Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Climate Change’
April 29th, 2022 at 9:30 am
Image of the Day: High Cost of “Green” Energy Explains Leftist Calls for Carbon Tax
Posted by Print

In our Liberty Update this week, CFIF highlights a bizarre new crony capitalist idea to introduce a carbon tax that some entrenched interests in Washington, D.C., have begun to advocate.  Even more bizarrely, they sell their proposal to begin taxing energy as a way to reduce energy costs.  You can’t make this up.

Courtesy of economist Stephen Moore, we have an illustration that helps explain their motivation.  Namely, “green” energy is far more expensive than more efficient fuel sources.  Accordingly, they need to tax those more efficient fuel sources in order to make their “green” energy boondoggles more acceptable by comparison:

Why Climate Activists Want a New Carbon Tax

Why Climate Extremists Want a New Carbon Tax

October 15th, 2021 at 12:30 pm
Statistic of the Day: Going Carbon-Free Would Cost Every American $11,300 PER YEAR
Posted by Print

From realistic climatologist Bjorn Lomborg, writing in The Wall Street Journal this week, a jarring analysis of the cost of imposing the Biden/Pelosi/Schumer/AOC carbon-free “Green New Deal” agenda for every American annually:

A new study in Nature finds that a 95% reduction in American carbon emissions by 2050 will annually cost 11.9% of U.S. gross domestic product. To put that in perspective: Total expenditure on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid came to 11.6% of GDP in 2019. The annual cost of trying to hit Mr. Biden’s target will rise to $4.4 trillion by 2050. That’s more than everything the federal government is projected to take in this year in tax revenue. It breaks down to $11,300 per person per year, or almost 500 times more than what a majority of Americans is willing to pay.

But don’t you dare ask any questions.  Just do what they say (not what they necessarily do, of course).

September 24th, 2019 at 9:53 am
Image of the Day: Give It Some Thought, Climate Fanatics
Posted by Print

In our latest Liberty Update, we celebrate the environmental, economic, geostrategic and employment benefits of the American fracking revolution.  Today’s “Pepper… and Salt” comic from The Wall Street Journal offers another poignant perspective for climate fanatics to ponder:

Food for Thought, Climate Fanatics

Food for Thought, Climate Fanatics

 

 

April 5th, 2019 at 10:35 am
Image of the Day: U.S. Leads World In Carbon Reductions, No “Green New Deal” or “Green Real Deal” Necessary
Posted by Print

In this week’s Liberty Update, CFIF wonders what Congressman Matt Gaetz (R – Florida) was thinking in throwing Congressional climate alarmists and their “Green New Deal” a lifeline with his “Green Real Deal.”  We noted how the U.S. already led the world in carbon reductions, which they claim is their goal, even without either bill and the economically disruptive policies they’d impose, and after President Trump rightfully withdrew us from the indefensible Paris climate accord.  This helpful image from the American Enterprise Institute illustrates our leadership in that regard:

 

March 29th, 2019 at 10:49 am
Want Green Power? Go Nuclear.
Posted by Print

In our Liberty Update this week, CFIF highlights how this week’s Senate vote on leftists’ “Green New Deal” once again exposed their hypocrisy.  We note how if climate alarmists really meant what they said, they’d support nuclear power, which offers carbon-free, reliable, safe power.  In a Wall Street Journal piece entitled “The Nuclear Option Is the Real Green Deal,” nuclear scientists John Rie and Alan Emery further detail nuclear power’s record of safety:

Is nuclear power dangerous?  The only major nuclear accident in the U.S. – Three Mile Island, in 1979 – caused neither death nor increase in cancer areawide.  The 2011 ‘disaster’ at the Fukushima plant in Japan also directly caused neither deaths nor disease from exposure to radiation.

World-wide, there have been fewer than 150 deaths from nuclear plants, mostly from the 1986 Chernobyl accident, in which bad design and a series of operator errors led to a significant release of radiation into the environment.  Thanks to the Soviet government’s attempt to keep it secret, lifesaving efforts such as the provision of iodine pills to local residents never happened.”

