Climate Change
Border Control/Immigration Climate Change Judging Trump Bringing Left & Right Together
SUMMARY/TALKING POINTS
A well-known climate activist has recently apologized for the unfounded panic caused by environmentalists over the fabricated horrors of global warming.
Here’s related material by the same scientist:
The Biden-Sanders climate plan:
- unscientifically blames climate change for flood, storm, & fire, damage
- would raise energy prices & increase unemployment
- would kill off nuclear, largest source of clean energy
- would increase killing of bald eagles & whooping cranes
Not all the Democrat positions on Climate Change are supported by mathematical and scientific data. Determining how much humans are contributing and future temperatures are based on complicated math, physics, and climate prediction models which have never worked.
Further, determining what to do about warming brings in more complex and less reliable economic prediction models (to estimate the effects and tradeoffs among government programs and regulations, businesses, jobs, etc.
The biggest, most obvious problem with the prediction models is that they ignore the effect of new events or discoveries that will almost certainly come along and contribute to solving any problem that may exist. (Whenever there is a problem to be solved there is money to be made. So free market capitalism can be expected to come up with many solutions to climate change problems. Many are already in development.)
Democrats have distorted the truth and used hysterical propaganda to support their positions. Their narrative that 97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real does not stand up to scientific scrutiny.
The real climate change debate is between two groups:
1. A confident, non-political group that believes technology, informed investments, rational decision making, and the use of the best scientific information will lead to a solution of the global warming issue. An optimistic group that sees global warming as a technical problem with technical solutions.
2. A group, mainly on the political left, that is highly partisan, anxious and often despairing, self-righteous, big on blame and social justice, and willing to attack those that disagree with them. They often distort the truth when it serves their interests. They also see social change as necessary for dealing with global warming, requiring the very reorganization of society.
If the issue were as simple as the alarmists lead you to believe, that rising temperatures are caused by rising CO2, why did cooling occur between 1940 and 1965 during a major industrialization phase of the western world?
And why was 1998 hotter than each of the next 9 years when the two most populous countries in the world, China and India, were in the sweet spot of their industrialization?
In the Democrats’ solutions to this issue, as they often do, they have excluded important variables such as cost, implementation details, unintended consequences, effects on the economy, and, like the models, they have excluded the effect of new events or discoveries that will contribute to solving any problem that may exist.
Humans have been notoriously bad at predicting the future. One big reason is that they don’t account for changes accurately.
It doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of money on currently available climate solutions that
-- Hurt our economy and
-- Put hundreds of thousands of people out of work,
especially when
--The long-term payoff cannot be calculated and may turn out to be insignificantly small, and
·-- Better, cheaper solutions are on the way.
President Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate accord because it very expensive for America in terms of money and lost jobs, contributed very little to the warming issue, and didn’t allow for new technologies already being developed. As someone who has been making deals for five decades, he knew it was a bad deal and we can do better.
The prediction models have completely ignored what could be the most significant factor of all—our suns variability. A Grand Solar Minimum (when solar activity weakens causing a global cooling trend) starting this year could cause a “mini ice age” lasting several years. (But, illustrating how scientists making predictions can obtain wildly varying results, a recent article claims the current solar minimum will not have a noticeable effect on the earth.)
DISCUSSION
We set the stage for our discussion with this article. In it, a well-known climate activist apologizes for the unfounded panic caused by environmentalists over the fabricated horrors of global warming.
Here’s related material by the same scientist:
The Biden-Sanders climate plan:
- unscientifically blames climate change for flood, storm, & fire, damage
- would raise energy prices & increase unemployment
- would kill off nuclear, largest source of clean energy
- would increase killing of bald eagles & whooping cranes
https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1281020520918470657?s=20
And a clip by the same author: Why renewables won’t save the planet.
