Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
People in developed nations take abundant electricity for granted. When asked where electricity comes from, most will point to their wall outlet. But many states in the US are headed for a serious and prolonged shortage of electrical power not seen in decades, driven by rising demand from the artificial intelligence revolution and mandates to adopt green energy.
People in developed nations take abundant electricity for granted. When asked where electricity comes from, most will point to their wall outlet. But many states in the US are headed for a serious and prolonged shortage of electrical power not seen in decades, driven by rising demand from the artificial intelligence revolution and mandates to adopt green energy.
For 20 years, US electrical power policy has been dominated by efforts to try to “mitigate” global warming, believed to be caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. In 2021, President Joe Biden called for achieving a 100% carbon-free electric sector by 2035. Twenty-three states have enacted statues or issued executive orders to achieve Net Zero electricity generation by 2050.
Because of Net Zero mandates, US grid operators spent the last two decades replacing coal-fired power plants with natural gas plants, wind turbines, and solar installations. More than 200 coal plants have been closed, reducing electricity output from coal by almost 60% since 2007. From 2000 to 2023, wind and solar output rose from near zero to a combined 14.1% of US production. Over the same period, natural gas rose from 16.2% to 43.1% of power generation.
These efforts to transition from coal to wind and solar have been possible because US demand for electricity was almost flat from 2007 to 2023 at about 4.1 million gigawatt-hours. But grid operators in many states now face an unprecedented ramp in electricity demand.
The forced transition to green energy drives three new sources of power demand. First, 22 states now have zero-emissions vehicle mandates, which intend to ban the sale of cars with internal combustion engines by 2035, or a similar target date. In March, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized regulations that attempt to force about 40% of new light vehicles sold by 2030 to be electric. California and the EPA have also recently enacted regulations to force the heavy trucking industry to transition to electric trucks. To the extent that electric vehicles (EVs) are adopted, this will require the grid to deliver large amounts of additional power.
Second, cities and counties in seven states have banned gas appliances in new housing construction, such as New York City. In a 2022 study, the New England ISO concluded that a shift from gas appliances to electric appliances in New England would require more new electricity than a shift to EVs.
Third, the US federal government proposes to establish a new green hydrogen fuel industry. Seven billion dollars have been earmarked for “regional hydrogen hubs” to try to stimulate hydrogen production. Green hydrogen is produced by electrolysis of water and uses large amounts of electricity. To produce a single kilogram of hydrogen from electrolysis requires 50 to 55 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is about double the daily electricity used by a typical US home. Plans call for billions of kilograms of green hydrogen to be produced.
But the electricity needed for the new artificial intelligence (AI) revolution will be greater than that needed for EVs, electric appliances, and green hydrogen combined. Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and dozens of other firms are building massive new multi-acre data centers. In addition to new facilities, servers in the nation’s 2,700 data centers are being upgraded with new high-performance processing cards, boosting data center power consumption by six to ten times. Today, data centers use about 4% of US electricity, but the AI revolution is expected to boost that demand to more than 20% of US electricity consumption within the next ten years. Cryptocurrency generation, such as Bitcoin, also uses large amounts of electricity.
Rapidly rising power demand from the AI revolution and EVs, home appliances, and the proposed hydrogen fuel industry caught US grid operators unprepared. We are now entering a decade in which electricity demand will exceed what can be supplied by a large margin.
The New York State data center market is expected to grow by over 50% from 2023 to 2030. The demand for electricity in Virginia is projected to more than double by 2035, driven by data center growth. California, Georgia, Texas, and the Pacific Northwest project large increases in electrical power demand. Jason Shaw, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, stated: “When you look at the numbers it is staggering … It makes you scratch your head and wonder how we ended up in this situation. How were the projections that far off? This has created a challenge like we have never seen before.”
The coming power shortage will produce two big economic impacts. First, electrical utilities will cease the premature shut down of coal, gas, and nuclear power plants. It will be impossible to construct enough new wind and solar generators to provide electricity to meet the new demand for AI data centers, let alone the needs of electric vehicles, electric home appliances, and hydrogen electrolyzers.
We already see efforts to extend the operating lives of power plants that were scheduled for closure. California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which was scheduled to close in 2025, has been extended to operate until 2030. The Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan has been idle since May of 2022, but has now received $1.5 billion from the federal government to restart operations. Coal-fired power plants located in many Midwest states will likely operate for decades to come.
The second economic impact will be rapidly rising electricity prices, driven by a growing disparity between power demand and supply. Higher prices will reduce the demand for heat pumps endorsed by the green energy movement, which will remain more expensive than natural gas and propane furnaces in cold regions. EVs will be more expensive to charge and public EV charging facilities will struggle to be profitable. Gasoline cars will hold cost advantages for decades to come.
The transition to electric heavy trucks will fail. Heavy truck charging requires vast amounts of power. The South El Monte truck charging site in California, the first of its kind, is designed to simultaneously charge up to 32 heavy trucks. But when fully loaded, this facility would use more electricity than consumed by a California city with a population of 200,000 residents, such as San Bernardino or Huntington Beach.
Efforts to establish a green hydrogen fuel industry, using electrolyzers, will produce only a tiny market. High electricity costs will make hydrogen from electrolysis too expensive to power chemicals, steel, and other heavy industries.
And the coming electricity shortage in the US is likely to be prolonged. US utilities have wasted much capital investment over the last few decades building intermittent wind and solar systems that don’t deliver much electricity. At the same time, the fleet of US nuclear power plants has been aging.
Today, 94 operating nuclear plants provide about 19 percent of US power. During the last two decades, ten nuclear plants have been retired, with only four new ones brought on-line. The other 90 plants began operating between 1970 and 1990.
Sixteen of these plants are 50 years or older and another 38 are between 40 and 50 years old. The good news is that the life of these plants can be extended for 60 years or more. But a decade from now, just as grid operators are making progress in closing the gap between power demand and supply, many of these nuclear plants will need to be refurbished or replaced.
The biggest impact will be on efforts to transition to a Net Zero electrical grid. The coming electrical power shortage will cripple these efforts. It will be impossible to serve both the artificial intelligence revolution and pursue a transition to wind and solar systems. The green energy transition will be sacrificed in favor of generating enough electrical power.
Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and the author of the new bestselling bookGreen Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.
The Senate Budget Committee took the House Democrats’ political-theatre-esque investigation into energy companies and turned it into a complete political dud. At a hearing Wednesday intended to build off of the House Oversight Committee’s (HCOR) failed investigation into energy companies back in 2022, Democratic politicians and activist witnesses failed to produce anything of substance to support their decades-long campaign aimed at taking down the American energy industry.
The Senate Budget Committee took the House Democrats’ political-theatre-esque investigation into energy companies and turned it into a complete political dud. At a hearing Wednesday intended to build off of the House Oversight Committee’s (HCOR) failed investigation into energy companies back in 2022, Democratic politicians and activist witnesses failed to produce anything of substance to support their decades-long campaign aimed at taking down the American energy industry.
The hearing comes just a day after the Senate Budget Committee and the House Oversight Democrats issued a joint report and a trove of documents alleging that oil majors deceived the public about climate change. And, even though Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) stated the documents “exposed” the industry, there was little mention of their contents – because they, like the numerous other documents analyzed by the HOC, are a complete nothingburger.
Putting a finer point on it, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told E&E Newsthat “the hearing might be the end of the line for the investigation for now.”
