Posted on 07/20/2019 4:47:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
Editor's note: This column was co-authored by Tom Harris.
There has been a barrage of attacks against the Trump administration for replacing the previous administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) with the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule. Last week, for example, the American Public Health Association and the American Lung Association announced that attorneys representing them from the Clean Air Task Force are filing a lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for repealing the CPP and bringing in ACE in its place. The three organizations issued a press release in which they asserted, “EPA’s decision to repeal the Clean Power Plan and replace it with the ACE rule continues to disregard the vast health consequences of climate change and puts more lives at risk.”
That is nonsense, of course. But that didn’t stop other groups from taking a similar stance. Carter Roberts, President & CEO of the World Wildlife Fund, said, “This rule [ACE] enables dirty power plants to keep polluting – grounding federal energy policy firmly in past and saddling future generations with the costs of unchecked climate change.” Michael Brune, head of the Sierra Club said, “This is an immoral and an illegal attack on clean air, clean energy, and the health of the public, and it shows just how heartless the Trump administration is when it comes to appeasing its polluter allies.”
Environmentalists, Democrats and some state attorneys general dubbed the regulation the “Dirty Power Plan.” U.S. Democratic Senator Tom Carper complained that the “Dirty Power Plan is a failure of vision and leadership.” They are losing the war on coal begun by Obama and cannot tolerate what now appears to be a defeat.
If Trump administration advisors thought they could appease their opponents by bringing in a rule focused on the useless, and ultimately dangerous goal of limiting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, they were sorely mistaken. But, as long as they did not contest the scientifically flawed idea that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant that must be controlled, they really had no choice but to bring in some form of CO2 reduction regulation.
Dr. Sterling Burnett explained on the internet “Think Radio” program, “Exploratory Journeys, “It [ACE] was forced on the Trump administration because they didn’t, at the same time, say we are going to re-examine the Endangerment Finding [the EPA’s 2009 finding that CO2and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) endanger the health and welfare of Americans].”
“As long as the Endangerment Finding [EF] exists,” said Burnett, “any administration, no matter how skeptical of the claims that humans are causing catastrophic climate change,…the courts will order them to come up with plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. So, to some extent, the administration’s hands were tied because the Endangerment Finding existed and they decided not to question that.”
“So, it's time to go back and examine that [the EF],” concluded Burnett. “And they [would] find there is copious evidence … hundreds of studies out there every year that question one aspect or another of the claim that humans are causing catastrophic climate change. All they have to do is cite that data and say, ‘higher carbon dioxide levels are not going to poison you.’ And, to the degree they are driving a modest temperature rise, [it] is not catastrophic. Human societies have thrived during warmer periods in the past and they have done less well during colder periods.”
It is hard to believe that the attacks that would ensue against the Trump administration for opening the GHG EF to re-examination would be any more severe than what they are already being subjected to for enabling the ACE rule. So, what was the advantage of bringing in a weaker version of Obama’s misguided CPP? If you are going to infuriate your opponents to the extent that they will take out lawsuits against you and publicly label you “the worst president in U.S. history for protecting the air and our climate,"as Brune did after Trump’s environment speech on July 8, you might as well do what you really wanted to instead of taking half measures.
Burnett explained that ACE has another serious downside that will limit the Trump EPA going forward.
“ACE is dangerous because it cements for a second time, this time by a Republican, supposedly skeptical administration, the idea carbon dioxide is a pollutant that needs to be regulated,” said Burnet in a Heartland Press release. “This gives the Endangerment Finding the Trump administration’s stamp of public approval, which environmentalists will cite when they fight this in court saying, ‘even the Trump administration acknowledges carbon dioxide is damaging the U.S. but they are unwilling to take the steps necessary to truly fight carbon pollution.’” The ACE rule is unfortunate but faced with the amazing lies from the opposition, for better or worse, the administration decided on it.
ACE is also problematic because it sets the stage for yet more CO2 controls to come from the EPA that will apply to new power stations, standards that fall under ‘New Source Review’ (NSR) standards. Indeed, Reuters reported on June 19 that, “Wheeler told reporters after signing the ACE rule that EPA will address NSR reform in a separate rulemaking that will be finalized separate in the coming months.”
It’s time for the Trump administration to call a spade a spade. They should clearly explain that CO2 endangers no one and order that the EF be reopened. And, when the re-examination inevitably reveals that effectively classifying CO2 as a pollutant was a mistake, they should not be quiet about it. Instead they must follow Winston Churchill’s advice. “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time—a tremendous whack.”
In exactly what spot ?
Do you believe that in 1919 they had accurate CO2 measuring equipment and that there were CO2 measurement stations positioned all over the globe ?
What is the amount of CO2 in the air, at your house ? It's not CO2 that man 'releases' into the atmosphere that changes the temperature of the air. It's the heat we put in the air that makes the air warmer.
