Wallace Manheimer
At the initial Republican debate on August 23, two incidents ought to be disturbing to readers of wattsupwiththat. First of all, when Vivek Ramaswamy suggested that the country use all of its energy resources, coal, oil, gas, nuclear and whatever else worked, someone shouted to him “What about the climate crisis”. He said: “The climate crisis is a hoax”, but was immediately shouted down, and this was by a group of conservative Republicans. Probably more readers of wattsupwiththat would use the word false, rather than hoax. Nobody thinks this is a big joke.
The evidence against a climate crisis is voluminous, and it is not appropriate to go into it here. Suffice it to say that in about 2000, Frederick Seitz, the former head of the National Academy of Sciences, spearheaded a petition, signed by over 30,000 scientists, over 9000 with Ph.D’s denying a climate crisis (http://www.petitionproject.org/). More recently the Clintel Foundation, centered in Holland put out a climate declaration signed by over 1600 top scientists from around the world (https://clintel.org/world-climate-declaration/) making the same point. Scientists are anything but united on the assertion of a rapidly approaching, CO2 generated climate crisis. For someone interested in a summary of the evidence against a climate crisis, this author has written one (Wallace Manheimer, While the climate always has, and always will change, There is no climate crisis, Vol. 15, No. 5, p. 116 (2022), Journal of Sustainable Development
https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jsd/article/view/0/47745)
The fact that so many believe in the false climate crisis makes Dick Lindzen, perhaps the leading authority on geophysical fluid dynamics, look more and more like a prophet:
“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 CO2 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 CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.”
The next is Nikki Haley saying that she will scold the developing world and make them not use coal, oil, or gas. The BP corporation publishes its energy outlook. (BP Energy Outlook 2019, https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/energy-outlook/bp-energy-outlook-2019.pdf). It showed that in the more developed world, the so-called OECD countries of 1.2 billion people, the per capita use of energy use is about 5 kW per capita, or 6 terawatts (trillion Watts) total. Since the entire world uses ~ 14 terawatts, this leaves about 1 kW per capita for the rest of the world.
Let’s see what these power number means. Take a typical American family with two parents and two children in the household. Say both parents work in different places, so they have 2 cars and drive each one the average of 12,000 miles per year. If their cars get 30 miles per gallon (most cars average less), they use together 800 gallons of gas per year. A gallon of gas (or heating oil) has the energy equivalent of about 40 kW hours, and there are about 30 million seconds in a year, so the family’s cars use about 5 kW. Now say they use the average of 500 gallons of heating oil per year to heat their house; this is about 3 kW. Then say that their home electrical use is the average of about 1.3 kW. However, electricity is produced with an efficiency of, of about 1/3, so their electrical use claims another 4 kW total (of say coal, gas or nuclear fuel). Hence this family’s total power use is ~ 12 kW, or about 3 kW per person. However this is only the personal use, there are many common uses, office buildings, stores, factories, farms, public transportation, airlines, demolition and construction, the military…..
Now think of what life is like in the many countries that average 1 kW per person. These countries also have factories, airlines, a military, … so the average person probably uses less than ~0.5kW. These countries are no longer willing to just passively accept this. They are building up their energy infrastructure as quickly and as economically as possible. Mostly this means coal.
At a US Department of Energy meeting in Maryland in 2009, a high-ranking member of the Chinese Academy of science attended. In his talk, he announced that in 2000, the average Chinese used ~ 10% of the power as the average American, and at the time of the meeting was ~ 20%. He said they would not rest until their per capita energy use is about the same as ours. (Now is ~ 30-35% of ours)
Here is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Novmber 2021: The colonial mindset hasn’t gone. We are seeing from developed nations that the path that made them developed is being closed to developing nations.
Here is Nigerian President Mohamed Bazoum (June 2022): Africa is being punished by decisions of western countries to end public financing for foreign fuel projects by the end of 2022. We are going to continue to fight, we have fossil fuel that should be exploited.
