Perhaps the worst aspect of the “Green New Deal” (GND) recently proposed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Edward Markey is that the authors have lost (or possibly never had) all perspective on climate change. They are acting as if climate change were as bad a problem as the Great Depression, and that another “New Deal” is required for the US to survive. This shows that they they really have no understanding of climate change and that Congress should never appropriate any funds for the purposes proposed by the GNDers. If they have such a bad understanding of this problem, what would they do if there actually were a real problem? It makes one worry that the GNDers might be willing to start World War III on the basis of nothing.
The larger view is that prior to about 1860 the world was suffering from the Little Ice Age, the coldest period for several hundred years with many adverse effects on humans and their crops. What the world needed was higher temperatures, not colder temperatures. During the 1930s the world began to get what it so badly needed, warmer temperatures. So then there was some warming again from the 1970s until recently. And now the climate extremists want lower temperatures rather than realizing that the present relative warmth is just what we needed. There are now increasing indications that temperatures may fall again over the next decade or two because of a weakening sun. The temperature changes to date are entirely consistent with past variations in climate temperatures. Clearly the best thing to do is nothing. But the GND supporters are desperate to claim an emergency and spend almost one hundred trillion dollars of taxpayer and ratepayer money claiming that the problem they see must be solved in 12 years if the world is to survive. We do not even understand how the climate system works, let alone how to solve the alleged problem. As explained on this blog and my Book, everything points to bad “science,” not an emergency.
How crazy can you get! We should be thankful for the minor temperature increases during the Twentieth Century and maybe even hope for a little more, not sacrifice everything to solve a non-problem that we should be thankful for. The climate alarmists should not be given even $1 of taxpayer or ratepayer funds until and unless the “consensus” science may be shown to be fully valid by independent scientists using the scientific method. It is the responsibility of the GNDers to show the validity of their “science,” not climate skeptics.
The best available scientific research using structural econometrics shows that there has been no significant warming due to increases in CO2 during the years for which data is available. But the GNDers want expenditures estimated at $93 trillion of your tax and ratepayer money that assume this is not the case. They base their case on climate models that assume that temperature increases during the 20th Century will continue or even accelerate as CO2 levels continue to increase. But there is no valid evidence for this, just computer models based on unproven “science” promoted by the United Nations in recent decades and more recently by left-wing socialists in the US.
[Originally Published at Carlin Economics]
Dr. Carlin, now retired, was a 37-year career environmental economist and scientist at EPA when, in June 2009, the Competitive Enterprise Institute broke the story of his negative 100-page report reviewing the agency’s draft Endangerment Finding.
