Part 4
By David Boleneus
Our State Colliding with Climate Insanity?
5.0 POLITICIANS SPEAK
5.1 To Protect “Eight emerging markets" from Climate — India, China, Indonesia, Kenya, South Africa, UAE, Nigeria, and South Africa [South Africa repeated] — will together need $94.8 trillion in transition finance from developed markets if they are to meet PARIS climate goals. “India will need investments worth $12.4 trillion, nearly half of U.S. GDP, from developed nations to help its economy transition to net-zero carbon emissions by 2060, according to Standard Chartered Plc.”
Because politicians are in charge, and technically or scientifically untrained the situation worsens. The public cost to abate climate change and the method proposed are conveniently never mentioned. What is known is there is no experience, so one might ask why embark on a program with outcomes unknown, or benefits and risks unknown? Statements claiming we must address Climate Change (or overcome, subdue, end or battle it) are blatantly wrong, and for the simple reason there is not climate change or global warming or a climate that humans can affect, according to Paul Homewood(1). Taking action today remains unnecessary but one hears only ever shrill warnings of doom from the news outlets.
5.2 Suffering and Human Costs Coming with RPS. Ten states with RPGs Renewable portfolio standards project reaching net zero emissions by 2045-2050, including Washington State while five other states plan to reduce emissions by 50%.(2) To date no country or province has reached a 25% reduction without compelling electric shock upon customers to pay $0.35 to $0.48 per kilowatt-hour driven by high-cost electricity from solar PV or wind turbines. Germany, for example this year recorded a substantial increase in greenhouse emissions despite efforts to expand renewable systems and must build new coal fired power plants to maintain an adequate level of electrical supply. Germany's energy minister says more subsidy driven electricity cost will lead to de-industrializing its country while emissions rise and it will build several new coal-fired plants.
Measuring the cost of energy consumption against GDP losses as propose by Renewable Portfolio Standards with the intent of reducing emissions by 70% or 90% below 1990 levels will reduce gross domestic product, GDP, respectively, by 21% or a loss of $61 trillion at the 70% level to 24%, or a loss of $72 trillion at the 90% level.
Energy poverty at 30% is rampant among low income groups in Ontario with electricity costs including surcharges rising 6.7 times faster than CPI from $0.09 to $0.36/kwh by 2016 after passing its Green Energy Act against advice of engineers. Disconnects by HydroOne rose to 62,730 customers in 3 years in Ontario after Parliament passed its Green Energy Act. Ontario customer choice becomes food for children or electricity.(3-7) States or countries that compel portfolio standards are blind to the potential GDP losses that may occur. The RPS, clean energy, renewables are untested. Clean energy may easily rise to unaffordable levels. There is no promise of benefit because any benefit claim is a political mirage. States cannot say that an emergency condition will not result by blindly following RPS.
6.0 NOBEL LAUREATES IN PHYSICS, OTHER SCIENTISTS SPEAK OUT
6.1 Nobel scientists speak. Two scientists who are recipients of the Nobel Prizes in Physics have publicly stated that climate change/global warming cannot happen and is impossible. Others show clear inability for carbon dioxide, methane other greenhouse emissions too weak to alter climate. Water is the true greenhouse actor. Two Nobel laureates and career professors in physics are Dr. Ivar Giaever, Rennsalaer Polytech, Troy NY(8)and Dr. Richard Feynman of California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. Dr. Giaever calls the President "delusional" for claim of global warming, ridiculous, dead wrong. Dr. Feynman laughs, says the issue is so simple that a fifth grader can prove it false using the scientific method.
CLINTEL Lecture William Happer in Amsterdam (9) - Another distinguished scientist of our time, Dr William Happer, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Princeton University, and former Science Advisor to President Trump, speaks to a CLINTEL lecture. Dr Happer provides evidence to show that carbon dioxide is powerless to affect climate or wholly incapable to affect temperature (Video). The reason for this is: Carbon dioxide's power is far past exhaustion, by 1,000 times, to affect a change in temperature. And for methane the same is true. The power of methane to affect a change in temperature is 100 times less than carbon dioxide.(10-12)
Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen, atmospheric scientist Massachusetts Institute of Technology in landmark papers with co-authors Y.S. Choi (Geophysical Research Letters, v. 36, 2009,2011) proved the greenhouse effect does not operate in atmosphere by comparing ocean heat lost to heat moving to space from the upper atmosphere. Data and observations comes from sea surface temperatures provided by floating buoys operated by NOAA in the ocean and current satellite data from CERES and ERBE orbiting satellites. Lindzen says there is not a climate feedback, the key factor the IPCC uses to validate its global circulation models saying it proves warming and the greenhouse effect.
