Biden’s Hypocrisy on Climate Change Is Painfully Obvious
President Joe Biden has repeatedly called climate change an “existential threat,” worse than nuclear weapons.
Yet, Biden’s green energy mandates result in a greater U.S. demand for wind turbines, solar panels and electric batteries from China, made by coal-fired power plants, increasing the emissions Biden criticizes at home.
The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that in the absence of reductions in carbon emissions, temperatures will rise by about 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The idea that such a temperature change is worse than deaths from nuclear weapons is ludicrous. Over 200,000 people died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after America dropped atomic bombs.
Temperatures have varied for centuries. Climate models are not reliable and accurate enough to attribute global warming to human activities. The observed rate of global warming over the past 50 years has been weaker than that predicted by almost all computerized climate models.
Thirty-six computer models overpredicted surface air temperatures during the summer growing season. The models all showed warming well above what happened in reality, with the most extreme model producing seven times too much warming.
Increases in hurricane frequency are erroneously cited as an effect of warming. Although carbon dioxide emissions and temperature—both in America and globally—have increased over the latter parts of the 20th Century, no meaningful increase in frequency and intensity of hurricanes has been observed.
Hurricane damage has increased over time, but this outcome is largely due to increased incomes and wealth, and therefore infrastructure creation, rather than more violent hurricanes. For example, homes in Florida have risen by a factor of 12 since 1975, according to the St Louis Federal Reserve Bank. The same hurricane that in 1975 destroyed a house worth $100,000 would now destroy a house worth $1.2 million.
Although some say that increased CO2 levels are detrimental to human health and welfare, deaths are more likely to result from medical events triggered by the cold than by the heat.
A 2020 study by Dr. Whanhee Lee and others in Lancet showed that cold-related morbidity and mortality—strokes, heart attacks, blood clots, and other problems—result directly from the influence of cold temperatures on the body, where the body is unable to maintain sufficient core temperature to guarantee survival.
In addition, Environmental Protection Agency data shows that death rates are about 10 percent higher in winter, and January is the deadliest month of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
If Biden truly thought that climate change was an existential threat, he would try to lower global emissions through greater U.S. exports of natural gas. This would enable other countries to reduce emissions by substituting natural gas for coal, just as America has reduced carbon emissions by 1,000 million metric tons over the past 16 years.
In addition, Biden would try to expand emissions-free nuclear power if he thought climate change was a threat. He would make uranium mining easier, because uranium is a critical ingredient for nuclear power. Yet he has taken swaths of land off the table for uranium development and made no attempt to solve the problem of nuclear waste.
Instead, Biden blocks a new liquid natural gas export terminal in Louisiana, which results in greater worldwide use of coal, increasing global carbon dioxide emissions. Europe has already been turning to coal to deal with energy shortages in the aftermath of Russia’s cutoff of natural gas.
New regulations at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of the Controller of the Currency discourage companies from investing in natural gas, and banks from lending money to fund natural gas. Regulations from the Department of Energy raise the cost of natural gas stoves, water heaters, and boilers.
Over the past 20 years, U.S. emissions of CO2 have declined by a billion metric tons as natural gas has been increasingly substituted for coal use in the generation of electricity. Over the same period, CO2 emissions in China have risen by 8.7 billion metric tons.
Biden’s repetition that climate change is an existential threat gives him an excuse to impose more regulations and sign into law subsidies for favored donors.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” said Amb. Rahm Emanuel when he was President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff. Biden is inventing the crisis and the waste is following.
https://www.heritage.org/climate/commentary/bidens-hypocrisy-climate-change-painfully-obvious
**************************************************John Kerry's Climate Office Coordinated With Left-Wing Nonprofits Working To Shut Down Coal
The State Department's lead climate office discussed shutting down coal power worldwide with environmental groups, namely the California-based Sierra Club among others, ahead of its decision to join an international anti-coal coalition, according to emails reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
The internal agency emails—obtained this month via information request by watchdog group Protect the Public's Trust (PPT)—are the latest evidence that the State Department's Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC), led by John Kerry until he departed early this year, discussed key policy issues, including actions related to coal power, with nonprofit interest groups.
