by placing direct constraints on energy production and consumption. Higher energy prices will in turn attract greater levels of investment in zero carbon energy technologies and will also allow the higher costs of wind, solar, and nuclear to be spread more evenly among all energy consumers. Under the SSCECP, Americans will be consuming roughly half as much energy per capita in 2030 as we do today in 2021.
In order to expedite environmental reviews and other permitting reviews of new-build wind, solar, and nuclear facilities, portions of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), along with portions of other project permitting requirements, are either partially suspended or else are bypassed altogether, as specifically directed by the President for each eligible new-build energy facility.
These are the six major points of the plan:
I: Establish the Legal Basis for Regulating All of America’s Carbon Emissions (2007-2020. Status ‘Complete’)
I-a: File and win lawsuits to allow regulation of carbon dioxide and other carbon GHG’s as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. (2007)
I-b: Publish a CAA Section 202 Endangerment Finding as a prototype test case for regulation of carbon GHG’s. (2009)
I-c: Successfully defend the CAA Section 202 Endangerment Finding in the courts. (2010-2012)
I-d: Establish a recent precedent, the COVID-19 pandemic, for taking strong government action in response to a declared national emergency. (2020)
II: Expand and Extend Regulation of all Carbon Emissions (2021)
II-a: Issue an Executive Order declaring a carbon pollution emergency.
II-b: Assign a joint task force comprised of all cabinet level departments, plus the National Security Agency, to manage the carbon pollution emergency.
II-c: Create a joint interagency control board to manage a phased systematic reduction in the production and distribution of all carbon fuels.
II-d: Place this control board under the direct supervision of the president and his national security staff.
II-e: Research and publish a US Treasury policy plan for redirecting energy market financial investments as needed to support the government’s GHG reduction goals.
II-f: Issue an Executive Order establishing an expanded carbon emission regulation program.
II-g: Issue an Executive Order establishing a carbon fuel rationing program.
II-h: Issue an Executive Order establishing an ongoing program for continuous monitoring & control of GHG reduction activities.
II-i: Issue an Executive Order suspending the application of anti-trust regulations in the energy marketplace.
II-j: Issue an Executive Order allowing the suspension of portions of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in order to expedite environmental reviews of new-build wind, solar, and nuclear facilities.
II-k: Issue an Executive Order granting authority to the President to reverse the final decisions of federal and state permitting agencies if those decisions are deemed to be ‘not in the national interest’.
II-l: Defend the president’s emergency actions as needed in response to specific lawsuits filed in the courts.
III: Establish an Expanded Carbon Emission Regulation Program (2021-2022)
III-a: Publish a Clean Air Act Section 108 Endangerment Finding which complements 2009’s Section 202 finding.
III-b: Declare carbon emissions as Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) under CAA Section 112.
III-c: Establish a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for carbon pollution.
III-d: Use the NAAQS for carbon pollution as America’s tie-in to international climate change agreements.
III-e: Defend the Section 108 Endangerment Finding, the NAAQS, and the Section 112 HAP Declaration in the courts.
III-f: Publish a regulatory framework for carbon pollution under Clean Air Act sections 108, 111, 112, 202, and other CAA sections as applicable.
III-g: Establish cooperative agreements with the states to enforce the EPA’s anti-carbon regulations.
III-h: Establish a system of carbon pollution fines which is the functional equivalent of a legislated tax on carbon.
III-i: Establish the legal basis for sharing the revenues collected from these carbon pollution fines among the federal and state governments.
III-j: Defend the comprehensive system of carbon pollution regulations in the courts.
IV: Establish a Carbon Fuel Rationing Program (2021-2022)
IV-a: Research and publish a system for government-enforced carbon fuel rationing.
IV-b: Establish a time-phased, hard-target schedule for reducing the production and distribution of all carbon fuels.
IV-c: Establish cooperative agreements with the state governments to enforce the federal government’s system of carbon fuel rationing.
IV-d: Establish production control agreements with private sector fossil fuel producers and distributors.
IV-e: Establish a guaranteed profit schedule for the carbon fuels industry in return for production & distribution cutbacks.
IV-f: Defend the government’s system of carbon fuel rationing in the courts.
V: Establish a Process for Expedited Energy Project Permitting and Approval. (2021-2022)
V-a: Research and publish a system for an expedited governmental review and permitting process for new-build wind, solar, and nuclear facilities.
V-b: Establish cooperative agreements with federal and state agencies for expedited reviews and approvals of energy infrastructure permits.
V-c: Establish a register of new-build wind, solar, and nuclear projects eligible for an expedited permitting review and approval process.