Emeritus Professor of Physics, Dr. Freeman Dyson, Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the physicist who replaced Albert Einstein when the university sought the most brilliant physicist on the planet. Dyson says of climatologists who use models to predict climate, "I just think they don't know or understand the climate". "To get the apocalyptic projections to trumpet claims of warming, effects of clouds in models need to be oversimplified and to include assumptions about CO2 that just are not true". Their predictions of doom simply cannot be taken seriously.
Scientist refuse to accept deception on global warming, and climate. 31,000 scientists signed a petition in 2015 to Pres. Obama, including 665 from Washington State, stating that the 1997 Kyoto Global Warming agreement to limit greenhouse gases is invalid and that limited greenhouse gases hinders both mankind and advancements in science and technology and that the CO2 is beneficial.(13)
7.0 BENEFITS and COSTS COMPARED.
Recent estimates of the cost to mitigate climate change were compiled in Climate Change Reconsidered – Fossil Fuels (CCR) by more than 70 scientists for a consortium of the Science and Public Policy Project, NIPCC, and the Center for Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. (14)
Their report speaks to Integrated Assessment Report created and used to declare the social cost of carbon (carbon is carbon dioxide) in chapter 7 and Benefits and Costs in chapter 8, Cost-benefit analysis. The following are comments copied from this report.
7.1 Mitigation Costs. Costs to mitigate climate change come from a close examination of the Cap and Trade bill considered by yet rejected by the US Senate in 2009, the UK's Climate Change Act passed in 2009 by the British Parliament, Maryland's plan to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030, the carbon trading scheme enacted by the European Union, California's cap and trade Act passed in 2006, the Thanet wind array along the English coast, Australia's carbon trading scheme of 2011, and other gesture political schemes such as locating a wind turbine alongside each elementary school, and London's bicycle hire scheme. The 2-part Table below summarizes costs and benefits by equating each of the programs on a common basis to allow comparisons and to demonstrate the immense costs and the little or no value of any climate mitigation scheme. Each also sheds light on the strenuous programs passed into law in Washington State's Clean Energy Transformation, Climate Commitment and Cap and Trade Acts which involve both carbon trading, and a 100% reduction to net zero emissions by 2045. The least costly of the schemes is Australia's carbon trading scheme of 2011 with a 40-year cost of $520 billion or same as $25,000 per person, causing Australia a loss of 5% in gross domestic product, although its effectiveness is the most expensive at cost of $2,200,000 billion ($2.2 quadrillion) in order to mitigate 1oC (1.8oF) of warming making it 60 times more costly than doing nothing against climate. Second, the Maryland program to cut emissions by 90% below 1990 emission levels by 2030 (compare this to Washington's 100% cut greenhouse emissions to reach net zero) records a highest cost per person at $320,000, or three times larger than the US-Senate 2009 Cap and Trade bill rejected as a "too high cost" has a 40 year cost of $7,300 billion, results in a 500% loss in GDP, is 1,150 times more costly than doing nothing and with overall cost of $3,000,000 billion ($3 quad.) in order to mitigate 1oC warming.
An alternative method to express cost is by a cost-benefit model. Each ton of CO2 emitted will create an average $5,645 economic benefit in GDP terms for the United State. Data for Washington shows this benefit was $7,000 in GDP per ton CO2 in 2018, and rising at an accelerating rate from $1,000 in 1980, while emissions were falling.(15) This benefit is 32 to 48 times larger than estimated by the IPCC and is a benefit that could be lost if renewable energies cannot replace fossil fuels. If renewables cannot replace fossil fuels the GDP loss will increase 500% beyond this estimate. The overall benefit-cost analysis shows that fossil fuels provide a benefit that is 50-fold to 500-fold benefit above their costs. (16 17)
Benefits. The benefit-cost or action/inaction ratio from reducing use of fossil fuels as recommended by IPCC are between 32 and 48 times more costly than the benefits that might accrue from reduction of carbon dioxide. Recommendations by Obama-era Interagency Working Group IWG in 2015 (ended by Trump but revived by Biden) is 73 to 79 times more costly than the benefits that might accrue by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide.
8.0 OBAMA ACTIONS DISGUST
If renewable energies are unable to entirely replace fossil fuels the cost would soar to 162 times larger than the benefit never realized from reducing emissions of carbon dioxide. Reducing emissions means dramatically slowed economic growth. Reducing emissions by 90% below 1990 emissions would lower growth of gross domestic product by $72 trillion or eight times the GDP (2015) of the United States. The benefits of using fossil fuel far outweighs the costs of reducing them. The costs to mitigate climate fails to mention the benefits squandered by mitigation strategies or the crippling costs accruing to western economies. Economies refusing to adhere to U.N. mitigation measures are China, Russia, India, Viet Nam, Pakistan and other southeast Asia countries, or those chosing to raise living standards for residents.