Any good discussion must start with defining key terms. The term climate change has been used to mean:
1. The earth is in a warming trend
2. The earth is in a warming trend and humans are contributing
3. The earth is in a warming trend and humans are making a significant contribution
4. The earth is in a warming trend and humans are the main cause
5. The earth is in a warming trend, humans are the main cause, and without massive government intervention there will be catastrophic consequences within a few decades.
There is actual mathematical and scientific data to support definitions 1 and 2. But definitions 3 and 4 go beyond actual data science and depends on a less accurate form of science that uses mathematical, climate, and weather models.
Definition 5 extends even farther from data science by using not only more complicated mathematical, climate, and weather prediction models but economic prediction models as well (to estimate the effects and tradeoffs among government programs and regulations, businesses, jobs, etc.) The models used to support Definitions 3-5, which attempt to predict the interaction of multiple complex nonlinear systems, are notoriously unreliable. If models like these worked, you could predict where the stock market was going.
As a result, as you move down this list of definitions, there is less and less agreement among scientists as the assertions become more and more dependent on the models.
In this clip
https://www.prageru.com/video/can-climate-models-predict-climate-change/
a scientist with the best credentials imaginable (Physicist, Taught at Columbia then Princeton for 5 decades, has published over 200 peer reviewed scientific papers, has co-authored several books including one of the first on how carbon dioxide emissions affect the climate, served as the Director of the Office of Energy Research at the US Department of Energy) says: “Predicting climate temperatures isn't science – it's science fiction. Long term predictive climate models don’t work—haven’t worked in the past, they don’t work now, and it’s hard to imagine when if ever they’ll work in the foreseeable future.”
No such predictions can be called “settled science” as democrats have done.
The reason these prediction models don’t work is that they attempt to predict a future that will include many relevant events that we have no data for because they have never happened before.
(We have recently seen an analogous situation with models predicting Coronavirus statistics based on “stay at home,” social distancing, inconsistent wearing of masks, uncertain transmission methods, etc.—all things that never happened before and for which there is no data. As a result, the models have given wildly inconsistent results.)
The biggest, most obvious problem with the prediction models is:
1. They ignore the effect of actions already being performed to reduce CO2 by governments, for profit and non profit organizations, and individuals . Some examples: about 90% of Costa Rica's electrical grid now runs on renewable energy; China put a ban on new coal mines and 15% of their economy will be renewable energy by 2021; Canada protected 85% of the Great Bear Rainforest, part of the world’s largest temperate rain forest; many businesses and individuals are actively trying to reduce their carbon emissions; and volunteers in India planted 50 million trees in 24 hours.
2. They ignore the effect of new events or discoveries that will almost certainly come along and contribute to solving any problem that may exist. (Whenever there is a problem to be solved there is money to be made. So free market capitalism can be expected to come up with many solutions to climate change problems.)
An example of a new event is fracking. In this article we read that in 2016 it was not government regulations or subsidies but, “The market-based fracking revolution (that) enabled the U.S. to reduce its emissions more than any other country…”
More examples: There are already machines that can extract carbon dioxide from the air and nuclear fusion reactors which may be economically viable within the next decade.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2019/01/14/is-fusion-power-within-our-grasp/#540677299bb4
The Democrat narrative we’ve heard that 97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real came from a survey where the questions were
a. Has the earth warmed since pre-1800’s and
b. Is human activity a significant factor in global warming?
The surveyors selected 79 out of 3,146 respondents out of 10,257 potential respondents. 76 of the 79 answered yes to question a. and 75 of 77 (97%) answered yes to question b. Note that this was an opinion survey—no facts required to justify answers. Also, the magnitude and consequences of the warming and human contribution were not addressed.)
In fact there have been several similar surveys by the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). At this site:
https://friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/97_Consensus_Myth.pdf
is a detailed study of several of the surveys including the one above. On page 3 they address the 97% “consensus” with the statement: “A detailed deconstruction of five separate surveys taken since 2004 reveals there is no such consensus in the IPCC surveys.” In the introduction we read, “Not only is the 97% claim faulty, the climate predictions of the IPCC exclude an estimated 65% natural factor influence.” On page 17 we see: “Ironically a detailed review of the most recent ‘consensus’ study by Cook et al (2013) found only 64 papers out of 11,958 that explicitly state that AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) caused more than 50% of recent warming. This represents only a 0.54% "consensus."
