David Blackmon
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Every time you think the energy policies pushed by the Democratic Party can’t possibly get any crazier, they go and fool you again.
Politico’s E&E News published an article Friday with a headline that should scare the bejeebers out of anyone who hopes for sanity in energy policy: “Progressives look to recharge the Green New Deal for the AI era.”Skip Ad
The video player is currently playing an ad.
The piece quotes Melat Kiros, the socialist who unseated longtime incumbent Democratic Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette in the party’s recent Colorado primary as saying, “The Green New Deal, frankly, is a floor now, not a ceiling, for what we need to actually be looking at doing.”
This, of course, parrots the classic mantra of every generation of new socialists, who, when presented with the reality that socialism fails disastrously everywhere it is tried, invariably claim that it just hasn’t been done the right way, and they know better.
But they never really do know better.
Let’s be clear: what any version of the Green New Deal introduced by Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Democratic Massachusetts Sen Ed Markey in 2019 would kill the AI era. Why? Because it is a classically socialist program by its very nature. It is a program which would seize the means of production through the central government, invoke a gigantic array of top-down command-and-control regulatory structures and utterly destroy the spirit of human initiative and innovation that leads to human flourishing and prosperity.
All the various socialist candidates quoted in the E&E piece are supported by The Sunrise Movement, a far-left activist NGO funded mainly by leftwing billionaire interests like the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tides Foundation and the Soros-affiliated Open Society Policy Center. What a surprise – it’s like a who’s who of far leftwing astroturf protest funders who have been behind every U.S. protest movement since Occupy Wall Street.
The Green New Deal as proposed by AOC and Markey seven years ago involved ending discretionary air travel; heavily restricting all other travel; heavily restricting personal driving; de facto banning oil, natural gas, and coal; building a vast network of high-speed rail lines which would cost trillions of dollars and take a century or more to develop (assuming the economy didn’t enter a major depression in the meantime); and destroying power grid reliability by forcing mass adoption of wind and solar.
To this new generation of Sunrise-supported socialists, that array of destructive and frankly impossible options is now the “floor” for what really needs to be done. You just can’t make this stuff up.
“The Democrat Party – the socialists, the Marxists – have nominated some of the most radical candidates to ever run for office, and they’re running for Congress. The insurgent left is on the rise,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said after New York voters nominated three socialist candidates.
The speaker isn’t wrong; in fact, he’s a master of understatement. The insurgent left is not just on the rise, it is being funded by the same leftwing billionaire interests who funded the destruction of America’s coal industry, the anti-fracking movement and the effort to kill the shale revolution that has generated hundreds of billions of dollars in economic growth and made the United States the world’s dominant energy powerhouse.
Any revitalization of the Green New Deal would be intentionally designed to destroy all of that and much more. Any effort to apply a renewed Green New Deal to the AI industry would be designed to destroy it, too. Because socialism at its base is never about building anything, but about destroying things, with human flourishing being its main target.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Green New Deal is a fascist socialism designed by retarded schoolchildren.
And those supporting it are just plain bonkers !
That would explain the idea of a high-speed rail system for travel between California and Hawaii.
High speed rail between SF and LA was bad enough. You ever drive The Grapevine?
The original, or the new interstate that goes by the same name?
Isn’t fascist socialism redundant?
Yup. As is Communist socialism and Nazi socialism.
All branches of the poison tree of socialism.
No. Not retarded schoolchildren.
They are geniuses with a dedication to the sole purposes of enriching themselves, achieving ultimate control, and eliminating 90% of humanity in the process.
You can spend lots of money trying to change 30 years worth of weather….so Climate control is a dream meme for those who believe government spending should be the driver of the economy….trading arrow heads for corn meal without government oversight is so passé…
29 year old Ethiopian immigrant now lawyer who is presently still also a PhD student. Zero practical knowledge of anything beyond university. Zero. Advocating Green New Deal for AI proves it conclusively. As relevantly experienced as bartender AOC who ran this same ‘challenge the old incumbent’ play a few years ago. Way to go, Denver.
OTOH, she was not yet born when the incumbent she defeated was first elected to Congress—15 terms, finally running in a challenged primary for #16! Again, way to go, Denver.
And I thought Diana DeGette was bad. At least Melat Kiros has a beautiful smile and pretty face.
A she-wolf in vixen clothes.
A female Fabian.
They won’t give up on this. Therefore it’s still a good time for skeptics of climate alarm to become more familiar with the reasons why, scientifically speaking, NO ONE KNOWS that emissions of CO2 from using natural hydrocarbons as fuel are capable of ANY perceptible influence on ANY climate variable.
