I am sometimes asked why I spend so much time on climate skepticism. Why not just ignore the climate issue and let the climate alarmists have their way at the expense of everyone else, particularly the less wealthy? The full answer can be found in my book, but the short answer is that there is too much at stake for the US and the world not to do everything possible to avoid the imposition of climate alarmist ideology.
It is now clearer than ever that the alarmists have no intention of reaching a symbolic compromise that while unjustified might be livable by the rest of society. Rather, their apparent intention is to keep pushing the US and other developed countries into a fossil fuel-less society in which all energy used will come from wind and solar or a few other “renewables” but not including either hydro or nuclear. This is just what the Democratic Party included in its Party platform last year. And if their candidate had won, this is exactly what the US would now be trying to do. She even endorsed Al Gore’s objectives just before the election, perhaps in hopes of added votes from “environmentalists.”
If this had happened, this is a recipe for a financial disaster and probably the end of the US as a global innovator and economic leader. The immediate reason is that their goal of a fully fossil fuel-less society cannot be achieved even if all resources available were spent on it. Rather, their goal would result in the enslavement of the US economy to this one never achievable and pointless end. Ever more technical and economic resources would be devoted to this end. And for what purpose? To lessen an alleged threat from catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) and stronger extreme weather phenomena that has never been shown to exist. The best available science shows that increased carbon dioxide has no significant effect on temperatures, and CAGW has not happened.
So climate alarmism is not just the biggest scam ever perpetrated on society, but one that would do immense real damages to all the objectives I have for our country, our economy, and the environment.
Under a Climate Alarmist Regime, Most New Efforts Would Be Devoted to This One Dubious Purpose
In the end, most new efforts would be devoted to this one dubious purpose. All fossil fueled power plants would have to be rebuilt at the expense of users. All motor vehicles would have to be replaced by their owners with electric vehicles. All housing and other buildings would have to use only electricity for fuel and be ever more air-tight and unhealthful. The population would be no better off and increasingly poorer. Government would become ever more powerful and the citizens ever worse off. In order to avoid using fossil fuels, the all encompassing electric grid would fail with increasingly regularity and more serious consequences. Electricity would become ever more expensive and unreliable.
Some may think I am exaggerating, but one only needs to look at what has happened in Great Britain, Germany, Ontario, and South Australia to see what would happen here. And it will happen unless people learn how much is at stake and take a strong stand against this special interest that wants to ruin the energy-using modern world as we now know it for no real purpose at all.
[…] Why I Spend So Much Time and Effort on Climate Skepticism […]
I should reflect about a difference in the colorful vocabularies of Doc and myself. He refers to the Climate Industrial Complex, whereas I have tradiitionally referred to the Climate Industrial Simplex.
I find the ideas and methods of climate science to be so unconvincing and simple minded that I jokingly refer to them as a simplex. By this I mean a confederacy of dunces. Climate change is not smart enough to earn the word complex.
Yet I see merit in the word complex in terms of a large money hungry network of believers and activists. This network must be enormous. It’s size and fervor justifies the word complex.
So I can agree to complex in terms of a large international conspiracy and fervent faith. The stakes are very serious and unfunny.
But the lunacy is simple minded and laughter is an effective means of countering the absurdities. Hence my traditional preference for simplex, a word that did not exist before Mad Jim and Big Al inspired it.
Willis Eschenbach had some thoughts that seem pertinant and I remember that a figure of $1B being put on the current greening not sure if that was annually or cum thus far.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/11/the-recursive-cost-of-carbon/
Alan, thank you for all you are doing and please keep it up. Here in the UK we have a few good people including Lord Nigel Lawson, our former Chancellor. We still have a long way to go here to fulfil the infamous Climate Change Act. So far they have barely scratched the surface. Electric vehicles are still very rare, and we have not touched the gas central heating of buildings, or even gas powered electricity generation. The price of electricity is already causing problems even so.
Alan–
Perhaps you saw this from last week
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/despite-trump-executive-order-social-cost-carbon-still-studied-federal-agency
There is clearly some work going on but it’s hard to figure out just where it is headed. Have you seen any valuation attempted for the 50% of land surface that is greening compared to 6% that is browning? I am not an economist, but you are, and surely there must be some approach to monetizing that.
There are of course estimates of how much the increased CO2 has added to the increase in food production. They seem to vary from 15-25% of the total increase.