But the Democrats and the Mainstream Media have used even definitions 4 and 5 as if they were fact. Note that Democrats want you to believe that massive government action is required to solve every perceived problem.
Here
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/real-climate-debate
the author says the real climate change debate is between two groups:
1. A confident, non-political group that believes technology, informed investments, rational decision making, and the use of the best scientific information will lead to a solution of the global warming issue. An optimistic group that sees global warming as a technical problem with technical solutions.
2. A group, mainly on the political left, that is highly partisan, anxious and often despairing, self-righteous, big on blame and social justice, and willing to attack those that disagree with them. They often distort the truth when it serves their interests. They also see social change as necessary for dealing with global warming, requiring the very reorganization of society.
The persuasion expert Jason Andrews said after studying the climate change arguments:
“The only climate-related thing I’m absolutely certain of is that socialist and liberal movements have turned any legitimate research findings into hysterics and massive behavior-changing propaganda.”
If the issue were as simple as the alarmists lead you to believe, that rising temperatures are caused by rising CO2, why did cooling occur between 1940 and 1965 during a major industrialization phase of the western world? And why was 1998 hotter than each of the next 9 years when the two most populous countries in the world, China and India, were in the sweet spot of their industrialization? And there are many miscellaneous facts like this one reported in the liberal Time Magazine September 23, 2013: (There was a) 60% increase in ice-covered ocean water since last year, leading some scientists to believe that the planet is actually undergoing “global cooling.”
The main alarmist Al Gore had huge conflict of interest issues. While sounding the alarm about climate change he was heavily invested in green energy firms—firms that profited from billions in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy. From a 2012 Washington Post article: “Fourteen green-tech firms in which Gore invested, received or directly benefited from more than $2.5 billion dollars in loan, grants, and tax breaks, part of President Obama’s historic push to seed a U.S. renewable-energy industry with public money.”
And keep this in mind: Historically, human beings have been very bad at predicting the future. There is a natural bias to think things will stay as they are.
Example: In 1943, Thomas Watson, the Chairman of IBM said, “… there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
A more recent example: In 2007 Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer said, “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.”
Economists in particular have sometimes failed greatly at predicting. In 1988 Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman predicted “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’ — which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants — becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
Here you can read about some global warming forecasts that didn’t come true:
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/global-warming-apocalypses-didnt-happen
Here are 50 years of failed climate change predictions:
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions
Scott Adams in his book Loserthink points out that the experts were wrong about the food pyramid, peak oil, the ozone layer shrinking, and effect of the 2000 computer bug. He points out that creative panic goes a long way.
In the Democrats’ solutions to this issue, as they often do, they have excluded important variables such as cost, implementation details, unintended consequences, effects on the economy, and, like the models, they have excluded the effect of new events or discoveries that will contribute to solving any problem that may exist.
It doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of money on currently available climate solutions that
· Hurt our economy and
· Put hundreds of thousands of people out of work,
especially when
· The long-term payoff cannot be calculated and may turn out to be insignificantly small, and
· Better, cheaper solutions are on the way.
Buying solar panels for your roof when they first came out turned out not to be a good idea because a few years later there were cheaper, more efficient solar panels available.
President Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate accord because it was very expensive for America in terms of money and lost jobs, contributed very little to the warming issue, and didn’t allow for new technologies already being developed. As someone who has been making deals for five decades, he knew it was a bad deal and we can do better. He will also be monitoring the progress of the many startup companies working on this issue to see if the government needs to help. There is every reason to believe these startups operating under our free market economy will contribute significantly to solving any problems that arise. Bill Gates who funds many climate related initiatives talks about some here:
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/A-critical-step-to-reduce-climate-change
This clip explains in more detail the problems with the Paris Climate accord:
https://www.prageru.com/video/the-paris-climate-agreement-wont-change-the-climate/
In February 2019, Energy Secretary Rick Perry announced $24 million in funding to support eight identified projects in the field of carbon capture. This approach creates jobs as opposed to most Democrat approaches.
