I have been so busy lately with net-zero transition implementation issues that I have not had time to put together an article about every relevant topic I have discovered. This is a summary of articles that I think would be of interest to my readers. One recommendation, please watch the video “Climate the Movie”.
I have been following the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) since it was first proposed and most of the articles described below are related to the net-zero transition. 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.
Podcast/Videos
I highly recommend watching this video “Climate the Movie”. It exposes the climate alarm as an invented scare without any basis in science. It shows that mainstream studies and official data do not support the claim that we are witnessing an increase in extreme weather events. It emphatically counters the claim that current temperatures and levels of atmospheric CO2 are unusually and worryingly high. On the contrary, it is very clearly the case, as can be seen in all mainstream studies, that, compared to the last half billion years of earth’s history, both current temperatures and CO2 levels are extremely and unusually low. We are currently in an ice age. It also shows that there is no evidence that changing levels of CO2 (it has changed many times) has ever ‘driven’ climate change in the past.
The film explores the nature of the consensus behind climate change. It describes the origins of the climate funding bandwagon, and the rise of the trillion-dollar climate industry. It describes the hundreds of thousands of jobs that depend on the climate crisis. It explains the enormous pressure on scientists and others not to question the climate alarm: the withdrawal of funds, rejection by science journals, social ostracism.
But the climate alarm is much more than a funding and jobs bandwagon. The film explores the politics of climate. From the beginning, the climate scare was political. The culprit was free-market industrial capitalism. The solution was higher taxes and more regulation. From the start, the climate alarm appealed to, and has been adopted and promoted by, those groups who favour bigger government.
Today’s technology impresses me. In particular, the ability to do a pod cast in New Zealand from my house. Reality Check radio interviewed me on the folly of a net-zero transition.
Climate Discussion Nexus has a new “Fact Check” video on heat waves “Dousing The Hot Hype”, that refutes the alarmist claims that they are becoming more common or more severe or even that the models expect
Alex Epstein notes that the world faces a serious crisis, one that will ruin whole economies and lead to needless suffering and death. The crisis is related to climate change, but not in the way you’re probably thinking. It’s the global energy crisis—a man-made crisis created by climate change policies.
Climate Act
This is a very nice letter to the editor arguing that the Climate Act should not be rushed.
Dennis Higgins comments on the State’s proposed public relations campaign asking: ”Will the public fall for NYSERDA’s efforts to put lipstick on this pig?”
One usually overlooked feature of the Climate Act is the requirement to try to minimize impacts to disadvantaged communities. The Climate Act requires the State “to invest or direct resources in a manner designed to ensure that disadvantaged communities receive at least 35 percent, with the goal of at least 40 percent, of overall benefits of spending.” Essentially that means that everybody else will be subsidizing that constituency. Potentially that could lead to something like a California electric rate structure initiative or here to “charge people based on their income rather than what they actually just use.”
In New York there is tremendous pressure to shut down existing natural gas fired power plants and the mere suggestion of building a new facility brings howls of outrage. In Europe 72 GW of gas plants are being built as nations realize the cannot power an electric grid on solar and wind alone.
One of the greatest misleading claims for the transition to wind and solar is that it will be more resilient. I don’t agree with that because they are relatively fragile sources of power. I feat that when New York becomes reliant on offshore wind that a hurricane will eventually damage those facilities. In Texas theory and reality collided as a hail storm caused major damage at a 3,300 acre 350 MW solar project. There are fears of toxic pollution too.
The failure of New York to acknowledge the problems observed in Europe can only mean that the state will have the same problems. The German energy transition threatens to be an unaffordable, unrealizable disaster, according to the government’s own independent auditors
At this time the New York State plan is to build as much wind and solar as possible as fast as possible. In order to expedite this development the concerns of local communities and environmental issues have been squashed with the passage of laws slipped into the budget negotiations. Now there are rumblings that “comprehensive permitting reform” is needed to expedite construction of green energy projects. However, Democrats in Washington have not been able to agree on how this should be done. Incredibly, Democrat-backed permitting reform bill unveiled in December would hand out billions in grants for eco-activist nonprofits to conduct environmental reviews on green government projects. Always follow the money.
State of the Climate
Although it gets into the weeds an article by Javier Vinós at Climate Etc. raises some important issues. Vinós notes that “Beginning in June 2023, the last seven months of the year marked the warmest period on record, significantly exceeding previous records.” Dr. Vinós downplays the role of the current El Niño that is usually associated with an uptick in temperatures. He says that the January 2022 Hunga Tonga underwater volcanic eruption, that boosted upper atmospheric water vapor by a remarkable 10%, is the most likely cause of the recent warming. As the excess water leaves the atmosphere, observes Vinós, it will induce a cooling effect at the surface potentially lowering temperatures for the next three to four years. Importantly, neither the El Niño nor the volcano effect are represented in the climate models that claim that CO2 is the control know for climate.
A new report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation challenges the popular but mistaken belief that weather extremes – such as flooding, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires – are more common and more intense today because of climate change.
End Game
Ronald Stein argues that “renewables will destroy America’s lifestyle back to the pre-1800s”.
At the same time, World Health Organization “Special Envoy for Climate Change & Health” Vanessa Kerry, daughter of multi-millionaire John Kerry, says: “We must accept that there is no other way forward than to phase out our reliance on fossil fuels”. My comment to her: you go first and get back to me when your carbon footprint is lower than mine.
Emissions in China
China’s energy sector CO2 emissions increased 5.2% in 2023. Based on the following figure I estimate that the average increase in emissions over the 2020 to 2023 time frame was 404.548 million tons from the energy sector. Total New York GHG emissions for all greenhouse gases and all sectors in 2021 was 268.302. Anything we do in New York will be subsumed by Chinese energy sector emission increases in less than a year.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 