Flipping the script, this also means that NO ONE KNOWS that even global adoption of an aggressive decarbonization program has any chance of bending the climate trends to our favor. There is no justification for spending even a nickel on that misguided program.
Consider the motion and the reason why weather happens to begin with. Dynamic energy conversion (in W/m^2), a well known concept in meteorology, massively overwhelms any tendency (also in W/m^2) of incremental concentrations of CO2, CH4, N2O – or any other IR-active trace gas – to promote sensible heat gain on land, in the oceans, and in the lower atmosphere. The static concept that continuing emissions will suppress the TOA longwave emission to space does not determine the end result after properly considering the motion of the atmosphere as the compressible working fluid of its own circulation.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1knv0YdUyIgyR9Mwk3jGJwccIGHv38J33/view?usp=sharing
More explanation with references here.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PDJP3F3rteoP99lR53YKp2fzuaza7Niz?usp=drive_link
Thank you for your patience. It’s important to refute the core claim of the “green new deal” proponents about “climate” impact.
David,
It still concerns me that planet Earth has a relatively tight range of temperatures. I do not know enough about mechanisms that keep it constant, so I fall back on the simple explanation that nothing happens that is powerful enough to change it, apart from tiny changes in Sun to Earth distance.
OTOH, there are scientists who postulate that gases such as water and greenhouse gases like CO2 can change global temperatures. Some claim that Earth temperature would be 18 deg C different without them.
Are you dismissing this gas mechanism as being without evidence?
Geoff S
Thank you for your reply, Geoff.
“Are you dismissing this gas mechanism as being without evidence?”
Not at all, in the sense of confirmed IR properties, and in the sense of what should be expected in a still atmosphere. I am demonstrating that the magnitude of the thermal “warming” influence of the incremental IR-active trace gases in the working fluid is negligible in the proper context of the motion. There is no justification for attribution; no justification for action to mitigate emissions.
The modern empirical evidence (i.e. winds, temperatures, pressures, humidity, etc. assimilated into ERA5) thus supports the views of Simpson and Brunt from 1938 as explained and detailed recently here.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/03/15/open-thread-181/#comment-4174555
I hope this helps.
All the best to you.
‘OTOH, there are scientists who postulate that gases such as water and greenhouse gases like CO2 can change global temperatures. Some claim that Earth temperature would be 18 deg C different without them.’
Two claims here and they need to be decoupled:
Starting with the second, and without getting into the details of the physics, yes, the presence of GHGs in the Earth’s atmosphere is the reason its surface temperature is higher than that which would prevail absent these gases.
However, as to the first claim, and specifically with respect to CO2, there is absolutely no evidence from the Earth’s carbonate rock or ice core records that variations in CO2 concentration over time have ever impacted global temperatures.
While these statements may seem contradictory, they are actually consistent once one realizes that thermal energy from the Earth’s surface is conveyed aloft through the troposphere primarily by convection rather that via the phenomenological physics of radiative transfer.
About half of the energy that CO2 is capable of capturing is captured by the first 20ppm. Every doubling of CO2 concentration above that point captures half of what is left.
320ppm is 4 doublings.
By the time you get to 400ppm, only a few percent is left.
Going from 400ppm to 5000ppm there is simply nothing left to capture, the bands are saturated.
Then when you add in water vapor and the other extremely minor green house gases, it’s no wonder that the increases in CO2 that we have seen are insufficient to have a noticeable impact on temperatures.
Mark W,
When you talk of doublings, you have to select a start point. I started with one CO2 molecule doubled over and over to 2 molecules, 4, 8, 16, 32 … It did not do me any good.
Why do you select 20 ppm CO2?
Geoff S
‘Every doubling of CO2 concentration above that point captures half of what is left.’
Yes, but most CAGW true believers will just tell you that additional heat trapping will occur as the ‘wings’ of the CO2 absorbtion spectra fill out; that what you’re saying is already ‘captured’ in the HITRAN database; and that when HITRAN data is processed through the radiative transfer codes of the GCMs, it validates their belief in CAGW.
The real argument, as David Dibbell correctly points out, above, is that ‘motion’, i.e., convection, and not radiative transfer theory is the proper explanation of how the bulk of the thermal energy emitted by the Earth’s surface is transported up through the troposphere.
GHGs, through collisions with non-IR active gas species, play a major role in setting up and maintaining convection. First, by converting thermal radiation emitted by the surface into sensible heat, and second, by exciting GHGs at higher elevations in the troposphere where they can spontaneously emit radiant energy to space.