Here are some other new technologies that can help with the problem:
1. New nuclear technologies
a. New DOE and NRC agreement will lead to faster deployment and licensing of U.S. nuclear technologies.
b. Gen IV nuclear reactors (meltdowns are impossible)
c. There are 10 funded startups for fusion power—clean power at a low cost.
2. CO2 scrubbers—equipment that absorbs CO2. There are many different approaches. One scrubber economically converts CO2 to a type of jet fuel. Another sucks it out of the air with giant air sucking engines and controlled chemical reactions. Another permanently stores it in rocks. Another has developed technology for using the heat generated by existing industrial processes, such as metal smelting, cement production, and petrochemical refining, to collect CO2 out of the air. The CO2 can then be used by indoor farms, in oil well rejuvenation, and to make carbonated drinks
3. Improved drones used for package delivery could reduce emissions by 54%.
The prediction models have completely ignored what could be the most significant factor of all—our suns variability. A Grand Solar Minimum is when solar activity weakens, and less solar energy reaches earth causing a global cooling trend. These minimums occur in cycles several years long. This link discusses NASA’s Grand Solar Minimum forecast for the next solar cycle.
https://www.whatsorb.com/news/global-warming-by-co2-or-cooling-by-a-grand-solar-minimum?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIzris9dz05QIVih-tBh2YUg8EEAAYASAAEgLTTPD_BwE
In this article we read the following.
1. This next cycle begins around 2020.
2. NASA says it will be the weakest (meaning the coldest global weather) of the last 200 years.
3. That would mean weather similar to the Dalton Minimum (1790-1830) when there was brutal cold, crop loss, famine, and powerful volcanic eruptions which put ash in the air, further blocking the sun’s radiation.
4. There are strong indications that by focusing on CO2 we may be ignoring what may be a far greater factor in our climate—the effect of the sun. We may have been spending trillions of dollars on the wrong problem.
5. No linear climate models used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the any of the hundreds of climate think tanks around the world are able to model the effect of the “moody” sun. They dismiss such solar influence as not significant. That is a huge mistake by all serious evidence. (The IPCC reports are the basis for all liberal hysteria related to climate change.)
6. There’s been a recent increase in volcanic activity. The IPCC has discussed the impact of cloud cover on climate in their evaluations, but this phenomenon has never been considered in climate predictions due to the insufficient physical understanding of it."
7. The cycle beginning in 2020 could last for years. Some predict a “mini ice age.”
But, illustrating how scientists making predictions can obtain wildly varying results, this article claims the current solar minimum will not have a noticeable effect on the earth:
For more on the Paris Climate accord see these clips. The first identifies flaws in the data used to indicate warming, further confirming President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the accord.
https://nypost.com/2016/02/22/the-paris-climate-deal-wont-even-dent-global-warming/
https://www.prageru.com/video/the-paris-climate-agreement-wont-change-the-climate/
Here are five more clips on climate change. The fourth analyzes in great detail the ineffectiveness of climate prediction models and how carbon dioxide regulations adversely impact the quality of life. The 5th is about a large-scale German renewable power experiment that failed.
https://www.prageru.com/video/what-they-havent-told-you-about-climate-change/
https://www.prageru.com/video/climate-change-what-do-scientists-say/
https://www.thegwpf.com/putting-climate-change-claims-to-the-test/
A FINAL NOTE:
Here are two simple very high payoff solutions to help with climate change:
1. Everyone should turn their thermostat target temperature up in the summer and down in the winter and wear less or more clothing to be comfortable.
2. There are plants that require very little care that grow an incredible number of leaves in a short period of time. One example is the creeping fig vine. Two of these plants can grow from the first image to the second in about 10 years.