Whitehouse’s Fishing Expedition Bound to Upset Other Democrats
While some politicians have hijacked the Senate Budget Committee far beyond its purview to focus almost exclusively on climate change, other Democrats are surely rolling their eyes at today’s political performance. In the wake of the Biden administration’s LNG pause, numerous Democrats have called out the importance of natural gas and rebuked their own party for turning against a needed economic and energy security powerhouse. Most recently, Jennifer Granholm thanked the industry for its extraordinary work supplying much-needed clean energy to the American people:
“You have helped us meet the moment when our energy and national security have needed it most [and] we will be counting on you again.”
Much like the House investigation, Sen. Whitehouse’s hearing – while also totally snooze worthy – was out of step and out of sync with the American people. Instead, it was used primarily for “political theatre,” a point Ranking Member Senator Chuck Grassley took issue with, arguing that committee has broken historic precedent in the production of its report and release of documents:
“The Majority could have been transparent with the Minority many months ago, as is normal course of business. The Majority chose not to do so. This unfortunate series of non-transparent events have undone years of investigative precedent.” (emphasis added)
Notably, this isn’t Sen. Whitehouse’s first swing at reviving the House’s flawed investigation into energy companies. Last June, he held a hearing featuring anti-industry activists Naomi Oreskes and Christine Arena who again failed to provide any momentum for this flailing campaign. This time, Sen. Whitehouse invited Oreskes’ former colleague Geoffrey Supran, former Department of Justice (DOJ) Attorney and La Jolla attendee Sharon Eubanks, along with Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD).
Supran, the “Academic,” Didn’t Even Do His Homework
Geoffrey Supran, a self-described “disinformation scientist” funded by the Rockefellers who was intimately involved in the House Oversight Committee’s investigation, didn’t even do his homework. When asked by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) about the internal industry documents that were intended to be the topic of discussion at the hearing, he admitted:
“I have yet to review the documents themselves, they were only just released. I have reviewed the reports that accompany them, so forgive me for having only a superficial understanding of them.” (emphasis added)
Comically, it was Supran and Oreskes who bragged about their document reading abilities back in 2017 when they embarked on their Climate Change Communications study aimed at American energy companies.
In fact, experts such as Roger Pielke Jr., have pointed out that Supran has a record of identifying a conclusion with no data only to then morph his evidence in a fashion that makes oil and gas companies look bad – all in the name of taking down energy companies.
Underlying this bias, a noteworthy exchange occurred when Supran became noticeably uncomfortable when Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) exposed him for endorsing fringe views on X. Sen. Kennedy pointed out that Supran couldn’t possibly be an unbiased witness when he endorses the dishonest and disruptive tactics used by activist group Climate Defiance:
The Link Between “Big Tobacco” and “Big Oil” Was Completely Debunked
Throughout the hearing, Democrats had little success in their attempts to create a link between the Big Tobacco lawsuits in the 1990s and the cases against energy companies. Even Sharon Eubanks, former director for the tobacco litigation Team at DOJ, didn’t provide this much sought after link. Instead, Eubanks opined about the good ol’ days and closed out the hearing by stating:
“There was more than one statute [supporting the DOJ’s lawsuit against Big Tobacco], that we went forward with. RICO was one, then we had the Medicare Reimbursement Act and the Medicare Secondary Pay and Provisions of the Social Security Act of 1930-something.”
While an interesting history lesson, Eubanks’ testimony didn’t advance the fringe narrative that energy lawsuits and Big Tobacco lawsuits are somehow analogous.
Ariel Cohen, a witness invited by the Senate Republicans, gave the clearest answer:
“The fundamental difference between tobacco and the fossil fuel industry is the fossil fuel industry brings a tangible economic good to the economy. Without it, we cannot have our transportation, or deliveries, our military…so I hope nobody in their right mind is advocating immediate cessation of fossil fuels.” (emphasis added)
Even James Hansen, a former Exxon employee and NASA scientist that supports a fossil fuel phase out has acknowledged that tobacco and hydrocarbons are entirely different products with drastically different values to society:
“Let’s be clear: the frequent comparison of the fossil fuel and tobacco industries is nonsense. Fossil fuels are a valuable energy source that has done yeomen service for humankind.”
Bottom line: Anti-industry advocates have tried for more than a decade to take down the American energy industry with no success and the Senate Budget Committee hearing was no different. After yet another allegedly “groundbreaking” document release, nothing new came to light. While politicians entertain these destructive games, American energy companies remain hard at work to ensure families and business have a reliable source of energy to power their homes and companies.
“CO2 is only present in the atmosphere in trace amounts (0.04%) and lacks sufficient enthalpy to have any measurable effect on the atmosphere’s temperature.” – Nelson and Nelson, 2024
“CO2 is only present in the atmosphere in trace amounts (0.04%) and lacks sufficient enthalpy to have any measurable effect on the atmosphere’s temperature.” – Nelson and Nelson, 2024
New research (Nelson and Nelson, 2024) further documents the inconsequential role that CO2 plays in climate.
Less than 4% of longwave infrared radiation is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the lower atmosphere. Greenhouse gases can have no effect outside of their narrow infrared atmospheric window.
Of all the greenhouse gases, water vapor (30,000 ppm) has easily the most dominant effect, absorbing 84 times more radiation than CO2 does, and 407,000 times more radiation than CH4 (methane).
If water vapor’s absorption capacity were to change by a factor of 1 (i.e., from 84 times greater than CO2 to 83 times greater), this tiny change would “wipe out all of what CO2 could have contributed” within the greenhouse effect.
Over the last 50 million years CO2 and temperature were negatively correlated (CO2 rose, temperatures fell or temperatures rose, CO2 fell) 42% of the time, and there was a glaring lack of recurring ratios, and “many ratios were zero or near zero.”
Over the last 1 million years “87% of the ratios were negative or zero or near zero.” This “directly contradicts the Climate Change-CO2 hypothesis.”
Furthermore, high CO2 levels and/or warming were not the cause of mass extinctions, as plants and animals “thrive” in much hotter temperatures than exist today.
These conclusions are very similar to Davis (2017 and 2023), who determined that over the last 210 million years (a) CO2 falls as temperatures rise (negative correlation, r = -0.76), (b) mass extinctions occur 4.08 million years after CO2 peaks, and (c) global warming/CO2 radiative forcing “did not cause extinction of biodiversity.”
Finally, approximately 89% of the warming over the period 1982-2018 could be attributed to the decline in cloud cover, which has allowed more solar radiation to be absorbed by the Earth’s surface. The rest “may be attributed to other factors including the greenhouse effect applicable to water vapor.”
In other words, due to the decoupling of CO2 from global warming (or cooling), there is effectively no consequential role for CO2 in climate change.
Senator Whitehouse does make some valid points. I’m pretty disappointed by the behaviour of some oil companies, their weak mismanagement of this political confrontation with Democrats is doing nobody any good.
UNITED STATES – JANUARY 31: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., speaks during the news conference to oppose the chained Consumer Price Index to cut benefits for Social Security and disabled veterans on Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
Big oil has privately acknowledged its efforts to downplay the dangers of burning fossil fuels, US Democrats have found.
Major fossil-fuel firms have also pledged support for international climate efforts, but internally admit these efforts are incompatible with their own climate plans. And they have lobbied against climate laws and regulations they have publicly claimed to support, documents newly revealed by the committee show.
The tranche of subpoenaed communications were unveiled on Tuesday morning by Democrats on the House oversight committee before a Wednesday hearing.
