I wrote earlier this week about the Trump EPA’s move to rescind the “endangerment” finding on which so much costly and obnoxious federal regulation has been based. In her weekly newsletter on Wednesday and in her weekly Wall Street Journal column today, Kim Strassel draws attention to the Department of Energy report A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate, by John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Ross McKitrick, and Roy Spencer. The report is separately summarized here.
In her newsletter Strassel provides this background:
The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday moved to rescind its 2009 “endangerment finding,” which declared greenhouse gases a threat to public health. The repeal will dismantle the legal basis for the federal government’s recent and sweeping climate agenda. Yet just as important was the Department of Energy’s Tuesday report that knocks down the scientific basis of the supposed threat, by providing a more rounded and up-to-date assessment of the state of climate science….
The study—which its authors say is written “to be accessible to non-experts”—notes that historical data doesn’t back up claims that climate change is increasing the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, flood or droughts. It points out problems with modeling, uncertainties over the extent human activity plays a role, the relatively minimal economic effects of climate change, and the limits of U.S. policy action on global emissions.
All this matters, since it was the Obama and Biden teams that used selective, one-sided scientific claims to argue for an endangerment finding and federal intervention. The climate crowd and mainstream media is in a tizzy over the new report, accusing Wright and the authors of rejecting “overwhelming consensus.” They must not have read the document, which draws heavily on peer-reviewed literature published since 2020.
Strassel writes in her column:
The report…provides a holistic picture of the messy reality of climate research—its many areas of uncertainty, disputes and unknowns. Most people never hear about this complicated debate, since only a subset of scientists with the “correct” views are given voice.
Here are a few noncontroversial findings from the report—based on peer-reviewed literature from recent years—that might surprise Times readers. Global warming has risks, but also benefits, including greater agricultural productivity. We still don’t know the extent to which human activity plays a role in warming, given natural variability, data limitations, uncertain models and fluctuations in solar activity. Models predicting what is to come remain all over the map. U.S. historical data doesn’t support claims of increased frequency or intensity of extreme weather. Climate change is likely to have little effect on economic growth. U.S. climate policies, even drastic ones, will have negligible effect on global temperatures.
This is the honest, modest assessment of the state of climate science today. Which explains the climate activists’ fury, since it is at odds with the controlled story of “mass extinction” and “end of glaciers” and “deathly heat waves” that the “consensus” gatekeepers obsessively enforce. Complete control over that scientific narrative has been essential to their ability to manipulate debate and, under Joe Biden’s presidency, gear the entire government to “fighting” the “threat.”
Yeah, it’s getting hot in here!
