Thursday, August 17, 2023
Princeton, MIT Scientists Say EPA Climate Regulations Based on a ‘Hoax’
Two prominent climate scientists have taken on new rules from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in electricity generation, arguing in testimony that the regulations “will be disastrous for the country, for no scientifically justifiable reason.”
Citing extensive data (pdf) to support their case, William Happer, professor emeritus in physics at Princeton University, and Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), argued that the claims used by the EPA to justify the new regulations aren’t based on scientific facts but rather political opinions and speculative models that have consistently proven to be wrong.
“The unscientific method of analysis, relying on consensus, peer review, government opinion, models that do not work, cherry-picking data and omitting voluminous contradictory data, is commonly employed in these studies and by the EPA in the Proposed Rule,” Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen wrote. “None of the studies provides scientific knowledge, and thus none provides any scientific support for the Proposed Rule.
“All of the models that predict catastrophic global warming fail the key test of the scientific method: they grossly overpredict the warming versus actual data. The scientific method proves there is no risk that fossil fuels and carbon dioxide will cause catastrophic warming and extreme weather.”
Climate models such as the ones that the EPA is using have been consistently wrong for decades in predicting actual outcomes, Mr. Happer told The Epoch Times. To illustrate his point, he presented the EPA with a table showing the difference between those models’ predictions and the observed data.
“That was already an embarrassment in the ’90s, when I was director of energy research in the U.S. Department of Energy,” he said. “I was funding a lot of this work, and I knew very well then that the models were overpredicting the warming by a huge amount.”
He and his colleague argued that the EPA has grossly overstated the harm from CO2 emissions while ignoring the benefits of CO2 to life on Earth.
Many who have fought against EPA climate regulations have done so by arguing what’s called the “major questions doctrine,” that the EPA doesn’t have the authority to invent regulations that have such an enormous effect on Americans without clear direction from Congress. However, Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen have taken a different tack, arguing that because the EPA regulations are “arbitrary and capricious,” they fail a test laid out in Motor Vehicle Manufacturers v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company.
“Time and again, courts have applied ‘State Farm’s’ principles to invalidate agency rules where the agency failed to consider an important aspect of the problem, or cherry-picked data to support a pre-ordained conclusion,” they wrote.
According to Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen’s testimony, “600 million years of CO2 and temperature data contradict the theory that high levels of CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming.”
They present CO2 and temperature data indicating much higher temperatures and levels of CO2 than are observed today, with little correlation between the two. They also argue that current CO2 levels are at a low point historically.
“The often highly emphasized 140 [parts per million] increase in CO2 since the beginning of the Industrial Age is trivial compared to CO2 changes over the geological history of life on Earth,” they wrote.
The scientists’ testimony to the EPA also stated that the agency’s emissions rules fail to consider that CO2 and fossil fuels are essential to life on earth, particularly human life.
“Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere create more food for people worldwide, including more food for people in drought-stricken areas,” they wrote. “Increases in carbon dioxide over the past two centuries since the Industrial Revolution, from about 280 parts per million to about 420 ppm, caused an approximate 20 percent increase in the food available to people worldwide, as well as increased greening of the planet and a benign warming in temperature.”
More CO2 in the atmosphere leads to more plant growth and higher farming yields, they said. Synthetic fertilizers, which are derivatives of natural gas, are responsible for nearly half the world’s food production today. “Net zero” goals would reduce CO2 emissions by more than 40 gigatons per year, reducing the food supply proportionally, according to the scientists.
In addition to disregarding the benefits of CO2, they stated, the EPA’s emission rules and the global warming narrative that has been used to justify them are based on flawed data.
In addition to teaching physics at Princeton, Mr. Happer’s decades of work in physics have focused on atmospheric radiation and atmospheric turbulence, and his inventions have been used by astronomers and in national defense.
“Radiation in the atmosphere is my specialty,” Mr. Happer said, “and I know more about it than, I would guess, any climate scientists.”
His expertise “involves much of the same physics that’s involved in climate, and none of it is very alarming,” he said.
The global warming narrative argues that as people burn fossil fuels, they emit higher concentrations of carbon dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere, which creates a “greenhouse effect,” trapping the sun’s radiation and warming the earth.
