CO2 Coalition submission to SEC -- on Proposal for Climate Change Disclosures
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) proposal to require that businesses take extraordinary measures to account for climate risks is based on a false premise that there is a climate emergency because emissions of carbon dioxide from human activity threaten Earth with catastrophic warming. None of this is so.
In fact, carbon dioxide is a beneficial gas absolutely necessary for life. More of it is good, as can be seen in an overall greening of Earth and record crop harvests that have paralleled modest warming and increasing CO2 levels in recent decades. Predictions of dangerous warming are based on flawed climate models and exaggerations of carbon dioxide’s potency as a greenhouse gas. In agreement with this view are many scientists, including the 95 members of the CO2 Coalition based at Arlington, Virginia.
One of those scientists is Dr. Patrick Moore, a former CO2 Coalition chairman and a co-founder of Greenpeace, who says that man-made CO2 emissions are life-saving. His 2016 paper, “The Positive Impact of Human CO2 Emissions on the Survival of Life on Earth,” states:
As recently as 18,000 years ago, at the height of the most recent major glaciation, CO2 dipped to its lowest level in recorded history at 180 ppm (parts per million), low enough to stunt plant growth. This is only 30 ppm above a level that would result in the death of plants due to CO2 starvation.
It is calculated that if the decline in CO2 levels were to continue at the same rate as it has over the past 140 million years, life on Earth would begin to die as soon as two million years from now and would slowly perish almost entirely as carbon continued to be lost to the deep ocean sediments.
The combustion of fossil fuels for energy to power human civilization has reversed the downward trend in CO2 and promises to bring it back to levels that are likely to foster a considerable increase in the growth rate and biomass of plants, including food crops and trees.
Human emissions of CO2 have restored a balance to the global carbon cycle, thereby ensuring the long-term continuation of life on Earth.
This extremely positive aspect of human CO2 emissions must be weighed against the unproven hypothesis that human CO2 emissions will cause a catastrophic warming of the climate in coming years.
The one-sided political treatment of CO2 as a pollutant that should be radically reduced must be corrected in light of the indisputable scientific evidence that it is essential to life on Earth.
According to this understanding of the atmospheric cycle of carbon dioxide, it would be more appropriate to reward the burning of fossil fuels than to discourage it.
Even if one accepts the gloomy forecasts of global warming, says Stuart Kirk, former Head of Responsible Investments at the UK bank HSBC, “Climate change is not a financial risk that we have to worry about.”
Mr. Kirk says that the most pessimistic view of climate’s effect on gross domestic product (GDP) estimates a five percent loss by 2100. However, he says, that number is insignificant compared to projected growth of between 500 and 1,000 percent GDP growth over the next 80 years. “A thousand percent! You lop five percent off that and who cares? You will never notice,” said the banker.
In assessing Mr. Kirk’s statements, CEOWorld Magazine, wrote, “It would be foolish to argue that this statement is totally off base. It has a significant amount of truth as shown by actual investment behaviors and returns.” Indeed.
We urge the SEC to abandon its effort to inject the irrationality of a climate scare into the management of American business. The costs to businesses would be large and the effects minimal.
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The Iron Law of Climate Policy
If there is an iron law of climate policy, it is that when policies focused on economic growth confront policies focused on emissions reductions, it is economic growth that will win out every time. That’s how I introduced the iron law in my book The Climate Fix back in 2010.
I coined the term to focus people’s attention on what might be called boundary conditions for the design of climate policies focused on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Back then there was great enthusiasm for putting into place policies that would increase the costs of energy – the idea of “cap and trade” was all the rage. In The Climate Fix, I argued that accelerating decarbonization to hit climate targets by intentionally increasing energy prices was never going to work. It was not a popular view then, but it has become broadly accepted since.
One anecdote I cited at the time was the changing view of President Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu. Prior to taking a role in the Obama Administration, in 2008 Chu argued that addressing climate change required U.S. gasoline prices go to $9 or $10 a gallon. When testifying before the Senate in 2012, he was asked about this comment by Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), which he quickly disavowed.
