Day: April 6, 2024

Extinction Rebellion Attacks an Electric Vehicle at the New York Auto Show

Extinction Rebellion is absolutely correct that there is nothing green about EVs. Building electric vehicles from high carbon components, extracting Lithium, rare Earth elements, and Cobalt, have all been criticised for their environmental and human rights impacts. When you add that EVs are recharged using mostly fossil fuel supplied electricity, EVs likely do nothing to reduce emissions.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

h/t observa; There is no path to appeasement – nothing is ever green enough for climate fanatics.

Climate Protestors Thrown Out Of NY Auto Show After Oiling Ford F-150 Lightning

Climate activists protested the New York Auto Show, claiming that EVs don’t do enough to address climate change 

by Sebastien Bell
April 1, 2024 at 12:04

  • Climate protestors were dragged out of the New York International Auto Show after pouring liquid on the floor and onto an electric Ford F-150 Lightning.
  • The group behind the action, Extinction Rebellion, says that EVs don’t do enough to avert a climate disaster.
  • The group claims it is not protesting automotive enthusiasts but, instead, the infrastructure decisions that mean millions of Americans have no choice but to buy cars and drive.

Members of the climate activism group Extinction Rebellion were forcibly removed from the 2024 New York International Auto Show this weekend, after pouring what appears to be oil on an electric vehicle, as well as the show floor, while shouting that there are “no EVs on a dead planet.”

The protestors stepped in front of an all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning modified to tackle off-road conditions. The pickup truck had just been rolled out in front of a crowd of people as the auto show opened to the public. While it may seem counterintuitive, the group said it wasn’t protesting automotive enthusiasts, but rather the EV industry.

…

“Electric vehicles don’t solve the real problem with cars: wastefully large infrastructure, needlessly complex and resource-intensive construction, and energy inefficiency, even in the case of electric cars,” said Miles Grant, an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson. “Electric vehicles are a popular investment because they don’t disrupt the status quo.”

As a result, the group wants discussions about environmental improvement to include smaller, greener vehicles, and public transportation. CBS reports that the same group protested a performance of the Henrik Ibsen play, “An Enemy Of The People,” on Broadway this month. The play focuses on a man who exposes an unpalatable truth publicly, and is punished for it.

…Read more: https://www.carscoops.com/2024/04/climate-protestors-thrown-out-of-new-york-auto-show-oiling-ford-f-150-lightning/#thread__container

My first thought given the publication date, maybe this was an April Fools joke? But there is a video which looks genuine, and the story has been republished on other outlets.

Another video of the same event.

Extinction Rebellion provided the following explanation on their twitter feed:

From Extinction Rebellion’s press release:

… Automobile production-as-usual won’t be possible on Earth if humanity fails to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. If we continue at our current pace of production expansion, there won’t be enough resources to meet car production demand, EV and gas-powered alike.

Construction of an electric vehicle requires immense amounts of resources that are rare and difficult to obtain. Steel, electronics, batteries (and the lithium they contain), and the concrete and asphalt infrastructure cars require, all involve extremely high-emission production. For every EV produced, 900 kg of highly polluting coal-based steel will be used, which will then go unrecycled due to copper contamination from wiring in EVs. The steel industry, already responsible for 11% of global CO2 emissions and over 10% of global resource extraction, is set to triple in size by 2050, with this growth driven primarily by the auto industry.

Lithium mining is also causing disastrous environmental damage throughout the world, as well as human rights abuses. Lithium batteries are not yet recyclable, and their lifespans are short. Swapping out oil extraction for a different extraction is not a net improvement. As with oil, the resources required for EV production are finite.

In Nevada, Thacker Pass (known as Peehee Mu’huh in Paiute), a vast nature preserve, has the largest known lithium deposit in the country and one of the largest in the world. Following a month of nonviolent protests at the site, six activists are facing lawsuits from Lithium Nevada Corporation. This is an attempt to suppress constitutionally protected free speech and protest. In a groundbreaking move for the American legal system, the defense is asserting a biodiversity necessity defense. …Read more: https://www.xrebellion.nyc/news/no-electric-vehicles-on-a-dead-planet

Extinction Rebellion is absolutely correct that there is nothing green about EVs. Building electric vehicles from high carbon components, extracting Lithium, rare Earth elements, and Cobalt, have all been criticised for their environmental and human rights impacts. When you add that EVs are recharged using mostly fossil fuel supplied electricity, EVs likely do nothing to reduce emissions.

