By Andy May
Marcel Crok, co-founder of CLINTEL, a Dutch foundation, ask me to explain the U.S. controversy over the proposed SEC climate change rule for European audiences. Both the rule and the controversy are complicated, but I did my best. See the essay at clintel.org here.
The root of the controversy is the difference between what Congress intended the SEC to do versus what they are trying to with the new rule. European governments combine their executive and legislative branches, making such a controversy less likely. I work the problem from that perspective.
Well, thanks, Andy. That’s an enlightening and entertaining essay. It actually gives me a little more hope that the CAGW nonsense may someday fade into a dark corner of the history books. One of these days we are going to find out who is writing the briefings that Biden struggles to read, as well as the author of the Executive Orders. Wait for it.
Go woke, go broke. Go green, go without.
Critial?
Oh yes, Critial. I can c that.
There always has to be one typo!
I wish they would bring forward more conistent arguments. It seems like they really don’t know any better..
I see you know more science than preeminent atmospheric physicists. Its a shame you aren’t writing the textbooks.
Andy,
From your article:
‘Princeton Professor, emeritus, William Happer and MIT Professor, emeritus, Richard Lindzen have reviewed the proposed rule and filed a critical comment on the rule with the SEC. In addition, they have filed an amicus curiae court brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit stating that they do not believe there is a climate-related risk related to burning fossil fuels, and the resulting CO2 and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.’
And from the President’s Page of the May, 2022 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly:
‘Climate change poses a daunting and unprecedented challenge to humanity. The scale, complexity, and tangled nature of the environmental problems can only be addressed through an interdisciplinary approach that harnesses knowledge across the disciplinary spectrum.
Princeton will have the most significant impact on the crisis through the scholarship we generate and the people we educate. Indeed, one of the most powerful things that we can do is create the conditions that allow the world’s most promising students and most accomplished faculty to do their best work.
That is the heart of our climate strategy.’
Apparently, the current president of Princeton does not consider Princeton Nobel laureate William Happer to be among its ‘most accomplished faculty’.
The next Federal administration that pays lip service to ‘limited government’ needs to Red Team the bejesus out of climate alarmism.
I hope a red team happens but I doubt it. Too much money to be made in Academia from global warming…I mean climate change…which is now climate extinction.
Good points. But Professor Happer did not win a Nobel Prize, he has received a lot of prestigious awards, including the Edison Patent Award, but not a Nobel. It is easy to tell that the whole climate science hoax is purely political, the “presidents” support it, and the scientific membership do not.
D’oh! Thanks for setting me straight re. the Nobel; I have no idea how that came to mind.
A man claimed to have won one. I wonder who that might be? PSU ring any bells?
Inndeed it does!
Educational explanation.
I find it hard to understanding why atmospheric physicists do not comprehend that ocean surfaces cannot sustain a temperature above 30C. People so trained should have an acute awareness of how a level of free convection is created and the limiting conditions for an LFC.
An LFC cannot form if the TPW is less than 35mm (15.3C for a saturated column) or beyond 100mm (30C for a saturated column).
If there was no convective instability, Earth would be an iceball so it is an important process.
You are not following the money. That is your lack of understanding.
But Happer and Lindzen are not chasing the money. They are critical of people who are. Why not just state clearly and confidently the fact that ocean surfaces cannot sustain temperatures above 30C. That is a fact that observations for decades confirm and yet no climate model is consistent with it. They exceed a fundamental constraint on ocean. surface temperature.
The predictions from the 2000 vintage climate models forecast ocean surfaces would be regularly exceeding 30C by now, which has clearly not occurred
Possible counterarguments:
The whole ocean is not 30 C. Tropical conditions may stay the same but the ‘heat ‘ moves to lower latitudes or into the deep ocean.
Argo floats say that temperatures are increasing below the surface.
Surface temperatures are increasing on land according to thermometers.
You need to overcome these arguments.
There is little debate that CO2 increases have contributed to past global warming and that there has been a radiation imbalance (ARGO est. 0,6 Watt/ square meter). On the other hand the models perfomances have been poor and models tend to “run hot”. In this uncertainty the catastrophic claims are unsupported and political not scientific.
There is little debate that CO2 increases have contributed to past global warming
There is much debate, in fact the evidence clearly points to global warming causing increases in CO2 and not the other way around. In fact there is not one warming event that you can attribute to CO2 with any confidence what so ever.
The only way oceans get warmer inside thousands of years at depths to 2000m is by reducing net evaporation – they are getting hotter at depth by virtue of cooling slower. Global river run-off reducing over the past 50 years verifies that is the case.
The counter is easy – no climate model limits ocean surface temperature to 30C. They all do what the CSIRO model does. They are all clearly wrong. If they did clamp tropical ocean surface temperature to 30C then they cannot get to the predicted temperatures globally.
