By: Marc Morano – Climate Depot
New: Today, 7 federal agencies are announcing clean energy projects and plans that will activate the entire government to fight climate change, lower energy costs, create good-paying, union jobs, and accelerate America’s clean energy economy.
Details here: https://t.co/LoEBLyUX4u— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 12, 2022
– Incoming U.S. President Joe Biden has promised an “all-of-government” approach to fight climate change that would require federal agencies from the Defense Department to the Treasury to help the administration achieve its goal of sharply slashing nationwide greenhouse gas emissions. …
“Every agency is a climate agency now,” said Sam Ricketts, co-founder of Evergreen Action, an advocacy group that advised Biden’s transition team on climate change. …
The Education Department could direct federal dollars toward funding of specialized teachers and programs to raise awareness of climate change and use its procurement powers to assist in the electrification of bus fleets and greening of school buildings.
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‘A whole-of-government approach’ – Climate will touch ‘every single piece’ of Biden’s budget
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Bang the drums! Make noise! Look busy! But don’t get blamed for inflation, job loss, or doing your day job.
“New: Today, 7 federal agencies are announcing clean energy projects and plans that will activate the entire government to fight climate change, lower energy costs, create good-paying, union jobs, and accelerate America’s clean energy economy.”
************
And here I thought that the union of church and state was unconstitutional. Silly me, I should have known better.
With the recent government announcement that inflation in the US from Dec2020 to Dec 2021 ran at 7% (meaning that real inflation was more like 14%), this is just what US citizens need at this time: more government spending on useless virtue-signaling.
What? . . . anyone think any possible reduction in US CO2 emissions will make a squat’s difference in comparison to the massive increases in CO2 emissions coming from China and India as they roll out tens, if not hundreds, of coal-fired power plants in just the next decade?
I expect most of the CO2 reduction will come from cutting the operational budget of the Pentagon. Stop running those ships and tanks and airplanes – that’ll make the world a better place.
Meanwhile, the bureaucracy, the offices filled with drones at desktops, the servers humming away to store petabytes of data that’s never used.. that will only increase, requiring more power, as new programs are created to “combat” climate change.
The Pentagon is already making a substantial contribution by switching to renewables (and saving money in the process)
for example:
Schneider Electric adds solar + storage to U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command center (solarpowerworldonline.com)
griff,
Ever heard of the term “insignificant blip”?
It applies to your only cited example of a “significant contribution”.
And thank you for my laugh-of-the-day!
The sky is green in griff-world.
Indeed.
Remote area mines and outback cattle stations have been using these kinds of supplemental electricity sources for decades.
Saves $$$s on expensive diesel fuel needed for the mainstay power generation plants – diesel powered generators.
(Oh, of course they also use wind power whenever they can. Just as they do for pumping water up from artesian basins)
But what isolated remote bases can get by with does not mean that towns, cities, statewide grids can adopt the same measures.
A fact that is lost to uncomprehending, innumerate solar & wind acolytes.
While the Pentagon is switching to renewables, they are not saving money by doing so. Nobody is.
BTW, how does following the demand of the politicians translate into we are doing this because we want to?
They are most especially not saving money. The US government doesn’t get to farm those subsidies and feed-in tariffs like the rest of us, so their costs are up front for all to see. Not to mention, a lot of what they are doing at your link is just run-of-the-mill infrastructure upgrades which would make sense even without the solar and battery baggage.
During the Obama years, we had cases of rooftop solar being added to VA hospitals while inside the building the deadly waiting list for services was being undercounted in reporting. That’s a case of misplaced priorities that kills people who served the country.
Solar Panel NATIONAL NR.pdf (va.gov)
The US Air Force is using solar?
Let’s hope they never want to carry out any night-time ops.
Where will they be parking their solar powered fighter planes?
Oh, hang on….
Think of how much it would help if we converted all the navy ships to nuclear power!
A nuclear PT would be amusing.
For something that small we would need to use anti-matter.
Those solar-powered tanks will be particularly effective for night assaults.
Jeez griff. You are Fick.
Tilting at windmills is all the rage nowadays.
