Vive la révolution! Vive les Gilets Jaunes!

Hundreds of French people in yellow vests advanced along the Marseilles waterfront.

As CFACT covered the march, two armored cars approached from the opposite direction.

A lone woman ran forward and situated herself in between, waving a yellow kerchief which smartly coordinated with her yellow vest.  The Berliet VXB-170 twelve ton behemoths continued their advance.

The woman stood her ground.  With the approaching force just feet away, she threw wide her arms and defied them.  For a moment, one brave héroïne slowed the power of the state to a crawl.  The next, a police officer in full riot gear swept her aside, and a platoon of police marched onto the scene.

Undaunted, the protestors continued until the police gave way.

The picture and video Adam Houser took of this modern day “Marianne” having a courageous “Tiananmen Square” moment are CFACT exclusives.

CFACT used the weekend break at COP 24, the UN climate conference in Poland, to head to France to do some research.  After interviewing many gilets jaunes (yellow vests), and observing their demonstrations, CFACT can report that the streets belong not to the government, nor to the police, but to the men, women and children in the yellow vests.  Moreover, contrary to what you may have seen in the media, in their hearts, the police are with the protestors.

The demonstrators are in fact the friends, neighbors and families of the police arrayed against them.  Except in extreme cases, the police are standing aside and leaving the gilet jaunes in charge.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there.  We’ve all seen images from Paris and other cities of masked hooligans in yellow vests smashing windows and setting fires.  Nearly all of this violence has come from radical leftists who never miss a chance to riot.  CFACT encountered these same thugs three years ago in Paris during UN COP 21, well before anyone thought to don a yellow vest.  The real gilets jaunes are upset that their president and the media are using the violent thugs to smear them.  The average French observer knows the protesters.  They get it.  Will the French government succeed in smearing the earnest, nonviolent people in the yellow vests elsewhere around the world?

Moreover, just about everyone with an agenda is trying to horn in.  This includes climate campaigners who are trying to claim the gilets jaunes as their own.  They’ve posed in yellow vests for the media during carefully staged climate events. Don’t buy it for a second.  We spoke with a wide assortment of protesters and asked them point blank.  (Video to follow).  Climate taxes? “They are BULL SHIT” is among the more genteel exclamations that question engenders.

Here are the straight facts:

The gilets jaunes represent a broad cross section of the French working and middle classes.  They are butchers, bakers and automobile makers.  They are the folks who drive the trucks, farm the food, build the buildings and fix what breaks.  They are France.  They have had enough.

The gilets jaunes took over a large toll station on the road to Marseilles.  CFACT was there.  They narrowed the lanes, but allowed traffic to pass.  Toll collectors and police left them completely in charge. The protestors did not allow motorists to pay the toll.  They are prepared to starve leviathan.

France, like many European nations, has gone much further down the UN climate road than Americans have.  They are already feeling the pain that Californians and so many others have in store.  Climate taxes on fuel to pay for inefficient, variable wind and solar power and other climate fantasies are a waste, and the folks in the yellow vests know it.  They refuse to redistribute more of what they earn in the name of global warming. They realize that climate taxes are regressive, and resent the elites with the means to take confiscatory taxes in stride.  President Macron has vowed to suppress and outlast the protestors.  He has no idea.  He also has no friends among them.

President Macron declared, “We have to tax fossil fuels more in order to fund our investments in renewable.”  Then, when faced with mass protests, he suspended the most hated climate tax for six months.  The protesters see right through this. Saturday their battle cry was, “we stay on our course.”

Over 120,000 nice, normal, fed up French citizens took to the streets in every corner of their country Saturday.  President Macron deployed 89,000 police and 80 of those armored cars to stop them.  He failed.

The yellow vest protestors are right on the merits.  Their movement has already spread to Belgium and the Netherlands.  Who will be next?

Vive la révolution!  Vive les Gilets Jaunes


Thank you to everyone who chipped in to make our work possible.  We can’t wait to share with the UN what we learned in France!  We keep finding so much more to do.  Will you give right now and help us do it?  


EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission.

Adolf Hitler: “He alone, who owns the youth gains the future.”

Schools have become the epicenters for pushing propaganda and various political agendas. Schools are not educating children to think critically or to become life long learners. School should be preparing our youth to become productive citizens not activists.

What we must have is more learning in schools and less activism.

The poster child for less learning and more activism in schools is a 15-year old girl named Greta Thunberg. Greta Thunberg is a disabled child. According to Wikipedia Greta has been diagnosed with Asperger syndromeWebMD says this about Asperger syndrome:

Asperger’s syndrome is technically no longer a diagnosis on its own. It is now part of a broader category called autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Those with ASD tend to have “an obsessive focus on one topic or perform the same behaviors again and again.” Greta’s obsessive focus is on climate change.

Greta is being used to push the environmentalist agenda of climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP24) conference in Poland.

Pat Carlson, Environmental Chairman for the Eagle Forum, in an article titled “Controlling The Youth” writes:

Conference of the Parties COP24 reflects 25 years of saturating the world’s youth in the dogma of global warming or, as we now refer to it, climate change. They have been told all their lives that humans (their parents) are killing planet Earth with all of our modern conveniences. Of course, the most advanced economies of the world are the most guilty of this crime with the United States being the worst offender.

One young Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, learned about the crisis of global warming when she was 7. She was so concerned she quit talking or eating and became ill. She is now 15 and acts as though she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders trying to stop climate change. She has been skipping school one day a week or striking, as she calls it, to bring attention to this crisis. This has made her a celebrity in Sweden.

I have learned from my good friend John Casey that: 1.) The climate changes; 2.) these changes follow natural cycles; and 3.) there is nothing mankind can do to change these natural cycles. Casey found that there is a 260 year cycle where the sun has few or no sunspots. This natural cycle causes the earth to cool and can last for decades. Carlson confirms what Casey discovered stating:

The fact is, according to satellite readings, Earth’s temperature has been in a pause for the last 20 years and has had no significant additional warming. Furthermore, Don Easterbrook, Professor Emeritus of Geology at Western University, is one of several scientists who say the Earth is cooling. Prof. Easterbrook predicts Earth’s temperature will cool 3/10th’s of a degree Fahrenheit over the next 20 years and will continue that cooling trend for several decades.

Carlson notes:

The United Nations is not going to miss cashing in on her fame. She is at COP24 and she is being held up as a hero. Her anguish over this is heart-wrenching. In just one interview she referred to the crisis as an “existential threat,” the “biggest crisis humanity has ever faced,” and “we must try to save what we can save.”

She has had an audience with United Nations’ Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, as well as other heads of state telling them “they are behaving like children.” She is being used as a pawn by the U.N. to further their cause. What adult can resist the impassioned plea of a child asking for help?

Hitler also said, “I use emotion for the many and reason for the few.”

President Trump has pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement. He has said that he is “not convinced” about global warming/climate change.

It is clear that Greta is being used. It is clear that the United Nations wants to push it’s climate change agenda and is more than happy to use Greta as their pawn to do so.

The problem is implementing the UN COP24 agenda harms human flourishing and especially children. Just look at Paris burning to understand the social cost of the UN agenda. Macron followed Greta’s advice and now he faces its consequences on his own people.

Carlson concludes:

Climate change is just a smoke screen for the U.N.’s hidden agenda to have a centralized government giving it the ability to globally regulate and redistribute wealth from rich countries to poor countries and of course, itself. The global warming lie has deprived the youth of the world the hope of a prosperous future. That hope has been replaced with fear.

President Trump is showing great courage and true leadership in pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement and questioning the whole human-induced global warming claim.

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EDITORS NOTE: The edited featured image of Greta Thunberg is by Marc Femenia from Wikipedia.

The Green Agenda Burns to Ashes in Paris

A riot is an ugly thing.

The anarchical mayhem in the streets of Paris in recent days paint a picture of a fractured society with deep-seated problems—a breakdown of the fragile yet essential rule of law.

While we’ve come to expect such things in France, there are specific reasons why these protests have erupted in the last month.