But one aspect of CO2 emissions that global warming models fail to take into account, according to Mr. Happer, is a phenomenon called “saturation,” or the diminishing effect of CO2 in the atmosphere at higher concentrations.
“At the current concentrations of CO2, around 400 parts per million, it decreases the radiation to space by about 30 percent, compared to what you would have if you took it all away,” he said. “So that’s enough to cause quite a bit of warming of the earth, and thank God for that; it helps make the earth habitable, along with the effects of water vapor and clouds.
“But if you could double the amount of CO2 from 400 to 800, and that will take a long time, the amount that you decrease radiation to space is only 1 percent. Very few people realize how hard it is for additional carbon dioxide to make a difference to the radiation to space. That’s what’s called saturation, and it’s been well-known for a century.”
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Leftmedia Finally Questions Ethics of EVs
It’s taken long enough, but members of the Leftmedia finally have begun noticing that the promise of an electrically driven future may not quite live up to the morally superior moniker it has been given. In fact, a future where the vast majority of cars Americans drive are electric holds some considerable downsides, especially when it comes to human labor and negative environmental impacts.
Even The Washington Post has begun highlighting several of the genuinely problematic and morally reprehensible aspects of the “green revolution.” In a recent article titled “In scramble for EV metals, health threat to workers often goes unaddressed,” the Post notes the serious health dangers associated with the mining and production of manganese, one of the materials necessary for the production of EV batteries.
These mines and production facilities are located in places such as South Africa and Gabon, where worker protections and safeguards are often secondary as the demand for manganese rises. An increasing number of workers are suffering the negative health effects. The article highlights one former worker who asks: “How long is it going to take until people start realizing what is happening? Another 30 or 40 years? Must we wait until people start dying?”
Another Washington Post article, published this week, is titled “Despite reforms, mining for EV metals in Congo exacts steep cost on workers.” This time, the Post observes that mining cobalt from Congo, the world’s largest producer, comes via dire working conditions often endured by child laborers. Slave labor is also a significant contributing factor in the mining of cobalt.
While noting that “EVs are widely considered crucial to addressing climate change,” the article observes, “Without a full accounting, there is a risk that the green-energy transition could repeat the painful history of earlier industrial revolutions.” Ya think?
However, the reprehensible labor conditions for mining the minerals necessary for making EV batteries are just one of many problems with forcing this green revolution.
It’s painfully ironic that Kamala Harris is busy lying about Florida’s slavery curriculum while the Biden administration is seeking to force more Americans to buy into an industry that relies on slave labor.
While leftists largely ignore the exploitation of those laboring in the mines, Americans are increasingly bearing the economic brunt of Biden’s green revolution, which is being foisted upon the country via the regulatory state and will cost Americans billions of dollars. It’s everything from new CAFE standards that are heavily pushing the market toward EVs to a proposed change to the National Environmental Policy Act that would require all federal agencies to consider climate change for “environmental justice” when evaluating projects.
On top of all this is the fact that the country simply doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to handle a significant increase in EVs. There are not enough charging stations and not enough power being produced to provide for millions more new EVs.
Speaking of power, renewable energy sources cannot even promise to sustain the current power demands of the country, let alone a huge influx of EVs. Ask California.
Will the Leftmedia eventually get around to admitting this reality as well? Or is it too committed to the climate cult to be bothered?
https://patriotpost.us/articles/99544 ?
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Brighton rock bottom: How the Greens nearly destroyed the city I love
Julie Burchill
When you’re short-sighted, everyone seems attractive; for this reason, I don’t often wear my glasses, as I think myopia has a felicitous effect on my attitude to life. However, after a whopping 28 years living in Brighton & Hove, it’s dawning on me that this has coloured my view of my adopted hometown too.
I love living in Brighton and wouldn’t dream of moving anywhere else. But I am privileged to do a thing I love for a living, when and where I want; for people who need to get around it on a daily basis, Brighton is an increasingly unpleasant place to be. A good deal of this is the fault of the Green council, the UK’s first ever; looking back on their recently ended rule, it feels like the city was overcome by an invading force who tried their best to destroy it, leaving residents looking around in dazed disbelief.
