Morano Climate Testimony before the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee (October 28, 2019)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 11, 2019

“Invited witnesses compar[ed] climate skeptics to Holocaust deniers, racists…. Prof. [Irana] Marinov … heckled me during my testimony.”

“Hopefully my testimony and the testimony of Kevin Dayaratna of The Heritage Foundation, Climatologist Dr. David Legates, and Geologist Gregory Wrightstone, helped educate Prof. Marinov on the realities of climate change.” (Marc Morano, Climate Depot)

In October, Pennsylvania’s House Environmental Resources & Energy Committee held its third hearing debating the science and policy of global climate change. Committee Chairman Daryl Metcalfe called the hearings to evaluate Penn Governor Tom Wolf’s executive order for his state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative’s (RGGI) cap-and-trade program. (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont currently participate in this power-plant-emission program.)

Some highlights from Marc Morano’s submitted written testimony follow:

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“I am not a scientist, although I do occasionally debate scientists on TV. My background is in political science, which happens to be an ideal background for examining man-made global warming claims and its so-called ‘solutions’.”

“I have been passionate about environmental issues since I began my career in 1991 as a journalist…. I am now ​the publisher​ of the ​award-winning Climate Depot​ and work daily with scientists who examine the latest peer-reviewed studies and data on the climate as well as the feasibility of the alleged ‘solutions’.”

“Why would Pennsylvania want to subject itself to more outside interference in its energy policies?”

“… as [federal] cap-and-trade grew closer to be defeated in 2009 and 2010, even climate activist Democratic Senators were forced to acknowledge the reality that such cap-and-trade schemes inevitably raise energy prices for absolutely no possible climate gain.”

“Cap-and-trade legislation has gone down in defeat in the U.S. Congress in 2003, 2005, 2008, and 2010. It passed the House in 2009, but the members of Congress who had voted for it got such an earful from their constituents … that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid never brought the bill up for a vote in the Senate….”

“In 2019, Pennsylvania Governor Wolf not only has declared a ‘climate crisis’ but he claims his climate efforts will somehow alter Pennsylvania storms and weather. The University of London professor emeritus Philip Stott has refuted the notion that governments can fiddle with CO2 emissions and get the desired climate they seek.”

“Climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically selected factor (CO2), is as misguided as it gets. It’s scientific nonsense,” Stott has noted.”

“Gov. Wolf declared: ‘2018 was Pennsylvania’s wettest year on record. the storms that came brought pounding rain, causing floods in communities of all sizes.’ … are floods increasing? The peer-reviewed evidence and data clearly says no.”

“A 2017 study found o​n floods found ‘approximately the number expected due to chance alone’ – No ‘global warming’ signal. Another 2017 ​study in the Journal of Hydrology found no increase in floods – ‘Compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking’​.”

“Extreme Weather expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. comments on new study: ‘​New empirical study: Are floods increasing in North America and Europe? No (and consistent with IPCC.)’ Previous studies have ​unable to link extreme weather of droughts, heavy rain & storms to ‘global warming’.”

“President Obama — just like Governor Wolf, has previously promoted this scientifically baseless notion that cap-and-trade legislation could somehow alter the climate or weather. Obama declared on June 24, 2009, that the congressional cap-and-trade bill would have huge climate impacts…. But just a few weeks after President Obama made those remarks, his own EPA chief Lisa Jackson admitted the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill would not even detectably reduce atmospheric CO2 levels—let alone cool the planet.”

“All of the so-called ‘solutions’ to global warming, whether from the U.S. EPA, the RGGI membership or any Governor’s mansion — are purely symbolic.”

“Such planned emissions control as RGGI self-described ‘mandatory market-based program’ with cap-and-trade, carbon taxes and other ‘climate regulations’ serve only to raise energy costs for all with impacts hitting the poor and those on fixed incomes the hardest…. Trying to centrally plan energy economies many years or decades into the future while factoring in economic growth, population size, technology, and the needs of a society that far into the future —is simply not realistic.”

“International efforts like the UN Paris climate accord will also have no detectable impact on the climate—even if you accept UN science claims and models.”

“Federal emission plans have no measurable impacts on climate or global emissions. And Pennsylvania’s efforts will not have an impact on climate or global emissions.”

“… Pennsylvania’s climate efforts will not even be measurable. As Geologist ​Gregory Wrightstone noted earlier ​this month: ‘So how much temperature rise would be averted by eliminating all of Pennsylvania’s CO2 emissions from coal and natural gas-fired sources? Using the calculations for predicting warming from [NOAA], if 100% of the state’s electricity generation emissions were eliminated, only 0.001 degree Fahrenheit in warming would be averted by the year 2050.”

“RGGI will do nothing but saddle Pennsylvania with meaningless political feel-good climate change inspired regulations. Fossil fuels have been one of the greatest liberators of mankind in the history of our planet. Is it greedy to want heat, A/C, lower infant mortality, longer life expectancy?”

“Fossil fuels have been the moral choice in energy. The Pennsylvania legislature and its political leaders should reject RGGI’s interference in the state’s energy economy.”