Over In The Congress, It's The "Hoax Of The Day" Every Day
/If you have read my April 1 “April Fools Day Hoax Roundup” — and maybe even before you had read that piece — it may have started to dawn on you that an absolute majority of what you see in the news media these days is in furtherance of one or another of the current wave of big hoaxes. The hoaxes covered just in that one short piece included the Trump/Russia Collusion Hoax, the Climate Change Hoax, the Hate Crime Hoaxes (multiple examples including Jussie Smollett), and the Poverty Hoax.
For today, forget the news media and let’s take a look at the Congress. Do they even talk about anything over there any more that isn’t a hoax? To all appearances, it seems like they just move back and forth between and among one of the hoaxes and another on a kind of “hoax of the day” rotation. Lately the big ones have been the Trump/Russia Collusion Hoax and the Climate Change Hoax.
Yesterday it was all “Trump/Russia Collusion,” with Senators grilling William Barr about nothing whatsoever. Today, it is the Climate Change Hoax, as the House has just voted on something called the “Climate Action Now Act.” According to Climate Home News, the bill has passed on a party-line vote of 231-190. The bill had 224 Democratic sponsors, but not a single Republican. (It won’t go anywhere in the Senate, of course.) By its terms, this Act would compel the U.S. to meet its “commitments” under the Paris Climate agreement of 2015.
As I stated in the April Fools Day post, I am not contending that the whole idea that “the climate is changing” is a hoax. But multiple aspects of the endless climate change drumbeat are obvious hoaxes, including as examples the heavily tampered hockey-stick-shaped surface temperature record, as well as the assertion that “extreme weather events” are on the increase. Now add to those another aspect of the climate change narrative that is a clear hoax, namely the assertion that the United States can somehow “do something” about climate change by restricting its own production and use of fossil fuels and/or by driving up the prices of those fuels — those being the central goals of the Paris agreement. And then there is the other part of the Paris agreement that would require developed countries, principally the United States, to transfer some $100 billion or so annually to corrupt third-world kleptocracies as some kind of climate justice payment. How exactly is that wealth transfer going to “do something” about climate change?
The luminaries in our House of Representatives seem not to be noticing that nobody else in the world (other than a few complete fools in the EU) is paying the slightest attention to this Paris agreement emissions reduction thing. On Monday Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute reported on world performance under the Paris agreement. Some highlights:
[N]one of the signatories [to the Paris agreement] are meeting the pledged energy aspirations. Yes, it’s “none.” Even the EU is included in that.
[S]ince plans were laid for the Paris Agreement, global oil consumption has risen by 4 million barrels per day and natural gas use has risen nearly as much (in energy equivalent terms). Both trends follow straight-line growth since the world came out of recession. . . .
Even coal use is on the rise. As the International Energy Agency (IEA) recently noted: "The story of coal is a tale of two worlds with climate action policies and economic forces leading to closing coal power plants in some countries, while coal continues to play a part in securing access to affordable energy in others."
Do you have the impression that the United States contributes a big part of global CO2 emissions? Back in the 1980s, when the whole climate scare was just getting going, the U.S. was definitely the biggest emitter of CO2. But those days are long gone, as the third world has made big strides toward entering the modern economy. The U.S. Energy Information Agency provides some considerable information to put this in perspective. In 1980, U.S. CO2 emissions were just under 5 billion metric tons per year, constituting close to 30% of total world emissions. For 2018, the EIA gives U.S. CO2 emissions as 5.237 billion metric tons, which is barely above the 1980 level, and actually a substantial decrease from a peak around 2005. But meanwhile, the emissions of the rest of the world have multiplied by about a factor of 2.4 over the same period. Today U.S. emissions today are barely 14% of world emissions, and indeed the entire 5.237 tons annual emissions of the U.S. in 2018 are less than just the annual increase in emissions in the rest of the world between 2005 and 2017: “EIA estimates that global energy-related CO2 emissions rose by 6,040 million metric tons (21%) [per year] between 2005 and 2017 . . . .”
Here is EIA’s handy chart, so you can see where we are:
Moreover, emissions outside of the U.S. and EU look to go right on increasing as far as the eye can see. The latest data reported at the World Resources Institute show that global emissions rose by some 2.7% in 2018 over 2017. Beyond 2018, if you look at projections from big pooh-bahs like BP, you find them tossing out various pie-in-the-sky scenarios where all third-world countries suddenly start building an electrical grid using wind and solar sources. But the fact is that nobody is doing that. Here is the truth from the real world (from Scientific American, December 6, 2018): “Emissions are on the rise with coal use, including a 4.5 percent increase in coal in China and a 7.1 percent increase in India.” That’s just in 2018. Going forward, some 1600 new coal plants are on the drawing boards for the third world. Those will generate far more than total U.S. emissions, and would result in world emissions greatly increasing even if the U.S. economy were totally shut down.
So the Democrats in the House took a victory lap earlier today after their great vote on the Climate Action Now Act. Among lots of good quotes, I pick this one from Eric Blumenauer of Oregon:
I’m thankful that today’s action demonstrates that Democrats are on the side of protecting our children’s future. H.R.9. is a first step towards a future of climate action and climate justice, a Green New Deal for clean energy jobs, rebuilding and renewing out sustainable agriculture and environmental justice.”
It’s all about “climate justice” and “protecting our children’s future.” I suppose a lot of people must be fooled by this, although I can’t think how.