And because water vapor is the most prevalent and most powerful GHG, and because it is in equilibrium with a vast reservoir of liquid water that covers 70% of the Earth to an average depth of 2 miles, any change in CO2 concentration, whether naturally ocurring or from the combustion of fossil fuels, will have no impact on the Earth’s temperature.
Having an atmosphere, regardless of its composition, simply prevents the surface from heating radically by sunlight. The gases are simply a conductive medium that carry energy away from the surface by convection, acting as an effective surface coolant. Close to 90% of insolation energy is thus sucked away from the surface.
The agonizing over the small amount of IR radiation, while ignoring the water cycle is quite amusing. Trenberth has long complained of the missing energy, as he wears water-cycle-blind glasses.
Water dissolves 50 times the CO2 in the air and, as long as the ocean temperatures are above a certain average, outgassing will occur, just as from a pop bottle while it warms. The same is true for overall glacier melting, it depends on the average temperature—anything above this results in overall melting. And, it should be pointed out that CO2 changes in the atmosphere always lag behind temperature changes in all time scales. There is no signal in the CO2 data, including carbon isotopic studies, that indicate that our CO2 emissions are having any effect.
Therefore, any policies, spending, or efforts to minimize CO2 emissions, other than simply making efficient use of our fuels and carbon-based chemical stocks, is a waste. However, it is hard, to me, to complain about higher CO2 greening the planet and allowing everything to thrive.
Chuck,
Does our moon heat radically? Radical with respect to what?
Geoff S
Ah, it is gravitational compression that sets the base temperature, just as it does on Venus, whose atmosphere is mostly CO2 (96.5%), at 93 atmospheres of pressure, and ~870 deg F. It is easy to assume a greenhouse effect, but, since Venus has a permanent cloud deck, sunlight never reaches the surface, which is a requirement of a greenhouse.
Pressure and compression are two entirely different things.
Pressure is a static concept, while compression is the act of increasing pressure.
While the surface of Venus is under great pressure, there is NO net compression going on. Small parcels of air lift and as result de-compress and become cooler, however an equal amount of air is also falling and hence compressing and getting warmer.
No net energy gain or loss.
Pressure does not determine temperature.
Sunlight does not have to reach all the way to the surface for greenhouse to work. As long as there is an atmosphere above the point where the sunlight reaches, greenhouse will work.
I thought it was 96 bar, not 93.
What you have to bear in mind is that the supposed “effect” of so-called “greenhouse gases” is based on an implicit and foundational assumption of “all other things held equal.”
And that said assumption is a set of conditions that has never occurred before, is not occurring now, and will never occur in the future. In reality, the feedbacks and reactions are negative, offsetting forces that will reduce the hypothetical (purely hypothetical) “effect” of additional “greenhouse gases” to the point where it cannot be distinguished from zero.
And we can determine this with actual empirical observations. No “runaway greenhouse effect” was ever initiated by high atmospheric CO2 levels in the past, and it is the same planet orbiting the same star today – and the “basic physics” of IR absorption are unchanged. Further, the Earth has experienced GLACIATION with roughly TEN TIMES today’s atmospheric CO2. If CO2 had this “climate driving power” they claim it has now, that could not have happened; YET IT DID.
In the ice core reconstructions (that the CO2 fetishists love, since on those time scales a correlation exists), there is no “CO2 driving temperature” relationship shown; only a “temperature driving CO2” relationship is shown. At the inflection points where temperatures stop falling and begin rising, or stop rising and begin falling, there is REVERSE CORRELATION that lasts for CENTURIES. This would also not be possible if CO2 “drives” temperature. Further, the Earth’s climate consistently begins WARMING when CO2 is FALLING and near its LOW point; and consistently begins COOLING when CO2 is RISING and near its HIGH point, all of which directly contradicts the notion of CO2 as “climate driver.”
So there IS evidence to base a conclusion on, but the so-called “climate scientists” routinely ignore it.
I like this view of the situation: weather prevents any consistent energy input that would heat the surface in any meaningful manner.
The crux of the problem is that there is no greenhouse effect and no such thing as greenhouse gases. This is failed scientific conjecture resurrected for political purposes, which is exactly why they refuse to debate their warming claims and that the science is settled.
No gas at any concentration in the atmosphere can heat the surface or climate. The upper tropical troposphere is supposedly the “hotspot” from which this energy reaches the surface. As this region is about -17 deg C and the surface is about 15 deg C, it is thermodynamically impossible for any radiation from above to heat the surface. As I said above, this is a political scam for money and power.
Another Negative feedback to global warming; increased atmospheric CO2 is causing a slow greening of the earth, this inturn reduces the regions local temp and lowers the averages.
