Tag: Climate Studies

From Watts Up With That?

By Gary Abernathy

This article was originally published at The Empowerment Alliance and is re-published here with permission. 

Before apparently backing off the idea this week, the U.S. Department of Justice had announced the creation of an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to “provide a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare” from the government.

While the original idea for such a fund might have been on shaky ground – with criticism coming from both parties – establishing a way to compensate Americans who were victims of the weaponization of the Obama and Biden administrations’ energy policies would be entirely legitimate.

The time is ripe for a serious accounting of the harm done to Americans by climate hysteria, considering how many mea culpas are now emerging. The latest to line up with at least some nod to truth and accuracy is the New York Times, the leading “mainstream” media proponent of climate change nonsense.

The Times last week produced a story headlined, “Why Scientists Retired the Dire Climate Scenario Used for Over a Decade.” The story reported that an international team of researchers has “abandoned a dire — and often criticized — high-emissions scenario known as RCP8.5 that has been prominently cited in thousands of climate studies over the past decade. The authors said the scenario was now ‘implausible’ given recent energy trends.”

The story went on to acknowledge that “the new paper has raised questions about whether some of the risks of climate change have been poorly communicated or overstated in years past and how best to think about those risks going forward.” In other words, the “climate deniers” – as the far-left media derisively describes anyone who has questioned the outlandishly dire gloom-and-doom climate scenarios – have turned out to be right.

Of course, the New York Times being the New York Times, it was still necessary to claim that “the majority of climate scientists still say global warming is a serious problem, and that even more plausible, medium-emissions scenarios can carry grave dangers.” And some true believers are claiming that the revised, less panicky outlook is because the fight against fossil fuels has been so effective. Sure.

But in between the occasional “we should still be a little nervous” qualifiers, the lengthy New York Times piece contained numerous stunning confessions both in regard to the climate cult movement in general and the newspaper specifically. For instance:

• “For years, critics of the high-emissions scenario had argued that it was always unrealistic, in part because it envisioned that countries would burn coal at absurdly high rates.” No kidding.
• “Predicting emissions over the next century is extremely difficult, since so much depends on future economic growth and technological changes.” Just like so many of us have been saying (or screaming) for years.
• “The high-emissions pathway wasn’t meant to be a prediction, but more of a ‘worst case,’ said Detlef van Vuuren, a climate scientist at Utrecht University…” That’s not the way it was sold.
• “News stories about climate research often emphasized results based on RCP8.5 as a picture of what the world can expect unless countries slash their emissions, which isn’t right, either.” Oh, now you tell us.
• “…the highest estimated damages based on RCP8.5 were a big focus and got more attention, including in The New York Times [emphasis mine].” That was not by design?

The story goes on to note examples of scientists urging caution, but “many policymakers and researchers continued to emphasize the high-emissions scenario for years afterward,” as one think tank critic said. The story quotes several people who now say that the worst-case scenario was not intended to be presented as realistic.

And yet, it was. It was used to demand radical changes. To set unrealistic targets for transitioning from fossil fuels to “alternatives.” To throw billions in tax dollars into subsidies for solar and wind in the name of saving the planet while strangling the life out of the most affordable, reliable and effective energy sources available. To shame anyone doubting the logic and the predicted severity of manmade climate change.

The authors of the new study are now presenting revised predictions that imagine worst-case scenarios “that could lead to similarly high estimated levels of warming later in the 22nd century (but) they’ve added a warning that these are not business-as-usual pathways.”

Read that carefully. The worst-case scenarios could lead to dangerous warming levels “later in the 22nd century.” Not 12 years from now, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) (and others) have warned. Not 30 years from now. Not in our lifetimes or the lifetimes of most of our children or grandchildren. And even that prediction is unlikely to happen, they admit.

But saying “I told you so” is not enough. The admission that we have been lied to over and over and over cannot be the end of it. As they used to say in the old days, “We demand satisfaction!” And citizens deserve it.

It’s now time for a reckoning. After years of lectures from government leaders (especially during the Obama and Biden administrations) insisting we needed to spend billions of dollars to fight the Big Bad Climate Boogeyman, we must insist on three things.

First, the money directed toward far-left climate-related mandates and projects (EV mandates, carbon penalties and fees, hundreds of thousands of acres of solar panels replacing cropland, no more gas appliances) must be immediately halted.

Second, damages to the American people who fell for the worst-case global warming scenarios or were forced by federal or state government to change their energy-related lifestyles are entirely warranted.

Finally, as often stated here, enacting the Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security Act (ARC-ES), either by congressional action or White House executive order, would ensure that the disastrous initiatives undertaken in the throes of climate hysteria can never be repeated. Americans deserve to be reassured that we will never go down that path again.

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing opinion columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.