The “climate” agenda, peddled as a means to save the planet and reduce inequality, is being exposed in France as an agenda inherently at odds with the interests of middle- and working-class people.

Last year, a wide range of American and international media, celebrities, and activists excoriated President Donald Trump for pulling the United States out of the international Paris climate agreement. Trump said in 2017 that he would put “no other consideration before the well-being of American citizens” and that he would reject an agreement that would force taxpayers to “absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.”

Former Vice President and climate change activist Al Gore said at the time that leaving the deal was a “reckless and indefensible action.”

But Americans may in fact have a better grasp of their interests than a tiny elite across the pond and in America’s powerful media institutions. For proof, look to the streets of Paris.

Paris is now burning, and French President Emmanuel Macron, who was once widely praised as a kind of “centrist” savior of the global community, is in hot political waters.

Macron’s approval ratings sit at 23 percent in a recent poll, according to Reuters, a new low for his presidency. The “yellow vest” protesters, as they’ve been called, have forced his administration to back off its proposed new gas and utility taxes.

The protesters appear to come from a vast swath of French society and don’t fit neatly on the ideological spectrum. They’ve rebelled against high taxes while also calling for increases in the minimum wage.

Alas, the consequences of living in a society where the government is involved in every aspect of a person’s life.

“France’s violent Yellow Vest protests are now about many domestic concerns, but it’s no accident that the trigger was a fuel-tax hike,” read an editorial for The Wall Street Journal. “Nothing reveals the disconnect between ordinary voters and an aloof political class more than carbon taxation.”

France’s widespread use of nuclear power has allowed it to move a bit further away from the carbon economy in terms of energy costs, but its transportation sector is still highly reliant on oil, The Wall Street Journal noted.

Nicolas Loris, an economist and regulatory expert at The Heritage Foundation, highlighted the widespread economic harm that’s caused by “green” policies:

Global warming regulations for new and existing power plants will drive electricity bills higher for families and businesses. Fuel efficiency mandates for cars, trucks, and heavy-duty vehicles increase the up-front cost of vehicles by thousands of dollars. Methane regulations on oil and gas would introduce burdensome, complex processes that would likely slow the industry’s current efforts to reduce emissions, which have been falling for decades.

For the average person, the cost of the war on climate change can be severe.

In a country like France, which is already dealing with economic hardship, low growth, and high joblessness rates, you have a recipe for disaster.

Maybe there is something to be said about leaders asserting national self-interest after all.

The shocking images of riots are nevertheless emblematic of the collapse of the green agenda and the animosity it engenders from the people it harms: the forgotten men—squeezed by regulations and taxes—who don’t count themselves among the privileged few who receive generous green energy subsidies.

In France, many see this dysfunctional system as inevitable and unchangeable without extreme recourse.

Certainly, we should deplore the mobs and destruction of property. In America, we’d hope that our differences can be solved through elections, deliberation, and peaceful protest, if necessary.

This is certainly possible as long as we maintain our constitutional system and a cultural respect for the rule of law that the Founding Fathers and generations of Americans blessed us with.

While France’s economy is stagnant, the U.S. economy has been booming—in part due to the flourishing oil industry and the curtailment of regulations that were a hallmark of the Obama era.

Are the conditions in Europe really what we want to replicate in the U.S.?

California is going down this path, and perhaps the new Congress will as well. But the chaos in France should serve as a stern warning of what lies down the road.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor and commentary writer for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: .

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The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now


EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Photo: Tatif/Wostok Press/ZUMA Press/Newscom.

Court Documents Suggest A Personal Vendetta Between Two Lawyers Might Be Fueling Climate Crusade

  • Two of the law firms suing Exxon Mobil sued each other over four years ago over disagreements about attorneys’ fees from a previous lawsuit targeting the oil company.
  • Court filings appear to suggest much of the anti-Exxon lawsuits is being fueled by a personal vendetta between two of the biggest law firms engaged in the climate crusade.
  • The trial attorneys behind the climate crusade have a long history of back-biting and bickering over attorneys’ fees from previous Exxon lawsuits.

Two of the attorneys representing various cities in climate litigation against oil companies have a history of suing and counter-suing each other over personal squabbles, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Environmental attorneys Vic Sher and Matt Pawa got into a multi-million-dollar legal dispute in 2014 stemming from a lawsuit they both worked on against ExxonMobil. Sher, who was with Sher Leff at the time, alleged Pawa’s group, Pawa Law Group, failed to distribute money from a settlement in the case. Pawa, in turn, argued in a lawsuit that Sher was the one cheating him out of millions of dollars.

Sher, who is now with Sher Edling, eventually paid Pawa about $6 million for the retributions, court documents show. The disagreement stems from a lawsuit New Hampshire filed in 2013 alleging Exxon negligently contaminated the state’s water ways with 2 billion gallons of MTBE, a gas additive experts believe poisons drinking water. The intrigue comes amid growing bad blood between the two sides.

The state initially sued 26 oil companies in 2003 over the contamination. New Hampshire previously collected over $130 million for MTBE cleanup from the other defendants. The jury eventually awarded the state damages of $816 million. Exxon was made to pay roughly 29 percent of market share, which equaled roughly $236,372,664 at the time of the lawsuit.

New Hampshire’s Supreme Court upheld the decision in 2015 after Exxon appealed the ruling to the top court.

People take part in protests ahead of the upcoming G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 2, 2017. Placard reads “Global Warming is NOT a Myth”. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

A dispute arose between Pawa and Sher in 2012 relating to the division of attorneys’ fees between them under a contract with New Hampshire, which retained both to represent the state in the Exxon contamination case. A panel eventually awarded Pawa nearly $6 million for breaching the agreement.

Sher Leff refused to comply with the final award, including payment of the amounts awarded to Pawa’s law firm, even while Sher Leff pocketed more than $27 million in attorneys’ fees from the Exxon case. Sher countersued in 2014, arguing Pawa entered into a secondary oral agreement that the legal fees associated with the case would be delivered proportionally. Sher’s case was dismissed.

Neither Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, a California-based law firm that now employs Pawa, nor Sher Edling responded to TheDCNF’s request for comment about how the nearly five-year-old lawsuit is affecting their current legal pursuits of Exxon.

Both law firms — Sher Edling and Hagens Berman — are barnstorming the country, convincing cities to sue energy companies for allegedly contributing to damage caused by climate change. The rivalry between the two attorneys heated up Nov. 26 after San Francisco and Oakland fired Hagens Berman and hired Sher Edling to represent the cities as they appeal a court’s decision to dismiss their lawsuits against Exxon.

Hagens Berman is handling King County, Washington’s lawsuit against five major oil companies. The California-based firm was also behind a now-dismissed climate lawsuit brought by New York City.

A logo of the Exxon Mobil Corp is seen at the Rio Oil and Gas Expo and Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil September 24, 2018. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes

Hagens Berman’s fee would have been 23.5 percent of any winnings from its cases with San Francisco and Oakland. Hagens Berman stood to earn possibly billions of dollars in contingency fees depending on the total winnings, had San Francisco, Oakland or New York City won their global warming suits.

Sher Edling, for its part, is handling climate lawsuits for six California cities and counties. Local governments suing fossil fuel interests argue state nuisance and trespassing laws, which have sometimes been applied to pollution, also apply to global warming. They also accuse energy companies of trying to downplay the harms their products allegedly cause.

Hagens Berman and Sher Edling’s drama comes after New York filed a lawsuit in October against Exxon for allegedly downplaying for decades the risk the company’s oil products pose on the climate.

The lawsuit follows over three years of investigation first orchestrated by former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who resigned in April over abuse allegations from former romantic partners. The probe took many twists and turns and seemed to come to a halt shortly after his resignation.

Exxon engaged in a “longstanding fraudulent scheme” to deceive investors, analysts and underwriters “concerning the company’s management of the risks posed to its business by climate change regulation,” the lawsuit notes.

COLUMN BY

Chris White | Energy Reporter

Follow Chris White on Facebook and Twitter

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EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission from The Daily Caller. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

NYT: Biofuel Mandates Have Been an Environmental Disaster

Across the world, the effects of biofuels mandates have been profoundly negative.