But Extinction Rebellion’s demand for more public transport or smaller vehicles is unacceptable.

Last time I sat on public transport I sat on a puddle of urine, someone wet the seat and didn’t tell anybody, so no thanks to public transport. And of course there is the enhanced risk of encountering a knife or gun wielding junkie on public transport, especially late at night in crime hotspots like New York.

As for small vehicles, small vehicles in rural Australia and pretty much everywhere else are a death trap.

During my recent road trip into the Aussie outback, I hit numerous feral animals, including a feral pig which darted out suddenly. The high speed collision with the pig lifted the left side of my two ton 4WD 30 degrees off the level road. No damage to the vehicle or occupants, thanks to the big shock absorbers and heavy steel armour plating on the underside of my vehicle. But can you imagine what would have happened if I had hit that same animal while driving one of the little death carts Extinction Rebellion wants us to drive? At the very least my road trip would have ended with an extensive stay in hospital.

Even high population density nations like Britain have significant feral deer populations. I never personally collided with a deer in Britain, though I had a few narrow escapes while driving in rural parts of the home counties, an hour’s drive from London. You don’t have to go far outside town to encounter the risk of colliding with large animals. Sometimes, especially when forage is in short supply, large feral animals intrude deep into cities. Those deer I saw in rural areas near London were more than big enough to wreck a normal vehicle, and put the lives of small vehicle drivers at risk.

Of course, Extinction Rebellion protestors themselves appear to be utter climate hypocrites, wearing a heady mix of oil based synthetic clothing to their protest. More fossil fuel was likely used to produce their machine woven synthetic clothing than was contained in the oil cans they poured on the EV.

Until Extinction Rebellion conduct these protests naked, personally divested of all fossil fuel products, I refuse to take their protests seriously. Environmentalists cannot expect others to accept their accusations of hypocrisy, when they themselves stink of that very same big oil hypocrisy.

Let’s see Extinction Rebellion take inspiration from Lady Godiva, the 11th century Noblewoman who started the feminist and workers rights movements by riding through town naked to protest against unfair treatment of the peasants. They should also avoid all use of artificial deodorants, cosmetics and fossil fuel based chemical body products, and only use natural products such as Native American mineral paints extracted by hand from traditional local sources, which they collected in person.

Then nobody will call Extinction Rebellion hypocrites and fools, right?

No, Savannah Morning News, a Warm Spring is No Indication of Climate Change

A story published by John Deem of the Savannah Morning News (SMN) claims that a warmer than normal spring that is expected this year is “under climate change’s influence.” This is false. SMN is conflating short-term weather patterns with long-term climate change and an examination of real-world data does not support their conclusion.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

A story published by John Deem of the Savannah Morning News (SMN) claims that a warmer than normal spring that is expected this year is “under climate change’s influence.” This is false. SMN is conflating short-term weather patterns with long-term climate change and an examination of real-world data does not support their conclusion.

The article comma titled ‘Ma Nature’ expected to nurture warm spring in Savannah under climate change’s influence, was published on the website of the newspaper on April 2nd 2024.  The article makes this claim:

Spring is likely to be warmer than usual in Savannah and across Georgia this year, according to the latest long-term forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center.

That’s nothing new. Thanks to warming fueled primarily by heat-trapping pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, average spring temperatures have climbed considerably locally and over much of the Southeast over the past 50 years.

Although it is unclear in the article which long-term forecast from the Climate Prediction Center SMN is referencing, this Seasonal Temperature Outlook in Figure 1 below is the most likely candidate:

Figure 1: Spring season temperature outlook for the United States. Source: Climate Prediction Center
The key on Figure 1 shows co

The key on Figure 1 shows colors that match different regions, for Savannah GA, the orange color relates to a “leaning above” 40 to 50% probability of a warmer than normal spring. That is hardly certain. Interestingly, the one-month outlook issued by the Climate Prediction Center shows equal chances for Georgia and much of the southeastern United States. (See figure below) Basically, that prediction is no better than a coin flip; it could be warmer, or it could be cooler. With such a lack of precision over the shorter term of one month, certainly a three-month forecast is not likely to be any better.