 

March 4th, 2019 at 4:13 pm
Image of the Day: Greenpeace Founder Takes Down Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)
Posted by Print

So “Green New Deal” fanatic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D – New York) apparently doesn’t practice what she preaches, as her extravagant personal carbon use doesn’t accord with what she advocates for everyone else.  Now, Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore just absolutely takes her apart on the matter:

AOC, the

AOC, the “Green” Hypocrite

 

That’s gonna leave a mark.

July 18th, 2018 at 2:18 pm
Image of the Day: Trump Destroying the Planet, Cont’d
Posted by Print

From withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord to his administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Trump is obviously destroying the planet:

Trump Is Destroying the Planet

Trump Is Destroying the Planet

April 22nd, 2018 at 10:35 pm
Image of the Day: Another Blown Climate Alarmist Prediction
Posted by Print

From our friends at AEI in honor of Earth Day, another “inconvenient fact” refuting hysterical climate alarmist claims:

.

Another Inconvenient Fact

Another Inconvenient Fact

.

June 30th, 2017 at 1:09 pm
City of South Miami Contemplates Its Own New Solar Mandate Boondoggle
Posted by Print

From Solyndra to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s energy subsidy boondoggle, opposition to costly and harmful “green energy” mandates at the federal, state and local levels remains one of the most important components of CFIF’s mission.

Unfortunately, the City of South Miami, Florida offers the latest example in the litany of ill-advised energy mandates.  But the positive news is that it can still be stopped.

City officials have proposed a new ordinance mandating installation of solar panels on every new residential construction project, as well as every expansion of existing residences.  Four similar ordinances exist in the U.S., all of them in California, that exemplar of wise legislation.

What could possibly go wrong, right?

For starters, the new solar mandate is too expensive for average consumers.  Panel installation costs approximately $25,000 for one 10 kilowatt rooftop system, which in addition to a Miami level mortgage can raise monthly costs beyond whatever electrical savings the panels might provide.  Among other things, that opens the door to advocates later demanding taxpayer subsidies to cover that cost, a la Solyndra and other green energy subsidies with which Americans have become all too familiar.

Another conspicuous problem is that no impact study has yet been performed on the ordinance.  Without a reliable assessment of how the ordinance will affect future home construction and costs, particularly for lower-income residents, how can anyone reasonably assess how the proposed law would impact the city?

And that’s just a partial list of the flaws in this proposed ordinance.  The bottom line is that without more due diligence, consumer protections, safety precautions and impact studies on businesses and residents alike, allowing the ordinance to pass would be the height of irresponsible local governance.

June 1st, 2017 at 2:31 pm
Image of the Day: Global Warming Projections’ Poor Performance Record
Posted by Print

The next time a global warming alarmist cites climatologist “consensus” (which is false, by the way) in support of their argument, offer them this straightforward reminder of past performance, courtesy of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI):

Climate Model Failures

January 3rd, 2017 at 9:56 am
Amid Other Failed 2016 Predictions, Don’t Forget Climate Alarmists’
Posted by Print

Amid the wreckage of failed political predictions last year, we shouldn’t overlook another year of failed global warming predictions.  One year ago, Cambridge University professor and global warming alarmist Peter Wadhams predicted that in 2016, Arctic ice would either disappear or decline to “record low” levels:

‘My prediction remains that the Arctic ice may well disappear, that is, have an area of less than one million square kilometers for September of this year,’ he said.  ‘Even if the ice doesn’t completely disappear, it is very likely that this will be a record low year.  I’m convinced it will be less than 3.4 million square kilometers [the current record low].  I think there’s a reasonable chance it could get down to a million this year, and if it doesn’t do it this year, it will do it next year.'”