For Nicki Haley to think that she can wave her finger and demand that these countries switch to windmills is not only living in a dream world, but also is the height of hubris.
Wallace Manheimer has had a 50+ year career as a scientist at the US Naval Research Laboratory. He has published ~150 reviewed scientific publications and has recently published a book Mass Delusions, how they harm sustainable energy, fusion and fusion breeding, available on Amazon.
It is not a winning argument to simply declare that the climate crisis is a hoax. Trump didn’t succeed with that argument, and neither will Ramaswamy or any other Republican. The best policy prescription by candidates for office (Congress as well as the Presidency) is to state the following:
1) The science is not actually settled, and there is always more to learn about how climate responds to inputs. It is not “science denial” to want to better understand our environment before taking drastic harmful actions.
2) The climate has always changed, but slowly, and it always will. We all – humans, plants and animals – have always adapted to those changes. That’s why we’re still here and, by the way, thriving.
3) In the meantime, making affordable energy available to all is the only way to provide an acceptable standard of living and to provide security to all; it is foolish to clamp down on energy availability at a time when we really don’t understand climate process very well.
4) It is inevitable that fossil fuel use will eventually be limited by supply, but in the meantime other sources of energy will continue to be developed. There is no cause to disrupt civilization in the name of an ill defined threat.
I suppose this summary is a bit wordy and perhaps could be boiled down for political sound bites, but politicizing climate is what is wrong already. It is a technical matter that humans will resolve, not a call to arms.
But by stating the above principles, Republicans will not appear to be just demogoging the issue, as Ramaswamy and Trump did, but will be seen as responding responsibly and intelligently and not simply slinging mud.
If only!
A couple of the candidates at the debate, including Ron DeSantis, whom according to Fox News Channel’s poll of Republicans was the “winner” of the debate, didn’t go into the detail I describe above, but they DID point out that taking drastic actions to curtail US energy production is only helping China, who more than make up for whatever cuts in emissions we produce. And that China is our biggest geopolitical threat.
Don’t be stupid, in other words.
It was only the first debate, and a very crowded one at that. No one had enough time to adequately address their full positions so it was more a “most important sound bite” type of presentation. As the pretenders go away and we get down to the final 2, that is when the details will be revealed and judgement can be made.
Yep: Nikki Haley eh? I see the Democrats are now saying that she is the candidate they most fear – or, in plain English, she is the most useless and least likely to beat even (and that is saying a lot!) Biden.
I’m becoming ever more doubtful that Biden is even going to make it to the 2024 election. His condition is becoming so bad that even the corporate press is having a hard time covering for him.
Sadly, as long as he has a pulse, and will follow his wife (that nice lady who holds his hand) around, he is going to be the nominee, and maybe get elected. We should hope that they do better on a running mate, since that person may be the president.
All of these pretenders need to drop out now, they are only serving the interests of the marxo-democrats.
I agree. I don’t think they are all pretending, but, for the good of the U.S., and to stand against the election interference and downright thuggery of the Democrats, it’s time to back Trump.
Amen. They are pretenders in the sense that they have no real shot against DJT nor the marxo-democrat Fascists.
True.
Climate activists inside the Biden adminstration haven’t gone nearly as far as current law would allow them to go in quickly suppressing America’s carbon emissions. That they haven’t yet done so raises this question:
Just how far could Joe Biden and the Biden administration go in quickly reducing America’s consumption of fossil fuels using authorities already granted to the Exectutive Branch under current law?
My essay posted on the WUWT Open Thread article from August 27th, 2023, covers this topic in considerable depth:
The Supply Side Carbon Emission Control Plan (SSCECP): a fast track approach for eliminating fossil fuels from America’s economy
Joe Biden himself doesn’t call the shots in his administration. That said, all of Biden’s cabinet members, senior advisors, and agency heads have bought into the ‘climate change as existential threat’ narrative. However, these people haven’t gone nearly as far as they legally could go in suppressing America’s carbon emissions. Not by a long shot.