SMN is making their claim of a warmer spring driven by “climate change’s influence” based on a forecast with a high level of uncertainty.

Figure 2: One month ahead temperature outlook for the United States. Source: Climate Prediction Center

A short-term change in weather patterns over a few months from year to year is not the same as long-term climate change. It is well established in the scientific community that at least 30 years of changing weather must be recorded in order for it to become a climate pattern. To create a climate record, 30 years of weather data is averaged to create a “normal” climate expectation for a location or region. Three months in one spring season is woefully short of that requirement.

More than that, SMN failed to do any detailed analysis of historical temperatures. According to State Climate Summaries 2022 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) temperatures were actually far warmer in the past than they are today as seen in Figure 3:

Figure 3: Observed (a) annual number of extremely hot days (maximum temperature of 100°F or higher), source: NOAA.

The observed number of hot days have fallen in Georgia since the peak in the early 20th century. Looking at the written summary on temperatures, NOAA has this to say: “Temperatures in Georgia have risen by 0.8°F, about half of the warming for the contiguous United States, since the beginning of the 20th century.”

Clearly Georgia is falling behind when it comes to warmer temperatures. If in fact “climate change’s influence” was driving warmer temperatures as SMN claims, we would see it in the data but the exact opposite is true.

Finally, according to World Population Review, the city of Savannah has seen explosive population growth since the beginning of the 20th century. Clearly people seem to prefer the climate of Savannah with obviously little concern over climate change driven temperature.

SMN editors and writer John Deem clearly didn’t do their homework when it came to making a claims of  “climate change’s influence” for this spring that according to forecast may or may not come to pass. It is just one more sad example of the media spinning a climate change narrative instead of paying attention to actual data and the relevant skill of a forecast.

Save the Whales, Kill the Turbines – The Climate Realism Show #104

On episode 104 of The Climate Realism Show, we explain that to save the whales we need to kill these growing large-scale offshore wind projects. These so-called “wind farms” are much larger and do much more environmental damage than most people realize. Covering an area the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, one project off the Mid-Atlantic poses an existential risk to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.

On episode 104 of The Climate Realism Show, we explain that to save the whales we need to kill these growing large-scale offshore wind projects. These so-called “wind farms” are much larger and do much more environmental damage than most people realize. Covering an area the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, one project off the Mid-Atlantic poses an existential risk to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. That is just one of many ocean mammals harassed and killed by these projects that will, at best, provide unreliable and expensive energy. Remember when “save the whales” was the cry of the environmentalists? Now they are fine with a spike in dead whales washing up on our Atlantic beaches as long as the “green energy” agenda continues apace.

The Heartland Institute is part of a lawsuit to stop to a major wind project in the Atlantic and save the right whale. We will talk about that effort with Craig Rucker and Terry Johnson of CFACT, who are also part of the suit. Join them and host Anthony Watts, H. Sterling Burnett, and Linnea Lueken to talk about that, plus the Crazy Climate News of the Week.

Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET (12 p.m. CT) for the kind of climate realism you can’t find anywhere else, and join the chat to get your questions answered, too.

Sea Level Rise Alarm? The Coastlines Of 13,000 Studied Islands Net GREW Seaward From 2000-2020

The sea level rise experienced in recent decades was supposed to lead to shrinking shorelines and inundated coasts. Instead, satellite observations reveal the globe’s island coasts expanded seaward (net) by 402 km² since 2000.

From NoTricksZone

By Kenneth Richard

The sea level rise experienced in recent decades was supposed to lead to shrinking shorelines and inundated coasts. Instead, satellite observations reveal the globe’s island coasts expanded seaward (net) by 402 km² since 2000.

In a new study, over 13,000 islands were assessed for coastal change over the last three decades (1990-2020). Only 12% of these islands experienced significant shoreline change during this period. Thus, approximately 88% of the islands had stable coasts − neither substantial erosion or accretion.

About 6% of these 13,000+ islands experienced coastline expansion (accretion), while 7.5% lost coastal land area (erosion). The scientists point out that, for the islands experiencing coastal erosion in recent decades, sea level rise was not a primary or predominant causal factor. This is “contrary to initial assumptions.”