Gridlock that stops any legislation from being passed is usually better than “bipartisanship.” To get bipartisan support, legislation has to buy off power brokers and special interest groups in both political parties. A classic example is America’s harmful legislation requiring the use of biofuels. It has resulted in the destruction of vast areas of tropical rainforest, massively increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

The New York Times describes this in a story called “Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe.” The story explains that “A decade ago, the U.S. mandated the use of vegetable oil in biofuels, leading to industrial-scale deforestation—and a huge spike in carbon emissions.” In some areas once covered by rainforest, there are now “only charred stumps poking up from murky, dark pools of water.” As the Times explains:

Slashing and burning the existing forests to make way for oil-palm cultivation had a perverse effect: It released more carbon. A lot more carbon. NASA researchers say the accelerated destruction of Borneo’s forests contributed to the largest single-year global increase in carbon emissions in two millenniums, an explosion that transformed Indonesia into the world’s fourth-largest source of such emissions. Instead of creating a clever technocratic fix to reduce American’s carbon footprint, lawmakers had lit the fuse on a powerful carbon bomb that, as the forests were cleared and burned, produced more carbon than the entire continent of Europe.

Despite this massive destruction of forests, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the Speaker of the House at the time, continues to defend the “biofuels mandate she shepherded into law.” She claims it is “reducing emissions” when it obviously isn’t. Her fellow Democrat and political ally, former Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), admits as much. He helped enact the mandate as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. But he now recognizes the obvious reality that the mandate is “doing more harm to the environment” than any fossil fuels it has replaced.

Former President George W. Bush enabled this destruction by supporting the mandate and signing it into law. This bipartisan support for the mandate didn’t make it better because bipartisanship is usually a toxic blend of evil and stupidity. “In America, we have a two-party system,” a Republican congressional staffer told a visiting group of Russian legislators in the 1990s. “There is the stupid party. And there is the evil party. … Periodically, the two parties get together and do something that is both stupid and evil. This is called—‘bipartisanship.’”

This harm to the environment was also facilitated by the Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency. It massively underestimated the destruction of forest that the mandate would cause. Dire losses of forests were projected in its initial, honest estimate of what would happen from the mandate going into effect. But in response to lobbying from special interests, it replaced that estimate with a rosier one that dismissed forest losses as negligible.

As The New York Times notes, initially, the Obama EPA recognized that the negative effect on the environment “of land-use changes overshadowed any other consideration, and not by a small margin,” resulting in negative effects on the climate annually for at least 32 years and taking “a century” before the resulting replacement of fossil fuels would “reach the level of benefit required under the law.” But in response to lobbying, the EPA’s stance changed:

By the time the E.P.A. released its final rule in early 2010, it had made a complete about-face. Its models now found that the impact from land-use changes were almost negligible. For Indonesia, the E.P.A. estimated that just 110,000 acres of forest would be converted to cropland as a result of the American biofuels law, and almost none of it on sensitive peatland.

Across the world, the land substitution effects of biofuels mandates have been profoundly negative.

Biofuel mandates drove up wheat prices in Egypt, triggering riots and contributing to the ouster of pro-American ruler Hosni Mubarak. Egypt is now under a veiled military dictatorship that is far more oppressive and wasteful than Mubarak’s rule, and there is far more terrorism and much less tourism and growth in small businesses than under Mubarak. Related food price increases fueled terrorism and violence in places like Yemen and Afghanistan. They also contributed to hunger and child malnutrition in Guatemala.

This article was reprinted from Liberty Unyielding.

COLUMN BY

Hans Bader

Hans Bader practices law in Washington, D.C. After studying economics and history at the University of Virginia and law at Harvard, he practiced civil-rights, international-trade, and constitutional law.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘A Political Report Masquerading as Science’: The Truth About the New Climate Report

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission.

4 Problems With the New Climate Change Report

If you’re like me, you’re happy the White House released the latest version of the National Climate Assessment on Black Friday. Publishing the 1,700-page report the day after Thanksgiving saved me from unwanted dinner conversations about our planet’s impending climate doom.

But if your aunt calls you up this week spouting claims of mass deaths, global food shortages, economic destruction, and national security risks resulting from climate change, here’s what you need to know about this report.

1. It wildly exaggerates economic costs.

One statistic that media outlets have seized upon is that the worst climate scenario could cost the U.S. 10 percent of its gross domestic product by 2100.  The 10 percent loss projection is more than twice the percentage that was lost during the Great Recession.

The study, funded in part by climate warrior Tom Steyer’s organization, calculates these costs on the assumption that the world will be 15 degrees Fahrenheit warmer. That temperature projection is even higher than the worst-case scenario predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In other words, it is completely unrealistic.

2. It assumes the most extreme (and least likely)climate scenario.

The scary projections in the National Climate Assessment rely on a theoretical climate trajectory that is known as Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5. In estimating impacts on climate change, climatologists use four representative such trajectories to project different greenhouse gas concentrations.

To put it plainly, Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 assumes a combination of bad factors that are not likely to all coincide. It assumes “the fastest population growth (a doubling of Earth’s population to 12 billion), the lowest rate of technology development, slow GDP growth, a massive increase in world poverty, plus high energy use and emissions.”

Despite what the National Climate Assessment says, Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 is not a likely scenario. It estimates nearly impossible levels of coal consumption, fails to take into account the massive increase in natural gas production from the shale revolution, and ignores technological innovations that continue to occur in nuclear and renewable technologies.

When taking a more realistic view of the future of conventional fuel use and increased greenhouse gas emissions, the doomsday scenarios vanish. Climatologist Judith Curry recently wrote, “Many ‘catastrophic’ impacts of climate change don’t really kick at the lower CO2 concentrations, and [Representative Concentration Pathway] then becomes useful as a ‘scare’ tactic.”

3. It cherry-picks science on extreme weather and misrepresents timelines and causality.

A central feature of the National Climate Assessment is that the costs of climate are here now, and they are only going to get worse. We’re going to see more hurricanes and floods. Global warming has worsened heat waves and wildfires.

But last year’s National Climate Assessment on extreme weather tells a different story. As University of Colorado Boulder professor Roger Pielke Jr. pointed out in a Twitter thread in August 2017, there were no increases in drought, no increases in frequency or magnitude of floods, no trends in frequency or intensity of hurricanes, and “low confidence for a detectable human climate change contribution in the Western United States based on existing studies.”

It’s hard to imagine all of that could be flipped on its head in a matter of a year.

Another sleight of hand in the National Climate Assessment is where certain graph timelines begin and end. For example, the framing of heat wave data from the 1960s to today makes it appear that there have been more heat wavesin recent years. Framing wildfire data from 1985 until today makes it appear as though wildfires have been increasing in number.

But going back further tells a different story on both counts, as Pielke Jr. has explained in testimony.

Moreover, correlation is not causality. Western wildfires have been particularly bad over the past decade, but it’s hard to say to what extent these are directly owing to hotter and drier temperatures. It’s even more difficult to pin down how much man-made warming is to blame.

Yet the narrative of the National Climate Assessment is that climate change is directly responsible for the increase in economic and environmental destruction of western wildfires. Dismissing the complexity of factors that contribute to a changing climate and how they affect certain areas of the country is irresponsible.

4. Energy taxes are a costly non-solution.

The National Climate Assessment stresses that this report “was created to inform policy-makers and makes no specific recommendations on how to remedy the problem.” Yet the takeaway was clear: The costs pf action (10 percent of America’s GDP) dwarf the costs of any climate policy.

The reality, however, is that policies endorsed to combat climate change would carry significant costs and would do nothing to mitigate warming, even if there were a looming catastrophe like the National Climate Association says.

Just last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proposed a carbon tax of between $135 and $5,500 by the year 2030. An energy tax of that magnitude would bankrupt families and businesses, and undoubtedly catapult the world into economic despair.

These policies would simply divert resources away from more valuable use, such as investing in more robust infrastructure to protect against natural disasters or investing in new technologies that make Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 even more of an afterthought than it already should be.