Oddly, considering the party’s name, the natural world appears to have been one of their main targets. The Greens had something of a slash-and-burn attitude to local flora. Hedges, bushes and even a bowling green, which had been standing for years, were eviscerated. Dutch elm disease ran riot: the council refused to properly treat all of the affected trees, some of which have now been chopped down.
Angry men on bicycles are the kings of our seaside urban jungle
Most perverse was the destruction of a large part of the oldest and longest ‘green wall’ (a vertically built structure intentionally covered by vegetation) in Europe in the spring of 2021, during nesting season for the hundreds of birds who inhabited it. Perhaps as it was established by the Victorians, it was probably a nasty colonialist nature reserve and deserved to die? One specimen of local flora which the Greens did like was weeds, which took over to the point of being a health hazard. Still, if you’ve righteously cracked down on herbicides, who cares if a few old ladies are hospitalised by nasty falls? The council even blamed Brexit for the weeds they had so lovingly nurtured.
In contrast to the disregard shown to the elderly, Brighton’s huge student population was endlessly pandered to by the council, who focussed on expanding student accommodation in the city practically to the exclusion of all other. Students often ride bikes; the justification for slashing the living wall was that it could allow a cycle lane to be built. This wasn’t a surprise: cyclists are the only beasts who have protected status here. Angry men on bicycles are the kings of our seaside urban jungle; it’s a cliche that fellows in flash cars are trying to compensate for inadequacies elsewhere, but a quarter of a century in Brighton has convinced me that this is equally true of grown men who ride huge bikes on pavements. It’s not like there aren’t any enough cycle lanes; in fact, there are so many that they regularly help bring our traffic to a standstill, causing extra congestion and pollution from cars.
Exorbitant parking fees imposed by the council are estimated to have cost us more than £1 million in day-tripper revenue over three years, but gridlock was nevertheless a regular occurrences. Some dunces suggested that this chaos was a sign that Brighton was a successful city. Another of the clowns, councillor Sarah Nield, had to apologise in 2020 for tweeting ‘laughed at queue of cars’ while observing how many freewheeling cyclists were around.
It was the stated aim of some Green councillors in 2020 that the city could be ‘car-free’ within three years. Luckily, the loonies were kicked out this May. The prospect of a crackdown on cars might have been appealing for the student population, but it would have effectively curtailed the movements of the old and the physically disabled. As is usual, it was one rule about transport-induced climate change for us and another for the planet-huggers, as we’ve seen with the globe-trotters of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, whose Instagram feeds often resemble recces for a re-make of Around The World In 80 Days. The leader of the city’s Green council had to apologise for a ‘major failure of judgement’ after being caught flying to a Cop conference in Glasgow on the same day he criticised the government for a ‘lack of action’ over climate change.
The old saucy Brighton was anathema to these pronoun-ed puritans
Apart from students, there were few people the Greens actually liked having here in Brighton. Those made to feel unwelcome included those who were born here (priced out), the working-class young (ditto), tourists (they planned to close public toilets) or those who preferred the naughty seaside-postcard town before Green Year Zero.
The old saucy Brighton was anathema to these pronoun-ed puritans who even attempted to ban the Christmas Day charity swim for ‘health and safety’ reasons. Why would you move to the louchest city in Britain and attempt to turn it into Gilead-on-Sea?
The list of Green idiocies and inefficiencies goes on forever, but thankfully I’ve got limited space. There was the infamous bin strike described so memorably by resident Lynne Truss:
‘The place turned into Armageddon…a tide of used teabags, eggshells, soiled kitchen paper, banana skins, smelly tin cans, and used sanitary towels advanced in such a determined and menacing manner down nice residential streets, you could almost hear it breathing.’
Somehow we managed to achieve one of the lowest recycling rates in England – 29 per cent whereas the national average is around 45 per cent. The pathetic and pointless British Airways i360 tower, opened in 2016, cost a fortune and is barely used. The decrepit West Pier once stood out; for the past decade it has fitted in perfectly as the city became a ghost of itself. When the Royal Albion Hotel burned down last month, it was found to be full of asbestos, making Brighton literally as well as figuratively toxic at the height of the tourist season.
