‘Climate change’ summit and AB 32

by John Seiler | September 23, 2014 3:31 pm

California remains the only state with anything approaching AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006[1]. It forces reductions in greenhouse gases in the state by 25 percent by 2020.

AB 32’s actual language read[2]:

National and international actions are necessary to fully address the issue of global warming. However, action taken by California to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases will have far-reaching effects by encouraging other states, the federal government, and other countries to act.

So it remains a political touchstone in two ways. First, it was passed in the waning months of “global warming” being the correct phrase; since then the P.C. phrase is the ambiguous “climate change.”

Second, any environmental action must be at least as stringent as AB 32 to be considered more than a pinprick on the earth.

Which is why the Climate Summit the last two days in New York City has achieved nothing. Not one state or nation will impose anything like AB 32. Indeed, China, India and other large nations didn’t even send representatives. They’re not going to allow their policies of lifting their people up from poverty be reversed by anything approaching AB 32.

Speaking today, President Obama called climate change[3] a “growing and urgent threat,” and specifically called on China to cut carbon pollution. Fat chance with military tensions sometimes flaring between the two nations. China sees economic progress, fueled by carbon energy, as the key to its eventual military parity with the United States.

Obama is expected unilaterally to impose new pollution controls after the Nov. 4 election. But the Republican Congress will stimie anything more.

March

People’s Climate March protesters in New York City backed climate-change polices — whatever those might be given the phrase’s ambiguity. But counter-protesters pointed out the hypocrisy of the protesters. The NY Post reported[4]:

David Kreutzer, a research fellow at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation,shared a similar photo of the marchers’ refuse trashing the city’s streets.

“Somehow this doesn’t seem too green 2me,” Kreutzer tweeted.

He and other critics of the People’s Climate March called the protesters hypocrites for wasting paper and burning fossil fuel in getting to the big event.

“The hypocrisy varies from person to person,” economist Kreutzer, 61, told The Post. “The ones that fly in on private jets are the most hypocritical.”

He was referring to celebrity A-listers who joined Sunday’s march.

Stars such as Leo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, an outspoken opponent of fracking, paraded through Midtown with people from around the country.

No global warming

It’s all mostly irrelevant.

There actually has not been any global warming for 18 years[5].

Even the Los Angeles Times, usually a global warming/climate change enthusiast, today reported[6]:

Naturally occurring changes in winds, not human-caused climate change, are responsible for most of the warming on land and in the sea along the West Coast of North America over the last century, a study has found.

The analysis challenges assumptions that the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been a significant driver of the increase in temperatures observed over many decades in the ocean and along the coastline from Alaska to California.

Changes in ocean circulation as a result of weaker winds were the main cause of about 1 degree Fahrenheit of warming in the northeast Pacific Ocean and nearby coastal land between 1900 and 2012, according to the analysis of ocean and air temperatures over that time. The study, conducted by researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Washington, was published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

So, will California now repeal AB 32 and allow our industries to grow again and provide middle-class jobs?

As Steve Martin used to say, Nahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Source URL: https://calwatchdog.com/2014/09/23/climate-change-summit-and-ab-32/

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