V-d: For those projects listed on the expedited review register, establish a process and a procedure to be followed if the President decides to reverse the final decisions of federal and state permitting agencies, if those decisions are deemed to be ‘not in the national interest’.
V-e: Defend the government’s expedited permitting and review process in the courts.
VI: Perform Ongoing GHG Reduction Monitoring & Control Activities (2023 through 2050)
VI-a: Issue a further series of Executive Orders, as needed, to further define and further implement America’s carbon emissions regulatory framework.
VI-b: Issue a further series of Executive Orders, as needed, to further define and further implement America’s carbon fuel rationing program.
VI-c: Issue a further series of Executive Orders, as needed, to further define and further implement the federal government’s expedited permitting process.
VI-d: Monitor the effectiveness of the EPA’s carbon regulation framework in reducing America’s GHG emissions.
VI-e: Monitor the effectiveness of renewable energy projects in reducing America’s GHG emissions.
VI-f: Monitor the effectiveness of energy conservation programs in reducing America’s GHG emissions.
VI-g: Monitor the effectiveness of carbon fuel rationing programs in reducing America’s GHG emissions.
VI-h: Adjust the schedule of carbon pollution fines upward if progress in reducing America’s GHG emissions lags.
VI-i: Adjust the carbon fuel rationing targets upward if progress in reducing America’s GHG emissions lags.
VI-j: Continue to defend the comprehensive system of carbon pollution regulations and the government-mandated energy rationing programs in the courts.
VI-k: Continue to assess the need for enforcing the government’s GHG reduction programs beyond the year 2050.
REMARKS:
The plan described above is completely legal and constitutional. Under current law, the SSCECP can be implemented unilaterally by the Executive Branch using its existing environmental protection and national security authorities. Not another word of new legislation is needed from Congress either to enable the plan legally or to fund its operation.
Nor does the plan require a separate line of funding in the federal government’s budget. The planning activities and regulation roll-out activities are easily accomplished within the existing spending authorities of the US-EPA, the US-DOE, and the US-DHS.
A plan like the SSCECP will generate many lawsuits. But if the plan is applied with equal force against all major sources of America’s carbon emissions, and with equal impact upon all affected economic sectors and demographic groups, those lawsuits will go nowhere. It is specifically designed to survive any lawsuits brought against it.
Even if the House of Representatives and the Senate were both in Republican hands in January, 2023, and passed legislation specifically forbidding the adoption of a plan like the SSCECP, a presidential veto can kill that legislation with the stroke of a pen.
So the big question remains. How far will President Biden and John Kerry go in acting upon their stated convictions? Will they, or won’t they, do all that is in their power as our Chief Executive and our climate czar to reduce America’s carbon emissions just as far and as fast as climate activists say is necessary?
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Disclosure: I’ve spent thirty-five years in nuclear construction and operations. Because the bulk of my occupational radiation exposure has come from beta-gamma sources, my internet handle is ‘Beta Blocker’.
I got half way, my brain fried. Jeeeefarque! It is way worse than we ever thought! “Defend and win cases…” “president needs to respond to court challenges…” Only with an “Independent Judiciary” would this be allowed to fly. I would laugh, but my own president tries his best to become Master of his Lodge, so he does everything The Fed tells him to. So I’m buggered by this too. This is a sad end to my day, good night.
The SSCECP may seem complex, but it is not nearly as complex as some of the schemes which have been kicked about in the environmental law community for the past decade or so. The plan is also a fully transparent ‘front door’ approach to GHG emission regulation and reduction, as opposed to a highly opaque ‘back door’ approach such as using ozone regulation as a proxy for carbon emission regulation.
The reason why the SSCECP is comparatively more simple is that the state governments and the private sector energy corporations are enlisted as the agents of energy conservation enforcement in ways that maximum their revenues from the sale and distribution of an ever-shrinking supply of fossil fuel. They will have every incentive to keep their activities as streamlined as possible in order to maximize their income streams.
It is conceivable that under the SSCECP, revenue income for the state governments and profits for the private sector energy corporations could both rise substantially in spite of a continuous decline in fossil fuel production, distribution, and consumption as a consequence of strictly enforced energy conservation measures.
Let us ignore for the moment the very many people who reckon that oil and gas is a biological waste product continuously excreted by subterranian microbes.
Let us talk rather about the new fields discovered on a weekly basis. Let us talk of the ginormous reservoir of oil off the Venezuelan coast that no-one is tapping because America, let us remind ourselves of the (possibly) even bigger, virgin oil field in dispute between Venezuela and Guam, with American instigation keeping everybody at throat.
There is no oil shortage, not now, not for many decades, unless we find new ways to waste it. Remember, HAARP was built as an answer for using all that lovely gas in faraway Alaski; essentially they built a gigantic heater to warm up spots of the atmosphere …to still undeclared logic purpose.