These would be hard estimates of current benefits to put against the unvalidated model predictions.
Comments by Alan Carlin: Thanks for the Science link, which I had not seen. No, I have not seen any numerical estimates for CO2 greening benefits.
But since I believe that net benefits of CO2 control are negative based mainly on the WCD research reports (since atmospheric CO2 appears to have no significant effect on temperatures), I am not sure how important it is to have such numerical greening benefits.
Alan–
Isn’t it odd there is no email address to be found for Pruitt? Especially since he is in some trouble regarding his claim of only one email address when he was AG for Oklahoma although two have been found.
Thanks for the link to the Executive Order disbanding the working group on SCC. However, in view of the longer-range goal of reversing the Endangerment Finding, it seems to me absolutely necessary to revisit the SCC and turn it into the SBC (Social Benefit of Carbon). If done well, it alone could be a crucial component of a new Endangerment Reversal.
I will send the Tol paper on to Pruitt using snail mail.
Alan–
No doubt you are familiar with this paper by Tol on the “private benefits” of carbon. Can we get it into the hands of whoever is working on the social cost of carbon for Scott Pruitt?
I hope you are being listened to by the new people at EPA. I am in complete agreement with you on focusing on this wonderful example of the madness of crowds. I’ve been reading up on the science for the last several years. I could help pick holes in the arguments for the endangerment finding (which you have already done in great part)
https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=wps-07-2017.pdf&site=24&utm_content=buffera74f6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Lance
Comments by Alan Carlin: A recent Trump Executive Order orders in part: “‘Disband the Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases,’ and withdraw the documents in which that group set forth a ‘social cost of carbon’ (SCC) for monetizing changes in greenhouse gas emissions.”
So I’m not sure that Administrator Pruitt will be taking much interest in the SCC.
I do not have Pruitt’s Email address. His mail address is as follows:
The Honorable Scott Pruitt
US Environmental Protection Agency (Mail code 1101A)
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20460
One possibility would be to suggest that your enclosed Tol paper might be sent to those now working on SCC issues for EPA.
If EPA were listening to me, they would have granted a reconsideration of the GHG Endangerment Finding, which I have strongly supported and discussed at length on this website since President Trump’s election. Trump and Pruitt, however, did favor withdrawal from the Paris Accord “Treaty” and other actions on climate, which I have also favored.
I ordered your book, Doctor carlin, I am pleased to report.
I think your time is indeed well spent.
Yes there are other voices, many heartfelt, thoughtful, and well spoken who have contributed many wise thoughts in opposition to the fake or flawed science of the left. I especially admire Steve McIntyre and a professor at MIT. Freeman Dyson has also felt compelled to oppose the herd.
It is value adding when a former federal scientist makes clear that he too opposes fatally flawed science and pointless costs that serve to injure our economy and our future.
Though just one person, Owing to the blessings of your education and career experiences, you have stature.
You have stepped up and accepted a difficult contentious challenge, in lieu of just retiring, as many other would. The easiest thing is to be quiet and leave the fight to others.
You have surely contributed a great deal of time and effort and bravery to oppose folly from powerful opponents. This is ethically laudable and renders public service. Great job upholding honest science and bravely speaking your mind.
Up to page 128. Good reading!
Climate change punches several buttons, so you erupted. I thought it was worthless and stupid before opening your book, but it turns out to be even worse than expected.
All your life was preamble to ripping apart climate lunacy.
In American history, has there ever been as monumental a difference in agenda between the main political Parties as there was in November 2016?
The Democrats campaigned for a Fake cause, the cargo cult dishonest science of global warming for which they championed a hopelessly ineffective solution called the Paris Agreement? Economic suicide.
The republicans championed energy independence and economic growth.
The Democrats deserve to stay out of office until they can hold an honest self assessment and repudiate their climate fakery.
The Democrats used to be the party that championed slavery and later the Klan and Jim Crow. These were repugnant evil policies. It took a century or more, but Democrats eventually shed this hideous Legacy of racial discrimination. They had to do so. They are going to need to show similar mental agility as regards dropping climate change.
Right now, they are still in thrall to and mentally enslaved by the sickly science of climate change.
As a scientifically literate honest employee of USEPA, you could not sign off on the insanely stupid anti-American hoax. In your book, flogging the insanity requires more than 500 pages. The stakes warrant.