Princeton must face its legacy of educating climate deniers
I am not sure that the agonized cry (below) from two climate activists is worth noting here but some of my fellow climate realists have noted it so I thought I should say something about it.
The Daily Princetonian is a student newspaper so is expected to be unscholarly but this particular rag is well-produced and apparently attracts some attention.
But its unscholarly nature is manifest nonetheless. The authors take the Torquemada-like approach of making clear that they have the unquestionable truth and heretics need only to be attacked, not taken seriously.
So they speak as if global warming were a revealed religion that needs no defence. Not the slightest attempt to show why the global warming critics are wrong is attempted. "Climate" has become a new religion in possession of unquestionable revealed truth.
Like all religion, however it has its competitors. The religion that seems to be getting all the press today is trangenderism, with rather frightful penalties sometimes imposed on doubters. The climate warriors are in other words now rather old hat, a bit like the Episcopalians, so I think the latest sermon will bore unbelievers and do nothing more
“Princeton will have the most significant impact on the climate crisis through the scholarship we generate and the people we educate,” University President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83 was quoted as saying in Princeton’s announcement that the school would divest from 90 fossil fuel companies.
Over the past decade, Eisgruber has repeated versions of this sentiment many times to discredit divestment activists and justify Princeton’s refusal to disentangle itself from the fossil fuel industry.
It’s true that the University goes out of its way to position itself as a climate leader; indeed, Princeton has educated many who have contributed to the scientific consensus on the climate crisis and are fighting for a liveable planet. But if the University wants to rest its climate legacy on those alumni that have fought for the climate, we also have to reckon with the alumni that have advanced climate denial.
We have already written about the relationship the University has with family foundations determined to thwart climate action, including the Bradleys, Scaifes, and Davises. Though we do not know the extent of the Tiger Dark Money web, we know that there are high-profile Princeton alumni whose careers have undermined climate policy since the 1970s, including through these foundations. However, there’s more to the picture. Three people who bear responsibility for the planet being set to surpass 1.5 degrees are Fred Singer GS ’48, Frederick Seitz GS ’34, and William Happer GS ’64, all graduate school alumni of Princeton. Despite being born decades apart, their paths intersected, and together, they helped bring us to this point of existential crisis.
Singer and Seitz are identified by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their book, “Merchants of Doubt,” as two of the most influential and effective climate deniers in the world. Singer undermined the Kyoto Protocol and its ratification by the U.S., effectively setting back American climate policy by decades. He also worked closely with the Heartland Institute, a conservative, industry-funded think tank, publishing reports that were sent to teachers and continue to circulate widely, misleading enough to create a new generation of climate crisis deniers. One of Singer’s works, “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate,” had a foreword written by Seitz.
Seitz founded the George C. Marshall Institute in 1984 to defend President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” initiative but a few years later, his focus shifted to climate change denial. In addition to being funded by the fossil fuel industry, the Institute took money from the tobacco industry to deny the dangers of smoking. Despite Seitz having been president of the influential and prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS), NAS published a clarification to unequivocally disavow Seitz’s climate denial, stating that the notorious Oregon petition, which Seitz helped organize, deliberately attempted to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol. The George C. Marshall Institute closed in 2015 and was replaced by the CO2 Coalition, co-founded by Happer.
Happer, a Princeton alum and professor, has made a career out of climate denial. He was director of the Office of Energy Research under President George H.W. Bush. From 1987 to 1990 he served as Chairman of JASON, a group of scientists who advise the government on energy policy issues. Most recently, he served on President Donald Trump’s National Security Council to block efforts to curb global warming and ensure the United States left the Paris Agreement. In 2015, as Seitz’s George C. Marshall Institute folded, Happer co-founded the CO2 Coalition to take over its work and “advocate for carbon dioxide.” With a Princeton banner behind him, Happer said on CNN in 2017, “There’s this myth that’s developed around carbon dioxide that it’s a pollutant, but you and I both exhale carbon dioxide with every breath.”
To understand the power of Happer’s work in blocking climate action, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito ’72 promoted Happer’s disinformation in another 2017 speech, stating, “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Carbon dioxide is not harmful to ordinary things, to human beings, or to animals, or to plants. It’s actually needed for plant growth. All of us are exhaling carbon dioxide right now. So, if it’s a pollutant, we’re all polluting.”
In 2015, employees at Greenpeace — an environmentalist group that uses “non-violent creative action” — posed as representatives of a Middle Eastern Oil Company and had Happer agree to write a paper espousing the benefits of oil and gas and downplaying the impacts of CO2 emissions. Happer agreed to write the paper as a professor emeritus at Princeton without disclosing the source of funding. He advised the undercover employees that the paper would not pass peer review and so proposed alternative publishing options. Happer remains a Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, allowing him to continue to use his professional title.
Happer, Seitz, and Singer are not just the products of a Princeton education; they have actively taken advantage of their associations with Princeton, using its name and prestige to open doors, grab headlines, mislead the public, and grant legitimacy to their climate denial claims. For years, they intentionally discredited serious climate scientists and prevented climate action, helping put us on the pathway to today’s existential global crisis.