The Trump administration is coming under criticism for publishing the report on Black Friday. To the extent that was a conscious strategy, it certainly isn’t a new tactic. The Obama administration had frequent Friday night document dumps in responding to congressional inquiries about Solyndra and the Department of Energy’s taxpayer-funded failures in the loan portfolio. The Environmental Protection Agency even released its Tier 3 gas regulations, which increased the price at the pump, on Good Friday.

No matter what party is in charge, the opposite party will complain about their burying the story. Regardless, the American public would be better served by enjoying the holiday season and shopping, rather than worrying about an alarmist report.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Nicolas Loris

Nicolas Loris, an economist, focuses on energy, environmental and regulatory issues as the Herbert and Joyce Morgan fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Read his research. Twitter: .

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The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now


EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Photo by David Pisnoy on Unsplash.

Bill Gates Thinks Green Energy Zealots Are ‘Dangerous’

Bill Gates offered some surprisingly critical comments about environmental activists who believe the proliferation of renewable energy is the only answer to climate change.

Gates is no stranger to environmental activism. The founder of Microsoft — and a man worth almost $100 billion — has used his wealth to propel a number of climate change initiatives. He currently leads a coalition of billionaires who are investing in clean energy technologies. The philanthropy organization he founded, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is focusing on the adaptation to climate change.

Gates has also invested in the development of advanced nuclear reactors, and a company, Carbon Engineering, that uses technology to capture carbon right out of the sky.

“It’s very American to invent things to help the entire world. We’re always on the front of new science and new product development. So it would be tragic if this was the first time the U.S. didn’t play that role,” Gates said Sunday in an interview with Axios on HBO. It was a wide-ranging conversation that covered his work on global warming.

While he has devoted an enormous amount of money and personal time to helping curb carbon emissions, Gates isn’t afraid to level criticism at environmental activists. The billionaire philanthropist told Axios that people who believe solar and wind development is the sole solution to stopping climate change are just as bad as people who block progress.

“That general impression that ‘Oh, it’s just about solar and wind,’ that I think is as dangerous to us as the fact that in one country, the U.S., there’s a faction that associates with ‘Hey, let’s not make any trade-offs to go in and solve this problem,’” he said.

Gates pointed out at the generation industry is just one of many sectors that releases carbon emissions, and that combating climate change takes a multi-faceted approach.

Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, attends a news conference as the foundation teams up with the Japan Sports Agency and Tokyo 2020 to promote the Sustainable Development Goals in conjunction with the Olympics, in Tokyo

Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, attends a news conference as the foundation teams up with the Japan Sports Agency and Tokyo 2020 to promote the Sustainable Development Goals in conjunction with the Olympics, in Tokyo, Japan, Nov. 9, 2018. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

“A lot of people think, OK, renewable energy, wind and solar, has gotten a lot cheaper, isn’t that it?” Gates explained. “Well, electricity is only a quarter of the problem. In fact, we’ve got to solve the entire 100 percent. You know, unless somebody has the pie in their mind that, OK, electricity’s 25 percent, agriculture’s 24 percent, transport’s 14 percent, unless they start with that, we’re not really talking about the same problem.”

Gates’ comments come when wind and solar proponents are increasingly pushing state governments to increase their renewable energy standards. Numerous efforts — much of them funded by billionaire activist Tom Steyer — have sought to increase the renewable energy mandates in varying states.

COLUMN BY

Jason Hopkins

Energy Investigator. Follow Jason on Twitter

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Scientists rip new fed climate report as ‘tripe’ – ’embarrassing’ – ‘systematically flawed’

Climate expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.: The claim of economic damage from climate change is based on a 15 degree F temp increase that is double the “most extreme value reported elsewhere in the report.” The “sole editor” of this claim in the report was an alumni of the Center for American Progress, which is also funded by Tom Styer.”

Climate analyst Paul Homewood: ‘Cherry picks’ a few bad weather events…extrapolates using the most scary scenarios’

Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels on the report: ‘Systematically flawed’ – Report ‘should be shelved’

Trump v. Trump?!: Dr. Ken Haapala: ‘The global warming chorus immediately seized on the new USGCRP report claiming the Trump administration is contradicting President Trump’s claims about global warming. Amusingly, some of the chorus interviewed people who worked on the USGCRP, who were political appointees under the Obama Administration.’

Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore: “The science must be addressed head-on. If POTUS has his reasons for letting this Obama-era committee continue to peddle tripe I wish he would tell us what they are.”
Dr. John Dunn: “Two years into the Trump administration it is sad to see this 400-page pile of crap.”

Climate Depot’s Morano: “It is a political report masquerading as science. The media is hyping a rehash of frightening climate change claims by Obama administration holdover activist government scientists. The new report is once again pre-determined science.  The National Climate Assessment report reads like a press release from environmental pressure groups — because it is! Two key authors are longtime Union of Concerned Scientist activists, Donald Wuebbles and Katharine Hayhoe.

The new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide To Climate Change: MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen wrote of the National Academy of Sciences: “Regardless of evidence the answer is predetermined. If the government wants carbon control, that is the answer that the Academies will provide.”

By: Marc Morano – Climate Depot – November 25, 2018 11:52 AM with 0 comments

Climate Depot Special Report

The new federal climate report, the 4th National Climate Assessment, released on Black Friday, is being hyped by climate activists and the media. See: CBS News: ‘Mass deaths and mayhem: National Climate Assessment’s most shocking warnings’  – &

Nothing new in administration climate change report &

The report is under fire for its scientific claims:‘EMBARRASSING’: CLIMATE EXPERT EXPLAINS WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE WHITE HOUSE’S NEW CLIMATE REPORT

But major scientific flaws were immediately discovered in this new federal climate report.

Climate experts call out new federal report for hiding the decline in hurricanes – ‘Were they thinking, no one would notice?’

Climate analyst on fed climate report: ‘Cherry picks’ a few bad weather events…extrapolates using the most scary scenarios’

Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels on new fed climate report: ‘Systematically flawed’ – Report ‘should be shelved’

Science group rips new fed climate report: ‘Based on speculation, not hard evidence’ – ‘Vague and unsubstantiated’

Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore ripped the new federal climate report: “The science must be addressed head-on. If POTUS has his reasons for letting this Obama-era committee continue to peddle tripe I wish he would tell us what they are,” Moore told Climate Depot.

“This new federal climate report even flies in the face of the  UNIPCC admission that there is no evidence of a connection between AGW (anthropogenic global warming) and extreme weather. [Lead author] Ms. [Katharine] Hayhoe reigns supreme. Very worrying,” Moore added.

The National Climate Assessment report is reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences, is basing one of its headline scare scenario on a study funded by climate activist billionaire Tom Steyer. Climate expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. noted on November 24 that the claim of economic damage from climate change is based on a 15 degree F temperature increase that is double the “most extreme value reported elsewhere in the report.” The “sole editor” of this claim in the report was an alumni of the Center for American Progress, which is also funded by Tom Styer.”

Pielke Jr. wrote: 

“Here’s source of the top line conclusion of US National Climate Assessment, 10% damage to US GDP
It’s derived from a study funded by Tom Steyer et al. The 15 deg F temp increase is 2x most extreme value reported elsewhere in the report,” Pielke Jr. wrote.

“Shouldn’t such an outlandish, outlier conclusion been caught in the review process?” Pielke Jr. added. 

“Not a good look that sole review editor for this chapter is an alum of the Center for American Progress … which is funded by Tom Steyer. Even rudimentary attention to COI (conflict of interest) would avoided this,” he added.

More here: HEADLINE CLAIM IN FED CLIMATE REPORT RELIES ON RESEARCH TIED TO MAJOR DEMOCRATIC DONORS – A top-line claim in the latest U.S. government climate report is based on research funded by groups tied to Democratic donors. The new National Climate Assessment claims the U.S. economy could take a 10 percent hit from global warming. However, that claim is based on research funded by groups founded by Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg.