8.1 The Obama WH Politicized, Unscientific, Error-filled IWG reports Thrown Out. A step in the process to determine to what degree effort should be expended to mitigate climate is Integrated Assessment Modeling. The Interagency Working Group's Integrated Assessment Models (IAM) are socio-economic models and considered by economists as a key element to assess the social cost of carbon (SCC) against the use of fossil fuels. The IWG was comprised of representatives of 12 federal agencies Obama charged to come up with a number, and of alleged damages due to climate change that could be caused by each ton of CO2 emitted by the use of fossil fuels – that could be used to support Pres. Barack Obama's war on fossil fuels. Authors, including scientists and economists writing in Climate Change Reconsidered (CCR) are extremely critical of use of IAMs, for example: "The IAMs suffer extensive errors, with errors propagating from one section of reports to another section, causing a cascade of uncertainty at any stage" (p. 682 CCC). "IAMs have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis as their inputs are arbitrary which have huge impacts on social cost of carbon (SCC) estimates that model produce, and so models can tell us nothing of a catastrophic IAM-based outcome without an empirical foundation. They create a perception of knowledge and precision that is illusory and misleading" (Journal of Economic Literature, 2013; p 683 CC). "Uncertainties are everywhere including the most challenging kinds of deep structural uncertainties" (Harvard Univ. M. Weitzman, 2015; p. 684, CCC). "Quantitative analysis show that SCC estimates are imaginations that vary by as much as two times to four times owing to differences in discounting" (p. 684 CCC). The use of abnormal discount rates used by the IWG are a second major error that artificially produces a cost of carbon when there is no cost had the correct rate been employed as recommended by Office of Management and Budget, OMB Circular A-4. "The widely cited social cost of carbon calculations and six IWG reports produced by the Obama WH and IWG have been withdrawn as unreliable guides for policymakers, under Executive Order 12866; IWG reports also fail to conform to OMB Circular A-4 standards regarding discount rates that embodies, and are required by law to represent the best practices for conducting regulatory cost-benefit analysis by federal agencies.
Pres. Obama's political interference to influence the Interagency Working Group, IWG, to issue false reports claiming climate change is due to humans provides easy justification to trash their reports, but instead their politically-forced unfactual or contrived mis-statements are accepted as fact-filled by the untrained. It was an example of 'seeing like the state' phenomenon when government agencies succumb to pressure to find what they believe their overseers want them to find" (p. 685-686, CCR). (18)
It is most unfortunate that key IWG sections withdrawn in 2017 appear in text of Washington's, Clean Electric Transformation Act, or CETA in 2019 effectively rendering the 2019 Act, its proclamations and ideals instead untrue, illegitimate. Now, CETA is Washington's climate roadmap to backwardation or worse. The same illegitimate evil also infects all subsequent climate legislation that leaders brand as clean energy but revealed as nothing more than a Trojan Horse. The difficulty lies in predicting future events that lay beyond human experience.
9.0 FINAL STATEMENT
So where are we, or what can be done to the backwarding trend? There is much knowledge among us. Call on it. Take action. Investigate, confer, analyze, understand, ask, learn, convene, communicate, broadcast, confirm and warn of what is at stake in terms of lives, your families, property, liberty.
Identify climate change claims empty, tantamount to the propaganda of Joseph Goebbels.(19)
A weekly newsletter by the Science and Environmental Policy Project publishes lay and technical data and discussions on climate and the scientific method can be accessed by anyone.(20) Richard Feynman, one of the Nobel laureates makes two statements that uncover the folly of climate change or of Biden's claim of existential threat of climate: Feynman: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” – Richard Feynman, conclusion to his report on the Challenger disaster. Feynman: “If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions.” .(21) The problem is that many politicized scientists, bureaucrats, and politicians claim their ridiculous conclusions are science facts, or evidence. They are not evidence. The mathematical rigor Feynman refers to is revealed by the lack of rigor in the reports issued by Obama's IWG reports and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC in its Summary to Policymakers (SPM). The IPCC is a political organization, not a scientific one, states the IPCC's Charter. The IPCC writes the SPMs, not the scientists, so the SPMs are politically-skewed and unfaithfully leverage the content of the detail from full reports of volunteering scientists. The IPCC-written SPM's attempt to prove "causation" of climate change by humans reveals the Feynman' lack of rigor in IPCC methods, and are blatantly wrong, even backward. By the scientific method, a theory is not proved true. Instead the method must falsify all alternatives for a theory to be accepted. No climate change idea can meet this standard, shows the IPCC's backward thinking. For brevity, I will not list the numerous and strong lines of evidence against climate change, including physical actions in the natural world that reject attribution by humans, except one, the ice core record of climate, which evidence is one easily understood by a fifth grader. To date no alternative or natural cause to explain natural change climate can dismissed by the IPPC or others. The scientific facts showing humans are not responsible for climate continues to accumulate and is overwhelming.
May 7, 2022