“For decades, the fossil-fuel industry has known about the economic and climate harms of its products but has deceived the American public to keep collecting more than $600bn each year in subsidies while raking in record-breaking profits,” said Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, who chairs the committee.
…
In a 2019 memo to the CEO, for instance, an Exxon official suggested removing reference to the Paris accord from a document because referencing it “could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris agreement goals”.
And in February 2020, BP announced plans to become a net zero emissions company by 2050 or sooner and to “help the world get to net zero”. Private emails sent months before, however, indicate that company top brass may have doubted that goal was achievable.
The demand for a halt to oil and gas exploration is contained in Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s committee report.
… Perhaps most telling, despite its previous statements supportive of the Paris Agreement, BP’s CEO announced earlier this year that the company would increase oil and gas production from 2024 through 2027, citing increased global demand for energy.94 The increase in production is inconsistent with the Paris Agreement. Scientists are clear that to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, new and expanded oil and gas exploration must stop immediately. 95 MSCI found in its “Implied Temperature Rise” ratings that, if BP’s business plan was extrapolated to the global economy, the world would warm 3.1°C—similar to Exxon’s and Chevron’s ratings and well above Paris Agreement targets.96 The documents, actions, and analyses suggest that BP’s stated commitment to the Paris Agreement is not credible.
Like its peer companies, Shell also first expressed support for the Paris Agreement in 2015 and now claims that it “supports the more ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit the rise in global average temperature this century to 1.5° Celsius. ”97 However, MSCI still estimates that, if extrapolated across the economy, Shell’s activities would be consistent with 2.3°C of warming.98 In 2021, Shell promised to undertake a gradual decline of about 1–2 % a year in total oil production through 2030, including divestments.99 Then, last summer, Shell announced plans to boost fossil fuel production. 100 It now states that oil and gas production will remain stable until 2030 and that it will invest $40 billion in fossil fuel production between 2023 and 2035.101 Shell’s current oil and gas expansion plans are inconsistent with the Paris Agreement. Despite originally pledging to reach net zero by 2050 for its total emissions consistent with the Paris Agreement, Shell now concedes that the “2050 target is ‘currently outside our planning period.’”102Read more: https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/fossil_fuel_report1.pdf
Senator Whitehouse does make some valid points. I’m pretty disappointed by the behaviour of some oil companies, their weak mismanagement of this political confrontation with Democrats is doing nobody any good.
Whitehouse claims that Shell promised a 1-2% / annum drawdown in total oil production. I checked Senator Whitehouse’s reference to this promise, while this isn’t exactly what Shell said, I believe Senator Whitehouse’s interpretation of Shell’s public commitment is a reasonable interpretation, and I accept Senator Whitehouse’s criticism that some oil companies do not appear to have lived up to some of their public commitments.
But Senator Whitehouse’s claim that oil companies concealed their knowledge that climate change would have a catastrophic impact also does not stand up to scrutiny.
For example, Senator Whitehouse’s report rehashes tired claims about ancient internal memos, but the memos I have read in my opinion are not what Senator Whitehouse claims they are.
The memo, and bear in mind this was a private internal memo, is anything but certain that climate change will have catastrophic impact. For example, at the bottom of Page 4, continuing to the top of Page 5.
“There is currently no unambiguous evidence that the earth is warming. If the earth is on a warming trend, we’re not likely to detect it before 1995. This is about the earliest projection of when the temperature might rise the 0.5° needed to get beyond the range of normal temperature fluctuations. On the other hand, if climate modelling uncertainties have exaggerated the temperature rise, it is possible that a carbon dioxide induced “greenhouse effect” may not be detected until 2020 at the earliest”.
What is the next move in this ridiculous charade?
Obviously I’d like oil companies who have been trying to cosy up to the Democrats to up their game, stop leading politicians like Whitehouse with assurances they are onboard with Democrat climate initiatives, without following through on those assurances. This kind of behaviour severely weakens the position of oil companies, it makes oil companies look like liars. Such behaviour might even expose oil companies to legal liability, if green investors claim they suffered reputational damage because they were misled by false assurances that oil companies intended to switch to green energy.
But Senator Whitehouse’s apparent acceptance of claims that “new and expanded oil and gas exploration must stop immediately” as established fact is even more absurd than an oil company promising to get out of the oil business.
Senator Whitehouse, if you believe there is a viable alternative to fossil fuel, it is time for you to stop being such a hypocrite. If you truly believe oil and gas are on the brink of ruining the planet, that oil and gas companies are like tobacco companies, that renewables can replace oil and gas, then put your money where your mouth is, and push for an outright ban on oil and gas. Consult your scientists and tell us a hard deadline beyond which we cannot use oil and gas, and make that deadline law. Because without concrete action, all your words are just empty political posturing.
The proposed right to a “stable climate system” is nothing like any fundamental right ever recognized by the Supreme Court. The state of the climate is a public and generalized issue, and so interests in the climate are unlike the particularized personal liberty or personal privacy interests of individuals the Supreme Court has previously recognized as being protected by fundamental rights.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals grants Federal government’s petition for writ of mandamus in the case of Juliana v. United States, originally filed in 2015. Ruling excerpts are below in italics with my bolds.
In the underlying case, twenty-one plaintiffs (the Juliana plaintiffs) claim that—by failing to adequately respond to the threat of climate change—the government has violated a putative “right to a stable climate system that can sustain human life.” Juliana v. United States, No. 6:15-CV-01517-AA, 2023 WL 9023339, at *1 (D. Or. Dec. 29, 2023). In a prior appeal, we held that the Juliana plaintiffs lack Article III standing to bring such a claim. Juliana v. United States, 947 F.3d 1159, 1175 (9th Cir. 2020). We remanded with instructions to dismiss on that basis. Id. The district court nevertheless allowed amendment, and the government again moved to dismiss. The district court denied that motion, and the government petitioned for mandamus seeking to enforce our earlier mandate. We have jurisdiction to consider the petition. See 28 U.S.C. § 1651. We grant it.
In the prior appeal, we held that declaratory relief was “not substantially likely to mitigate the plaintiffs’ asserted concrete injuries.” Juliana, 947 F.3d at 1170. To the contrary, it would do nothing “absent further court action,” which we held was unavailable. Id. We then clearly explained that Article III courts could not “step into the[] shoes” of the political branches to provide the relief the Juliana plaintiffs sought. Id. at 1175. Because neither the request for declaratory relief nor the request for injunctive relief was justiciable, we “remand[ed] th[e] case to the district court with instructions to dismiss for lack of Article III standing.” Id. Our mandate was to dismiss.
The district court gave two reasons for allowing amendment. First, it concluded that amendment was not expressly precluded. Second, it held that intervening authority compelled a different result. We reject each. The first reason fails because we “remand[ed] . . . with instructions to dismiss for lack of Article III standing.” Id. Neither the mandate’s letter nor its spirit left room for amendment. See Pit River Tribe, 615 F.3d at 1079. The second reason the district court identified was that, in its view, there was an intervening change in the law. District courts are not bound by a mandate when a subsequently decided case changes the law. In re Molasky, 843 F.3d 1179, 1184 n.5 (9th Cir. 2016). The case the court identified was Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, which “ask[ed] whether an award of nominal damages by itself can redress a past injury.” 141 S. Ct. 792, 796 (2021). Thus, Uzuegbunam was a damages case which says nothing about the redressability of declaratory judgments. Damages are a form of retrospective relief. Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home v. W. Va. Dep’t of Health & Human Res., 532 U.S. 598, 608–09 (2001). Declaratory relief is prospective. The Juliana plaintiffs do not seek damages but seek only prospective relief. Nothing in Uzuegbunam changed the law with respect to prospective relief.
