MasterResource has previously posted on the work of the Climate Intelligence Foundation, an independent charitable group that focuses on climate-change science and climate policy. CLINTEL, founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok, has grown in stature with great promise for the future.
CLINTEL’s policy positions, communicated at the highest levels of government, begin with a World Climate Declaration, “There is No Climate Emergency.”
…Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. In particular, scientists should emphasize that their modeling output is not the result of magic: computer models are human-made. What comes out is fully dependent on what theoreticians and programmers have put in: hypotheses, assumptions, relationships, parameterizations, stability constraints, etc. Unfortunately, in mainstream climate science most of this input is undeclared.
“The recent declines in transit ridership are a continuation of trends that began before 1920: the most important of these are the increasing levels of auto ownership and the migration of jobs and people to the suburbs.”
“A century ago, transit was a vital part of American urban economies. At least outside of New York City, that is no longer true. It’s time to stop wasting $54 billion a year pretending that it is.”
Randal O’Toole is the proverbial gentleman and scholar. His decades of work on transportation issues has held up well–very well. And so it was with great interest that I read his latest Policy Analysis for the Cato Institute, “Transit: The Urban Parasite” (April 2020).
Some highlights follow:
Falling Demand
“Data released by the Federal Transit Administration in December 2019 indicate that 2018 transit ridership fell in 40 of the nation’s top 50 urban areas, and, over the past five years, ridership has fallen in 44 of those 50 urban areas.”
“These declines [in transit ridership] have taken place in spite of huge increases in spending on public transit.
…“In a paper being published in the March-April [2009] edition of the journal Environment, Matthew C. Nisbet … said Mr. Gore’s approach, focusing on language of crisis and catastrophe, could actually be serving the other side in the fight … ‘as global-warming alarmism….'” – Andrew Revkin, NYT (2009).
“There has to be a lot of shrillness taken out of our language. In the environmental community, we have to be more humble. We can’t take the attitude that we have all the answers.” – Fred Krupp, Environmental Defense Fund (2011).
A backlash against climate alarmism is evident. Witness the interest in Michael Shellenberger’s Apocalypse Never, building on his argument presented at Forbes seven months ago, Why Climate Alarmism Hurts Us All.
Bjorn Lomborg’s new book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet,” also a best seller, demotes the climate scare at just the time the other side wants panic.
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