Dr. Pielke has rebuked this new federal climate report, calling it “embarrassing.” See: ‘EMBARRASSING’: CLIMATE EXPERT EXPLAINS WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE WHITE HOUSE’S NEW CLIMATE REPORT – Prof. Roger Pielke Jr.: “By presenting cherrypicked science, at odds w/ NCA Vol,1 & IPCC AR5, the authors of NCA Vol.2 have given a big fat gift to anyone who wants to dismiss climate science and policy,” Pielke Jr. wrote in a tweet Friday shortly after the White House released the report. “Embarrassing.”

Dr. John Dunn lamented that he was disappointed that President Trump has not halted these federal reports written to promote climate fears.

“Two years into the Trump administration it is sad to see this 400-page pile of crap,” Dunn told Climate Depot.

As Climate Depot has previously reported:

“This is pre-determined science. If you are reading this report and you say: ‘This sounds like a press release by environmental groups’ — that’s because it is! The lead authors are activists with environmental group Union of Concerned Scientists.”

“The government is paying our National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to come up with alarming report with a bunch of scary climate computer models. (NAS is almost entirely dependent on federal funding).

The lead authors of this report Donald Wuebbles and Katharine Hayhoe, have come out and said every storm is now impacted by global warming. It is a political report masquerading as science. We knew what it was going to say before it was issued. The media is hyping a rehash of frightening climate change claims by Obama administration holdover activist government scientists. The new report is once again pre-determined science.

The 2017 National Climate Assessment report reads like a press release from environmental pressure groups — because it is! Two key authors are longtime Union of Concerned Scientist activists, Donald Wuebbles and Katharine Hayhoe.

Wuebbles is on record as believing global warming has powers and abilities far beyond those of any other phenomenon. “There’s really no such thing as natural weather anymore,” Wuebbles said in 2011.  “Anything that takes place today in the weather system has been affected by the changes we’ve made to the climate system,” he added.

Whoa! Wuebbles may as well claim that we never had weather like this until those darn witches moved in the neighborhood! If he is correct, then how does he explain that as CO2 has risen, extreme weather events have declined? This National Climate Assessment is a political report masquerading under the guise of a “science” report. The report is designed to pressure the Trump administration to reverse course on repealing Obama era climate regulations. Essentially the same climate scare report is issued every four years and relentlessly hyped by the media.

“The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” By Marc Morano:

Book Excerpt: The National Academy of Sciences came under fire for its lobbying when a $5.8 million NAS study was used to lobby for a climate change cap-and trade bill in 2010.29 The Washington Times reported that the federally funded NAS “report urges that a cap-and-trade taxing system be implemented to reduce so-called greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.” The science group also urged passage of a carbon tax that same year,30 completing its transformation to an advocacy group. NAS is virtually 100 percent dependent on government funding. According to the NAS website: “

About 85 percent of funding comes from the federal government through contracts and grants from agencies and 15% from state governments, private foundations, industrial organizations and funds provide by the Academies member organizations.” MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen harshly rebuked then-NAS president Ralph Cicerone in his congressional testimony in November 2010. “Cicerone [of NAS] is saying that regardless of evidence the answer is predetermined. If government wants carbon control, that is the answer that the Academies will provide,” Lindzen testitifed.

Science group rips new fed climate report: ‘Based on speculation, not hard evidence’ – ‘Vague and unsubstantiated’ – Dr. Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP): The Fourth National Climate Assessment offers no hard evidence, just vague assertions and claims that past climate change is no evidence about future climate change. It earns the distinction that it does not meet the standards of the Information Quality Act, and each page should be stamped: “Based on speculation, not hard evidence.”

Much of the latest USGCRP report is vague and unsubstantiated.

Trump v. Trump: The global warming chorus immediately seized on the new USGCRP report claiming the Trump administration is contradicting President Trump’s claims about global warming. Amusingly, some of the chorus interviewed people who worked on the USGCRP, who were political appointees under the Obama Administration. Part of the problem stems from the disorganization of the Trump administration after his election. The administration was not prepared.

The USGCRP created an illusory climate using complex climate models without a physical basis. As such, the entire 1100-page report can be viewed as an assembly of prophecies that may or may not occur in the next 25 to 100 years – no contradictory evidence needed.

Climate analyst on fed climate report: ‘Cherry picks’ a few bad weather events…extrapolates using the most scary scenarios’– Climate analyst Paul Homewood: ‘This latest Federal Climate Report follows the same pattern as previous ones. Cherry pick a few bad weather events, ignore all of the bad weather which did not happen, and extrapolate the lot using the most scary scenarios.’

Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels on new fed climate report: ‘Systematically flawed’ – Report ‘should be shelved’ – Dr. Pat Michaels: The NA4 (fourth “National Assessment) and the accompanying Climate Science Special Report repeatedly state that models show anthropogenic emissions are responsible for almost all 20th-century warming.

This is claimed despite the fact that of the two twentieth-century warmings; the first one, approximately from 1910 to 1945, could hardly have been a result of carbon dioxide emissions. The 1910-1945 warming is statistically similar in slope to the 1976-1997 warming.

Going back to 2000, there have been persistent problems throughout the entire assessment process, underscoring the need for major administrative change. For these and other reasons, draft NA4 should be shelved and reset, so that time and resources can be devoted to a new Assessment that corrects and addresses the first three Assessments and the draft NA4.

NA4 suffers from a fundamental methodological flaw in assuming that models making large bulk errors are representative of a range of future warming. Ubiquitous tuning of the models to the 20th-century history hardly increases their reliability.

HEADLINE CLAIM IN FED CLIMATE REPORT RELIES ON RESEARCH TIED TO MAJOR DEMOCRATIC DONORS – A top-line claim in the latest U.S. government climate report is based on research funded by groups tied to Democratic donors.

The new National Climate Assessment claims the U.S. economy could take a 10 percent hit from global warming.
However, that claim is based on research funded by groups founded by Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg.

The Bloomberg-Steyer-funded study found future temperature rise could cost “roughly 1.2% of gross domestic product per [additional one degree Celsius increase] on average.” At the most extreme high-end, that could add up to 10 percent of GDP by 2100.

Pielke called the use of such an extreme scenario “embarrassing” because it’s based on a future that’s 15 degrees Fahrenheit warmer — in other words, twice what the United Nations’ most extreme scenario projects.

Climate experts call out new federal report for hiding the decline in hurricanes – ‘Were they thinking, no one would notice?’

Comic Relief at CBS News: ‘Mass deaths and mayhem: National Climate Assessment’s most shocking warnings’ – CBS News on new federal climate report: “One chart in the study predicts that by 2100, drivers in parts of the country could spend more than 625 million hours a year in their vehicle, delayed on roads flooded by high tides… More mental health problems – and murders”

This federal climate report is released every few years.

Below is a compilation of comments about the 2017 National Climate Assessment.

Skeptical meteorologist Joe D’Aleo issues point-by-point rebuttal to previous 2017 warmist Fed climate report

Top Climate Research Scientist Blasts Media For Lying About Climate Research Report

Analysis: Fed climate study ‘unsupportable junk science’

Analysis: Federal Climate Report A Deceptive…mix of half truths, exaggerations, omissions & outright lies’ – Paul Homewood: ‘This new climate report is not an objective or an honest assessment of the state of the climate, particularly in relation to the US. Instead, it is a highly partisan and politicized report, designed to promote alarmism. There has been much talk of the need for red and blue teams, to challenge lazy consensus. It is now time for this to happen, so that this Report can be constructively assessed and, where appropriate, criticized. One of the tasks of a counter group should be to produce their own state of the climate assessment. The climate mafia have had it their own way for far too long.’

Scientific Critique of woeful federal climate study

Physicist Steven Koonin: ‘A Deceptive New Report on Climate’ – The report ominously notes that while global sea level rose an average 0.05 inch a year during most of the 20th century, it has risen at about twice that rate since 1993. But it fails to mention that the rate fluctuated by comparable amounts several times during the 20th century. The same research papers the report cites show that recent rates are statistically indistinguishable from peak rates earlier in the 20th century, when human influences on the climate were much smaller. The report thus misleads by omission…This isn’t the only example of highlighting a recent trend but failing to place it in complete historical context. The report’s executive summary declares that U.S. heat waves have become more common since the mid-1960s, although acknowledging the 1930s Dust Bowl as the peak period for extreme heat. These deficiencies in the new climate report are typical of many others that set the report’s tone. Consider the different perception that results from “sea level is rising no more rapidly than it did in 1940” instead of “sea level rise has accelerated in recent decades,” or from “heat waves are no more common now than they were in 1900” versus “heat waves have become more frequent since 1960.” Both statements in each pair are true, but each alone fails to tell the full story.