So how did that turn out?  Ice levels actually grew by a significant amount:

Dire predictions that the Arctic would be devoid of sea ice by September this year have proven to be unfounded after the latest satellite images showed there is far more now than in 2012…  [W]hen figures were released for the yearly minimum on September 10, they showed that there was still 1.6 million square kilometers of sea ice, which was 21 percent more than the lowest point in 2012.  For the month of September overall, there was 31 percent more ice than in 2012, figures released this week from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) show.  This amounts to an extra 421,000 million square kilometers of sea ice.”

Oh, well.  Although the  climate alarm industry believes that there won’t be a next year, there’s always  next year.

September 13th, 2016 at 1:11 pm
Poll: Public Overwhelmingly Opposes Persecution of Climate Alarm Realists
Posted by Print

The political tyranny du jour among climate change alarmists is leveraging the power of the state to persecute anyone who contradicts their orthodoxy using actual facts and data.  As we’ve highlighted, that abusive effort has blown up in their faces, including countersuits from targeted organizations.

There’s more good news to report:  The persecutors’ effort has hit a thud in terms of public opinion as well.  In an election season marked by narrow partisan divisions, a new Rasmussen survey demonstrates a rare degree of public consensus against politicians hoping to silence climate realists:

Attorneys general in 15 states are attempting to prosecute corporations and individuals that they believe are misleading the public about global warming.  Their action, which critics claim is a violation of free speech, has prompted a Congressional investigation.  Most voters continue to believe that the scientific debate about global warming is not over, and oppose government action against those who question it.  A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 69% of likely U.S. voters oppose the government investigating and prosecuting scientists and others, including major corporations, who question global warming.  Just 15% favor such investigations.”

It’s rare to find a 69% to 15% public agreement on anything these days, but it’s worth celebrating that despite the constant onslaught of demonizing rhetoric from climate change alarmists, the overwhelming majority of Americans continue to reject their agenda.

May 4th, 2016 at 2:35 pm
“Climate Hustle”
Posted by Print

In an interview with CFIF, Bonner R. Cohen, Ph.D., Senior Policy Analyst at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, discusses ”Climate Hustle,” a movie released this week that reveals the history of climate scares, explores the question of whether there is a genuine scientific consensus on the issue and examines the science on both sides of the debate.

Listen to the interview here.

September 8th, 2015 at 10:04 am
Ramirez Cartoon: Biggest Threat To America
Posted by Print

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

August 4th, 2015 at 11:08 pm
Obama’s Clean Coal Initiative: A Warning from California
Posted by Print

The Los Angeles Times‘ front-page headline Tuesday comes across as remarkably upbeat: “California is ahead of the game as Obama releases Clean Power Plan.”

But the story’s lead paragraph reads more like a threat than a promise: “President Obama’s plan to cut carbon pollution from power plants over the next 15 years will force states to address climate change by pushing them to act more like California.”

The president cited California’s example when he announced the plan on Monday, recalling the smog that hung over the Los Angeles basin in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “You fast-forward 30, 40 years later, and we solved those problems,” Obama said.

Well, yes, we did — and it’s a good thing, too. But the president is conflating those clean-air rules with policies of a more recent vintage.

California has led the way in pushing utilities to adopt renewable energy from sources such as windmills and solar panels in lieu of natural gas and coal-fired plants. According to the Times: “In 2013, the most recent year available, nearly 19% of California’s electricity came from renewable sources, while less than 8% came from coal, according to the California Energy Commission. In January, Brown proposed an ambitious target of 50% renewables by 2030.”

The story doesn’t mention, however, that the Golden State ranks close to the top in terms of energy prices. It’s no coincidence that the cost of renewable energy in California increased by 55 percent between 2003 and 2013, as the renewable portfolio standard was being phased in. And costs will continue to rise, in no small part because the state Public Utilities Commission earlier this year ordered changes in California’s tiered pricing for electricity, moving from four tiers to two. As a result, the first tier rate will increase significantly, and the second tier rate will rise marginally.

The Times also reports that California is on track to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 as required under AB 32, the “Global Warming Solutions Act” of 2006. Gov. Jerry Brown in January issued an executive order that would accelerate the mandate’s requirements, with the goal of reducing emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. Expect rates to go higher still.

