More Reasons to Pause Climate Act Implementation June 25, 2025

I am very frustrated with the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net zero transition because the reality is that there are so many issues coming up with the schedule and ambition of the Climate Act that it is obvious that we need to pause implementation and figure out how best to proceed.  This article describes more reasons to pause implementation.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good because the energy density of wind and solar energy is too low and the resource intermittency too variable to ever support a reliable electric system relying on those resources. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 540 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Overview

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050.  It includes an interim reduction target of a 40% GHG reduction by 2030. The Climate Action Council (CAC) was responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlined how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.”  After a year-long review, the Scoping Plan was finalized at the end of 2022.  Since then, the State has been trying to implement the Scoping Plan recommendations through regulations, proceedings, and legislation. 

Australia New Zero Model

Robert Bryce sums up the Australian net zero scheme “won’t work because it can’t work”. He points out that:

Affordability matters. Given that, let’s start with prices. Aussie households have seen their energy costs rise by more than 40% over the past three years alone.

He shows why in the following graph.

This sums up New York’s path forward if nothing changes.  Bryce concludes:

The punchline here is obvious: Australia cannot — will not — achieve net zero by 2050. It’s an impossible task. Nevertheless, it appears the country will waste a lot of money pretending that it can.

CO2 is not the Climate Control Knob

Richard Lindzen and William Happer have published a white paper that goes after the reducing GHG emissions will affect the climate rationale for the net-zero transition.  The document is titled :Physics Demonstrates that Increasing Greenhouse Gases Cannot Cause Dangerous Warming, Extreme Weather or Any Harm.  Lindzen and Happer are career physicists with a special expertise in radiation physics, which describes how CO₂ and GHGs affect heat flow in Earth’s atmosphere. The only conclusion from their work is that even if New York could magically reduce its emissions and inspire all other jurisdictions to do the same, that it could not possibly have any impact on the weather.

The report has four major sections:

• Government opinion, consensus, 97% of scientists’ opinions, peer review, models that do not work, or cherry-picked, fabricated, falsified or omitted contradictory data.
• Ignored science #1: CO2, other GHGs and fossil fuels will not cause catastrophic global warming and more extreme weather.
• Ignored science #2: there will be disastrous consequences or the poor, people worldwide, future generations, Americans, America, and the West if CO2, other GHGs and fossil fuels are reduced to net zero and will endanger public health and welfare.
• Unscientific evidence is the basis of the EPA endangerment finding, all known net zero rules and subsidies.

One quote from the paper caught my attention:  “Peter Drucker warned, as every Net Zero Theory rule and subsidy demonstrates, that science in government is often based on “value judgments” that are “incompatible with any criteria one could possibly call scientific.”  These value judgements have permeated every aspect of the Climate Act implementation.  New York’s Climate Act is even worse because the “science” was provided by activists and promoted into law by naïve politicians.

The concluding statement in the Summary states:

In summary, the blunt scientific reality requires urgent action because we are confronted with policies that destroy western economies, impoverish the working middle class, condemn billions of the world’s poorest to continued poverty and increased starvation, leave our children despairing over the alleged absence of a future, and will enrich the enemies of the West who are enjoying the spectacle of our suicide march. Instead, let people and the market decide, not governments.

An Alternative Driver of Climate Change

The driver for reducing GHG emissions is that they are the primary driver of climate change.  In my opinion, the primary driver for climate change is the sun.  After all, the currently accepted theory for continental glaciation is that it is caused by changes in solar intensity due to orbital variations.  Unfortunately, the arguments for solar variation based on sunspots and other factors causing recent changes in the climate are weak.  However, there is another way that the sun’s impacts can affect the Earth.

The recent paper by Tselioudis et al., titled “Contraction of the World’s Storm-Cloud Zones the Primary Contributor to the 21st Century Increase in the Earth’s Sunlight Absorption” evaluated Earth energy budget observations.  They showed that a decrease in cloud reflection increased sunlight absorption which caused an increase in global temperatures. 

Charles Rotter explains:

To understand the full implications of this study, we need to parse its findings in plain terms. The paper concludes that the Earth has absorbed significantly more solar radiation over the past 24 years—0.45 W/m² per decade. The primary culprit? A reduction in cloud cover, specifically a contraction of the midlatitude and tropical storm-cloud zones. This change has resulted in less solar radiation being reflected back into space and more being absorbed by the Earth’s surface. Crucially, 0.37 W/m² of this uptick is attributed solely to this contraction in cloud coverage, a result of large-scale atmospheric circulation changes: “This cloud contraction, along with cloud cover decreases at low latitudes, allows more solar radiation to reach the Earth’s surface. When the contribution of all cloud changes is calculated, the storm cloud contraction is found to be the main contributor to the observed increase of the Earth’s solar absorption during the 21st century.”

These conclusions are based on observations.  Clouds are one of many emergent phenomena that the climate models cannot represent.  Rotter concludes:

This paper should serve as ammunition for any skeptic pointing out the absurdity of building trillion-dollar policies on the backs of incomplete and overconfident simulations. The cloud regimes are shifting. The models aren’t keeping up. And neither is the narrative.

Final Word on the Science

Despite the constant refrain that 97% of climate scientists agree there is problem facts differ.  “Your funding, salary increase, and tenure case are tied to agreeing with the ‘consensus.’ It’s really about careerism and resources. They all have to dance to that same drum beat to get professional recognition and professional advancement,” says Dr. Judith Curry, professor emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology, describing the state of climate science and research in recent years.  She “𝐝𝐞𝐛𝐮𝐧𝐤𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐲𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐬, 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐞𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠” in a video interview. 

There is a transcript of the interview available.  This response about the pursuit of net-zero is particularly apropos for New York:

No, yeah, it’s not achievable. Not only that, okay, here’s the part that they don’t tell you: even if we did achieve net zero by 2050, we wouldn’t notice any change in the climate until well into the 22nd century. 

Climate Act proponents plea that we need to do this for our children and grand-children.  Keep in mind that if New York managed to reduce all its GHG emissions that represent one half of one percent of global emissions, the climate won’t change for over 100 years even if our actions inspire everyone else in the world to follow suit. That is several generations after our grandchildren.

Conclusion

New York cannot “solve” climate change on its own because our greenhouse gas contributions to the atmosphere are dwarfed by emissions elsewhere.  Recent work shows that GHG emissions are not a significant driver of climate change.  The best we can help for is a successful model for other jurisdictions, but the continuing ride of unresolved questions and unacknowledged issues suggests that our current approach is not on the right path.  Pausing the Climate Act insanity before it does more damage is the only rational path.