And all that about profits? Yeah, but I’m having more fun watching them use all those things to absorp and subsume all ‘competitors’ and bankrupting anyone too small to bother buying out. All of this. It’s The Game, and Winner takes all. Every single move they make is towards this one end. Speak to any rich man about money; so far every single answer I got, was a variation on: “Money? Money’s nothing, it’s a game, money’s just a game.”
It’s not about profit, it’s about control.
“…impose strictly-enforced energy conservation measures on the American public…”
If it must be strictly-enforced it isn’t conservation. It’s Energy Prohibition.
“…Establish a guaranteed profit schedule…”
This is what Nazi Germany did to all its industries. This is also why the Nazi Party, or at least Hitler himself, was so cozy with the unions, they became his enforcement arm over the workers.
“…Building enough wind, solar, and even nuclear to replace even half of our carbon energy resources by 2030 is completely impossible….”
…and has anyone done a cradle-to-grave analysis of the various means of power production to establish how much CO2 is produced by the construction of each option? And an aggressive schedule will require shutting existing fossil fuel fired power plants before their scheduled date of closure, i.e., that is the lifetime of the equipment envisioned during planning, and the number used in calculating financial rates of return. CO2 emitted in the construction of an existing plant has already been emitted, and now the lunatics are proposing constructing that plant again, ahead of schedule, with all its accompanying emissions (all emissions, not just CO2). That’s basically doubling up on the emissions! And how much do you want to bet there are more CO2 emissions constructing a windmill than there are for the same nameplate capacity of a natural gas fired plant? And since every wind system has a utilization rate of somewhere around 30%, you have to build three times as many of them to get the same power you would out of a natural gas plant! But all this is irrelevant anyway, since it has been apparent for awhile that the true goal of “renewables” is neither energy efficiency nor emissions reductions, it’s all about control. How much power can be produced, how it will be produced, and who gets to use it.
I get the feeling that when too many American citizens face energy poverty, there will be a reckoning, likely armed. Trampling the Constitution apparently won’t do it, but imposing a death sentence on a majority of the population probably would.
The SSCECP is a highly coercive means of achieving Biden’s 50% reduction by 2030 target. It is consciously designed to be just that. It will get the job done even if the result is that Americans consume half as much energy in the year 2030 as they do today in the year 2021.
Why so? Because the plan can be implemented quickly and effectively under the assumption that President Biden and his climate czar John Kerry are truly sincere in believing that quickly reducing America’s carbon emissions is in the best interests of the American public.
And so if GHG-driven climate change is indeed the existential threat to life on earth Biden and Kerry claim that it is, then they are morally obligated to act in accordance with their claims and to quickly reduce America’s carbon emissions just as far and as fast as current law allows.
Under current environmental and national security law, President Biden and the Executive Branch can implement a plan like the SSCECP unilaterally without the need for any new legislation from Congress.
When Congress enacted these laws, it gave the Executive Branch the authority and the responsibility for reducing the emission of substances identified as harmful pollutants, and for managing the government’s response to declared national emergencies.
Every program element listed in the SSCECP has a past-practice precedent either in the area of environmental regulation or in the area of national security law and decision making, the latter body of past precedent coming from America’s experience in World War II.
So once again, the big question remains. How far will President Biden and John Kerry go in acting upon their stated convictions? Will they, or won’t they, do all that is in their power as our Chief Executive and our climate czar to reduce America’s carbon emissions just as far and as fast as climate activists say is necessary?
My first reaction is: “Wow, really? Like everybody on this site doesn’t know that stuff already”. Then I thought: “Wait! Not everyone reading this is ‘everybody here’. There are always newcomers.”
Secondly, Ms. Curry is a much better communicator than most, and this is a concise and structured response to keep in mind for ‘next time’.
Lastly, one of the Enemy’s most powerful weapons is the constant repetition of their “Narrative”. Us dweebs try one logic argument after another, while They just repeat the same lies over and over andover…
Let this essay stand, let it breed over the ‘Net, repeat it at every opportunity. Every one of us is worth a thousand of them, and every single one of Them we can bring to their senses, will be a problem to another thousand enemies.
“My first reaction is: “Wow, really? Like everybody on this site doesn’t know that stuff already”. Then I thought: “Wait! Not everyone reading this is ‘everybody here’. There are always newcomers.”
Yes, everyone should keep that in mind. There are new readers all the time, and with the enhanced emphasis of the Biden administration on Human-caused Climate Change, there will probably be more new people looking in.
Should one laugh or should one cry when reading that Time issue?? Well, I certainly found myself laughing out loud. It is climate change panic reaching an all time high.
