Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems
From "The American Journal of Economics and Sociology"
Abstract
Prior to the mid-19th century, Earth was in the grip of the Little Ice Age. Since then, temperatures have on average trended upward. At the same time, human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) have increased, and the interest of scientists has turned to consider the extent of the relative contributions of anthropogenic CO2 and natural forces to warming.
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group II (WGII) claims that human-caused climate change or global warming is dangerous. According to the report, “Human-induced climate change … has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people, beyond natural climate variability. … The rise in weather and climate extremes has led to some irreversible impacts as natural and human systems are pushed beyond their ability to adapt (high confidence)” (IPCC, 2022a, p. 9).
The AR6 WGI and WGII reports measure climate change as the global warming since 1750 or 1850. The period before these dates is commonly referred to as the “pre-industrial period.” The Little Ice Age, a phrase rarely used in AR6, extends from about 1300 to 1850. It was a very cold and miserable time for humanity, with a lot of well documented extreme weather in the historical record from all over the Northern Hemisphere. It was also a time of frequent famines and pandemics. Arguably today's climate is better than then, not worse.
None-the-less, the IPCC claims that extreme weather events are worse now than in the past, however observations do not support this. Some extreme weather events, such as the land area under extreme drought (Lomborg, 2020), is decreasing, not increasing. Globally the incidence of hurricanes shows no significant trend (IPCC, 2013, p. 216; Lomborg, 2020).
Observations show no increase in damage or any danger to humanity today due to extreme weather or global warming (Crok & May, 2023, pp. 140–161; Scafetta, 2024). Climate change mitigation, according to AR6, means curtailing the use of fossil fuels, even though fossil fuels are still abundant and inexpensive. Since the current climate is arguably better than the pre-industrial climate and we have observed no increase in extreme weather or climate mortality, we conclude that we can plan to adapt to any future changes. Until a danger is identified, there is no need to eliminate fossil fuel use.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.12579
***********************************************Politico, NYT Exploit Senator’s Death to Attack His Climate Change Views
The eco-fanatics at Politico and The New York Times exploited a Republican Senator’s death to grave-stomp over his climate change skepticism.
How many Politico reporters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Who knows, but we do know it took four to write an insane, grave-stomping July 9 headline: “Former Sen. Jim Inhofe, who called climate change a 'hoax,' dead at 89.” The first paragraph of the piece was no better. In fact, it was about as cringeworthy as it gets. “Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who once brought a snowball onto the Senate floor as a brazen symbol of his denial of climate change, died on Tuesday. He was 89 years old.”
Compare Politico's treatment of Inhofe to its flowery 2019 obituary for Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro and its priorities become clear: "Cuba’s Fidel Castro, who defied U.S. for 50 years, has died."
Politico's ghastly report on Inhofe begs the question why any editor(s) using their prefrontal cortexes would okay this for publication. Apparently, someone at Politico had some kind of epiphany because its asinine headline was changed soon after the piece was published.
But Politico wasn’t alone. The New York Times followed suit with its own outrageous attack against Inhofe’s climate views in a separate obituary. “James M. Inhofe, Senator Who Denied Climate Change, Dies at 89,” The Times’s boorish headline read. The Times smeared Inhofe in its first paragraph as “arguably Washington’s most prominent denier of the established science of human-generated climate change.”
Unlike Politico, The Times only needed one author to paint itself as a collective of thoughtless climate ignoramuses. The Times, however, didn’t recognize the insanity of its headline as Politico did, and it remains unchanged as of the publication of its article.
Inhofe’s former staff director Andrew Wheeler blasted Politico and The Times for their utterly disrespectful treatment of the former senator in comments to MRC Business.
“It’s a sad commentary of modern life when some people rush to speak ill of the dead. It’s even worse when it’s the so-called mainstream media like the New York Times, and it’s particularly vile when they only speak ill of Republicans,” Wheeler said.
Politico — despite changing the initial barking mad headline — cast Inhofe as a comic book pollution villain stemming the tide of progress for Gaia’s faithful acolytes:
One of the GOP’s most vocal critics of environmental regulation and the science of climate change, Inhofe held vast sway over environmental policy during his time as chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — not only through his use of the gavel, but through his cultivation of staffers who went on to take key positions at EPA during the Trump administration and worked to roll back those rules Inhofe long maintained that climate change was a ‘hoax,’ going so far as to include it in the title of a 2012 book on the matter.
Politico is the same publication that hyped actually blocking the sun to save the planet from the climate boogeyman, so it’s no wonder it couldn’t resist dinging the legacy of a dead senator because he didn’t genuflect to the media’s pagan climate gods.