No, but consistent methods for estimating historic CO2 have been developed that seem pretty accurate (tree rings, sea sediment).
With respect to "where", I get your point. For example, temperatures compared at same site measurement stations are unreliable and biased towards warming. Because, weather stations that were formerly out in the boonies are increasingly surrounded by expanding urban and suburban heat islands.
Anyway, my objection is one of the first questions raised in the excellent Ed Berry article linked to by Hot Tabasco. It's a pretty convincing takedown of the IPCC model.
“The proof that CO2 does not drive climate is shown by previous glaciations...If the popular catastrophist view is accepted, then there should have been a runaway greenhouse when CO2 was more than 4000 ppmv. Instead there was glaciation. Clearly a high atmospheric CO2 does not drive global warming and there is no correlation between global temperature and atmospheric CO2.”
https://skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past.htm
Personally I doubt the accuracy of the 210 PPM figure from over a hundred years ago and how they came to that conclusion.
The same with their claims about global temperature average of a hundred years ago. What measuring apparatus was used and where were all the thermometers located?
If I can control the data input I can also control the data output.......
I don't think there was any significant event that caused a rise in PPM but rather the current 410 level is actually the norm since the science is sophisticated enough to actually read it as opposed to 100 years ago.....
That’s a discussion in the back and forth comments to the article with the author.
The article itself does a convincing job of showing what’s wrong with the IPCC model. The 14CO2 decay data from the nuclear test pulse is particularly convincing.
However, the article seems to say, that since the model is wrong, and the human contribution is accounted for, there is either a rise in natural CO2, or the historical data is wrong.
Some of the posters to the article make the latter assertion, saying that ice cores may track atmospheric CO2, but they underestimate it.
Things to follow going forward.
I guess a logical question is, “How long have we been directly measuring atmospheric CO2, and how much of our data is inferred?”
My guess is the accurate measuring is only 20 years max and the rest is as you say, inferred........
As a side story, back around 2002 I spent the first night of a pheasant hunting trip to N.W. Kansas in an upstairs room of a 94 year old lady in Logan KS.
She was born and raised there and the house she lived in had been built by her father outside of town and she recalled how once a week they would take their horse and buggy into town to purchase supplies. The well they had at their house was drilled by her father using the method of the times, a drilling post pulled around and around by mule.
Eventually her father had the house moved into town by mule train, with the house being rolled on logs..........
The main street in town is so wide, that people park their vehicles in the middle of it. The reason it was so wide was because when the town was first founded, all the lumber was brought into town on mule trains and the street had to be so wide so as to allow them to turn around.
Anyway, this lovely woman was a literal history book of those times but what was most captivating was her account of living thru the great dust bowl of the 1930's......(There's still evidence out there of the old, abandoned small houses dotting the countryside of people who abandoned them and left)
The reason I bring up the dust bowl in this climate thread is that if you do a search on it, almost every article you find will classify it as the "Greatest man made climate catastrophe of all time"...........
Total BS! The catastrophe was caused by three years of drought and the farmer's inability to grow crops that would have helped to prevent soil erosion and dust storms..........
So the articles imply it was the fault of the farmers........
Great story, local color.
I’ve heard that the Dust Bowl was mostly weather, but that plowing and farming land where rainfall fluctuated from year to year left the land vulnerable. A dry wind blowing over desiccated plowed land is going to pick up and move dirt, creating those dust storms. If the land hadn’t been farmed, there’d be tangled thatched weeds and grass holding the soil together (but of course, no food production).
Before I met her, my wife was in the Sahara during a dust storm, really a full blown sandstorm, which she described as intense, amazing, and awful. There, of course, the drought is perpetual, and the exposed soil and sand gets picked up by the wind. No one thinks much about it, except to blame subsistence farming at the periphery of the desert for extending it (possibly true to some extent due to local overpopulation).
If people want to call what occurred in Oklahoma “man-caused”, they’re partly right because of the poor soil protection techniques, but the ones who do so are saying it as if its somehow unique to modern times. Any time you have a multi-year drought without soil-protecting farm practice, you’ll eventually get consequences. It has nothing to do with world wide industrialization and CO2 generation from fuel usage.
That said, I’m really glad you put me onto Ed Berry’s web site.
I understand what you are saying but I would add, for those who stayed and suffered thru the three year drought, how many actually believed it would last three years and had any thought on how to deal with it?
No blame. A man’s got to make a living. If you’re born into farming and there hasn’t been any drought lately, how’s one to know one might come?
I might add, on the other end of the scale, consider California. Apparently there are these events called “atmospheric rivers” which are infrequent, but dump enormous amounts of water when they occur. Something close to that happened there last winter (or maybe the winter before) where a multi-year drought was followed by so much rain that a major earth dam came very close to collapsing as the spillway was topped.
Maybe today, with historical perspective, one could blame authorities for not maintaining the dam. But in the 30’s, in Oklahoma, only recently converted to farming, who knew?
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