If Princeton wants to trumpet its alumni and faculty who champion climate solutions, then it must also reckon with the loss and damage caused by its own alumni and faculty.
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Greenland's glaciers are melting 100 times faster than estimated
Isn't a new model a wonderful thing? Sure beats observation of actual reality
Greenland's glaciers are melting 100 times faster than previously calculated, according to a new model that takes into account the unique interaction between ice and water at the island’s fjords.
The new mathematical representation of glacial melt factors in the latest observations of how ice gets eaten away from the stark vertical faces at the ends of glaciers in GGreenland. Previously, scientists used models developed in Antarctica, where glacial tongues float on top of seawater — a very different arrangement.
"For years, people took the melt rate model for Antarctic floating glaciers and applied it to Greenland's vertical glacier fronts," lead author Kirstin Schulz, a research associate in the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at University of Texas at Austin, said in a statement. "But there is more and more evidence that the traditional approach produces too low melt rates at Greenland's vertical glacier fronts."
The researchers published their findings in September in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Researchers already knew their Antarctica-based understanding of Arctic glaciers was not a perfect match. But it's hard to get close to the edges of Greenland's glaciers, because they're situated at the ends of fjords — long, narrow inlets of seawater flanked by high cliffs — where warm water undercuts the ice. This leads to dramatic calving events where chunks of ice the size of buildings crumble into the water with little warning, creating mini-tsunamis, according to the researchers.
Researchers led by physical oceanographer Rebecca Jackson of Rutgers University have been using robotic boats to get close to these dangerous ice cliffs and take measurements. They've done this at Alaska's LeConte Glacier as well as Greenland's Kangerlussuup Sermia. (An upcoming mission led by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin will send robotic subs to the faces of three west Greenland glaciers.) Jackon's measurements suggest that the Antarctica-based models massively underestimate Arctic glacial melt. LeConte, for example, is disappearing 100 times faster than models predicted.
The mixture of cold fresh water from the glaciers and warmer seawater drives ocean circulation near the glaciers and farther out in the ocean, meaning the melt has far-reaching implications. The Greenland ice sheet is also important for sea-level rise; Greenland ice holds enough water to raise sea levels by 20 feet (6 meters).
The new model uses the latest data from near-glacial missions along with a more realistic understanding of how the steep, cliff-like faces of the glaciers impact ice loss. The results are consistent with Jackson's findings, showing 100 times more melt than the old models predicted.
"Ocean climate model results are highly relevant for humankind to predict trends associated with climate change, so you really want to get them right," Schulz said. "This was a very important step for making climate models better."
https://www.livescience.com/greenland-glacier-melt-model ?
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EU Announces Agreement to Reform Europe’s Carbon Market, Cap Natural Gas Prices
The European Union announced on Dec. 18 a provisional agreement that reforms the bloc’s carbon market, successfully expanding a crucial component of the region’s broader green agenda.
After a 30-hour session, representatives of the 27 member states and the European Parliament agreed to apply the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) to heating, road transportation, and maritime shipping. Officials also plan to use the agreement to accelerate requirements on companies to reduce pollution, whether they produce power or manufacture steel.
The latest reforms are a part of the EU’s broader “Fit for 55” initiative to slash emissions by a minimum of 62 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. The bloc wants to reach net-zero by 2050.
“The agreement on the EU Emissions Trading System and the Social Climate Fund is a victory for the climate and for European climate policy,” Marian Jurecka, Czech minister for the environment, said in a statement. “This will allow us to meet climate objectives within the main sectors of the economy, while making sure the most vulnerable citizens and micro-enterprises are effectively supported in the climate transition.
“We can now safely say that the EU has delivered on its promises with ambitious legislation and this puts us at the forefront of fighting climate change globally.”
The European Council and the European Parliament have yet to formally endorse and adopt the agreement.
Inside the Climate Change Package
The first key measure in the comprehensive package is creating a second Emissions Trading System (ETS) for road transport, buildings, and shipping. This feature will slap a price on emissions from these sectors by 2027, although the fee could be postponed by a year if energy prices in Europe remain elevated.
Another critical change is mandating that 10,000 factories and power plants purchase permits for emissions. Experts say this will nudge businesses to install greener technologies to reduce their carbon footprints. The plan will phase out free CO2 licenses by 2034.
EU states will be forced to measure, report, and verify emissions from municipal waste incineration installations beginning in 2024. The European Commission intends to include these installations in the ETS starting in 2028.
“Installations that will benefit from free allocations will need to comply with conditionality requirements, including in the form of energy audits and for certain installations climate neutrality plans,” the report reads. “Additional transitional free allocations can be granted under certain conditions to the district heating sector in certain member states, in order to encourage investments into decarbonising that sector.”
EU leadership will finance the shift to green technologies by tapping into and increasing allowances to climate-related funds.