“Moreover, the data results suggest that sea-level rise has not been a widespread cause of erosion for island shorelines in the studied region. Presently, it is considered one of the contributing factors to shoreline erosion but not the predominant one.”

“Contrary to initial assumptions, our empirical data does not conclusively link the widespread erosion of island shorelines primarily to historical sea-level rise, suggesting that human activities might mask the effects of sea-level rise.”

Somewhat consistent with the alarming sea level rise narrative propagated by anthropogenic global warming (AGW) activists, there was indeed a net loss (-259.33 km²) of coastal land area for the 13,000+ islands studied in the decade spanning 1990 to 2000. But then, “in the subsequent decades, the trend reversed, with net increases of 369.67 km² from 2000 to 2010 and 32.67 km² from 2010 to 2020.”

Added together, in the last two decades the globe’s island coasts net grew seaward by 402.33 km² from 2000-2020, and coasts grew by a net 157.21 km² for the entire 30-year period (1990-2020).

“Over the past three decades, the entire region experienced a cumulative increase in land area of 157.21 km² across more than 13,000 islands.”

“…over the past 30 years, fewer islands experienced landward erosion compared to those undergoing seaward accretion.”

Sea level rise thus cannot be an explanation for the contradictory three decades of net coastal seaward expansion observations.

But if the recent decades of sea level rise trends cannot even be considered a primary or predominant factor contributing to coastal erosion either, then the alarmist sea level rise narrative necessarily disintegrates under the weight of the evidence.

Image Source: Zhang et al., 2024
Evolutionary-dynamics-of-island-shoreline-in-the-context-of-climate-change-insights-from-extensive-empirical-evidenceHerunterladen

Time for MPs to Come Clean About the Green Blob

For years, perhaps decades, the cross-party Westminster consensus on climate change has been a suffocating orthodoxy that limited debate about energy and other policy agendas, leaving Britain under-resourced and facing the consequences of energy prices that are out of control. But then, just a year and a bit after the U.K.’s hosting of the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, and following energy price spikes caused by lockdowns the world over, a small number of MPs began to question green dogma.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY BEN PILE

In the wake of Boris Johnson’s exit from Number 10, Tory MPs, including former ministers, have created a sea change in the public conversation about U.K. climate policy. For years, perhaps decades, the cross-party Westminster consensus on climate change has been a suffocating orthodoxy that limited debate about energy and other policy agendas, leaving Britain under-resourced and facing the consequences of energy prices that are out of control. But then, just a year and a bit after the U.K.’s hosting of the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, and following energy price spikes caused by lockdowns the world over, a small number of MPs began to question green dogma. This new energy and climate realism is a long overdue and welcome development. But if politicians want realistic policies, they are going to have to go much further.

The number of critics of the U.K.’s green agenda in Parliament has until now been very small. In the final Commons vote on the Climate Change Bill in October 2008, just five MPs, including the two Tellers, voted No. Outside, snow lay on the streets of Westminster for the first time in October in 74 years, in an ironic gesture from Nature herself that brought chaos to travel and power networks. The Bill, now an Act, would lock criticism of green ideology out of British politics for the next 12 years because what MPs had agreed to was in effect to hand what decision-making power they had not already transferred to the EU to the Committee on Climate Change that the Act created. In 2019, the Climate Change Act’s 80% emissions reduction by 2050 target was upped to ‘Net Zero’. But our democratic representatives had yet to find their feet. It wasn’t until the beginning of 2022 that a formal presence of the Nez Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) took the form of open letters to the Prime Minister and other briefings to the press.

Between Boris Johnson declaring that the U.K. would soon be the “Saudi Arabia of wind” and the formation of the NZSG, natural gas prices on European markets rose by around 1,000%, that is to say, 10-fold. Britain should lift the ban on fracking, urged the disobedient MPs. But the Government, and nearly the entire British political class, was still glowing from the buzz of Glasgow. The then Chancellor, now Prime Minister, declared at COP26 that financial institutions with $130 trillion in assets under management had been brought into alignment. “Make no mistake,” said former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney to the assembled delegates, “the money is here.” The great and the good cheered. The following year, thanks to the lifting of lockdowns increasing demand, gas prices nearly tripled, leaving Britain’s households and industries facing ruin.