Now the smoke has cleared and the future looks brighter. The Greens were sentimental sadists when they were in charge: sweet words smeared over actions of cruelty and callousness. A friend who moved to Stockholm told me: ‘The UK Greens seem to use ecology as an excuse to ruin people’s lives while the Swedes make the green thing about enhancing people’s lives.’ She’s right.
Brighton still shows up in national surveys as one of the best places to live; it’s a hopeful city, which has none of the feeling of ‘managed decline’ which other once-thriving cities have. My local heroine is the independent councillor Bridget Fishleigh, who never ceased drawing attention to the way the Greens were running the city into the ground. ‘Like many residents,’ she said, ‘I have high hopes for the new Labour administration – they have fresh ideas and aren’t tied to Labour of the past.’
Council leader, Bella Sankey, appears to be doing all she can to distance her party’s policies from those of the disgraced council; this feels very much like what will happen nationally at election time, when Keir Starmer will put clear water between himself and any Green policies in order to win back the Red Wall. Labour’s leader knows that yapping on about a better future is incompatible with delivering a net-zero one at great expense to an impoverished population.
The only fly in the ointment is the fact that the ghastly Eddie Izzard is planning to stand at the next election as a Labour candidate for Brighton Pavilion – the seat of the country’s only Green MP, Caroline Lucas. Talk about being caught between a frock and a hard place; hasn’t my beautiful, beleaguered, bashed-about city suffered enough? But, short-sighted though it may be, I still wouldn’t live anywhere else.
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Australia: millions of animals die in the fires of environmentalism
From the 1980s, green academics introduced the theory that people are bad for the environment. They embraced the Wilderness Myth and burning was restricted. In 2003, after hundreds of homes were burnt and people were killed in Canberra, the Nairn Inquiry identified the problem that we weren’t burning enough.
Green academics and fire chiefs boycotted that parliamentary inquiry. They gave us the 2004 Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Inquiry which preached about ‘Learning to Live With Bushfires’. Now we have emergency response and evacuation instead of sustainable land and fire management. Over the years, hundreds of people and countless millions of animals have died as a consequence of mismanaged forests and the failure to keep up with controlled burn programs.
After Black Saturday 2009 and Black Summer 2019/20, emergency leaders and academics used the Climate Cop-Out to cover their derrieres. The bushfires Royal Commission turned into the Natural Disasters Royal Commission. The Emergency Leaders for Climate Action convinced our leaders that alleged warming had visited a holocaust upon us.
The only thing unprecedented about Black Summer was the filthy unmanaged scrub that fuelled the firestorms. During the Settlement Drought from 1790 to 1793, there were three consecutive extreme fire seasons in the area around Sydney. At one stage Parramatta had three straight days of searing northwesterly gales with mid to high 40s temperatures. Masses of flying foxes and lorikeets dropped dead on the ground in what is now Parramatta Park. Imagine what Flannery and Mullins would say if that happened today!
People were living in bark humpies, but there were no disasters, even though Aboriginal fires were burning 24/7 to the northwest. Firestorms couldn’t develop in the clean open landscape. After we made it a wilderness, a lightning strike in that same area ignited the world record Gospers Mountain fire of more than half a million hectares. Emergency Generalissimos with fire engines, heavy waterbombers, and computer models couldn’t save buildings clad with brick and steel.
This is not a climate crisis but a lack of common sense. Now green academics are trying to turn Aboriginal culture to their own ends. There’s nothing magic about cultural burning nor is it particular to any one race. Some of our elders, black, white, and brindle have the knowledge and experience to manage bushland. The academics advising governments don’t. Frequent mild burning is effectively illegal in New South Wales because the stupid rules and regulations are dictated by academics, not experienced practitioners.
You can’t burn too often. In mild weather, fire will only carry after continuous flammable fuel has accumulated. The trick is to burn it as soon as possible – when it is easy and safe. Even if people could control the climate, it wouldn’t change that simple fact. Equally important is managing the whole landscape, not just patches.
Uncontrollable firestorms explode from the wilderness because three-dimensionally continuous fuels accumulate in the absence of management. Hiring a waterbombing airforce costs zillions of dollars and makes no difference to wildfires in severe weather. It takes money away from land management, hurts taxpayers, and lines privileged pockets. But, I suppose it’s a small part of the Climate Scam.
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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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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