We held that the Juliana plaintiffs lack standing to bring their claims and told the district court to dismiss. Uzuegbunam did not change that. The district court is instructed to dismiss the case forthwith for lack of Article III standing, without leave to amend.
Background July 2023: Finally, a Legal Rebuttal on the Merits of Kids’ Climate Lawsuit
As reported last month, the Oregon activist judge invited the plaintiffs in Juliana vs US to reopen that case even after the Ninth Circuit shot it down. Now we have a complete and thorough Motion from the defendant (US government) to dismiss this newest amended complaint. Most interesting is the section under the heading starting on page 30. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
Plaintiffs’ Claims Fail on the Merits
Because Plaintiffs’ action fails at the jurisdictional threshold, the Ninth Circuit never reached—and this Court need not reach—the merits of the claims. . . Plaintiffs’ second amended complaint, which supersedes the first amended complaint, asserts the same claims that were brought in the first amended complaint, which this Court addressed in orders that the Ninth Circuit reversed. Defendants thus renew their objection that Plaintiffs’ claims fail on the merits and should be dismissed pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6).
A. There is no constitutional right to a stable climate system.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly instructed courts considering novel due process claims to “‘exercise the utmost care whenever . . . asked to break new ground in this field,’… lest the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause be subtly transformed” into judicial policy preferences. More specifically, the Supreme Court has “regularly observed that the Due Process Clause specially protects those fundamental rights and liberties which are, objectively, ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.’” Plaintiffs’ request that this Court recognize an implied fundamental right to a stable climate system contradicts that directive, because such a purported right is without basis in the Nation’s history or tradition.
The proposed right to a “stable climate system” is nothing like any fundamental right ever recognized by the Supreme Court. The state of the climate is a public and generalized issue, and so interests in the climate are unlike the particularized personal liberty or personal privacy interests of individuals the Supreme Court has previously recognized as being protected by fundamental rights. “[W]henever federal courts have faced assertions of fundamental rights to a ‘healthful environment’ or to freedom from harmful contaminants, they have invariably rejected those claims.”. Plaintiffs’ First Claim for Relief must be dismissed.
B. Plaintiffs fail to allege a cognizable state-created danger claim.
The First Claim for Relief must also be dismissed because the Constitution does not impose an affirmative duty to protect individuals, and Plaintiffs have failed to allege a cognizable claim under the “state-created danger” exception to that rule. As a general matter:
[The Due Process Clause] is phrased as a limitation on the State’s power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security. It forbids the State itself to deprive individuals of life, liberty, or property without “due process of law,” but its language cannot fairly be extended to impose an affirmative obligation on the State to ensure that those interests do not come to harm through other means.
Thus, the Due Process Clause imposes no duty on the government to protect persons from harm inflicted by third parties that would violate due process if inflicted by the government.
Plaintiffs contend that the government’s “deliberate actions” and “deliberate indifference” with regard to the dangers of climate change amount to a due process violation under the state-created danger exception.
First, Plaintiffs have identified no harms to their “personal security or bodily integrity” of the kind and immediacy that qualify for the state-created danger exception. . . But here, Plaintiffs allege that general degradation of the global climate has harmed their “dignity, including their capacity to provide for their basic human needs, safely raise families, practice their religious and spiritual beliefs, [and] maintain their bodily integrity” and has prevented them from “lead[ing] lives with access to clean air, water, shelter, and food.” Those types of harm are unlike the immediate, direct, physical, and personal harms at issue in the above-cited cases.
Second, Plaintiffs identify no specific government actions—much less government actors—that put them in such danger. Instead, Plaintiffs contend that a number of (mostly unspecified) agency actions and inactions spanning the last several decades have exposed them to harm. This allegation of slowly-recognized, long-incubating, and generalized harm by itself conclusively distinguishes their claim from all other state-created danger cases recognized by the Ninth Circuit.
Third, Plaintiffs do not allege that government actions endangered Plaintiffs in particular. . . As explained above, Plaintiffs’ asserted injuries arise from a diffuse, global phenomenon that affects every other person in their communities, in the United States, and throughout the world.
For all these reasons, there is no basis for finding a violation of Plaintiffs’ due process right under the state-created danger doctrine, and Plaintiffs’ corresponding claim must be dismissed.
C. No federal public trust doctrine creates a right to a stable climate system.
Plaintiffs’ Fourth Claim for Relief, asserting public trust claims, should be dismissed for two independent reasons. First, any public trust doctrine is a creature of state law that applies narrowly and exclusively to particular types of state-owned property not at issue here. That doctrine has no application to federal property, the use and management of which is entrusted exclusively to Congress. . .Consequently, there is no basis for Plaintiffs’ public trust claim against the federal government under federal law.
Second, the “climate system” or atmosphere is not within any conceivable federal public trust.
1. No public trust doctrine binds the federal government.
Plaintiffs rely on an asserted public trust doctrine for the proposition that the federal government must “take affirmative steps to protect” “our country’s life-sustaining climate system,” which they assert the government holds in trust for their benefit. But because any public trust doctrine is a matter of state law only, public trust claims may not be asserted against the federal government under federal law. . . The Supreme Court has without exception treated public trust doctrine as a matter of state law with no basis in the United States Constitution.
2. Any public trust doctrine would not apply to the “climate system” or the atmosphere.
Independently, any asserted public trust doctrine does not help Plaintiffs here. Public trust cases have historically involved state ownership of specific types of natural resources, usually limited to submerged and submersible lands, tidelands, and waterways. . . The climate system or atmosphere is unlike any resource previously deemed subject to a public trust. It cannot be owned and, due to its ephemeral nature, cannot remain within the jurisdiction of any single government. No court has held that the climate system or atmosphere is protected by a public trust doctrine. Indeed, the concept has been widely rejected.
For all these reasons, the Court should dismiss Plaintiffs’ Fourth Claim for Relief.
Three and a half years into the Biden Administration, and to an ordinary citizen on the ground it might seem like not that much has changed as to energy. Despite hundreds of government actions and initiatives in an all-of-government regulatory onslaught to transform the energy economy, the important things have been remarkably stable. Production of oil and gas are actually up, and prices increases have been relatively modest — far less than one might have anticipated from the extreme regulatory hostility to production.
Three and a half years into the Biden Administration, and to an ordinary citizen on the ground it might seem like not that much has changed as to energy. Despite hundreds of government actions and initiatives in an all-of-government regulatory onslaught to transform the energy economy, the important things have been remarkably stable. Production of oil and gas are actually up, and prices increases have been relatively modest — far less than one might have anticipated from the extreme regulatory hostility to production. The percentage of what is called “primary energy” (that is, energy for everything, not just electricity) coming from fossil fuels has remained nearly unchanged. EIA data here for 2022 (latest I can find) show about 79% of U.S. primary energy from fossil fuels, barely changed since Biden took office, and indeed very stable for decades.
Perhaps this situation of stable energy production and consumption results because it reflects what markets and consumers want and need to satisfy their demand for energy. So do you think that the hyperactive regulators might just relax and let the consumers have what they want?