“So are you saying you no longer share the view that we need to figure out how to boost gasoline prices in America?” Lee asked.
“I no longer share that view,” Chu replied.
“When I became secretary of Energy, I represented the U.S. government,” Chu added. “Of course we don’t want the price of gasoline to go up, we want it to go down.”
What caused Secretary Chu to reverse his view? The iron law.
The idea of using higher priced energy as a key tool to accelerate decarbonization makes perfect sense – in theory and in bloodless computer models. In the real world it runs up against the reality that while some people may be willing to paying higher prices of climate policy, that willingness is limited. Last fall, a University of Chicago opinion poll found that only 52% of Americans would be support (strongly and somewhat) to pay $1 per month to combat climate change., and 28% did not support even paying that much. As the proposed cost increases, support decreases. At $10 per month support and opposition were about equal in the poll.
As gasoline prices have recently spiked to over $5 per gallon nationwide, today the Biden Administration has quickly pivoted its stance on energy. Here are recent comments by President Biden and his Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm:
President Biden: “I led the world to coordinate the largest release of global oil reserves in history — 240 million barrels — to boost supply to keep prices from rising even more.”
Energy Secretary Granholm: “In this moment of crisis, we need more supply ... right now, we need oil and gas production to rise to meet current demand.”
At about 3% of spending in April, gasoline was at the highest level of overall spending since 2014. Since April, gasoline prices have increased by another 30%. All else equal, that would suggest that in June, 2022 gasoline would have increased to about 4% of personal consumption expenditures. That would mean that gasoline spending today takes up about three times the amount of spending in consumers’ budgets than it did in 2020, while the nation was in the depths of the pandemic. That is a big increase over a short time. No wonder President Biden’s attention is focused on energy prices and supply.
The dynamics described here are by no means unique to the United States. The iron law holds everywhere that people are found. When energy prices increase, for whatever reason, people respond. Consider these recent reactions to higher priced energy around the world:
Protests in Europe
Protests in Central Asia
Protests in Southeast Asia
Protests in South America
When we look at where carbon pricing is implemented we see what it means to implement carbon pricing consistent with the iron law. Here is what we have learned:
Richer jurisdictions more readily adopt carbon pricing
Carbon pricing is easier when existing energy supply relies less on carbon-intensive fuels
Carbon pricing requires keeping carbon prices sufficiently modest
These conditions are unlikely to change. As the World Bank observes, “adopting carbon prices remains politically challenging, particularly amid rising inflation and energy prices. There is a clear need to ensure policies are fair, effective, and embedded within integrated climate and social policies.”
Email from rogerpielkejr@substack.com
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Green/Left politicians are ruining New Zealand
That the worst Prime Minister New Zealand has ever had has bought into the climate emergency scam – or finds it convenient to endorse it – is not surprising. What is unforgivable is that the leader of the opposition, and apparently every MP, is supporting this canard. The sheer ignorance involved in endorsing this fake, global warming scenario is not only quite shocking. It’s also inflicting increased taxation and compliance issues across multiple areas on New Zealanders, especially those who can least afford it.
Targeting motorists to reduce by 20 per cent the number of people using cars – the most convenient form of transport – is ridiculous. There is a growing lack of enthusiasm for sharing public transport – recognised as an increased health risk, given the lessons from Covid. Cycling is hardly possible for tradespeople, professionals, or families with children. It is also rather ominous that the thinking is for people to be corralled into the inner cities where cars are not seen as necessary, and where they can be more easily controlled.
In essence, our government’s recently released proposals are not just punitive. What is unforgivable is that all our MPs are aware that nothing this small country can do to reduce CO2 emissions will make one whit of difference to the planet! So why are New Zealanders being so punitively targeted?
Although scientists were once held in a kind of reverent respect, we have learned that many endorse this canard about the destructive nature of CO2 to further their own careers, seeking funding for their own projects. Equally culpable is that our media have become complicit in promoting government propaganda by refusing to publish the consistent challenges from top scientists pointing out that demonising CO2, a minor greenhouse gas, is senseless, from a scientific point of view, and presages destructive policy-making.
