I have a “to-do” list of posts and analyses that I want to do. Some items on the list are over a month old. Rather than adding to the list with articles about specific posts that I have read that I think are relevant, this post describes articles that caught my attention.
I have been following the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) since it was first proposed and most of this blog articles are related to it. I have devoted a lot of time to the Climate Act because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good. . The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.
Weather and Climate
It seems that every day there is at least one article that claims that a recent extreme weather event is related to climate change caused by humans. Roger Pielke, Jr was prompted to write a post after the Lahaina, Maui fire disaster link to climate change. The post Signal and Noise that addresses this issue and includes the following lessons:
Just because the signal of climate change for particular variables cannot (yet) be detected in the context of historical variability does not mean that climate change is not real or important, and in many, if not most cases, a lack of signal is to be expected.
Natural variability is real and significant. It does not mean that climate change is not real or important, but that detecting signals is often difficult even when climate is changing and there is always a risk of erroneously detecting signals where none is present.
He concludes:
The challenges of detection and attribution should tell us that both adaptation and mitigation policies must be built upon a foundation that involves justifications for action that are much broader than climate change alone.
So far, climate advocates have sought to shape perceptions of science to support a climate-change-is-everything agenda. We will have a lot more success if we instead shape policy to align with what science actually says.
My pragmatic take concerns the tradeoff between the resources devoted to climate change mitigation relative to extreme weather adaptation. I was involved with emergency planning at a nuclear plant so I have experience with this kind of planning. From what I have seen the emergency planning for Lahaina relative to an identified wildfire threat was criminally negligent. Blaming climate change absolves blame for the guilty parties. Trying to mitigate climate change displaces resources that would be better employed to address existing weather problems.
I wrote the preceding paragraph before I read that Bjorn Lomborg said that politicians were blaming climate change for disasters like the wildfires on Maui to duck “responsibility” for “failures” in addressing them. It is reassuring that my thoughts agree with him.
One final note about the Maui fires. Professor Cliff Mass did an excellent job explaining what really happened: a high amplitude atmospheric wave forced by strong winds interacting with the mountains of northwest Maui. He explains that:
It did not matter whether the grass or light vegetation were wet or dry the days or weeks before: this extraordinary atmospheric animal would ensure they were dry enough to burn. Prior dry conditions during the weeks before were immaterial.
With respect to the current state of the climate, Judith Curry, Jim Johnstone, and Mark Jelinek presented a “deep dive into the causes of the unusual weather/climate during 2023. People are blaming fossil-fueled warming and El Nino, and now the Hunga-Tonga eruption and the change in ship fuels. But the real story is more complicated.” They conclude, among other things:
The exceptionally warm global temperature in 2023 is part of a trend of warming since 2015 that is associated primarily with greater absorption of solar radiation in the earth-atmosphere system. This increase in absorbed solar radiation is driven by a slow decline in springtime snow extent, but primary by a reduction in reflection from the atmosphere driven by reduced cloudiness and to a lesser extent a reduction in atmospheric aerosol. Any increase in the greenhouse effect from increasing CO2 (which impacts the longwave radiation budget) is lost in the noise.
Climate Emergency
Alex Epstein writes that it would be inappropriate for the Biden Administraiton to declare a Climate Emergency. He argues that there is no emergency because rising CO2 levels are:
- Not dire: Humans are safer from climate than ever.
- Not temporary: They will rise for decades.
- Not in our control: We emit 1/7 of CO2—and falling.
He makes the point that a government “emergency” declaration is a temporary increase in power that should only be used if a problem meets three criteria:
- Dire: Unusually deadly
- Temporary: Of limited duration
- In our control: Actually solvable by our government
His conclusion is that none of the conditions necessary to declare a climate emergency have been met and goes on to support his arguments in detail.
Climate Act and Electric Vehicles
The Climate Act is a political animal. While I focus primarily on the environmental and energy-related issues associated with GHG emission reductions, there is a social justice aka “Green New Deal” component that is a primary interest of many of the Act’s proponents. The contradiction between advocating for zero GHG emissions that will markedly increase energy prices and risk electric reliability that will impact those that can least afford to deal with the problems the most while at the same time demanding investments in disadvantaged communities has always seemed incongruous to me. No where is this tradeoff more stark than in the push for electric vehicles.
The CalMatters post Will California’s push on electric vehicles reduce inequality — or deepen it? touched on the issues that concern me. The post described a CalMatters panel discussion that addressed the question whether California can make sure the electric vehicle revolution isn’t just for the wealthy few.
The post noted:
While bringing down the cost of EVs is crucial, so is the availability of chargers. And that is something of a chicken-and-egg proposition.
Some on the panel — moderated by CalMatters’ climate reporter Alejandro Lazo — called for building out the charging infrastructure in disadvantaged communities in advance, especially residential chargers.
- Steve Douglas, vice president of energy and environment for the Alliance for Automotive Innovation: “You can’t ask low-income residents to spend an hour, three hours, six hours away from their families, every week, just to charge their car, while affluent people pull in, plug in and wake up to a full car.”
But others said without enough EV owners in a neighborhood, it’s a recipe for vandalism and disuse.
- Ted Lamm, senior research fellow in the climate program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment: “When charging is installed in an area where there is no demand for the vehicles and no local desire to use them, it’s this sort of dead infrastructure. It has no use to the local population and local community, and so it is more likely to be subjected to vandalism, or just disuse and disrepair.”
Montana Court Climate Decision
A group of young people in Montana won a landmark lawsuit on August 14, when a judge ruled as unconstitutional the state’s failure to consider climate change when approving fossil fuel projects. While this has been hailed as a turning point by the usual suspects the reality is different.
David Wojick explained why the court decision was not a big deal. He writes:
Much ado is being made from the supposed win of a kid’s climate lawsuit in Montana. The alarmists call it a victory, the skeptics a tragedy, but it is neither. What was won is almost funny, while the big ask was in fact denied. The climate kids won a little, but lost a lot.
On the win side the judge merely ruled that the Montana law forbidding consideration of GHG emissions in permitting was unconstitutional. How it is considered is up to the agency or legislature. This need not slow down or stop any project.
The Montana constitution says there is a right to a healthful environment. Alarmism says emissions are harmful which all Courts to date have bought, including this one. So given the possible harm, one cannot simply ignore emissions which the law said to do. Hence the decision to kill the law.
Gregory Wrightstone debunked the claim that Montana is a “major emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world” and the state’s emissions “have been proven to be a substantial factor” in affecting the climate. He explains:
Montana’s CO2 emissions are 0.6% of the total U.S. emissions. If Montana had gone to zero emissions of CO2 in 2010, it would only avert 0.0004 degree Fahrenheit of greenhouse warming by 2050 and 0.001 degree by 2100, according to the MAGICC simulator, a tool created by a consortium of climate research institutes including the National Center for Atmospheric Research. These numbers are far below our ability to even measure and certainly not the “substantial factor” as claimed.
New York’s emissions are a greater proportion of total U.S. emissions but I have found they are not high enough to measure and are also not a “substantial factor”.
The Montana Attorney General’s office considered arguing against the plaintiff’s witnesses about the alleged harms of climate change. They retained Dr. Judith Curry to prepare evidence but ended up not using it. She explained the inside story, her written expert report, and why she was not asked to testify at the trial. I found it fascinating and there is plenty of ammunition included to debunk many of the arguments used by proponents of the net-zero transition. This will be useful when the inevitable lawsuit is filed in New York.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 