October 24, 2023

Do We Really Know That Human Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cause Significant Climate Change?

October 24, 2023/ Francis Menton

It’s by far the most important scientific question of our age: Do human emissions of CO2 and other such “greenhouse gases” cause significant global warming, aka “climate change”?
Based on the belief that an affirmative answer to that question is a universally accepted truth, our government has embarked on a multi-trillion dollar campaign to transform our economy by, among other things, eliminating hydrocarbon fuels from electricity generation (without any demonstrated workable plan for the replacement), outlawing the kinds of vehicles we currently drive, suppressing fossil fuel extraction, banning pipeline construction, making all your appliances work less well, and much more.
Express any doubt about the causal connection between human activities and climate change, and you could very well get labeled as a “climate denier,” fired from your academic job, demonetized by Google or Facebook, or even completely ostracized from polite society.
But is there actually any real proof of the proposition at issue? In fact, there is not.

October 21, 2023

The Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council Has Petitioned The Supreme Court For Certiorari

October 21, 2023/ Francis Menton

It’s the question that I know has been on the tips of the tongues of all Manhattan Contrarian readers: Will the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council, after getting booted ignominiously out of the D.C. Circuit on grounds of standing, now continue its fight to overturn EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding by petitioning the Supreme Court for Certiorari?
The answer is YES. Our Petition for a Writ of Certiorari was filed on Wednesday, October 18, and is now available on the Supreme Court’s website.
Not that other strategies did not occur to us.

October 19, 2023

October 19, 2023/ Francis Menton

A couple of days ago, a Substack called Doomberg had a piece titled “False Utopia.” The piece featured a discussion of a post of mine from February 2023 with the title “We Must Demand A Demonstration Project Of A Mainly Renewables-Based Electrical Grid.”
My post argued that we should demand a demonstration project of a mainly renewables-based electrical grid that would include all the key elements — generation mainly from solar and wind, plus sufficient back-up or storage to make the whole thing work for the long term without involvement of the evil fossil fuels, plus any other necessary elements to make the whole thing work.
Meanwhile though, the government “net zero” or “Green New Deal” (or whatever they are currently called) promotional sites are full of talk of things they call demonstration projects.
So are they responding to my demand? The opposite. All of what they call demonstration projects follow a common approach, which is only to attempt to demonstrate various portions of the full system that would be needed to provide reliable 24/7/365 electricity from predominantly wind and solar generation.

October 15, 2023

October 15, 2023/ Francis Menton

Consider Manhattan Contrarian as your go-to source for the latest on New York’s progress toward green energy utopia.
Can you remember all the way back to December 19, 2022? That’s the day that New York’s Climate Action Council officially adopted its “Scoping Plan,” telling us all how we are going to achieve, among other goals, 70% of statewide electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030 and a zero-emissions electricity system by 2040. The biggest part of the grand plan consists of some 9,000 MW (nameplate capacity) of offshore wind turbines to be built by 2035. As of the time of the Scoping Plan, the state claimed that some 4,300 MW out of the 9,000 MW of upcoming offshore wind projects were under “active development.”
On the very day that the Scoping Plan got finalized, I had a post titled “On To The Great Future Of Offshore Wind Power.” That post noted that even of the 4.300 MW of offshore wind supposedly under “active development,” not one turbine was operating, or even under construction. Several developers had made bids that had been accepted by the state, and some of those developers were getting kind of close to applying for permits. My prediction was: “Expect long delays and demands for lots more money before anything gets built.” Boy, can I call these things.
Shall we check back in for the latest information?

October 12, 2023

October 12, 2023/ Francis Menton

One of the benefits of living in Manhattan is that there are many interesting things to go and see. For example, there are lots of plays, concerts, museums, and even the occasional political show trial.
Today, I thought I might stop by the state government’s civil fraud trial against ex-President Trump, to see how it’s going. The trial, now nearing the end of its second week, is taking place at the main state courthouse at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan.
The last time I dropped in on a political trial in Manhattan, it was the New York AG’s case against Exxon for supposedly defrauding its investors by using different valuation methodologies to assess projects for internal versus external corporate purposes. I covered that trial in an October 2019 post titled “A Serious Contender For The Stupidest Litigation In The Country Goes To Trial.” The AG quickly lost that case ignominiously, which I covered in a further post in December 2019.
Is this case any better?

October 11, 2023

October 11, 2023/ Francis Menton

Among the trendy Left, and particularly on elite academic campuses, hatred of Israel, and by association of all Jews, has long been on the ascendant. The Anti-Defamation League traces the origins of the “Boycott, Divest, Sanctions” movement against Israel to the early 2000s.
By the time we get to the most recent ten years, every elite academic institution has multiple student groups and scores of faculty members advocating for delegitimizing Israel as oppressors of the Palestinians, or even as an “apartheid state.”
And thus the current wave of atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against Israel has brought out statements of support from some 30+ student groups at Harvard, from the Student Bar Association at NYU, from a group of students at Stanford, and many other such around the country.
In the bigger picture, the treatment of Israel and Israeli Jews by Muslims is not at all unique.