Not surprisingly, Brown hailed Obama’s plan as “bold and absolutely necessary.”

But a new Manhattan Institute report by Jonathan A. Lesser of Continental Economics highlights the real consequences of California’s decarbonization efforts, some unintended, some not. Among Lesser’s key findings:

  • California households’ electricity prices have risen as a result of the state’s renewable-energy mandates and carbon cap-and-trade program—and will likely continue to rise at an even faster rate in coming years.
  • The aforementioned policies have created a regressive energy tax, imposing proportionally higher costs in certain counties, such as California’s inland and Central Valley regions, where summer electricity consumption is highest but household incomes are lowest.
  • In 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced “energy poverty”—defined as energy expenditures exceeding 10 percent of household income. In certain California counties, the rate of energy poverty was as high as 15 percent of all households.

This is the model that President Obama lauds and his EPA wants to emulate. The EPA’s new regulations would mandate that states cut carbon emissions 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.

A tough Wall Street Journal editorial notes that the EPA’s final rule “is 9 percent steeper than the draft the Environmental Protection Agency issued in June 2014,” and opines: “The damage to growth, consumer incomes and U.S. competitiveness will be immense—assuming the rule isn’t tossed by the courts or rescinded by the next Administration.”

Steven F. Hayward, a professor of politics at Pepperdine University and an expert in environmental policy, observed in a post at Power Line on Monday, “By [EPA’s] own admission, full implementation of the emissions targets will avert only 0.018 degrees C of warming by the year 2100. I’m sure we’ll all notice that much change in temps!”

The final rule is nearly 1,600 pages long, and the regulatory impact analysis is nearly 400 pages, so needless to say it will take some time for the lawyers and wonks to sort everything out. But Hayward found an odd paragraph in near the middle of the impact analysis that led him to wonder if the government is putting us on:

As indicated in the RIA [Regulatory Impact Assessment] for this rule, we expect that the main impact of this rule on the nation’s mix of generation will be to reduce coal-fired generation, but in an amount and by a rate that is consistent with recent historical declines in coal-fired generation. Specifically, from approximately 2005 to 2014, coal-fired generation declined at a rate that was greater than the rate of reduced coal-fired generation that we expect from this rulemaking from 2015 to 2030. In addition, under this rule, the trends for all other types of generation, including natural gas-fired generation, nuclear generation, and renewable generation, will remain generally consistent with what their trends would be in the absence of this rule. [Hayward’s emphasis.]

Hayward poses a fascinating question: “if the electricity sector under this new regulation is going to unfold more or less along the lines of business as usual, why are we bothering with this regulation in the first place? Is the EPA seriously admitting that their regulation does nothing substantial at all, or that they’ve spotted a parade going down the street and decided to march at the head of it?”

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors encourage a vigorous legal challenge to the new rules, noting:

The Supreme Court did give EPA the authority to regulate carbon emissions in Mass. v. EPA in 2007. But that was not a roving license to do anything the EPA wants. The High Court has rebuked the agency twice in the last two years for exceeding its statutory powers.

“When an agency claims to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power to regulate a significant portion of the American economy, we typically greet its announcement with a measure of skepticism,” the Court warned last year. “We expect Congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast economic and political significance.”

Congress did no such thing with the Clean Power Plan, which is a new world balanced on a fragment of the Clear Air Act called Section 111(d). This passage runs a couple hundred words and was added to the law in 1977, well before the global warming stampede. Historically Section 111(d) has applied “inside the fence line,” meaning the EPA can set performance standards for individual plants, not for everything connected to those sources that either produces or uses electricity.

When the EPA rule does arrive before the Justices, maybe they’ll rethink their doctrine of “Chevron deference,” in which the judiciary hands the bureaucracy broad leeway to interpret ambiguous laws. An agency using a 38-year-old provision as pretext for the cap-and-tax plan that a Democratic Congress rejected in 2010 and couldn’t get 50 Senate votes now is the all-time nadir of administrative “interpretation.”