Agreed, except for this:
“Flipping the script, this also means that NO ONE KNOWS that even global adoption of an aggressive decarbonization program has any chance of bending the climate trends to our favor.”
The “climate trends” need not be “bent in our favor,” since the current climate trend IS IN OUR FAVOR.
A WARMER CLIMATE IS BETTER. This is THE BIG LIE and it must be continuously and repeatedly exposed. The Earth, as we live and breathe, IS IN AN ICE AGE. We are currently in an INTERGLACIAL period, which is a SHORT (in geologic terms) period during which the Earth’s climate is TOLERABLY warm. The next big “climate change ” will be the descent into the next GLACIATION. And THAT “climate change” WILL BE a “climate disaster.”
No disagreement with your point. I thought about adding a modifier to the same effect, but left it unsaid. My bad for not stating it as clearly as you have done here.
To see the Socialist/Communist pressure group style, simply download and read “Rockefeller Foundation reports”.
A theme is tax free philanthropy finance. This has got out of hand. Over-wealthy people fund leftist interest groups like Rockefeller, who spend vast sums on self-promotion of its virtues and self comfort. They in turn produce slick material about why Communism is good.
In olden times, philanthropy was a tiny part of national budgets. It was a largely private act of directing excess personal wealth direct to real people in need.
Many countries now need to examine why commercial philanthropy should have tax concessions. It has become just another industry, spending $$$ advertising how good it is. Geoff S
You make some excellent points. For you, Bill Gates has some vaccines, ticks and artificial meat, not necessarily in that order.
You can call it anything you want but if it doesn’t feature a constitutional republic (similar to ours) and free market capitalism featuring individual freedom and the right to private property it will almost certainly fail.
Just show it up front so we can vote against it instead of putting it in the next multi trillion dollar list of claimed mandates in the week after the election.
Thank you again to Mitch McConnell for bring the green new deal up for a vote it the Senate. The vote tally was 0-100.. That’s what happens when you put unpopular ideas out alone for a straight up and down vote.
The Green New Deal passed while the under Biden and the Democrats held the Senate at the time.
I believe you are thinking of the Paris Accords, and that was never brought up in the Senate. There was a “sense of the Senate” resolution rejecting the Accord that passed 99-0. (someone was “sick” that day)
Well that was only the “Green New Deal Light” that they passed.
And it was STILL a horror show.
Thank goodness for Trump.
The DSA (Dumbocrat Socialists of America) is doing their platform soon. It includes free medical care, housing, and college (who pays for all this? we do), expand the Supreme Court, do away with the Senate, abolish ICE (and likely police and prisons as well), and more. I just hope people read the whole platform and see that this not only does away with the Constitution but is also something totally unworkable, which they do not want.
Margaret Thatcher said that socialism only works until you run out of other people’s money.
BTW, socialism is not real because it has to be managed, which is communism—socialism run by a gang. The managers thus have power over all others (not themselves, of course), making them a powerful elite or upper class (think of the Communist Party of the late USSR).
There is no idea so bad, that the socialists won’t try it over and over again, convinced that this time, it’s going to work.
The Green New Deal as proposed by AOC and Markey seven years ago involved ending discretionary air travel…
Translation: That’s means you deplorables because we have important flyover work to do attending COPs and making everybody more aware
The left desires, above all else, absolute control of the masses. They view themselves as superior beings that will be able to bring about heaven on Earth, but only if they can force everyone else to behave properly.
“The Green New Deal as proposed by AOC and Markey seven years ago involved ending discretionary air travel; heavily restricting all other travel; heavily restricting personal driving; de facto banning oil, natural gas, and coal; building a vast network of high-speed rail lines which would cost trillions of dollars and take a century or more to develop (assuming the economy didn’t enter a major depression in the meantime);”
This is literally Hunger Games without the brutal games. I have seen maps with the US divided up into 12 or 13 regions, a la Panem of those movies. BTW, the books and movies were clearly based on the author reading Agenda 21. High speed trains, yeah.
Let’s stop calling them radical. They like being called radical. It’s something they relish. They should be called what they actually are … ignorant and selfish.
Melat Kiros fits the profile of a Democratic socialist. Foreign born. Intelligent but over educated in generally useless fields. Was fired after only a year from her job at a New York law firm for insubordination. At only 29 years old, she has never worked in the real world. Instead, she has been continually immersed in the radical leftist world of higher education.
She is pretty, 29 and single. She probably won her congressional primary because half the young men in Colorado would like to…
The Green New deal was passed in 2024 buried in the “Inflation Reduction Act.” The trillion dollars are gone, the inflation remains.
https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/24.pdf