The rising prices and inflation were blamed on Russia, which wasn’t where the blame belonged. The real culprits were the lockdowns and various green policies, including a commitment to ESG, which the Bank of England and successive U.K. Governments had used their power to promote. Both lockdowns and many years of green policy failure had created scarcity, with Britain and many other European governments taxing, restricting and even prohibiting oil and gas production. Green ideological utopianism thus rolled on, but this intransigence has finally produced a response, the NZSG. Finally, it was PM Johnson vacating Downing Street and his Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat, thereby triggering a by-election, that would be the first test of green ideology and a boost to the significance of this group.

The contest to select the constituency’s MP became something of a referendum on London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) expansion, championed by the Labour Mayor, Sadiq Khan. Labour had signalled its even greater commitment to the green agenda. But it went down badly with voters, who in July last year narrowly returned an anti-Ulez Conservative candidate to Westminster – all the more surprising, given that Ulez was a policy introduced by Johnson when he was Mayor. Former Home Secretary Priti Patel became perhaps the most senior Conservative Party figure, albeit no longer in the Cabinet, to read the political runes. “Pause drive to Net Zero, the public are not ready,” she warned the new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Patel was followed by former Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg. Now a regular host on GB News, Rees-Mogg refers to Net Zero as a “fallacy” responsible for the U.K. having the most expensive energy prices in the world. The idea that Net Zero is “affordably achievable”, he argues, is a “fundamental untruth”.

These challenges to Net Zero have surely had a small but significant impact on Number 10’s decisions. The infectious realism has in the last year caused the Government to press pause, but not quite U-turn, on the gas boiler tax and the petrol/diesel car sales ban and to announce the commissioning of new gas-fired power stations. But though these are the first signs of the climate agenda suffering any meaningful setbacks in decades, they are clearly not enough. Worse, the next election is unlikely to be a referendum on Net Zero, and the Conservatives’ unpopularity is likely to bring in a Labour Government with a huge majority by default.

However, there is something that Conservative politicians with genuine concern for the future of this country can do to hasten the end of Net Zero. It may not save their Government or their seats. But it may change the debate far more radically than has so far been possible.

It is not enough merely to argue that Net Zero policies are wrong. What the public needs to hear is an explanation of how such bad policies, from Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and Ulez through to wind farms and car and boiler bans, came to dominate the political agenda, despite there being no clamour for them from the public and no test of the public’s willingness to accept the consequences. Regressive and anti-democratic policies have been imposed on the public through Westminster by what former Environment Secretary Owen Patterson a decade ago called the “green blob”.

Opposite the NZSG, but on the same benches, is a much larger caucus of green-ish Tory MPs, which includes the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Claire Coutinho. The Conservative Environment Network (CEN) was founded by Ben Goldsmith, brother of Lord Zac (whom Boris Johnson made a peer when he lost his seat, so he could remain in Government). And it is funded through the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and the Clean Air Fund (CAF) – both philanthropic foundations controlled by British billionaire Sir Christopher Hohn. Ben Goldsmith is also a trustee of Hohn’s philanthropic outfit, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), which is the major grantor to both the ECF and CAF. The Prime Minister himself was a partner at Hohn’s hedge fund, The Children’s Investment (TCI), where he, along with Hohn, was implicated in the collapse of RBS, with the public footing the bill for the £45 billion bailout.

The resources made available to green campaigning organisations by such billionaires are but a fraction of their net wealth, but well beyond what political parties or any other organisation can hope to raise from the increasingly hard-pressed public. In 2022, for example, CIFF made grants of £174 million to green organisations – a figure that vastly exceeds the total spending by all U.K. political parties each year, bar 2019 (as I point out here). And that’s just one billionaire. Another, Michael Bloomberg, spends about the same amount. Throughout the West each year, billions are pumped by the world’s wealthiest individuals into ersatz civil society organisations as seemingly diverse as Extinction Rebellion and the green-wet Tory caucus, but all in the service of the same agenda. It funds organisations like Carbon Brief – the green news outfit that came up with the lie that “wind power is nine times cheaper than gas“, which has been repeated in Westminster countless times.