The war on disease
The war on drugs
The war on obesity
The war on loneliness
War on want
Etc
All the above and more waste time fighting enemies or trying to resolve issues that are imaginary, unimportant, or impossible to overcome.
Zero covid – a complete non-starter
Many humans like taking drugs
Many humans will be fat
Many humans will be lonely
So what’s new?
Fighting climate change – pointlessly reviewed at 30 year intervals.
I believe Biden’s bill contains money for forest management… surely Watts readers are all in favour of that?
“forest management”
So you’ve come round to our way of thinking, griff? Environmental management works, loony rewilding doesn’t.
I am all in favour of forest management – I just don’t think lack of it is driving the increase in fires/scale of fires.
I note nations outside the Us seeing a rise in fires, where they have almost perfect/textbook forest management
Such as where for example?
Because 0.1% of the expenditures are for something we agree with, therefore we are obligated to support the onter 99.9%?
I was expecting someone to make a comment about that’s how modern politics works.
U.S. government, to trees:
Hi, we’re from the government, and we’re here to help.
Trees (running away) “AAAAAAAUUUUUUGHGGGGG!!!!!”
Are you sure they are not Ents?
Ents are smart enough to not let agents of the government close to them in the first place.
At what cost in the other areas when considering the whole?
You forgot that Americans are not supposed to read what’s in the bill till after the vote, according to Dear Leader Nancy.
I think Hitler’s mob did quite a good job of building a cheap car for people to use, and Hugo Boss designed him some very natty uniforms. That doesn’t mean I think the rest of his policies were worth supporting.
Griff, your lack of simple clarity of thought is astounding.
It probably explains why he holds the opinions he does.
so what ? 1 item in a laundry list of hundreds of wasteful and useless spending …
“…. funding of specialized teachers and programs to raise awareness of climate change …”
Yikes, you mean the fact that it’s in every newspaper, magazine and TV news program isn’t enough? Everyone’s already heard the story.
“raise awareness “
Aka keeping them [sort of] relevant
“… greening of school buildings… “
OK, OK, let’s invest in green paint.
Hey, hey! Let’s be specific; forest green paint. Now you’re going green and being all woodsy!
Years ago, US Forest Services vehicles were a woodsy green. Now they are white. Explain that!
Some bureaucrat with nothing to do decided on a change in colors to justify his/her salary.
Annual Review: Implemented a significant change in the color scheme for USFS vehicles to symbolize the purity of the purpose of the agency. Added staff to keep the vehicles washed to remove the ubiquitous reddish dust from the unpaved roads.
They kept losing track of the green vehicles?
Maybe they needed the pigment for greenwashing?
Something like the old WWII “Lucky Strike Green has Gone to War” campaign.
Wait, wait, WAIT! If the government is going to fight climate change, instead of inflation or the death of good paying jobs due to flooding the market with people willing to work for Depression Era wages, I want global warming if I’m going to have to live under a bridge.
One doesn’t know whether to conclude that its hysterical religious mania, which would be one relatively benign explanation.
Or whether its a deliberate attempt to distract the population with irrelevancies to divert from very serious problems that people don’t want to talk about.
Whichever, its totally irrational for the following reason above all others. If you are a country which is doing 5 billion tons a year out of a global total of 37 billion, and you have failed to persuade the rest of the world to reduce, you are clean out of chips. There is nothing you can do about climate change on your own.
You have, in the course of the last few years, what with Afghanistan and the cities going up in flames, and the election, lost all the force of example you used to have. No-one is listening. If they are looking for an example to follow, they are looking to China, whose approach is to talk politely about climate change and grow the economy as fast as humanly possible.
The most realistic expectation for the next 5 – 10 years is that global emissions rise to north of 40 billion tons a year. If America pulls out all the stops, maybe it knocks 2 – 3 billion tons a year off this. So we don’t have 45 billion tons, we have 42 pr 43.
On the theory which is motivating these pronouncements, what is needed is not 42 as opposed to 45, but more like down to 10 billion tons in about 2035-40.
People need to get real. And they need to understand that in real terms, America is no longer a large enough economy to make much difference to global emissions by anything it does.