The Climate Study NYT Warned Trump Would ‘Suppress’ Is Released

Flashback: ‘Pre-determined science’ Morano reacts to NYT’s ‘leaked’ federal climate doom report: ‘Political report masquerading as science’

Watch: Morano on TV on ‘Leaked’ Federal Climate Report: It reads like ‘a press release by environmental groups — Because it is!’

Analysis: Fed climate study ‘unsupportable junk science’

Climatologist dismisses alarmist fed climate study: Report ‘needs to be taken with a mountain of salt’

Analysis: Federal Climate Report A Deceptive…mix of half truths, exaggerations, omissions & outright lies’

Scientific Critique of woeful federal climate study

EDITORS NOTE: The featured edited photo is by Jon Tyson on Unsplash.

Some of What the U.S. Department of Energy Needs to Address

Now that the mid-term elections are finally over, one of our top priorities is to fix some of the major issues at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Very few of the needed changes in the DOE have been made over the last 2± years (especially as compared to what’s happened at the EPA) — and we are running out of time! I’ve listed some issues that need to be addressed below.

I’m writing this for two reasons:

1) If you have any additions or deletions to my list, please let me know by leaving a comment,
2) If you have any DOE connections that can help get some of these implemented, please advise, ASAP.

The mission of DOE should be carefully reviewed and updated.

These are specifically about nuclear:

(Note: most of these are consistent with EO13777)

Thank you for your interest in this matter. Please pass it on to other interested parties.

Climate skeptic uncovers major scientific error, upends media hyped ocean warming study

“The findings of the … paper were peer-reviewed and published in the world’s premier scientific journal and were given wide coverage in the English-speaking media,” Lewis wrote. “Despite this, a quick review of the first page of the paper was sufficient to raise doubts as to the accuracy of its results.” Co-author Ralph Keeling, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, took full blame and thanked Lewis for alerting him to the mistake. “When we were confronted with his insight it became immediately clear there was an issue there,” he said. “We’re grateful to have it be pointed out quickly so that we could correct it quickly.” …

“Our error margins are too big now to really weigh in on the precise amount of warming that’s going on in the ocean,” Keeling said. “We really muffed the error margins.” A correction has been submitted to the journal Nature.
‘Biased and sloppy peer review’ – Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer on ‘The Sorry State of Climate Science Peer Review, and Kudos to Nic Lewis’

Dr. Roy Spencer: ‘For decades now those of us trying to publish papers which depart from the climate doom-and-gloom narrative have noticed a trend toward both biased and sloppy peer review of research submitted for publication in scientific journals.’

‘If the conclusions of the paper support a more alarmist narrative on the seriousness of anthropogenic global warming, the less thorough will be the peer review. I am now totally convinced of that. If the paper is skeptical in tone, it endures levels of criticism that alarmist papers do not experience. I have had at least one paper rejected based upon a single reviewer who obviously didn’t read the paper…he criticized claims not even made in the paper.’

The peer review process, presumably involving credentialed climate scientists, should have caught the error before publication.’

‘WE REALLY MUFFED’ IT – MATH ERROR: SCIENTISTS ADMIT ‘MISTAKES’ LED TO ALARMING RESULTS IN MAJOR ‘GLOBAL WARMING’ STUDY

  • Scientists behind a headline-grabbing climate study admitted they “really muffed” their paper.
  • Their study claimed to find 60 percent more warming in the oceans, but that was based on math errors.
  • The errors were initially spotted by scientist Nic Lewis, who called them “serious (but surely inadvertent) errors.”

Ocean warming paper found to have ‘major error’ – Uncritical News Media Gave Blanket Coverage To Flawed Climate Paper

A major problem in new media hyped ocean heat uptake paper: Serious ‘errors in the underlying calculations’

The findings of the Resplandy et al paper were peer-reviewed and published in the world’s premier scientific journal and were given wide coverage in the English-speaking media. Despite this, a quick review of the first page of the paper was sufficient to raise doubts as to the accuracy of its results. Just a few hours of analysis and calculations, based only on published information, was sufficient to uncover apparently serious (but surely inadvertent) errors in the underlying calculations. Moreover, even if the paper’s results had been correct, they would not have justified its findings regarding an increase to 2.0°C in the lower bound of the equilibrium climate sensitivity range and a 25% reduction in the carbon budget for 2°C global warming.  Because of the wide dissemination of the paper’s results, it is extremely important that these errors are acknowledged by the authors without delay and then corrected. Of course, it is also very important that the media outlets that unquestioningly trumpeted the paper’s findings now correct the record too.

Media touts study of ocean heat claiming ‘global warming’ at ‘worst-case scenarios’ – But claims not based on actual thermometer data

RELATED ARTICLE: Don’t Tell Anyone, But We Just Had Two Years Of Record-Breaking Global Cooling

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by Dan Stark on Unsplash.

Debate invitation to Elon Musk and Michael Mann

Last year I spoke to 2,000 college students at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit. This year I’ve been invited back–and Turning Point has asked me to debate one of today’s leading fossil fuel opponents.

The biggest challenge, however, is finding someone willing to debate me. I recently decided to invite Elon Musk and Michael Mann to debate, given their outspoken opposition to fossil fuels.

Screen Shot 2018-11-14 at 11.32.27 AM
Here’s what I recently posted to Twitter in response:

Screen Shot 2018-11-13 at 1.20.27 PM
Unfortunately, both had already blocked me; Musk after I criticized the ethics of his subsidy-based business model and Mann after I asked him to substantiate a public lie he told about me.

Feel free to share my offer with them.

More “bite-sized” videos

One of the easiest and most effective way you can increase your energy influence is by sharing persuasive resources. That’s why I’ve been releasing “bite-sized” clips featuring a few minutes of the best portions of my speeches and interviews.

Here are a few recent clips:

Be sure to share these videos with anyone you think would be interested. And if you do share them, let me know how it goes.

We’re releasing new videos every week. You can find them on my Facebook page and on our YouTube channel.

The Human Flourishing Project: Nutrition (part 3)

On the latest episode of The Human Flourishing Project I discuss the most recent developments in my quest to get real knowledge about nutrition.

Visit our Facebook page and join in the discussion. And for the latest news visit humanflourishingproject.com where you can sign up to receive email updates.

Popular links

Alex Epstein on Unregistered with Thaddeus Russell

Four Fallacies That Fracktivists Use To Scare You

Bring me to speak at your next event

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Environmentalist Policies Are Exacerbating Wildfires. It’s Time to Rethink Forest Management.

Massive wildfires continue to rage out of control in Northern California, causing historic loss of life and billions of dollars in damage.

The images coming out of California towns, which look like bombed-out cities from World War II, are a sobering reminder of man’s occasional futility in the face of nature unleashed.

Stopping these huge blazes is, of course, a priority. The firefighters who have been battling these infernos have at times done a miraculous job under extremely difficult circumstances.

However, policymakers should also look at ways to curtail the long-term trend of growing numbers of major wildfires. While some argue that climate change is to blame for the uptick in fires, it’s also worth grappling with the drastic alterations in forest management that have occurred over the last four decades.

Many have argued that this is driving the surge in huge fires.

As a Reason Foundation study noted, the U.S. Forest Service, which is tasked with managing public wildland, once had success in minimizing widespread fires in the early 20th century.

But many of these successful methods were abandoned in large part because of efforts by environmental activists.

The Forest Service became more costly and less effective as it increasingly “rewarded forest managers for losing money on environmentally questionable practices,” wrote Randal O’Toole, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

Spending on the Forest Service has risen drastically, but these additional resources have been misused and haven’t solved the underlying issues.