Unfortunately, that is not how this works. Even as the energy producers and consumers have figured out endless workarounds to avoid the fossil fuel suppression that the Bidenauts attempt to impose, the little regulatory tyrants have been busy preparing new bouts of punitive restrictions. Last week saw a round of some of the most sweeping regulatory edicts yet. The regulators really plan to put the people in their place this time.
In the new round, the regulators have gotten farther and farther away from anything realistic, anything consistent with the laws of physics or thermodynamics, anything that might actually work. We are now well into the world of fantasy and delusion.
On last Thursday (April 25), the Administration, via the EPA, announced a suite of no fewer than four final rules “to Reduce Pollution from Fossil Fuel-Fired Power Plants.”Essentially, this is the replacement for the Obama Administration’s so-called “Clean Power Plan,” that ordered a complete re-do of the electricity generation system to gradually shutter fossil fuel plants and replace them with unworkable “renewables.” That Plan got struck down by the Supreme Court in June 2022 for being far beyond anything the EPA was authorized to do under its statutes.
So here is the new Rule covering the comparable subject. The title is “New Source Performance Standards for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from New, Modified, and Reconstructed Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units; Emission Guidelines for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Existing Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units; and Repeal of the Affordable Clean Energy Rule.”The document is 1020 pages long because, hey, we’re the EPA, and anything worth doing around here deserves a Rule of at least a thousand pages.
And how does this new Rule achieve the goal of reducing “greenhouse gas emissions”? You could probably spend all week trying to read the thing without ever figuring that out. EPA’s press release makes the following claim:
“EPA’s final Clean Air Act standards for existing coal-fired and new natural gas-fired power plants limit the amount of carbon pollution covered sources can emit, based on proven and cost-effective control technologies that can be applied directly to power plants.”
And what is the “proven and cost-effective control mechanism” they are talking about? The AP summarizes it here in a few words:
Coal-fired power plants would be forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a rule issued Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency.
It’s the “capture of smokestack emissions” — otherwise known as carbon capture and storage, or CCS. I had a post last August at the time this Rule had been proposed and comments were being received. In my August post I highlighted some of the comments, including those from the states of Ohio and West Virginia. Those comments made mincemeat of any possible claim that CCS technology was either “proven” or “cost-effective.” Not only has it never been proven, but it’s impossible for it ever to work economically. There are many long quotes from comments in that post. Here are just a few.
A study of 263 carbon-capture-and-sequestration projects undertaken between 1995 and 2018 found that the majority failed and 78% of the largest projects were cancelled or put on hold. After the study was published in May 2021, the only other coal plant with a carbon-capture-and-sequestration attachment in the world, Petra Nova, shuttered after facing 367 outages in its three years of operation. . . . [T]his [SaskPower] facility is the world’s only [remaining] operating commercial carbon capture facility at a coal-fired power plant. And it has never achieved its maximum capacity. It also battled significant technical issues throughout 2021—to the point that the plant idled the equipment for weeks at a time. As a result, the plant achieved less than 37% carbon capture that year despite having an official target of 90% . . . .
Take efficiency to start. CCS units run on power, too. An owner can get that power from the plant itself. But this approach makes the plant less efficient by increasing its “parasitic load”—and CCS more than triples combustion turbines’ normal parasitic load. . . . This is the cause the Wyoming study analyzed that showed installing CCS technology would devastate plants’ heat rates and lower net plant efficiency by 36%.
There is endless more of same. The fact is that CCS technology is neither “proven” nor “cost-effective.” It is nowhere after 30 years of trying because it cannot be done economically. It cannot be done economically because it is, in effect, a war against the Second Law of Thermodynamics. To capture more and more of the CO2 from the plant takes more and more of the plant’s output of energy, until in the limiting case you use all the energy of the plant and still some small amount of the CO2 escapes. The whole idea of CCS is to avoid having the disorder of the universe increase by the method of putting sufficient energy into trying. Won’t ever work. See also, perpetual motion machines.
Well, the sensible comments have all been rejected and EPA has just gone ahead and done what it was always planning to do, which is to order up something that can’t ever work economically and can only result in forcing the closure of an energy system that works without any idea of something realistic to replace it.
The deadlines for this start around 2030. Most likely between now and then either the Supreme Court will strike this down, or we’ll get a Republican administration that will sweep it all away. In the meantime we have completely ignorant and tyrannical regulators ordering up an energy system that can’t possibly work and heedless of the enormous destruction that they will likely cause if not stopped.
And that’s only part of what these fools were up to last week on the energy front. Here from Wednesday (April 24) is a “Fact Sheet” issued by the White House on another totally delusional effort: “Biden-Harris Administration Sets First-Ever National Goal of Zero-Emissions Freight Sector, Announces Nearly $1.5 Billion to Support Transition to Zero-Emission Heavy-duty Vehicles.”
I’ve got some news for them: the freight transportation sector (trucks and railroads) is not going to convert to electricity any time soon. At least this announcement was not a regulation mandating the conversion, but only the supposed setting of a “national goal,” with no idea of how it could possibly be achieved or at what cost. The $1.5 billion mentioned is an irrelevant rounding error of a figure that maybe could buy 10,000 new electric trucks (in a sector with at least 3 million existing non-electric ones), and the 10,000 trucks would be mostly useless for the purposes in question.
These people become more and more detached from reality with each passing day. They seem to have no idea how much damage they are doing, and they don’t care a bit. Somehow they have convinced themselves that they are “saving the planet,” when if they could do even a little arithmetic they would know that their efforts cannot possibly move the needle on that effort. It’s just another week in the Biden Administration energy clown show.
Here’s a great short video for those who like to think science is settled on global warming/climate change, as only one example of hubris despite our limited understanding of natural phenomena. Further on is a discussion of the climate system we see as chaotic, another way of saying its behavior surpasses our understanding.
Here’s a great short video for those who like to think science is settled on global warming/climate change, as only one example of hubris despite our limited understanding of natural phenomena. Further on is a discussion of the climate system we see as chaotic, another way of saying its behavior surpasses our understanding.
Readers here will know that I report frequently on the changes in Arctic ice extents during the year. So I was impressed to learn about fundamental mysteries underlying even this ordinary process. We do know a lot about the phase change of liquid water into ice. And we have a theoretical law that is predictable, but only when water is absolutely pure, i.e. only H2O with no gases or impurities dissolved in the sample. As the researcher explains, almost all of the water in nature has impurities and thus parts of the process are still beyond our scientific knowledge.
Our Chaotic Climate System
h/t tom0mason for inspiring this post, including his comment below
Foucault’s pendulum in the Panthéon, Paris
The Pendulum is Settled Science
I attended North Phoenix High School (Go Mustangs!) where students took their required physics class from a wild and crazy guy. Decades later alumni who don’t remember his name still reminisce about “the crazy science teacher with the bowling ball.”
To demonstrate the law of conservation of energy, he required each and every student to stand on a ladder in one corner of the classroom. Attached to a hook in the center of the rather high ceiling was a rope with a bowling ball on the other end. The student held the ball to his/her nose and then released it, being careful to hold still afterwards.
The 16 pound ball traveled majestically diagonally across the room and equally impressively returned along the same path. The proof of concept was established when the ball stopped before hitting your nose (though not by much). In those days we learned to trust science and didn’t need to go out marching to signal some abstract virtue.
The equations for pendulums are centuries old and can predict the position of the ball at any point in time based on the mass of the object, length of the rope and starting position.