Even the London Mayor is Chair of a Bloomberg-Hohn-funded outfit, C40 Cities, from where he and other politicians learn to put green ideology before the public interest and democracy, and no doubt secure future roles for themselves in the green blobocracy. Entire university research departments are funded by rich greens, such as Jeremy Grantham who funds the eponymous ‘institutes’ at LSE and Imperial College London, which enjoy direct working relationships with the Climate Change Committee. The effect of this money has been to make the Westminster parties ideologically indistinct and to align successive governments, state agencies and so-called ‘civil society’ with business agendas. The Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy Shirley Rodrigues came directly from CIFF, where she managed grants. Last year, Rodrigues was caught by the Telegraph instructing scientists at Imperial College – itself the beneficiary of more than £5 million in grants from City Hall – to try to silence critics of the Mayor’s policies.

The scandal is not merely that Net Zero policies are wrong; the scandal is green politics. It is anti-democratic and corrupting. At all levels of government, from the parish council, through Westminster and the European Union, to the United Nations, the limbs of the green blob shape the agenda. ECF grantees organise local lobbying for LTNs and candidly boast that they drafted both the EU’s climate policy roadmap to 2050 and the 2008 Climate Change Act. Once this is explained to the public, the zombie-like persistence of failed green policies is far more easily explained. The fact that even Conservative Cabinet members have been far more interested in meeting Extinction Rebellion for a sit-down than in hearing from the public about green issues, as well as the absurdity of wind farms, boiler bans and wet car prohibitions, would be far more readily understood.

Tory MPs have helped to shift the debate. The last year or so has seen conversations in the public square that were almost inconceivable in the late 2000s or early 2010s. But in order to bring realism and democracy back to policymaking, MPs must take an even bigger risk. They must explain how democracy, civil society and institutional science have been captured by the ‘green blob’ – in reality, a handful of billionaires. They were there. They saw the lobbying. They saw constituents, businesses and industries’ needs being ignored. And they saw their colleagues being brow-beaten into green utopianism. They saw billionaires’ cronies use state agencies – such as the Bank of England – to further their ideological and commercial interests. Now, if they mean what they say, it is time for them to explain what they have seen.

Subscribe to Ben Pile’s The Net Zero Scandal Substack here.

EV Sales Stall

The government mandated target is 22% this year, but YTD EV registrations only account for 15.5%.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

We’re three months into the year, and EV sales are still struggling to increase their share of the market:

https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle-data/car-registrations/

The government mandated target is 22% this year, but YTD EV registrations only account for 15.5%.

This is despite the fact that fleet sales have been booming this year, a sector with a much higher uptake of EVs because of beneficial tax allowances.

It is the private sector which has proven a much harder nut for EVs to crack, for the very simple reason that very few drivers actually want one.

Despite all of the subsidies, both overt and hidden, it appears that EV sales have hit a ceiling.

Where this will leave government policy remains to be seen, with the target increasing to 28% next year, and 33% the year after.

But it appears they will be between a rock and a hard place. The UK motor industry simply will not be able to afford to pay ZEV fines, which will run into the billions by then. As a result they will surely have to drastically cut back on production of ICE vehicles for the UK market.

And drivers will still refuse to buy unaffordable and useless EVs; instead they will accept long lead times for new cars, as a result of the inevitable shortage of stock, while keeping their old cars longer.

It is painfully obvious that both the government and the opposition parties have believed their own propaganda far too long, thinking that EVs are wonderful and that the public would be queuing up to buy them once a few more charging stations were built. Just as with many other matters, the Westminster establishment has totally lost contact with the real world.

EXCLUSIVE: ‘Blatant Violations’: Watchdog Challenges Key Data Used By Biden Admin To Push Sweeping Climate Agenda

A government watchdog group has filed a complaint with the Biden administration over its use of a dataset frequently used to push its climate agenda.

From The Daily Caller

NICK POPE

CONTRIBUTOR

A government watchdog group has filed a complaint with the Biden administration over its use of a dataset frequently used to push its climate agenda.

Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) filed the complaint with the Commerce Department over the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) “Billions Project” dataset, which purports to keep track of natural [and climate] disasters that have caused at least $1 billion in damages going back to 1980. The billion-dollar disasters (BDD) data — cited frequently by the Biden administration to insinuate that climate change is intensifying and justify sweeping green policies — is based on opaque data derived from questionable accounting practices, PPT alleges in the complaint.