And the emails come amid a sweeping congressional probe into the SPEC office's coordination with eco groups. That probe is being spearheaded by House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.), who told the Free Beacon that his panel continues to review separate documents showing the Biden administration "caved to pressure by leftist climate groups" seeking to end construction of new coal plants and phase out all coal worldwide by 2040.
"Evidence continues to mount showing a sophisticated, targeted approach by radical environmental groups to influence the Biden Administration's domestic and foreign policy," said Comer.
"The Oversight Committee will continue to press the Biden Administration for information related to Envoy Kerry’s position and his office’s ability to bind the United States to agreements at the detriment of American consumers and businesses," he continued.
According to the emails obtained by PPT and shared with the Free Beacon, on April 15, 2021, Steve Herz, a senior attorney and international climate policy adviser at the Sierra Club, contacted then-SPEC adviser Jesse Young, inviting Kerry and other administration officials to attend the June 2021 "grassroots leadership climate summit" hosted by the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth.
Herz said the summit would focus on issues "the U.S. government needs to address internationally" including "shutting down coal."
Sierra Club senior attorney emails SPEC adviser Jesse Young an invitation for John Kerry to attend a private discussion with environmental groups.Sierra Club senior attorney Steve Herz emails SPEC adviser Jesse Young an invitation for John Kerry to attend a private discussion with environmental groups.
Young, who is now the SPEC office's chief of staff, responded to Herz, saying that he "would love" if Kerry could attend the summit. Then, in a May 2021 email, Young asked other State Department officials to confirm whether Kerry could attend the event, noting the invite was brought up during a recent "NGO call" and adding that it "seems like a good idea to me."
Kerry and then-senior SPEC adviser Lauren Sanchez, who has since been hired as a climate adviser for Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.), ultimately attended the Sierra Club-Friends of the Earth summit, joining a session on June 3, 2021. While much of the event was broadcast online, that session was private.
"This private session of the Global Grassroots Leaders Climate Summit will provide an opportunity for participating grassroots leaders to have a dialogue with Special Envoy for Climate, John Kerry and his team," a description of the session online states. "They will discuss ways the Biden administration can be constructive partners in global climate efforts and specific ways the administration can benefit their campaigns."
That description failed to detail the session's covered topics that were listed in Herz's original email to Young two months earlier.
In a separate email exchange from July 2021, Herz requested a meeting with SPEC officials to discuss "opportunities of limiting international coal finance." The top Sierra Club official sent the request to a group of SPEC officials whose names were redacted in the documents produced via FOIA request.
"limiting international coal finance."
Sue Biniaz, who serves as the principal deputy special envoy for climate, said in an email to other officials that it "couldn’t hurt to hear their thoughts." An unnamed official then responded, suggesting that they loop the White House National Security Council into the conversation.
The SPEC office, Sierra Club, and Friends of the Earth did not respond to requests for comment.
"Government of, by, and for the people demands transparency and accountability," PPT director Michael Chamberlain told the Free Beacon. "The actions of John Kerry’s secretive climate office are anathema to those qualities."
"And every new revelation seems to add to the body of evidence that Kerry’s office has been outsourcing its policymaking—policies that have a significant impact on our ability keep the lights on and the machines running in our homes, hospitals, schools, and businesses—to powerful but unaccountable special interest organizations," added Chamberlain.
In January, the House Oversight Committee released emails that, like the batch obtained this month by PPT, highlight the extensive coordination between the SPEC office and environmental nonprofit organizations.
Those emails showed that, on March 2, 2021, the State Department solicited and received guidance from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) on the so-called Powering Past Coal Alliance, an international effort to reduce coal reliance. And they also revealed that, on April 7, 2021, the NRDC, along with the Sierra Club and three other eco groups, sent SPEC officials a memo outlining a "global coal phase-out agenda for the Biden administration."