For almost 50 years we have been treated to dire warnings about these coming disasters – but looking around we still do not observe any hint of disasters coming anywhere in the world.
It is just too ridiculous for words (though I appreciate Judith Curry’s patient endeavours!)
“It is just too ridiculous for words”
How about this from Frans Timmermans, vice president of the EU Commission.
“It’s not just an urgent matter, it’s a difficult matter. We have to transform our economy…… If we don’t fix this, our children will be waging wars over water and food. There is no doubt in my mind.”
Wasn’t it something like 40 years ago that the pronouncement went forth… in less than a decade the wealthy countries will be overwhelmed by “climate refugees”. Well, we should have been overwhelmed 4 times by now, and it hasn’t even happened once.
When an immediate 5.8% drop in world economic output for a year ( the covid shutdown) does not move the climate control knob of Mauna Loa CO2 measurements one iota, Why would anyone think that anything else governments do would work to fight climate change any differently?
The experiment has been done already, and it failed to produce any measurable results.
What was the definition of insanity again?
when they define Climate I’ll listen to their claims of “change” … until then I’ll point at them and laugh at their nonsense …
It seems to be a human condition to require religion in one’s life – a shared religion with all associates agreeing to some greater purpose and of course, sin.
Climate belief IS that new religion. That is why it is so frustrating to try to have a reasonable debate with a believer – it’s all about their emotions and philosophical beliefs expressed in a sort of pseudo-scientific language. The general devotee quote their priests (the so-called climate scientists) without having or needing any deeper understanding of what they are talking about.
“Now, spurred by alarming science…”
The science is certainly alarming, but the evidence is not. There is no climate crisis.
How new religions take root.
The “Climate Crisis” is a massive Progressive gaslight operation to distract the masses from the fact that Progressivism has been a massive failure for the poor & middle class.
So instead of dealing with all of the problems that they themselves have either created or encouraged, what do they do? They tell you they need to deal with these even bigger “existential” problems to deal with that they can’t possibly be held responsible for, like “climate change” and “white supremacy”, problems that exist only exclusively in non-peer reviewed computer models and/or in the Progressive imagination.
The “climate crisis” is simultaneously the excuse for Progressive policy failure and the justification for even more of it.
The Time cover is so ridiculous, it’s a parody of itself.
Only an addicted Climate-Porn user could get anything out of it and they might have to roll it up and smoke it to do that..
Any normal person would just see a bad joke.
Andrew
For the purpose of mockery, maybe a post covering Epicurious deciding to no longer carry any recipes using beef, because climate change?
Because of some 2013 UN report on how cow farts are destroying the world?
Is there a comparison of how much of the amazon gets whacked for beef ranching VS sugar cane/palm oil plantations for green BS energy?
A political response will be required to eventually turn this climate alarmism around. We can gripe all we want as we agree with each other in our comfortable WUWT echo chamber. However, governments at all levels, …international, federal, state/province and local municipal, are buying in and instituting changes to “fight climate change”. A more than 25 year propaganda campaign has been enormously successful and life as we know it is slipping away as noble cause green new deals are imposed everywhere. A complacent public will not notice what is happening until it is too late to stop. Even the Conservative party in Canada buys the climate alarm narrative, while pretending they don’t.
We can be right/correct about climate science but nothing will change until enough people are prepared to take the heat by pushing back on the current narrative. So far very few have been willing to take the risk in the political arena to loudly proclaim that the emperor has no clothes.
Climate (weather) is everything, naturally.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/68838/#68886
You can design all the scary make believe pictures that you want for your magazine covers and news stories and exaggerate all the facts and use busted computer model simulations programmed with extreme, subjective unrealistic mathematical equations from biased scientists but YOU CAN’T change the fact that NONE of the authentic data shows a climate crisis……….it shows a climate optimum.
It’s long past TIME to start being honest about this because the distance/disparity between the the fake climate crisis and the truth… a climate optimum is big enough to drive a mack truck thru it and continues to widen!
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/27864/
Let’s compare TIME’s fake depiction of our planet above, with one that represents the REAL earth below.
Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
That link is broken, 404?
If your kid gets poor marks at school, he fortunately knows what to blame for it.
(global warming have burned my homework!)
The term climate change can never be challenged – for it the climate gets warmer, it’s climate change and if the climate gets cooler, it’s climate change. The only way climate change can be challenged is if the climate doesn’t change.
But no one believes that it can’t change.
The thing we are missing is that climate is not about the weather – as the left has told us many times when the weather is inconvenient to the narrative.
It is economic and political and social climate change that the left is after using the scientific idea of climate as a cloud cover over their real agenda.