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Pennsylvania General Assembly Sends Carbon Capture Bill to Governor's Desk
Absurd
A legal framework for carbon capture and sequestration, part of a plan to reduce emissions and advance hydrogen development, has made it through the General Assembly.
It now awaits the governor’s signature.
Senate Bill 831 has found support among some environmental groups like the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, Environmental Defense Fund, and the Nature Conservancy — but others like the Better Path Coalition, Clean Air Council, and the Center for Coalfield Justice have opposed it.
Sen. Gene Yaw, R-Williamsport, celebrated the bill’s passing as preparing Pennsylvania for a better future.
“This legislation is a proactive step to secure Pennsylvania’s future as a hub for carbon capture and sequestration,” Yaw said in a press release. “It’s a pragmatic solution to a problem that we all want to solve – reducing our carbon emissions without crippling the reliability of our existing power grid.”
One report estimates that Pennsylvania has space for 2.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide underground, the equivalent of yearly emissions from more than 500 million passenger cars. A federal tax credit created in 2018 has spurred dozens of new carbon capture projects, but even with almost $700 million of federal subsidies, attempts to implement the technology have so far failed.
SB831 has also received support from the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, the Pennsylvania State Building and Construction Trades Council, the AFL-CIO, and others.
“Carbon capture technology has the potential to create a significant number of good paying jobs in the construction industry while simultaneously creating family-sustaining permanent jobs for the citizens of our commonwealth,” Robert Bair, Pennsylvania State Building and Construction Trades Council president, said in a press release.
In the Pennsylvania House, instead of running through the Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, it was handled by the Consumer Protection, Technology and Utilities Committee and advanced without discussion.
Both ranking members of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee Reps. Greg Vitali, D-Havertown, and Martin Causer, R-Bradford, voted against SB831.
Vitali was one of only 11 Democrats to go against the bill, while only 36 Republicans voted in favor of the bill, which passed the House 127-75.
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World’s largest oil company bets on the enduring power of gasoline
Saudi Aramco is betting the internal combustion engine will be around for a “very, very long time” as the world’s largest oil company spots a business opportunity from the rise of the electric car.
The state-owned oil group, which made $500bn in revenues last year mainly from producing and selling crude, last month took a €740mn, 10 per cent stake in Horse Powertrain, a company dedicated to building fuel-based engines.
The calculation by Saudi Aramco and the other shareholders in Horse, Chinese carmaker Geely and its French peer Renault, is that as the industry stops designing and developing its own combustion engines, it will start buying them from third parties.
“It will be incredibly expensive for the world to completely stamp out, or do without internal combustion engines,” said Yasser Mufti, the executive vice-president at Saudi Aramco responsible for the deal. “If you look at affordability and a lot of other factors, I do think they will be around for a very, very long time.”
Asked if he thought there would be internal combustion engines forever, Mufti said yes. Saudi Aramco has previously said it believes that even in 2050, more than half of all cars will still run on some sort of fuel.
In 2021, the demise of the internal combustion engine (ICE) seemed assured after carmakers including Ford, General Motors and Mercedes-Benz, and governments including the UK, pledged to end sales of new petrol and diesel engines between 2035 and 2040.
But with growth in electric vehicle sales slowing and trade protectionism rising, the future of ICEs is looking less bleak.
“We believe that as far out as 2035, 2040 and even beyond 2040 we still see a significant number of ICE vehicles,” said Matias Giannini, chief executive of Horse. “More than half for sure, and up to 60 per cent of the population will still have some sort of an engine, whether it is pure ICE, a full hybrid or a plug-in hybrid.”
That outlook presents an opportunity to consolidate production.
Giannini said Horse had already secured “a couple of pieces of business”, and was in talks with several carmakers to supply them with engines.
“We have a variety of new engines coming out, for example, to address legislation,” he said, adding that while a lot of car companies had decided to stop investing in or developing engines in response to new EU standards, “we continued”.
The joint venture was created a year ago, after Geely and Renault carved out their engine and transmission divisions and joined them together into Horse. The new €7.4bn, 19,000-employee company, which has 17 factories worldwide, is capable of building 3.2mn units a year and wants to produce 5mn, putting it roughly in the same league as Stellantis, the owner of Chrysler, Fiat and Citroën.
“There’s nobody doing what we propose to do,” said Giannini. “If you are a car company today and you are focusing 100 per cent on EVs and all of a sudden you realise that in one region your customers want a hybrid vehicle, you could partner with Horse Powertrain.
“You will still have your branded vehicle,” he added. “Everybody wins. You don’t have to make a big investment, you don’t have to reshuffle your engineering, you can have something much faster, still producing out of your plants, employing people out of your region and offering more options to the final consumer.”
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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