“American families and businesses continue to struggle with persistently high inflation, which many attribute in large part to the energy policies and government spending of the current administration. The idea that blatant violations of scientific integrity could be underlying the rationale for these policies should concern every American,” Michael Chamberlain, PPT’s director, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Unfortunately, this is far from an isolated incident. The Biden Administration came into office pledging that its decision making would be grounded in the highest-quality science, but all too often has failed to live up to those promises.” (RELATED: The Entire Push To Halt New Natural Gas Exports Traces Back To One Ivy League Prof And His Shaky Study)

0719425904-PPT-Scientific-Integrity-Complaint-Billion-Dollar-DisastersHerunterladen

PPT Scientific Integrity Co… by Nick Pope

The complaint was filed with the Commerce Department, as NOAA operates under its auspices, Chamberlain told the DCNF.

PPT’s complaint alleges that NOAA does not adequately disclose its sources and methods for compiling the BDD dataset, adds and removes BDD events from the dataset without providing its rationale for doing so and produces cost estimates that are sometimes significantly different than those generated by more conventional accounting procedures.

While NOAA states that it develops its BDD data from more than a dozen sources, the agency does not disclose those sources for specific events or show how it calculates loss estimates from those sources, PPT’s complaint alleges.

The complaint further alleges that NOAA’s accounting methods are opaque and “produce suspect results.”

For example, when Hurricane Idalia took aim at Florida in 2023, NOAA initially projected that the storm would cause about $2.5 billion worth of damages before insured losses ultimately came in at about $310 million, according to PPT’s complaint, which cites the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation for that figure. Nevertheless, NOAA subsequently marked up its estimate for how much damage the storm caused to $3.5 billion, a discrepancy for which NOAA provided no explanation, PPT alleges in its complaint.

NOAA researchers have disclosed in the past that the agency considers factors such as functions pertaining to livestock feeding costs — in addition to more conventional types of damages — in their cost calculations.

Further, the complaint alleges that BDD events are quietly added and removed from the dataset without explanation, citing Roger Pielke Jr., a former academic who believes climate change to be a real threat but opposes politicized science. In a forthcoming paper analyzing the merits of BDD statistics, Pielke compared the dataset in late 2022 to the dataset in the middle of 2023 and found that ten new BDD events were added to the list and 3 were subtracted without explanation.

Apart from the issues with methodology alleged by PPT in its complaint, the use of BDD events as a proxy for climate change’s intensity is inherently misleading because economic data does not reflect changes in meteorological conditions, Pielke has previously explained to the DCNF.

For example, increasing concentrations of assets, especially in coastal areas, can confound the usefulness of BDD events as an indicator for the intensity of climate change, as Energy and Environment Legal Institute Senior Policy Fellow Steve Milloy has previously explained to the DCNF. Hypothetically, the same exact hurricane could hit the same exact place, decades apart, with vastly different damage totals; this would be the case because there are simply more assets sitting in the way of the storm, not because the storm was any more violent due to worsening climate change.

NOAA has acknowledged this limitation of the dataset in prior communications with the DCNF.

Additionally, NOAA will add disasters to the list retrospectively because it adjusts for inflation, meaning that a hurricane that caused $800 million in damages in 1980 dollars would be added to the list because the damages exceed $1 billion when adjusted for inflation, for example.

The Biden administration has frequently cited the BDD dataset to substantiate its massive climate agenda.

For example, Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk cited the dataset in written testimony submitted to lawmakers in February explaining the White House’s decision to pause new approvals for liquefied natural gas export terminals.

The BDD statistics are also referenced Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), the Biden administration’s landmark climate report that is intended to provide the most sound scientific basis for lawmakers and officials to craft climate policy.

NOAA asserted that the increasing frequency of BDD events is a sign of intensifying climate change in a January press release and blog post summarizing 2023, and then defended the use of the dataset in subsequent communications with the DCNF.

“Sensational climate claims made without proper scientific basis and spread by government officials threaten the public’s trust in its scientific officials and undermines the government’s mission of stewarding the environment,” PPT’s complaint states. “It also poses the danger of policymakers basing consequential government policy on unscientific claims unsupported by evidence.”

NOAA declined to comment, citing the active nature of the scientific integrity complaint. The White House and the Department of Commerce did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

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