NRDC's memo, obtained by the Free Beacon, made a series of recommendations to the SPEC office, including joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, prioritizing coal phase-out policies in diplomatic engagements with China, Japan, and South Korea, and increasing financial incentives for other countries to transition away from coal by "greening" COVID-19 recovery plans.
"The Biden administration should make a global coal phase-out a top-tier foreign policy priority, and a critical issue in bilateral relations with all key countries funding and using coal," the memo stated.
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The week the UK took another step on the road to being ruled by unelected judges
I'm beginning to wonder if it really matters who we vote for on July 4 when we are now a country in which power has been steadily seeping from elected politicians to unelected judges.
Take energy policy, a pivotal issue at a time of high fuel prices and fears about security of supply.
The Tories want to grant lots more licences to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea, to increase supply (to steady prices) and make us less dependent on unreliable foreign imports.
Labour would cease any further development in the North Sea after existing licences expire, preferring to give greater priority to reducing our carbon emissions and getting to net zero sooner rather than later.
So a clear choice for us to make. Exactly how a democracy should work. Except that judges have already taken the decision for us.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that Surrey County Council had been wrong to allow the expansion of a tiny oilfield known as the Gatwick Gusher (for its proximity to the airport) because it had only taken into account the emissions generated by developing the field, not those emitted when the oil was eventually burnt.
Thus, with one ruling, has the highest court in the land brought the further development of our oil and gas reserves to a grinding halt.
It has done more for Just Stop Oil's campaign than any amount of Stonehenge-style performative attacks could ever hope to achieve.
The Surrey field is small in the grand scheme of things but the Supreme Court ruling will now be applied to far bigger ventures just getting off the ground, such as the massive Rosebank oil field 80 miles west of the Shetlands and the Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria.
The massed ranks of climate activists are already being mustered. Armed with their high-powered (and highly paid) lawyers and the Supreme Court ruling, they will challenge every nascent fossil fuel development in the land.
And there is every chance they will bring them to a grinding halt, just as they have the Gatwick Gusher.
It is yet another significant step on the road from democracy to kritocracy (rule by judges).
We are moving from rule by elected politicians —who consult experts in and out of government before rolling out the policies on which they were voted in — to rule by unelected judges who know nothing of the matters on which they opine but are still able to impose their own narrow but highly consequential interpretation of the law.
None of the three Supreme Court judges who took Thursday's decision would seem to have any expertise in energy policy or climate change.
One of them, Lord Leggat, is big on diversity and inclusion, as those — like him —educated at Eton, Cambridge and Harvard often think they should be seen to be. But not energy policy.
Another, Lady Rose, a product of Oxford and Cambridge, doesn't seem to have any private sector experience, never mind energy sector expertise, since she's spent most of her working life as a career legal officer in government.
The third, Lord Kitchin, also Cambridge, is a specialist in intellectual property. Not oil and gas.
The activists determined to stop the Surrey development had already lost in the High Court and the Court of Appeal. But thanks to these three judges from the same university, they won a narrow victory (three to two) in the highest court.
The local council and the oil company have run out of legal road. That sound you hear is the noise of oil and gas firms running for the door. Why hang around in a country that doesn't want you?
A country in which an incoming Labour government was going to freeze further licences anyway; in which the governing SNP in Scotland is no friend either; and in which supposedly temporary windfall taxes, taking the corporate tax rate to a penal 75 per cent, look like becoming permanent.
A country in which every planning application takes for ever (even the minor development in Surrey spent five years in the courts); in which you face the relentless hostility of activists and polite society treats you as a pariah (while, of course, avidly consuming your products).
And in which you never know when you, your family or your offices will be sprayed in orange paint by eco-zealots and loons.