The censorship applied by the mainstream media, essentially cheer-leading for our hard-left government – rather than impartially examining the evidence critiquing the global warming scam – is undeniably against this country’s best interests. Refusing to publish the findings of such reputable scientists as Australians Bob Carter, the well-respected Ian Plimer, our own Dr David Kear and many others can be regarded as basically a social crime – even treasonable.
Harsh lessons to be learned from Europe’s escalating energy crises are lost on our apparently ignorant MPs, while other, major-emitting countries renege on their undertakings. The UK government is calling on energy firms to keep buying coal. Australian MPs are arguing net zero is done and dusted. Worldwide, new coal-fired power plants are being built, nearly 200 in Asia, the majority by far in China, followed by India and Indonesia. Communist China paying lip-service to reducing emissions – while conning countries as foolish as ours into demonising coal, gas and oil – has become an important weapon in her war against the West.
Moreover, the UK Global Warming Policy Foundation, in its annual state of the climate report by Ole Humlum, Ph.D. Emeritus Professor at the University of Oslo, examining temperature records and trends for the atmosphere, oceans and other weather events, found no evidence of a dramatic change in snow cover, rates of sea-level rise, or storm activity.
Global tide gauge measurements suggested sea levels are rising on average between 1 and 2 mm per year, consistent with the historic rise of the past hundred years, with no recent acceleration or deceleration in the rate of rise.
It makes fascinating reading, endorsed by GWPF director Benny Peiser Ph.D. finding it extraordinary that anyone should think there is a climate crisis. ‘Year after year our annual assessment of climate trends documents just how little has been changing in the last 30 years. The habitual climate alarmism is mainly driven by scientists’ computer modelling – rather than observational evidence.’
As actual evidence does not count, this won’t deter those applauding the Emissions Targeting plan just released, promoted by the Climate Change Commission. Long out of touch with reality, it is dismayed we may miss our set target of net zero – despite the government’s ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration, wanting industrial coal burners removed, and gas connections scrapped as soon as possible.
Moreover, while New Zealanders are beginning to doubt the truth of this cargo cult, a new issue is conveniently playing into the government’s hands. We are being told that sea levels are going to rise 30 cm, and that with the movement of our tectonic plates New Zealand is actually sinking, causing havoc to people’s property and cities along the coastline.
That this catastrophe claim can be contested is not surprising. The aforementioned Australian geologist, Ian Plimer, pointed out that if there was a global sea-level rise it would be worldwide, not just on the eastern side of New Zealand; that sea-level change is not simple and that over the history of time there is also no relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide, sea levels and climate.
For example, we are told that Pacific Ocean atoll nations will be inundated, ‘but there seems to be no knowledge of the exact opposite findings by Charles Lyell (1833) Charles Darwin (1842) and various scientists from the University of Auckland over the last decades. The oceans are dynamic; local sea-level changes are always taking place, and a postglacial sea-level rise is minuscule in the scale of things – is exactly as expected – and there is no relationship to atmospheric carbon dioxide. If atmospheric carbon dioxide drove a high sea level, then we could not have had six of the six global ice ages start when there was more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than now’.
Another scientist pointed out that in South Wairarapa on the east coast beach ridges have been uplifted – ‘it is all to do with plate tectonics, and claims of sea level rise can be open to manipulation’.
Nothing deterred, Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced a new Climate Change Emergency Fund of $4 billion over the next four years – as a down payment only! But where is the appraisal of this whole climate change hysteria by an intelligent opposition? And by the media? And whatever has happened to the once far-superior intellectual capital of our country?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/ignorant-or-subversive
***************************************************The reality of owning an electric car in Australia: Driver struggles with useless ghost chargers, other motorists stealing his spot and taking a whole day to finish a trip between Canberra and Sydney
An electric vehicle owner has shared the brutal reality of going on a roadtrip in his $72,000 car - taking a full day to drive from Sydney to Canberra and back again after repeatedly struggling to find spots to charge it.