The first step is raising the allowance of the Innovation Fund to 575 million euros ($610 million) from the present 450 million euros ($478 million).
The Modernization Fund also will be bolstered by auctioning 2.5 percent of allowances allocated to nations that maintain a gross domestic product per capita lower than the bloc’s average. This money will be monitored to ensure it’s assigned toward climate-related efforts.
Despite the European Union recently changing its mind and labeling natural gas as green energy, “natural gas projects will in principle not be eligible for” Modernization Fund money. However, officials noted that “a transitional measure will allow the current beneficiaries of the fund to continue time-limited financing natural gas projects under certain conditions.”
Finally, the bloc intends to establish an 86.7 billion euro ($92 billion) Social Climate Fund that will help vulnerable transit users, households, and small businesses endure the cost of emissions trading. This fund would be created from 2026 to 2032, and members may be eligible as early as Jan. 1, 2026.
“Each member state would submit to the Commission a ‘social climate plan,’ containing the measures and investments they intend to undertake to cushion the impacts of the new emission trading system on vulnerable households,” the European Council noted in the announcement. “Such measures could include increasing the energy efficiency of buildings, the renovation of buildings, the decarbonization of heating and cooling in buildings and the uptake of zero-emission and low-emission mobility and transport, and measures providing direct income support in a temporary and limited manner.”
Natural Gas Price Controls
Soon after the EU unveiled the latest green agenda development, the bloc approved a measure to institute a limit on natural gas prices to mitigate the energy crisis.
The latest policy directive, which the energy ministers describe as a market correction mechanism, will be activated on two occasions. The first is if front-month gas contracts top 180 euros ($191) per megawatt hour on the benchmark Dutch Title Transfer Facility (DTTF) for three consecutive business days. The second is if the price is 35 euros higher than a reference price for liquid natural gas on international markets during the same span.
“We have succeeded in finding an important agreement that will shield citizens from skyrocketing energy prices,” said Jozef Siklea, Czech minister of industry and trade. “We will set a realistic and effective mechanism, which includes the necessary safeguards that will steer us clear from risks to security of supply and financial markets stability. Once again, we have proved that the EU is united and will not let anybody use energy as a weapon.”
The measure is scheduled to go into effect on Feb. 15, 2023.
However, not everyone is on board with these price controls.
The European Central Bank (ECB) stated that such a measure might “jeopardize financial stability in the euro area.”
“The mechanism’s current design may increase volatility and related margin calls, challenge central counterparties’ ability to manage financial risks, and may also incentivise migration from trading venues to the non-centrally cleared over-the-counter (OTC) market,” the ECB wrote in a report (pdf). “These considerations, relevant to the stability of the financial system, should be taken into account by the Council in its deliberations on the proposed regulation.”
Germany and the Netherlands also have shared concerns about potential market disruptions.
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Australia: No greenhouse gas limits for Victoria's coal-fired power plants as Supreme Court rejects challenge
Victoria's coal-fired power stations will not face new limits on how much greenhouse gas pollution they can emit, after the Supreme Court today rejected a challenge brought by an environmental group.
The plaintiff, Environment Victoria, argued the state's environmental regulator had failed to properly consider climate change law when reviewing the operating licences for the state's three coal-fired power stations.
Environment Victoria argued the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) had an obligation to impose limits on the amount of greenhouse gas pollution the plants could emit.
Victoria's Climate Change Act 2017 requires people making certain decisions to consider the effects of climate change.
But in his written decision, Justice James Gorton said he rejected Environment Victoria's argument that the EPA had failed to do so.
He found that the EPA had considered climate change when it decided not to set a target.
Community expectations 'shattered'
Environment Victoria policy and advocacy manager Bronya Lipsi said the decision showed the state's climate laws needed to be fixed.
"I think it sends a message that the Climate Change Act in Victoria is not living up to community expectations," Ms Lipski said.
"We have an expectation that our climate laws will mitigate climate change and reduce carbon pollution."
She said the decision "shattered" community expectations and Environment Victoria would consider the judgement before making a decision about whether to appeal.
In a statement, the EPA thanked the court for its decision and said it was also considering its next steps.
"We have already taken steps to strengthen our processes and ensure climate change is demonstrably considered in all our regulatory decisions," a spokesperson said.
"Scrutiny from organisations like Environment Victoria can only make us better."
Energy Australia, which owned the Yallourn power station, said it welcomed the decision.
AGL, which owns the Loy Yang A plant, and Alinta, owner of Loy Yang B, did not respond.
Plants headed for early closure
Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood said it would not have been possible to cheaply curb the station's greenhouse gas emissions if the court had ruled the other way.
He said Victoria's energy policy was already geared towards the early closure of the three coal-fired plants to address climate change.
"If you look at the Victorian government's most recent policy positions, before and after the most recent election, you will conclude that these power stations will all be shut down in about 10 years' time, maybe even earlier," Mr Wood said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-21/supreme-court-rules-on-victorian-coal-pollution/101796702
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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