“The Green New Deal is a massive investment program, not an expenditure. The question isn’t how will we pay for it, but what is the cost of inaction, and what will we do with our new shared prosperity created by the investments in the Green New Deal.”

“The Green New Deal sets a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, at the end of this 10-year plan because we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from farting cows or air travel before then.”

It was an embarrassment–and to my knowledge, the most ill-conceived energy proposal in the history of the United States by a major political party since the oil-industry nationalization proposals of the shortage 1970s.

The Green New Deal FAQ was published on the website of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) on February 5, 2019, only to be taken down after an outcry over its proposed elimination of air travel and cow flatulence within ten years (quotation above).…

“If ‘some humans survive’ is the only thing we care about, then climate change is a non-issue. I think it’s certain that ‘some’ humans will survive almost any climate change. They may be living short, hard lives of poverty, but they’ll be alive.”

“Future humans, as they live in a climate dystopia: ‘I thought he cared about the environment’.”

“I find the path we’re on now — the rich world survives (if lucky), but abandons everyone else — to be morally problematic.”

Professor Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M is the alarmist’s alarmist. At a lunch some years ago, he remarked to me (and his more moderate colleague Gerald North) that humankind would have to live underground because of anthropogenic warming. And he stated that fossil fuels had made us slaves, a deep-ecology argument that has been ably turned around by Matt Ridley).…

This is the final installment of the course syllabus of Pierre Desrochers’ Energy and Society class.

Part I explored the course description as well as the videos and readings from the first two weeks of the class; Part II covered carbon-based energy. Part III yesterday was on electricity generated from non-carbon sources (Hydro, Nuclear, Renewables, Biomass).

“[Bjorn] Lomborg’s performance careens far across the line that divides respectable (even if controversial science) from thoroughgoing and unrepentant incompetence…. He has needlessly muddled public understanding and wasted immense amounts of the time of capable people who have had to take on the task of rebutting him.”  – John Holdren (2003)

This April 1^st is a good time for skeptics of settled, high-sensitivity climate science to make amends. My apology goes to the distinguished John P. Holdren.

My comeuppance (below) reminds me of the episode of Dallas where J. R. Ewing befriends a pretty young secretary at a friend’s office. He talks her up, she bubbles.

At J.R.’s next visit, she bashfully asks if he would like to go to a party with her.

“Sorry honey,” he responded.…