{"id":100826,"date":"2025-10-14T11:45:53","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T18:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/resourcework2.devstudio.work\/?p=100826"},"modified":"2025-10-14T11:45:55","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T18:45:55","slug":"climate-contrarians-have-the-presidents-ear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/resourcework2.devstudio.work\/?p=100826","title":{"rendered":"Climate contrarians have the president\u2019s ear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At the end of July, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released a report <\/a>on climate change that seemed surprisingly optimistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s good news and bad news. First, the bad news: We only have five years to live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s according to U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, you may recall, warned in January 2019: “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The good news is that AOC may have been exaggerating just a wee bit.  And so has the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), according to the DOE\u2019s Climate Working Group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s my layman\u2019s interpretation of what the 150-page DOE report says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It mainly takes issue with climate models used by the IPCC. These models run too \u201chot\u201d and, as a result, predict things like temperatures or extreme weather events that are not borne out by observation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report also notes that the IPCC appears to bury one positive consequence of more CO2 in the atmosphere: global \u201cgreening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also question the assumptions that a warming planet necessarily has led to \u2013 or will lead to \u2013 increased extreme weather events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, it should be noted that the report\u2019s five authors are considered climate science heretics and contrarians, and their report has been dismissed and repudiated<\/a> by 85 establishment scientists as \u201cmisleading or fundamentally incorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would note that two of the group\u2019s five authors \u2014 John Christy and Judith Curry \u2014 have both contributed to past IPCC assessments as lead or contributing authors.  They\u2019re not cranks \u2013 they are legit climate scientists who just happen to disagree with the \u201cconsensus\u201d on some basic points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report was commissioned by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright to provoke \u201ca more thoughtful and science-based conversation about climate change and energy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019ve found is that media coverage often distorts the science,\u201d Wright says in a foreword to the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One such distortion is the repeated use of a worst-case scenario for warming (RCP8.5) that is considered so unlikely as to be \u201cimplausible,\u201d but which produces better headlines and gets more grants than more probable, less scary scenarios for warming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The five scientists and academics selected for the DOE\u2019s climate working group are well-known for their climate science heterodoxy \u2014 Christy, Curry, Steven Koonin, Roy Spencer and Ross McKitrick (the sole Canadian on the team.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither Wright nor the report\u2019s authors deny the climate is changing.  That would be hard to do. The earth has been warming ever since we came out of the last Ice Age. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The $122 trillion question is just how much the more recent heating has been the result of burning of fossil fuels. (It\u2019s estimated that to hit net zero targets, we will need to spend US$3.5 trillion a year until 2050.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cClimate change is real, and it deserves attention,\u201d says Wright in the report. \u201cBut it is not the greatest threat facing humanity. That distinction belongs to global energy poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pay attention, Canada. Like it or not, this is where America\u2019s head is at right now. It is bumping climate action down the priority list and bumping up energy security and affordability, and if our own policies on environment and energy are too misaligned with America\u2019s, we will continue to put our economy at a disadvantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polling confirms there has been shift in attitude in just the last couple of years on climate and energy. On the hierarchy of fears, it appears climate change no longer tops the list. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Greta Thunberg took a sabbatical from climate activism to go fight the Israelites from a flotilla of diesel-burning boats in the Levant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The climate catastrophism and alarmism that reached peak mania in 2019 may have led to both fatalism and fatigue. The DOE report goes some way to explaining where this fatigue and fatalism may be coming from. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basically, it comes from environmentalists, politicians and the media taking worst-case scenarios from the IPCC and scaring the shit out of everyone with apocalyptic doomsaying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some highlights of the report, as I see it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n