Pictured above is the currently operating Foucault pendulum that exactly follows these equations. While it had long been known that the Earth rotates, the introduction of the Foucault pendulum in 1851 was the first simple proof of planetary rotation in an easy-to-see experiment. Today, Foucault pendulums are popular displays in science museums and universities.
What About the Double Pendulum?
Trajectories of a double pendulum
A comment by tom0mason at alerted me to the science demonstrated by the double compound pendulum, that is, a second pendulum attached to the ball of the first one. It consists entirely of two simple objects functioning as pendulums, only now each is influenced by the behavior of the other.
Lo and behold, you observe that a double pendulum in motion produces chaotic behavior. In a remarkable achievement, complex equations have been developed that can and do predict the positions of the two balls over time, so in fact the movements are not truly chaotic, but with considerable effort can be determined. The equations and descriptions are at Wikipedia Double Pendulum
Long exposure of double pendulum exhibiting chaotic motion (tracked with an LED)
But here is the kicker, as described in tomomason’s comment:
If you arrive to observe the double pendulum at an arbitrary time after the motion has started from an unknown condition (unknown height, initial force, etc) you will be very taxed mathematically to predict where in space the pendulum will move to next, on a second to second basis. Indeed it would take considerable time and many iterative calculations (preferably on a super-computer) to be able to perform this feat. And all this on a very basic system of known elementary mechanics.
And What about the Climate?
This is a simple example of chaotic motion and its unpredictability. How predictable is our climate with so many variables and feedbacks, some known some unknown? Consider that this planet’s weather/climate system is chaotic in nature with many thousands (millions?) of loosely coupled variables and dependencies, and many of these variables have very complex feedback features within them.
Hurricane Gladys, photographed from orbit by Apollo 7 in 1968 (Photo: NASA)
Summary
To quote the IPCC:
The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.
But as the IPCC emphasizes, the range for future projections remains enormous. The central question is “climate sensitivity” — the amount of warming that accompanies a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As of its Fifth Assessment Report in 2013, the IPCC could estimate only that this sensitivity is somewhere between 1.5 and 4.5°C. Nor is science narrowing that range. The 2013 assessment actually widened it on the low end, from a 2.0–4.5°C range in the prior assessment. And remember, for any specific level of warming, forecasts vary widely on the subsequent environmental and economic implications.
For now, though, navigating the climate debate will require translating the phrase “climate denier” to mean “anyone unsympathetic to the most aggressive activists’ claims.” This apparently includes anyone who acknowledges meaningful uncertainty in climate models, adopts a less-than-catastrophic outlook about the consequences of future warming, or opposes any facet of the activist policy agenda. The activists will be identifiable as the small group continuing to shout “Denier!” The “deniers” will be identifiable as everyone else.
Climate System Summation
Esteemed climate scientist Richard Lindzen ends a very fine recent presentation (here) with this description of the climate system:
I haven’t spent much time on the details of the science, but there is one thing that should spark skepticism in any intelligent reader. The system we are looking at consists in two turbulent fluids interacting with each other. They are on a rotating planet that is differentially heated by the sun. A vital constituent of the atmospheric component is water in the liquid, solid and vapor phases, and the changes in phase have vast energetic ramifications. The energy budget of this system involves the absorption and reemission of about 200 watts per square meter. Doubling CO2 involves a 2% perturbation to this budget. So do minor changes in clouds and other features, and such changes are common. In this complex multifactor system, what is the likelihood of the climate (which, itself, consists in many variables and not just globally averaged temperature anomaly) is controlled by this 2% perturbation in a single variable? Believing this is pretty close to believing in magic. Instead, you are told that it is believing in ‘science.’ Such a claim should be a tip-off that something is amiss. After all, science is a mode of inquiry rather than a belief structure.
Flow Diagram for Climate Modeling, Showing Feedback Loops
The recent G7 communiqué on climate, energy, and environment policy is laden with the typical rhetoric and ambitious declarations that have come to characterize such international missives. Yet, beneath the surface of urgent calls and reaffirmed commitments lies a web of unaddressed complexities and overly optimistic goals that warrant a closer, more skeptical examination.
The recent G7 communiqué on climate, energy, and environment policy is laden with the typical rhetoric and ambitious declarations that have come to characterize such international missives. Yet, beneath the surface of urgent calls and reaffirmed commitments lies a web of unaddressed complexities and overly optimistic goals that warrant a closer, more skeptical examination.
The Triple Global Crisis: An Overarching Narrative
The G7 ministers open with a sweeping narrative about the “triple global crisis” of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, further exacerbated by desertification, land, soil and ocean degradation, water scarcity, drought, and deforestation. They assert:
“We reiterate our concerns on the gravity and urgency arising from the interlinked and mutually reinforcing global crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution as well as desertification, land, soil and ocean degradation and water scarcity, drought and deforestation which pose a global threat to sustainable development.”
This passage sets the stage for the G7’s ambitious agenda, framing these crises as cataclysmic and implying a direct linkage with human activity, particularly through emissions and environmental degradation. However, the complexity of these issues is significantly downplayed, and the narrative leans heavily on a presumption of consensus about the causes, trajectories, and solutions to these problems.
Unfeasible Goals and Lack of Clear Methodology
In addressing climate change, the G7’s goals are particularly lofty. They recommit to reaching greenhouse gas emissions net-zero by 2050, a target that has become a staple of international climate policy rhetoric. The communiqué states:
“We reaffirm our commitment to implement immediate, short- and medium-term concrete actions in this critical decade… including to reach greenhouse gas emissions net-zero by 2050 at the latest in order to keep a limit of 1.5°C temperature rise within reach.”
The practicality of such targets is laughable, considering the substantial gap between the current trajectory of national policies and the reductions needed to meet these goals. The plans rely heavily on yet-to-be-perfected technologies and massive socio-economic transformations that are fraught with their own sets of challenges and uncertainties.
The Economic and Social Implications of Green Policies
Economically, the shift toward a net-zero, circular, and climate-resilient economy entails profound changes in energy production, industry, and daily human activities. The G7 pledges to:
“Promote policies and measures including research and development of technologies for energy flexibility and storage, in particular for seasonal variability of energy consumption.”
The push towards renewable energy and the phasing out of fossil fuels, as outlined extensively in the communiqué, is not just a technological shift but also an economic one, impacting everything from energy prices to job markets in traditional sectors. The financial requirements for such a transition are immense, and the G7’s call for mobilizing financial resources from all sources underscores the anticipated economic burden.
Critical Voices and Alternative Views
Amidst these sweeping commitments, the voice of skepticism—that demands rigorous scientific scrutiny and cautious policy-making—is crucial. The G7’s reliance on projections and models necessitates a robust debate about the accuracy of these tools and the viability of their proposed solutions. As history has shown, large-scale policy shifts based on unverified predictive models can lead to unintended consequences that exacerbate the very problems they aim to solve.
Conclusion: A Call for Prudence and Realism
As the G7 advances its agenda, it is imperative that these policies are subject to continuous and rigorous scrutiny. The integration of stringent evaluation mechanisms and diverse perspectives from across scientific and economic spectrums will be essential.
Apart from politicization, arguably the biggest issue is that we have oversimplified both the climate change problem and its solution. The UN has framed climate change as a tame and simple problem, with an obvious solution that is demanded by the science.