I do not believe its actually possible for any American government to reduce emissions by half. Its only a four year term. By the time it gets started enough for people to have experienced the real economic effects and see how little effect its having on either climate or other country plans, there will be an election, and the party responsible will be toast. It will be wipeout at the Presidential election and at all the Congressional and Senate elections.
Democrats and liberal voters should hope and pray this is no more than rhetoric. Because if its real and serious and implementation is attempted, they are doomed.
If there is any logic at all in the US government’s position of “fighting climate change”, as alluded to the the above article’s title, then the government necessarily must have a firm position on the target “climate” to be achieved, from which all effort will be expended to fight any further change.
I, for one, have never heard any US government official’s or US scientific organization’s or IPCC’s or COP’s or Paris Accord’s definition of what that target climate should be.
That is, is it a certain climate that existed more than 200 years ago (prior to the Industrial Revolution) or the one that exists right now or the one that will exist in 2050?
And, of course, is there “one stable climate that fits all” on planet Earth?
Finally, I apologize for leading everyone on with the stated presumption in my very first sentence: “If there is any logic at all . . .”
a firm position on the target “climate”
Here you are, Gordon. Why 350? – MN350
This was written when CO2 was 400 ppm. About 1988?
Mauna Loa report for January 12, 2022, is 418.18 ppm.
While this is just one day’s data point, the monthly mean will be close to 418.
The two Bills, McKibben & Nye, are revered by government officials, so we can assume that at 350 ppm we will have a Goldilocks Climate.
Sorry, John, but if you reread my previous post I clearly stated I never heard of any scientific organization defining what the target climate should be.
First, mn350.com is not a scientific organization. At their website, which you linked, under their article titled “Why 350?”, they state:
a) “Countless scientists, climate experts, and governments officials agree that 350 ppm is the ‘safe’ level of carbon dioxide.” Of course, they give no reference(s) to support that absurd claim. And, on a more elementary level, the deemed-“safe” concentration (indeed any reasonable concentration) of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere does NOT establish climate, as is well known by any person that has cared to look objectively at paleoclimatology data over, say, the last 600 million years.
b) “As far back as 1896, founders of modern science connected industrial coal burning to high atmospheric carbon with global warming.” History shows that overwhelming majority of the “founders of modern science” did not give a shist about whether of not atmospheric CO2 played any role whatsoever in Earth warming during the Holocene. What? . . . you really think scientists such as Issac Newton, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Edward Jenner, Louis Pasteur, Charles Darwin, William Kelvin, Thomas Edison, Madam Curie, Michael Faraday, James Maxwell, Nikola Tesla, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrodinger, Edwin Hubble, Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman, and Stephen Hawking (to name just a few!) amongst themselves wrote even one single scientific paper or article connecting coal burning to global warming? If so, show the proof.
c) “That’s why MN350’s mission is to bring Minnesotans into the global 350.org movement, fighting climate change on a local level to create a just and healthy future for all.” Thank the good Lord that mn350.com’s stated agenda is limited to just Minnesota.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, neither Bill McKibben nor Bill Nye rate the title of scientist . . . rather the term “poser” is much more fitting for their career description as well as current job title. No wonder they are “revered by government officials” (your words). 🙂
It should be somewhere between 0 and 100 deg C.
Clyde,
That’s a start, but you won’t get anywhere in today’s world if you assert that temperature is the sole parameter defining “climate”.
Everyone wants the climate to be forever as it was that glorious summer in high school when they lost their virginity. Results may vary.
To quote General McAuliffe (Battle of the Bulge, WWII):
“NUTS”
“Every agency is a climate agency now,”
Funny me. I thought the Dept of Defense should be about defense, the Justice Dept about justice, Agriculture Dept about agriculture, the Dept of Education should
be aboutjust go away!Apparently you believe in “old think!”
Report for reeducation!
They’re just creating phony jobs for all of the otherwise economically useless people that have racked up almost 2-trillion in student loan debt.
It was estimated in 2019 that the US produced about 11% of global GHG emissions (our proportion has probably declined since due to increases in rest of the world emissions). It is estimated by Stanford University that global GHG emissions declined 7% in 2020 due to covid mitigations reducing transportation and industrial energy demands.