“This plan is essentially a tax on the livelihood of every American,” the Journal‘s editorial concludes, “which makes it all the more extraordinary that it is essentially one man’s order.” As California goes, so goes the nation? Let’s hope not.

July 13th, 2015 at 2:20 pm
Podcast: Pope Francis and the “Science” of Climate Change
Posted by Print

Ambassador Francis Rooney, former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, discusses Pope Francis’ latest encyclical, why the Pope should not get involved in divisive and contested political issues like climate policy, and why the climate change debate should not be couched as rich countries versus poor countries.

Listen to the interview here.

July 3rd, 2015 at 8:13 pm
More Uses and Abuses of Laudato Si’
Posted by Print

In last week’s column about Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment and creation, I pointed out some of the ways climate change alarmists have appropriated the pontiff’s language to advance agendas quite different from that of the Catholic Church. (Population control? Seriously?)

Well, the hits just keep on coming. Actor/activist Robert Redford on Sunday cited Pope Francis in his case for doing something — anything — to address the threat of climate change. 

“As Pope Francis has told us, we have a moral obligation to be responsible stewards of the earth and all it supports,” Redford wrote, which is true as far as it goes. “That means protecting future generations from the dangers of climate change.” Well, maybe.

But what does Redford have in mind exactly? On that point — and as with so many others who share his point of view — he’s maddeningly vague. “Our best business minds grasp the historic opportunity for us to lead the world in the clean energy economy of tomorrow,” he writes. “And a new American generation understands the urgency of acting now.”

He may be referring to the U.N.’s stated desire to “decarbonize the economy” by the end of the century. Or he might be talking about covering the country with solar panels and windmills. Whatever it is that he means, it won’t be cheap and it will require plenty of coercion.

It’s one thing to point out how greens lean on the Pope’s encyclical for their pet causes, but in fairness, Francis hasn’t made himself easy to defend. The Pope’s latest choice in climate change advisors is enough to send the most devout Catholic or free market devotee into the slough of despond. As I mentioned in the column, Francis is hardly a friend of capitalism. But he looks like Milton Friedman compared to Naomi Klein.

April 21st, 2015 at 6:48 pm
What It Takes to Prove Global Warming Exists

Lost amid the charge of “inconvenient truths” and “hockey stick” graphs is a clear notion of what it would take to prove that global warming is real, man-made and alterable.

Robert Tracinski has an answer.

“We don’t know whether current warming departs from natural variation, nor have scientists proven the underlying mechanisms by which humans could cause such an increase,” writes Tracinski at The Federalist. “But even if we did know these things, we would have to be able to forecast with reasonable accuracy how big the effect is going to be. A very small warming may not even be noticeable or may have mostly salutary effects, such as a slightly longer growing season, whereas the impact of a much larger warming is likely to cause greater disruption.”

And therein lies the trillion dollar question: If meteorologists can’t consistently predict the weather from day-to-day, how on earth can humanity justify spending vast amounts of money on temperature predictions that fluctuate from “global cooling” to “global warming” only to settle on “climate change”?

As Tracinski says, “Given the abysmal record of climate forecasting, we should tell the warmists to go back and make a new set of predictions, then come back to us in 20 or 30 years and tell us how these predictions panned out. Then we’ll talk.”

September 26th, 2014 at 8:21 am
From Climate Summit Charades to Scorched-Earth Judicial Politics
Posted by Print

CFIF’s Timothy Lee, Senior Vice President for Legal and Public Affairs, discusses this week’s United Nation’s summit on climate change, more inconvenient truths about global warming, and Harry Reid’s court packing efforts.

Listen to the interview here.

January 29th, 2014 at 2:04 pm
Podcast: Median Income Continues to Decline … and So Do Temperatures
Posted by Print

CFIF Senior Vice President Timothy Lee discusses how the U.S. has fallen from the top ten most economically free nations in the world and how, in unrelated news, temperatures have fallen too despite the warnings from the global warming alarmists.

Listen to the interview here.