But the temptation to push the legal envelope to its absolute limits has to be there. These people are who they are, and their long-term vision for America is that it become a fully socialized command economy.
The SSCECP would give the people who call the shots in the Biden administration direct control over the lifeblood of the American economy, energy in all of its various forms. A plan as bold and aggressive as the conceptual SSCECP would be the perfect means to do deliver their vision for America.
They are already charging lawyers with felonies for appearing in court and writing legal briefs, as well as gutting legal privileges.
There is an organization that goes after any lawyer who defends Trump to get them disbarred. This is a sick attack on our legal system where ALL defendants, no matter how repugnant, are entitled to a defense.
If it succeeds, justice will no longer exist in the US.
Indeed, it is quite close to being already gone.
Yes, our legal system is under attack from within.
Yes, that’s the thing that I found most disheartening about the Republic debate – the loud boo from the audience when Vivey rightly denounced the #ClimateScam
I was shocked, quite frankly.
I listened to this part of the debate again, and one could make a case that the booing was for Vivek calling everyone on stage but himself as being “bought and paid for”, and you could make a case for the booing being made because of the climate change quote. It could have been for either reason, or maybe even both, but I think it started because of the “bought and paid for” comment. I don’t think the Repubican audience was that upset with calling climate change a hoax. They didn’t boo Trump when he said the same thing.
I I had seen parts of it Trump’s protest speech as it was happening and considered it sour grapes. Among other things I did not like him pressuring Pence. In any case I read parts of the transcript to find his instructions to the crowd which he said he assumed would be walking up the hill to the capital. He used the word “peaceful” but he also enjoined the crowd to “fight”. I agreed with his call for voter rule fixes which he cites near the end. I’ve always thought a photo id and citizenship were a low bar for voting and should be required. Walk-in voters should be in line before 7 pm local time election night. All mail-in ballots should be postmarked a week before election night. Absentee ballots should be in the day before the election. Unsigned or unverifiable ballots should not be counted. Ballot drop boxes seem to be a major source of the problem. Probably should be eliminated.
Creating federal voter legislation that would supersede States’ rights would elicit huge cries of unfairness – and only a Republican president with the support of both houses of Congress could do it.
Violating these laws would be prosecuted as federal crimes. People who have committed these crimes already should be prosecuted and trials made public.
Trump is inclined to hyperbole, so I did not believe his condemnation of mail-in and absentee ballots which we have used in my state for many years. I was aware of “shenanigans”, but no clear evidence that fraud was widespread.
Last night I streamed a free version of Dinesh D’Souza “2000 Mules” which makes a strong case against the Democrats for organized fraud through ballot harvesting. If its charges are valid they constitute massive election interference and Trump’s lawyers should certainly raise them in every one of his hearings. In that sense, if the D’Souza thesis and his interviews are made public, maybe the indictments against Trump are a good thing for election transparency. I assume you’ve seen the video.
What is the best single support of the D’Souza thesis that you’ve seen? What is the best single refutation of his argument?
By “best” I mean the clearest and most unbiased report with documented and supporting evidence. You’re very opinionated on this topic. Personally I think strong claims need equally strong support.
“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 CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin.”
Except this is not what happened. What happened was that a small minority of activists managed to persuade the political and media class in the English speaking countries that they had to reduce emissions.
The rest of the world drifted along making pious noises in public, but taking absolutely no action, and in private shaking their heads over the madness that appeared to be overtaking America, Canada, England, Australia and New Zealand.
It has made some headway in Brussels and Germany also, though not as much. But in both Germany and Holland we are seeing now the first signs of popular revolt.
No-one outside the English speaking countries really believes it. That’s a very important fact about the mania. These manias have occurred before and will again, and they are always confined to a particular group or culture.
As a comparison, look at the other two great madnesses of our time, those on gender and race. Same mechanism.