“Fire expenditures have grown from less than 15 percent of the Forest Service budget in [the] early 1990s to about 50 percent today. Forest Service fire expenditures have increased from less than $1 billion in the late 1990s to $3.5 billion in 2016,” O’Toole wrote.

Perhaps now, Americans will begin to re-evaluate forest management policies.

In a May congressional hearing, Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., said, “Forty-five years ago, we began imposing laws that have made the management of our forests all but impossible.”

He went on to say that federal authorities have done a poor job of implementing methods to reduce the number of deadly fires, and that this has been devastating for America’s wildlands.

“Time and again, we see vivid boundaries between the young, healthy, growing forests managed by state, local, and private landholders, and the choked, dying, or burned federal forests,” McClintock said. “The laws of the past 45 years have not only failed to protect the forest environment—they have done immeasurable harm to our forests.”

In a recent House address, McClintock pinned the blame of poor forest management on bad 1970s laws, like the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. He said these laws “have resulted in endlessly time-consuming and cost-prohibitive restrictions and requirements that have made the scientific management of our forests virtually impossible.”

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has promoted a change to forest management policies, calling for a more aggressive approach to reduce the excess vegetation that has made the fires worse.

Congress is also moving to address the problem.

Members of the Western Caucus have proposed legislation to dramatically change the way forests are managed. If passed, this bill would give power back to local authorities and allow for more aggressive forest thinning without subjecting them to the most onerous of environmental reviews.

While state and federal governments can take measures to enhance forest and wilderness management, private management can also get involved to improve conditions.

One idea is to adopt a policy popularized by the school choice movement: create charter forests that are publicly owned, but privately managed. This would allow forest management to move away from top-down, bureaucratic control to a decentralized and varied system that may better conform with local realities.

As professor Robert H. Nelson wrote for The Wall Street Journal, the charter forest “would be exempt from current requirements for public land-use planning and the writing of environmental impact statements. These requirements long ago ceased to perform their ostensible function of improving public land decision making.”

Similar privatizing efforts have succeeded in the past.

No measure can truly prevent all fires, but reasonable steps can be taken to reduce the incidence of huge blazes like the ones currently engulfing California.

It’s time for lawmakers to redouble their efforts to protect American lives and property from nature’s most devastating ravages.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor and commentary writer for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLES:

Trump Is Right: Poor Land Management Is Leading to Bigger California Fires

23 Photos of the Wildfires Burning Through California

House Lawmakers Push Legislation to ‘Stop the Spread of Catastrophic Wildfires’


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EDITORS NOTE: This column with images and video is republished with permission. Photo: Barbara Munker/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom.

California Wildfires are NOT due to ‘climate change’

Gov. Brown blames climate ‘deniers’ for worsening wildfires – Scientific evidence refutes him: ‘Less fire today than centuries ago’ – Wildfires are NOT due to ‘climate change’ – Book Excerpt

California Governor Jerry Brown is blaming “climate deniers” for more California’s devastating wildfires despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that wildfires are not historically worse or caused by “global warming.” See:

Jerry Brown: Climate-Change Deniers ‘Definitely Contributing’ to the ‘New Abnormal’ of Wildfires– California Gov. Jerry Brown said all climate-change deniers are “definitely contributing” to the fatal wind-whipped wildfires that have pummeled northern and southern parts of the state over the past few days, as well as blazes “in the coming years.”

JERRY BROWN BLAMES ‘THOSE WHO DENY’ GLOBAL WARMING FOR DEADLY WILDFIRES

Gov. Brown joins other high profile climate activists in blaming bad weather on “climate deniers.” Most recently, Sen. Chuck Schumer actually said on the Senate floor, “If we would do more on climate change, we’d have fewer of these hurricanes and other types of storms.” See: Sen Schumer goes full witchcraft: ‘If We Would Do More on Climate Change, We’d Have Fewer of These Hurricanes’

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from author Marc Morano’s new 2018 best-selling book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change.

(Move over Rachel Carson! – Morano’s Politically Incorrect Climate Book outselling ‘Silent Spring’ at Earth Day – Order Your Book Copy Now! ‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change’ By Marc Morano)

Book Excerpt:

Wildfires

The mainstream media seems to be very sure that wildfires are getting worse because of man-made global warming. ABC World News Tonight warned in 2014 that “here in America, more wildfires, intense burns” have arrived courtesy of climate change. CBS This Morning featured climate fear promoter Michio Kaku, predicting “hundred-year droughts, hundred-year
forest fires” and claiming that “something is very dangerously happening with the weather.”

Al Gore also thinks he knows all about wildfires. “All over the West we’re seeing these fires get much, much worse,” Gore said in 2017, adding, “the underlying cause is the heat.”

But the science tells a very different story. A 2016 study published by the Royal Society reported, “There is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago” and the “global area burned” has seen a “slight decline over past decades.” The study, by Stefan Doerr and Cristina Santín of Swansea University in Wales, noted that “many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses. However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends.”

The study also found that the data for the western U.S. indicates “little change overall, and also that area burned at high severity has overall declined compared to pre-European settlement. Direct fatalities from fire and economic losses also show no clear trends over the past three decades.” The researchers concluded, “The data available to date do not support a general increase in area burned or in fire severity for many regions of the world. Indeed there is increasing evidence that there is overall less fire in the landscape today than there has been centuries ago, although the magnitude of this reduction still needs to be examined in more detail.”

According to the study, “fire is a fundamental natural ecological agent in many of our ecosystems and only a ‘problem’ where we choose to inhabit these fire-prone regions or we humans introduce it to non-fire-adapted ecosystems.

The ‘wildfire problem’ is essentially more a social than a natural one.” Researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid found that “climate change” is not to blame for increased forest fires in the Mediterranean basin. “The change in the occurrence of fires that are recorded in the historical research cannot be explained by the gradual change in climate.” The fires instead “correspond to changes in the availability of fuel, the use of sources of energy, and the continuity of the landscape.”

In the United States, wildfires are also due in part to a failure to thin forests or remove dead and diseased trees. In 2014, forestry professor David B. South of Auburn University testified to the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that “data suggest that extremely large megafires were four-times more common before 1940,” adding that “we cannot reasonably say that anthropogenic global warming causes extremely large wildfires.”

As he explained, “To attribute this human-caused increase in fire risk to carbon dioxide emissions is simply unscientific.” The evidence is so strong that even the Los Angeles Times featured an article rebuking Governor Jerry Brown for his claims that California’s 2015 wildfires were “a real wake-up call” to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which he claimed were “in many respects driving all of this.” The Times article noted, “But scientists who study climate change and fire behavior say their work does not show a link between this year’s wildfires and global warming, or support Brown’s assertion that fires are now unpredictable and unprecedented. There is not enough evidence, they say.”

Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist at the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, has conducted research on fires in the western United States and found them declining. “If we use the historical baseline as a point in time for comparison, then we have not seen a measurable increase in the size or the severity of fires,” DellaSala said. “In fact, what we have seen is actually a deficit in forest fires compared to what early settlers were dealing with when they came through this area.”

A 2014 study found that Colorado wildfires have not become more severe since the 1900s. “The severity of recent fires is not unprecedented when we look at fire records going back before the 1900s,” said research scientist Tania Schoennagel. The study, “one of the largest of its kind ever undertaken in the western United States,” was published in the journal PLOS ONE and funded by the National Science Foundation.

Related Links:

Wildfires are not worse — despite media hype about ‘global warming’

A Geological Perspective of Wildfires: ‘Global biomass burning during past century has been lower than at any time in past 2000 years’

Wildfires are not worse — despite media hype about ‘global warming’

Plummeting Forest Fire Burn Acreage – Down 80% since 1930’s – And forest fires are down 90% since CO2 was at pre-industrial levels – when an area larger than the state of California burned every year.