There are far friendlier climes that want your investment — and they're probably more profitable, too. So don't for a second think the departure of the oil and gas industry from our shores is any kind of victory for net zero.
They will just move to exploit fossil fuels in other territories, often with less rigorous environmental standards than our own, while our world-class oil and gas sector, which generates £30 billion in revenues, £9 billion in tax and 220,000 direct and indirect well-paid jobs, enters terminal decline.
Not for much longer will Aberdeen be the oil capital of Europe. It risks the same fate as Glasgow, whose once proud boast to be the shipbuilding capital of the world is now but a distant memory.
Lord Leggat opined that oil from the Surrey field would 'inevitably' be 'burned' and the planning application had failed to account for that in terms of the carbon emissions generated.
Exactly how you would calculate that he did not say. After all, not all oil is burned. It's used for petrochemicals (the clue is in the name, your lordship) and in a variety of products from plastics to tyres to bitumin to pharmaceuticals. So the figure he wants is well nigh impossible to calculate.
But the most ludicrous aspect of the judgment — described by one energy expert as 'utter lunacy' — is the implication that banning new licences in the UK will reduce our consumption of fossil fuels.
If that were the case, there would be some logic to the ruling. But it's not. We are destined, on all reputable forecasts, to need oil, gas and even some coal for the foreseeable future.
But now we'll import even more of it, at even greater cost in terms of price and emissions. The UK Supreme Court will be the toast of Qatar and Saudi Arabia this weekend. No doubt the Kremlin is smiling too, as it also looks at ways of sneaking its oil to us, perhaps via India.
Our loss is the dictators' gain. And not just the dictators. A friend from Texas thanked me yesterday for the Supreme Court ruling, saying his state looked forward to sending us even more natural gas.
The Tories have only themselves to blame. They have long pandered to the net zero cause, hoping to scoop up some of the 'green' vote (naturally, they've failed).
This culminated, during the last, miserable days of Theresa May's premiership, in the House of Commons nodding through, without proper debate or scrutiny, a legally binding target for Britain to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
May regarded this as her lasting legacy. It's turned out to be more of a time-bomb because it's the legally binding aspect of the target which has given the Supreme Court such a grip on energy policy.
The net zero target only covers emissions generated within our borders. So the fact we will have to import more oil and gas as a result of its ruling, even though that means higher emissions, doesn't concern the Court. It has no legal remit over imported energy.
Nor can it have anything to say about energy security since the Government hasn't set a legally binding target for that.
Thus, almost by accident, has net zero become the be-all and end-all of judge-determined energy policy, whose impact will be to make us all poorer.
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Congratulations to Australian conservative leader on climate change retreat
Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, deserves an elephant stamp for calling out the impossibility of Australia reaching its 2030 emissions target set by the Labor government. The Coalition has now effectively disowned the target.
Recall here that the Coalition had been shooting for an emissions-reduction cut of between 26 and 28 per cent by 2030 from a base of 2005. The then prime minister, Scott Morrison, declared that this would be achieved in a canter. He wasn’t wrong on that score, because by the end of 2023, a cut of 29 per cent had been achieved.
But as they say, the last mile is always the hardest and so the 43 per cent emissions reduction set by the Albanese government is looking like a tough climb to the top of Everest in unfavourable weather conditions.
But this fact never deterred Albo and the hapless B1, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, from racing the new higher target into legislation and formally advising the UN climate bureaucrats in charge of the Paris Agreement racket of this more ambitious goal.
Mind you, the fact that the target is legislated doesn’t really make much difference nor does our refreshed statement of intent made to the UN – let’s not forget here that the Paris climate agreement is not legally binding.
Most signatories to Paris haven’t bothered to legislate their targets and have no intention of doing so. The UK, much to its shame, is different in that regard. Theresa May, a true climate believer if there ever was, insisted on this as well as committing the Tories to net zero.
