Useless climate panel asks to waste our time

If you want a textbook definition of a rigged game that inevitably will follow GIGO, look no further than the appeal sent out by Louisiana Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ Louisiana Climate Initiatives Task Force – with the whole operation on the taxpayer dime.

This panel, filled mostly with true believers of the unscientific theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, was charged with finding a way of eliminating greenhouse gases in the state by 2050, matching a United Nations’ goal now adopted by Democrat Pres. Joe Biden. This operates under the unverified assumption that the fewer than 5 percent of GHG emissions by humans of the total planetary amount somehow tip things so out of balance that significant temperature elevation occurs.

That hypothesis fails as historically temperatures changes have not tracked, even remotely, changes in human GHG output. However, temperature changes do track well the observed cyclical activities of the sun and its radiation releases and those consequences. As solar magnetic activity decreases, more cosmic rays hit the Earth, causing more clouding and volcanic activity (which produces another form of clouds), thus cooling temperatures. The GHG amount released increases as do temperatures, depending upon soil moisture as well as how the oceans, which trap the vast majority of heat on the planet, exchange heat with the atmosphere, which contains a far smaller amount.

In short, since temperature changes lead volume of GHG – because cyclical solar activity in large part causes the former – it’s a fool’s errand to try to alter GHG volume in any significant way, especially in a cost-effective manner that would affect its theoretically man-made tiny effect on temperature. Not that it would make much difference in any event. Biden’s announced “rejoining” of the U.N.-sponsored 2016 Paris Climate Agreement – which he legally can’t do without Senate approval but he can direct government to try to mimic its dictates at least in part – even if all the world’s states respected this commitment (only a couple do, and no major emitters come close) the temperature reduction that it aims for of at least 1.5 degrees Celsius in 2100 in fact would end up an insignificant two-tenths of a degree by 2100. Even if every economically more-developed country stopped all emissions tomorrow, that would drop the average by only half of the 2050 goal by 2100. And these analyses rely fully on the CAGW hypothesis built into the U.N data.

Further, to achieve such ends would be ruinously expensive. Only one country, New Zealand, has computed the annual cost in 2050 to meet the target of net zero that year: 16 percent of its gross domestic product, or its entire budget. Since Louisiana has an economy disproportionately reliant on fossil fuels, the cost each and every year would be greater than its entire budget. Where would the money come for that?

Not that doing nothing would provoke ecological disaster, considering the tiny decreased temperature, or even economic woe. Again using the U.N.’s CAGW-based numbers, doing nothing in half a century would have supposedly higher temperatures causing a reduction of a half to 2 percent of average global personal income. But being that otherwise this level is predicted to increase 363 percent, lopping off 2 percent of that will drive few people to ruin.

Despite all this countervailing evidence, the task force is all in on reducing carbon output (reiterated in its interim report), prompting it to produce a laughable request for public participation in formulating government action to that effect, with responses due Apr. 30. Laughable not only in that it will entertain only items that fit this goal, but that the recommended form is so lengthy and requires such detail that all but a few special interests with CAGW religion will wish to take the time and effort to complete it. Broad public input it certainly won’t have, with largely if not exclusively a tiny, extremist sliver of opinion represented instead.

Thus, it’s a case of garbage in, garbage out insofar as the final report due from the group in a year’s time. Not long after that, the Legislature will meet in its 2022 Regular Session. At that time, the chambers’ Natural Resources Committees or perhaps Appropriations Committees should hold a hearing about it, pose questions about its CAGW hypothesis, and demand an accounting of how many taxpayer dollars were wasted on this propaganda exercise.

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