California’s ‘new normal’ of winter wildfires doused by climate scientists – Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, compiled data from 1926-2017 showing that the acreage burned by U.S. wildfires has dropped fourfold since peaking in the 1930s, which was posted on the skeptics’ website Climate Depot. “The destructive fires in California are not unexpected given the wet winter last year and resultant plant growth, followed by hot and dry weather since then in which the vegetation dried out,” University of Colorado Boulder meteorologist Roger A. Pielke Sr. said. “An important issue is an extent humans have deliberately or inadvertently started the fires,” Mr. Pielke said. “If these were not started by people (including sparks from power lines), how many fires would there have been naturally? Probably none.” “As to whether this is a ‘new normal,’ it is easy (and inaccurate) to blame climate change just from added CO₂,” said Mr. Pielke, “when in reality the reasons for the fires and the damage they are causing are more complex.”

Peer-Reviewed studies, historical data reject claims California wildfires are due to man-made climate change

Fires far worse last century: Claim global warming causing wildfires goes up in — flames

Prominent forestry scientist goes from environmentalist hero to victim after his research reverses ‘old growth’ logging concepts – “Against the Grain” by Warren Cornwall in Science, 6 October 2017.

Trump Blames CA Wildfires On Forest Mismanagement, Threatens To Cut Off Federal Funding

BLAMING GLOBAL WARMING FOR NORTHWEST’S WILDFIRES IS ‘SERIOUSLY MISINFORMED,’ SAYS CLIMATE SCIENTIST

Report: Poor Management of Forests, Not Global Warming, To Blame for Widespread Wildfires

Climatologist Dr. John Christy rebuts wildfire and heatwave claims: ‘Our most serious heatwaves were in the 1930’s. We have not matched those at all’

STUDY: HUMANS, NOT GLOBAL WARMING, SPARKED ALMOST ALL OF CALIFORNIA’S WILDFIRES – Ninety-five percent of wildfires that ravaged California in the past 100 years were caused by humans, according to a forthcoming study in the International Journal of Wildland Fire. “In most of California, if we could stop ignition during extremely high winds and drought and heat spells, like now, that will be an effective approach,” lead author and U.S. Geological Survey wildfire expert Jon Keeley told The San Jose Mercury News of his soon-to-be-published study. While the public debate largely rages around global warming’s role in wildfires, Keeley’s study shows that human interaction with the landscape, no matter the climate, is causing most fires.

Environmentalists’ Plan To Solve California’s Wildfire Problem — Ban Fossil Fuels

Climate Scientist Calls Out Media (and Mann) ‘Misinformation’ On Wildfires And Global Warming

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by luke flynt on Unsplash.

Energy & Environmental News [+Video]

Here is the latest Energy and Environmental Newsletter.

Maybe due to the recent US elections, there’s a very high quantity of reports and articles in this cycle. I’ve tried to simplify this by having a special section on Nuclear Energy in this issue of the Newsletter. There are quite a few excellent (and surprising) articles in that part (like this and this), so please check them out.

In my continuous effort to make it clearer to citizens how to succeed in a local wind war, I just added a new page to my website: Winning. Let me know if you have any questions, or suggestions for improvements to that significant page.

I was asked an interesting question: what are some of the better books about the Climate Change issue? I know others have tackled this before, but I thought an update was appropriate — so I put together a list of good book related to this topic. If you have corrections and/or additions, please let me know and I will update.

Speaking of Climate Change, I’m starting the highlights of this Newsletter with a short video from Dr. Jordan Peterson — a phenomena. If you don’t know who this no-hold-barred scientist is, you’re in for a treat and a breath of fresh air.

Some of the more informative Global Warming articles are:

Short Video: Jordan Peterson on Climate Change
IPCC: Where Dictators Overrule Scientists
Report: IPCC SR15 Climate Change Report is Based on Faulty Premises
Moving The Goalposts, IPCC Secretly Redefines ‘Climate’
UN’s Solution to Climate Change: End Capitalism
The UN Admits That The Paris Climate Deal Was A Fraud
3 Surprises About Nobel Laureate Nordhaus’s Model of Climate Change
Levin TV: Dr. Pat Michaels on Global Warming, wind energy, etc.
National Association of Scholars: Making Science Reproducible
The Intrinsic Value of Nature and the Proper Stewardship of the Climate
500 Million Years of Unrelatedness between Atmospheric CO2 and Temps
Video: Is the Global Temperature Record Credible?

Some of the more interesting Energy related articles are:

Federal renewable energy subsidies reduce reliability, hinder the market
BBC Mislead Again — This Time About the Cost of Wind Power
Report: Natural Gas Economics Outshines Solar, Blows Past Wind
The Production Tax Credit: Corporate Subsidies & Renewable Energy
Green Energy Mandates Could Double Your Electric Bills
Former Wind Energy CEO Charged In Million Dollar Fraud Scheme
MA Town Board of Health Says Turbines Negatively Affecting Public Health
New Medical Research: Infrasound Negatively Impacts Heart Health!

Note 1: We recommend reading the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone. Some documents (e.g. PDFs) are easier to read on a computer. We’ve tried to use common fonts, etc. to minimize issues.

Note 2: Our intention is to put some balance into what most people see from the mainstream media about energy and environmental issues… As always, please pass this on to open-minded citizens, and link to this on your social media sites. If there are others who you think would benefit from being on our energy & environmental email list, please let me know. If at any time you’d like to be taken off this list, simply send me an email saying that.

Note 3: This Newsletter is intended to supplement the material on our website, WiseEnergy.org. The most important page there is the Winning page.

Note 4: I am not an attorney, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or our WiseEnergy.org website) should be construed as giving legal advice. My recommendation has always been: consult a competent licensed attorney when you are involved with legal issues.

Trump Approved the First-Ever U.S. Oil Facility in Arctic Waters

The Department of the Interior approved what could be the first-ever oil and gas production facility in U.S.-controlled Arctic waters Wednesday.

Hilcorp Alaska submitted a proposal to build a 9-acre gravel island off the coast of Alaska in the Beaufort Sea. The artificial island, called the Liberty Project, will serve as a well-pad that will support a drilling rig, pipelines and storage facilities similar to other artificial islands in the area.

2019-2024 Alaska Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Draft Proposed Program Areas

2019-2024 Alaska Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Draft Proposed Program Areas (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management)

“We’re announcing approval of the Hilcorp Liberty Project, which if completed, will be the first production facility ever located in federal waters off Alaska,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement. “American energy dominance is good for the economy, the environment, and our national security.”

“Responsibly developing our resources, in Alaska especially, will allow us to use our energy diplomatically to aid our allies and check our adversaries,” Zinke added. “That makes America stronger and more influential around the globe.”

Environmentalists have been critical of Trump’s energy policies in Alaska and have singled out the Liberty Project as “a big risk.”

“Giving us Liberty could give us the death of imperiled whales and polar bears. Conditions in the Arctic are brutal, and a major oil spill in this remote location would be impossible to clean up,” Center for Biological Diversity attorney Kristen Monsell said in a statement after the project was proposed. “There are too many things that could go wrong with this project to take such a big risk.”

Former President Barack Obama banned oil and gas drilling in the Beaufort Sea in December 2016. After taking office, President Donald Trump rescinded Obama’s Five-Year-Plan controlling oil and gas leasing in federal waters. Scrapping the plan lifted the Beaufort Sea ban and reopened vast stretches of the Outer Continental Shelf along the coasts of the U.S. to potential oil and gas development.

“Available information indicates that the Beaufort Sea possesses great oil and gas potential,” Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Alaska OCS director James Kendall said in a statement announcing the reversal of the ban.

The Liberty Project represents a goal Alaska’s congressional delegation has shared since Obama took the oil reserves beneath the Beaufort Sea out of play. Alaska’s GOP lawmakers, Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan as well as Rep. Don Young, have insisted that opening the Beaufort Sea, as well as the Cook Inlet, back up to oil and gas development be a top priority for the Trump administration’s energy policy in Alaska.

“Such a program will maximize agency resources and reflect the areas with the broadest support for development among Alaskans,” the three lawmakers told Zinke in a January letter.

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RELATED ARTICLE: Trump Is Beginning To Tap Into Those Massive Alaska Oil Stores He Just Opened

EDITORS NOTE: Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. This column with images is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Roxanne Desgagnés on Unsplash.