I am delighted to be here this evening, to talk about my favorite topic – climate uncertainty and risk. To provide some context for climate uncertainty and risk, lets first consider the so-called climate certainties:
The Earth’s climate is warming
A warming climate is dangerous
We’re causing the warming by emitting CO2 from burning fossil fuels
We need to prevent dangerous climate change by eliminating CO2
These alleged certainties are associated with apocalyptic rhetoric from UN and our national leaders. Here are some of my favorites:
“The clock is ticking towards climate catastrophe” – Ban-Ki Moon, UN Secretary General
“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator” – Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General
“Climate change is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world” – Joe Biden, US President.
The UN Paris agreement targets NETZERO emissions by 2050 to keep warming to within 1.5 degrees. Policy makers and others are grappling with a number of issues in addressing the NETZERO challenge. These include the technical, economic & political feasibility, the priority of climate change relative to other problems, and unintended consequences of a rapid transition of our energy systems.
So how did we come to be between a rock and a hard place on the climate issue, where we are allegedly facing an existential threat. And the proposed solutions are both unpopular and infeasible? Well in a few words, we’ve put the policy cart before the scientific horse.
In the 1980’s, the UN Environmental Program was looking for a cause to push forward its agenda of eliminating fossil fuels and anti-Capitalism. With the help of a small number of well-positioned activist climate scientists, a 1988 UN conference in Toronto recommended that the world “reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 20% by the year 2005 as an initial global goal.” The implicit assumption was that the small amount of warming observed over the previous decade was caused by emissions, and that warming was dangerous.
1988 was the year that the UN established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or the IPCC. The first assessment from the IPCC in 1990 concluded that the recent warming was within the magnitude of natural variability. Well, that didn’t hinder the UN. They went ahead with the 1992 Treaty from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that was signed by 196 countries, to prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change caused by emissions.
The second IPCC assessment report in 1995 found pretty much the same thing as the first assessment report. However in the meeting with policy makers to write the summary, there was substantial pressure for a stronger finding. They came up with the word ‘discernible’, and then went back and changed the body of the report to be consistent. At that point, the IPCC lost any pretense of being independent or uninfluenced by politics. Apparently ‘discernible’ was sufficient to justify the 1977 Kyoto Protocol.
A number of leading scientists were deeply concerned about the policy-driven science of the IPCC. Pierre Morel, Director of the World Climate Research Programme, had this to say:
Mixing politics and science is inevitable on issues of high societal relevance, such as climate change. However, there are some really bad ways to do this, and we’re seeing all of these with the climate change issue. Policy makers misuse science by demanding scientific arguments for desired policies, funding a narrow range of projects that support preferred policies, and using science as a vehicle to avoid ‘hot potato’ policy issues. Scientists misuse policy-relevant science by playing power politics with their expertise, conflating expert judgment with evidence, entangling disputed facts with values, and intimidating scientists whose research interferes with their political agendas.
Apart from politicization, arguably the biggest issue is that we have oversimplified both the climate change problem and its solution. The UN has framed climate change as a tame and simple problem, with an obvious solution that is demanded by the science. The precautionary principle has been invoked, in context of speaking consensus to power. However, climate change is better characterized as a wicked problem, with great complexity and uncertainties, and clashing societal values. When viewed as a tame problem, the climate change problem is framed as being caused by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which can be solved by eliminating fossil fuel emissions. Both the problem and solution are included in a single frame, whereby the science demands this particular solution. This framing dominates the UN negotiations on climate change.
There’s another way to view the climate change problem and its solutions. This framing views climate change as a complex, wicked problem. This framing of the problem also includes natural causes for climate change such as the sun, volcanoes and slow circulations in the ocean. This framing is provisional, acknowledging that our understanding is incomplete and that there may be unknown processes influencing climate change. While the UN’s framing is about controlling the climate, this other framing acknowledges the futility of control, focusing on managing the basic human necessities of energy, water and food. Economic development supports these necessities while reducing our vulnerability to weather and climate extremes.
Wait a minute. Don’t 97% of climate scientists agree on all this? Doesn’t climate science demand that we urgently eliminate fossil fuel emissions? Here is what all scientists actually agree on:
Surface temperatures have increased since 1880
Humans are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere
Carbon Dioxide and other greenhouse gases have a warming effect on the planet.
However, there’s disagreement and uncertainty about the most consequential issues:
How much of the recent warming has been caused by humans
How much the planet will warm in the 21st century
Whether warming is ‘dangerous’
And whether urgently eliminating the use of fossil fuels will improve human well being
Nevertheless, we are endlessly fed the trope that 97% of climate scientists agree that warming is dangerous and that science demands urgent reductions in CO2 emissions.
So how did we come to the point where the world’s leaders and much of the global population think that we urgently need to reduce fossil fuel emissions in order to prevent bad weather? Not only have we misjudged the climate risk, but politicians and the media have played on our psychological fears of certain types of risks to amp up the alarm.
Psychologist Paul Slovic describes a suite of psychological characteristics that make risks feel more or less frightening, relative to the actual facts. In each of the risk pairs below, the second risk factor in bold is perceived to be worse than it actually is.
natural versus manmade risks
controllable versus uncontrollable risks
voluntary versus imposed risks
risks with benefits versus uncompensated risks
future versus immediate risks
equitable versus asymmetric distribution of risks.
For example, risks that are common, self-controlled and voluntary, such as driving a car, generate the least public apprehension. On the other hand, risks that are rare and imposed and lack potential upside, like terrorism, invoke the most dread.
Activist communicators emphasize the manmade aspects of climate change, the unfair burden of risks on poor people, and the more immediate risks of severe weather events. The recent occurrence of an infrequent event such as a hurricane or flood elevates perceptions of the risk of low probability events. This then translates into perceptions of overall climate change risk. And so, our perceptions of climate risk are being cleverly manipulated by propagandists.
In spite of the recent apocalyptic rhetoric, the climate “crisis” isn’t what it used to be. Circa 2013 with publication of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, the extreme emissions scenario RCP8.5 was regarded as the business-as-usual emissions scenario, with expected warming of 4 to 5 oC by 2100. Now there is growing acceptance that RCP8.5 is implausible, and the medium emissions scenario is arguably the current business-as-usual scenario according to recent reports issued by the Conference of the Parties since 2021. Only a few years ago, an emissions trajectory that followed the medium emissions with 2 to 3 oC warming was regarded as climate policy success. As limiting warming to 2 degrees seems to be in reach, the goal posts have been moved to reduce the warming target to 1.5 degrees
The most recent Conference of the Parties is working from an expected of warming of 2.4 degrees by 2100, and half of this warming has already occurred. Instead of acknowledging this good news, UN officials continue to amp up the apocalyptic rhetoric. The rationale for continuing to increase the alarm is that the impacts are worse than we thought, specifically with regards to extreme weather. However, for nearly all of these extreme weather events, it’s difficult to identify any role for human-caused climate change in increasing either their intensity or frequency. Even the latest IPCC assessment report acknowledges this. Nevertheless, attributing extreme weather and climate events to global warming is now the primary motivation for the rapid transition away from fossil fuels.
This rationale commits the logical fallacy of conflation. There are two separate risk categories for climate change. The first is the slow creep of global warming, with impacts on sea level rise and glacier melting. The second is extreme weather events and interannual climate variability such as El Nino, which have little if anything to do with global warming.
The urgency of addressing emergency risk is being used to motivate the urgency of reducing the incremental risk from emissions. Reducing emissions will have little to no impact on extreme weather events. Ironically, attempts to reduce emissions are exacerbating energy poverty and unreliability, which increases emergency risk. One would logically think that if warming is less than we thought but impacts are worse, that priorities would shift away from CO2 mitigation and towards adaptation. However, that hasn’t been the case.