Fact remains that the climate has changed in the past decades and sea levels have continued to rise during the past centuries and are likely to rise further. Reporting on the effects is not per se invalid. For most companies risks will be minimal but some may face existential consequences. This is independent of the question if 20th and 21st century climate change has been caused by antropogenic global warming or not. Problem of the reporting requirement of course is the prospective element: how to know what changes are ahead, and how the world will adapt? But that is no different from other SEC risk assessment requirements. I personally believe reporting has little or no value as the reporting enitities are in no better position than investors in their assessment.
If the risks are increasing then insurance premiums go up. There is a competitive market for insurance and the premiums will reflect that market.
People will not get finance to build in flood-prone locations if they cannot insure the property. Obama has beachside property. Rudd has beachside property. If they seriously believed there was a risk of oceans rising rapidly they would not have invested significant sums in these coastal locations.
It is actually the combination of the reporting requirement and the bureaucratic calculation of the social cost of carbon (SCC). Regardless of what happens in the future, the present cost will be computed using the totally made-up SCC. That erroneously lowers the value of the company by an arbitrary amount decided by a clueless bureaucrat.
A) it was much warmer in the 1930’s than it is currently. B) What rising sea levels?
“but some may face existential consequences.”
But not from climate. Or sea level rise. Most likely from market forces or poor management.
Or, from the FED or, idiot and/or bought off politicians.
Fact remains that the climate has changed in the past decades and sea levels have continued to rise during the past centuries and are likely to rise further.
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Your comment seems to imply that climate has only changed in the past decades as opposed to sea level changing over the past centuries.
A pointed comment by Lindzen:
“What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that carbon dioxide from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin.
“It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that carbon dioxide, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.”
This is what happens when reason has to give way to emotions in arguments. Emotions are the worst guide a human has because they are are changeable as the weather.
With regard to apportioning blame, Suki Manabe, should be at the top of the list for his incompetence and unwillingness to condemn models that he well knows are unsuited to the task they are being used for.
I will get this Comment by Lindzen printed as a Christmas card and send one to every member of parliament .
I know that it would be futile sending it to the present government members in New Zealand .
Governments right around the free world are destroying their countries because they believe that climate change is a future threat.
Democratic governments should be looking after their countries interests first Not pushing their people into poverty because of shortage of energy and fuel which can only lead to less employment .
Why would any government in the world attack their main export earner in the name of climate change when those exports are food produced by farm animals.
The answer is that our New Zealand Government is the only country in the world that is going to charge farmers for their methane emissions from their livestock .
This is in direct contravention of the UN directive that countries should not take action against emissions that affect food supplies .
This government is going to inflict a levy on our main exports in the name of saving the world from a non existing threat. This is a self imposed tariff and just shows how far from reality governments are becoming around the world.
In Ireland we do not have a Green government but the Greens are propping up a minority government. One of their members is Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications and Minister of Transport. He would be furious if I called him a science denier but he would reject Clintel’s Climate Declaration and their appreciation of greening CO2.
I think in would be most interesting to check the bank accounts of the politicians promoting this nonsense and I don’t mean only those of the Green parties. I suspect the answer to your question may well lie there.
Excellent article.
I presume Andy decided to avoid the obvious contradiction between his first paragraph explaining that the Federal government’s role is limited to its enumerated powers and the third; the creation of the SEC to “control businesses and corporations” – since no US politician seems concerned about that either.
You are correct, I deliberately dodged that issue. There are legitimate complaints about the unfettered 1800s and early 1900s and all the corporate fraud during that period. The formation of the SEC, mainly by Joseph Kennedy, its first chairman, was needed. It has helped restore confidence in the stock market. But the article addresses a modern overreach that is unjustifiable.
Andy, after watching the antics of Big Pharma and various politicians and government agencies during Covid, I wonder if the corruption is not worse now than it was during that period? Pharma has not only been corrupt in the US but worldwide.
There is much hope for, if not in the SEC, the courts to overrule this blatant attempt by Brandon to rule by Executive power. Beginning with the 2008 Heller decision, continuing through the 2010 McDonald decision and cumulating with the recent New York state ruling the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has consistently ruled that the Federal, State and local governments must abide by the clear language of the 2nd Amendment’s prohibition of governmental infringement on the right of ordinary U.S. citizens to keep and bear arms that are currently and commonly in use within the U.S.
Additionally, the recent SCOTUS Dobbs decision established that the Construction of the United States confers no power to the Federal government to regulate abortion. Our Constitution restricts Federal power such that any power not granted by it to the Federal government is reserved to the “States, or to the People.” Loopy Leftist jurists violated that provision of the Constitution for 50 years in Roe v Wade and Casey decisions. It doesn’t matter what you passionately believe, the U.S. Federal government is not designed to give you everything you want. Our system is meant to work primarily at the local and State levels.
What we are now seeing is violent Leftist temper tantrums in reaction to not getting everything they want, every time. SCOTUS did not outlaw abortion: They simply said the States (through the people) Constitutionally should work it out on a local level.
Don’t like the 2nd Amendment or restrictions on Federal power to regulate abortions? Amend the Constitution. But Leftists know they can’t accomplish that and simply resort to intimidation and violence.
Thank you, Dave. Yours is one of the best explanations I’ve seen for how our Consitituion and SCOTUS works or, is supposed to work.