In 2020 with a reduction of the equivalent of 2/3 of the US GHG emissions we saw no decline in global atmospheric CO2 content. In fact, we did not even see a decline in the rate of RISE in global CO2.
I see no evidence that US policy can have any measurable impact on global GHG increase let alone any impact on climate.
Disaster for the USA.
Political catastrophe for Biden.
Everything Biden touches turns to you know what.
It used to be known as the ‘Midas’ Touch. It should be changed to the Biden Touch.
“Political catastrophe for Biden”
Only is there are free and fair elections. The Dems are counting on preventing that.
And if you disagree with what the Democrats are doing, you are the equivalent of Jefferson Davis, seeking to tear the country apart.
Unfortunately this carries on a long history of distractions of no value to anyone but robbers and thieves for the entire federal government so they can fritter away the wealth and future of taxpayers tilting at windmills while the country slides into oblivion. Biden should be taking up fiddling lessons very soon and building a giant bonfire on the White House lawn to warm him while he fiddles.
Obviously, Biden hates America and American workers. His plan as described targets only union workers, who are only 12-13% of the labor force. So he is grossly discriminating against the vast majority of workers to give special privileges to the few. That is far worse than alleged systemic racism.
Speaking of systemic racism, the Biden admin is still defending it’s desire to use race as the most important criteria in determining who gets medical attention for anything COVID related.
If race is a determining factor in who needs hospitalisation, then prescribing treatment based on that makes sense
That is not how the criteria is being set. Race is the only determining factor regardless of age or other risk factors.
“create good-paying, union jobs”
It’s not the government’s job to create jobs. Its job is to provide a stable framework, so that businesses, entrepreneurs, can prosper. Those businesses will create jobs, jobs that people actually want. And they’ll make products that people actually want.
Government never creates jobs. Unless you count digging holes and filling them in again without planting the trees.
What frightens me is how long Joe Biden has been president. I am at an age where time seems to go faster and faster – the birthdays and Christmases that took for ever to arrive in my youth now just whizz by. Donald Trump was in and out of power in the blink of an eye, But since Joe Biden was elected, time has almost stood still. It seems like he has been president for ever, yet he’s only a quarter of the way through his first (and surely only) term.
There is so much time now for reflection on all the major issues, but in the mainstream media there is no reflection at all. The same propaganda is pumped out svery day, and it is every bit as absurd as Baghdad Bob telling Iraq and the world one thing while the opposite could be seen happening behind him. So it is with climate and renewable energy propaganda: While we are being told for the 365th time in 12 months that lower renewable energy costs are driving down the cost of electricity, for example, we can clearly see electricity prices going up. Yet there is never any discussion or reflection in the mainstream media.
Western democracy is in a terrible state, almost completely hijacked by green marxism. While we still have our democratic institutions we have some sort of a chance, but first something in green marxism has to break. It will be miserable for Californians, but maybe the collapse of California’s electricity system can be the break we all need. Californians can take comfort from the reflection that while there will be a lot of pain from electricity system collapse, it is as nothing beside the steadily increasing pain of continuing as is.
That is a reflection that will not be seen in the mainstream media of course. Californians will have to do their own reflecting. Or maybe those who can reflect have already left.
I observe the same effect. I suspect that it is because we subjectively perceive time as the fraction of time we have experienced.
Joe Biden graduated at the top of his class with 3 degrees.
Why don’t you think he can fight climate change too?
It’s easy. All you need to do is print more money and hand it out to your friends.
Have they already ordered the Wonder Twin suits for all the staff?
It is now totally moral to evade taxes.
From tomorrow the whole of the US Federal Government will be manning giant Punkahs, day and night.
Are you troubled by strange noises in the middle of the night? Do you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic? Have you or your family every seen a spook, specter, or climate change? If the answer is yes then don’t wait another minute. Pick up your phone and call the professionals: Climatebusters.
Their courteous and efficient staff is on call 24 hours a day to serve all your supernatural elimination needs.
The ghosts, spooks and specters in GhostBusters just MIGHT be more real than catastrophic climate change.