She even conferred ridiculous powers on the Climate Change Committee, appointing extremist chairs who bully the Poms to change their evil climate ways – don’t eat meat, install expensive and ineffective heat pumps, use ‘active transport’ (walk, cycle or scooter) rather than drive the car, don’t even think about getting on a plane, etc, etc. Is it really any surprise that the Tories are about to get a drubbing, Boris and Rishi having never walked away from this rubbish?
But I digress. Let me get back to Australia. Dutts’ decision to decline the 43 per cent target is a mixture of informed realism and courageous politics. Needless to say, the progressive press is aghast, claiming that the announcement puts paid to the Liberals’ chances of winning back the Teal seats, although we shall see.
The rent-seeking business community with interests in green things is complaining bitterly. Evidently, they need certainty which is simply code for more subsidies. A lower target or no target at all will undermine their case for even more moolah from taxpayers and long-suffering consumers.
One of the advantages that Dutts has over Albo is that Dutts can count. Albo’s strong suit is wishful thinking and dreaming up rhyming cliches. The fact is that a 43 per cent target requires losing around 100 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent in six years in the context of a rapidly rising population. It boils down to the maths: where will those tonnes come from?
Sadly – OK, not that sadly – for B1, the renewable energy experiment has not been going entirely to plan, like Japan’s second world war effort. Of course, if you throw subsidies at something, you will get more of it. But there have been some significant impediments to renewable energy (RE)investment in recent times – escalating costs, worker shortages, local resistance to RE developments (God bless our country cousins) and inadequate transmission.
As a consequence, the amount of RE added to the grid has been a fraction of what is required to meet another B1 target – 82 per cent RE in the grid by 2030. It’s only around 40 per cent now. There is a long way to go.
Going by the polls, voter opinion is on the side of the Coalition on this issue. A rising majority think that affordable and reliable electricity is the most important consideration with a small and declining proportion taking the view that hitting the emissions target should prevail. Even those on board with the green energy idea either don’t want to pay anything extra or $100 more per year at most. It looks as though peak climate has been reached and we are now on the sunlit downhill.
Albo and B1 could easily be tempted to look beyond the electricity grid to achieve the unachievable target. Laughably, there was a view at some stage that 90 per cent of all car sales by 2030 would be EVs. Given recent developments in the EV market here and overseas, it would seem extremely optimistic to predict that half of all car sales in Australia will be EVs by the end of the decade.
Let’s face it, the wheels are really falling off the EV market in the US – pardon the pun. General Motors, which was given great licks of taxpayer money to convert to EV production and ditch its highly profitable and popular lines of internal combustion vehicles, is walking back at an incredible pace. The company built an EV truck expecting to sell 150,000 in the first year; it sold 27,000.
There are so many hairs on EVs as convenient family or work vehicles, including the incredibly high cost of insurance and the absence of a second-hand market. Add in the difficulty of accessing fast charging and range anxiety, and the real surprise is that so many EVs have been sold.
But note here that most EVs are sold to companies attracted by the substantial tax concessions, not to private buyers. The only ones surprised by these developments are the true-believing green activists – and B1.
The Albanese government might have a crack at pushing for the closure of some of the big emitters – aluminium smelters, alumina refineries, steel works – but the politics of this are not great. Attacking the farming community also has its downsides – just take a look at what has been happening in Europe with farmers revolting.
The bottom line is that Australia’s current emissions target already looks like a bust and most people who follow these things know this.
As Speccie readers appreciate, a political leader who stands for nothing is never well-placed to roll an incumbent government. Claims of superior managerial competence simply do not cut it if the proposed platforms are essentially the same as the government’s. (Take note, David Crisafulli, hapless opposition leader of the LNP in Queensland. It was a Bill Shorten moment – ‘I don’t know what’s in Labor’s budget but we will support it.’)
I say hats off to Dutts: he has taken a stand on the 2030 target. Next stop: ditch the folly of net zero by 2050.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/06/hats-off-to-dutton/
***************************************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)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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