Underlying all this is an important moral dilemma that is implicit in climate policy debates. There’s a conflict between possibly preventing future harm from climate change, versus helping currently living humans. The UN policies are targeted at possibly preventing future harm. However, the UN climate policies are hampering the UN Sustainable Development Goals that focus on currently living humans.
In 2015, the world’s nations agreed on a set of 17 interlinked Sustainable Development Goals to support future global development. These goals include, in ranked order:
No poverty
No hunger
Affordable and clean energy
And development of Industry, innovation & infrastructure
Climate action
Why should one element of Goal 13, related to net-zero emissions, trump these higher priority goals? International funds for development are being redirected away from reducing poverty, and towards reducing carbon emissions. This redirection of funds is exacerbating the harms of weather hazards and climate change for the world’s poor. Efforts to restrict the production of oil and gas is hampering the #1 goal of poverty reduction in Africa, and is restricting Africa’s efforts to develop and utilize its own oil and gas resources. The #2 goal of no hunger is being worsened by climate mitigation efforts, including restrictions on livestock and fertilizer. Industry and infrastructure require steel and cement, which are currently produced by fossil fuels.
Neglecting these sustainability objectives in favor of rapidly reducing CO2 emissions is slowing down or even countering progress on the most important Sustainable Development Goals. This statement from a recent UN Progress Report particularly struck me: “Shockingly, the world is back at hunger levels not seen since 2005, and food prices remain higher in more countries than in the period 2015–2019.”
Leading risk scientists and philosophers, who don’t have a particular dog in the climate fight, have expressed their concerns about how all this has evolved and where its headed. Norwegian risk scientist Terje Aven has this to say:
“The current thinking and approaches have been shown to lack scientific rigor, the consequence being that climate change risk and uncertainties are poorly presented. The climate change field needs to strengthen its risk science basis, to improve the current situation.”
Political philosopher Thomas Wells states:
“The global climate change debate has gone badly wrong. Many mainstream environmentalists are arguing for the wrong actions and for the wrong reasons. And so long as they continue to do so, they put all our futures in jeopardy.”
The diagram below summarizes the UN view of climate risk. I call this the “climate is everything” view, based on a recent cover story in Time magazine. Under this perspective, climate change is a big umbrella that subsumes extreme weather and energy policy, and causes many of the world’s problems. The most recent problem that I spotted is that climate change is harming Indonesian trans sex workers. Go figure. The “climate is everything” perspective is reinforced by a broader view, espoused by the UN and others, that the environment is fragile, there are too many people, capitalism is bad, and therefore we need global control of all these issues.
The following figure provides a different view, that is more consistent with a human centric perspective and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Further, this view is consistent with human flourishing and thriving, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Most importantly, this view regards climate change, extreme weather, and energy policy as three different issues, albeit with a small overlap. Energy Policy is regarded as primary, since abundant energy is needed to manage whatever challenges from climate change and extreme weather that we may face in the future. And to spur human development – energy is the motive power that pushes the frontier of human knowledge and advancement.
Once we separate the incremental risk of warming from the emergency risks associated with extreme weather, the problems and their solutions become more tractable. My book Climate Uncertainty and Risk argues for a reset of climate and energy policy, that is consistent with the human centric perspective. First, we need to face some inconvenient truths about climate risk.
Risks from climate change and extreme weather are fundamentally local. The risks are entwined with natural climate variability, land use, & societal vulnerabilities. Blaming weather catastrophes on fossil fuel emissions deflects from the real causes of our vulnerabilities, which includes poor risk management & bad governance. And finally, many people fear a future without cheap, abundant fuel and continued economic expansion, far more than they fear climate change.
There are also inconvenient truths about the UN climate & energy policies. The urgency of meeting NETZERO targets is causing us to make bad choices about future energy systems.
Wind & solar power is impairing grid reliability and increasing the cost of electricity. If we somehow reach net zero by 2050, we will notice little if any change in the climate before 2100, relative to natural climate variability. We can’t control the climate or extreme weather events by eliminating emissions.
Given that the UN has mischaracterized climate risk, it will come as no surprise that we are mismanaging climate risk. The left-hand side of the diagram summarizes elements of the UN approach to climate risk management. The right-hand side of the diagram is a perspective that I describe in my book, informed by modern risk science. This includes elements of what has been called Climate Pragmatism and Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty
On the left, we have a tame problem, while on the right we have a wicked problem
On the left, we have global problem and a global solution, while on the right, problems and solutions are regional
The left hand side seeks to control the problem, while the right hand side seeks to understand the problem and manage its impacts
On the left, the focus is agreeing on the problem, while right focuses on agreeing on no-regrets solutions
On the left, there is a focus on consensus and speaking consensus to power, while the right hand side acknowledges uncertainties and disagreements
On the left we have the precautionary principle, while on the right we have robust decision making
The UN strategy imposes targets and deadlines, whereas the strategy on the right uses adaptive management that is flexible, and incorporates new understandings as they become available.
In terms of politics, the UN strategy is deeply polarizing, whereas the strategy on the right seeks to secure the common interest of communities.
Once you separate energy policy from climate policy, the way forward for energy policy is fairly straightforward. A more pragmatic approach to dealing with climate change drops the timelines and emissions targets, in favor of accelerating energy innovation. The goal is abundant, secure, reliable, cheap & clean energy.
The energy transition can be facilitated by: accepting that the world will continue to need & desire much more energy; developing a range of options for energy technologies; removing the restrictions of near-term targets for CO2 emissions; and using the next 2-3 decades as a learning period with intelligent trial & error. All technologies should be evaluated holistically for abundance, reliability, lifecycle costs and environmental impacts, land and resource use. Without focusing on CO2 emissions, odds are that this strategy will lead to cleaner energy by the end of the 21st century than by urgently attempting to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar power.
The wickedness of the climate problem is related to the duality of science and politics in the face of an exceedingly complex problem. There are two common but inappropriate ways of mixing science and politics. The first is scientizing policy, which deals with intractable political conflict by transforming the political issues into scientific ones. The problem with this is that science is not designed to answer questions about how the world ought to be, which is the domain of politics. The second is politicization of science, whereby scientific research is influenced or manipulated in support of a political agenda. We have seen both of these inappropriate ways of mixing science and politics in dealing with climate change.
There’s a third way, which is known as “wicked science.” Wicked science is tailored to the dual scientific and political natures of wicked societal problems. Wicked science uses approaches from complexity science and systems thinking in a context that engages with decision makers and other stakeholders. Wicked science requires a transdisciplinary approach that treats uncertainty as of paramount importance. Effective use of wicked science requires that policy makers acknowledge that control is limited and the future is unknown. Effective politics provides room for dissent and disagreement about policy options, and includes a broad range of stakeholders.
My book Climate Uncertainty and Risk provides a framework for rethinking the climate change problem, the risks we are facing, and how we can respond. This book encompasses my own philosophy for navigating the wicked problem of climate change. As such, this book provides a single slice through the wicked terrain. By acknowledging uncertainties in the context of better risk management and decision-making frameworks, and with abundant energy, there’s a broad path forward for humanity to thrive in the 21st century.
Thank you
JC remarks
This was a very enjoyable evening, and I very much appreciate the invitation from GWPF
You must be logged in to post a comment.