A video posted to TikTok by user Suthocam on June 10 showed the issues EV drivers who do not have access to the Tesla supercharging network face.
Suthocam detailed his charging port debacle after a Sydney to Canberra round trip in a Hyundai IONIQ 5 using only third party chargers.
'The car itself is a great road trip vehicle - it's super spacious, great seats, great speakers and has a cool big sunroof,' Suthocam said.
Suthocam said the $71,900 vehicle, with an estimated range of 450km, was able to make the trip to Canberra in one charge but he decided to give it a top-up which would allow him to drive the car around the city once there.
His first stop was a charging station in Goulburn, 196km from Sydney, where the only available port was out-of-order.
The NRMA ChargeFox charger screen notified the driver that the 'station had faulted' and had not been fixed since the beginning of the year despite an 'estimated' repair date of January 14.
Suthocam waited until a working charger became available and then had to park halfway in a disabled parking spot for the cord to reach his car's battery - a scene he described as 'just a bit sketchy'.
'Once we got going again we made it... so worth it,' Suthocam said. 'It was pretty in Canberra but we had to get back on the road so we had to go find some chargers.'
The first charger the EV driver found was located in a carpark and did not work.
The Tesla wall chargers did not work with his Hyundai and the other chargers that did work were often taken up by other cars.
'Finally we found a free charger (in an Ikea carpark) in what felt like a really long time but it was super slow,' Suthocam said. 'I didn't want to wait four hours to get 100 per cent so I had to find a fast charger.'
Suthocam drove to a third charging station but to his frustration it was blocked by a petrol ute.
He then drove to a fourth charging port but was unable to locate it despite it appearing on the car's map. He found a fifth, but it was being used by a Tesla.
A sixth station was found but to Suthocam's dismay it had a similar speed to the Ikea carpark charger. 'We ended up having to jump back into Goulburn, charge there, and then finally made it home,' Suthocam said.
The charging port ordeal added two-and-a-half hours to Suthocam's round trip - a drive which typically takes six to seven hours.
The video, which he captioned 'we need more chargers tbh', has received more than 190,000 views and almost 700 comments.
'I love the idea of EVs but good lord I’d go insane if I had to spend 50 per cent of my day worrying about charging just to get to Canberra and back,' one user commented. 'You’ve convinced me to give it another two to three years before considering getting EV,' a second user wrote.
'Same issues in the UK. Until they sort out charging infrastructure I'm going to stick with dinosaur juice,' a third chimed.
The Electric Vehicle Council (the national body representing Australia's EV industry), reported an 85 per cent increase in the number of ultra-fast charging stations across the country and a 29.6 per cent increase in standard stations since August 2020.
However, drivers are reluctant to make the switch to plug-in cars as the nation's infrastructure for fast-charging ports has not caught up to the demand.
In Australia, just 1.5 per cent of cars sold are electric and plug-in hybrid, compared to 17 per cent in the United Kingdom and 85 per cent in Norway.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is set to introduce policies to boost the take-up of electric vehicles but will stop short of imposing a ban on petrol or diesel cars as part of his plan to tackle climate change.
The Labor Party will introduce tax benefits to reduce the price of electric cars and plug-in hybrids, forecasting that 89 per cent of new car sales will be electric by 2030.
By making electric cars cheaper and more convenient, Mr Albanese hopes there will be 3.8 million on the road by 2030, with 15 per cent of all cars on the road by then being zero-emission.
Electric cars will be exempt from a five per cent import tariff that would reduce the cost of a $40,000 vehicle by $2000. The move would result in savings of up to $8700 for a $50,000 vehicle. The tax cuts will be introduced on July 1 this year and will be reviewed in three years.
Labor will also invest $39.3 million, matched by the NRMA, to deliver 117 fast charging stations on highways across Australia.
This will provide charging stations at an average interval of 150km on major roads, allowing Aussies to drive from Adelaide to Perth or Darwin to Broome with an electric car.
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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)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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