This week, a Hall of Shame business memo turns a quarter-century old. Dated December 12, 1997, it was written from Kyoto, Japan, by Enron lobbyist John Palmisano in the afterglow of the Kyoto Protocol agreement.
Global green planners were euphoric that, somehow, someway, the world had embarked on an irreversible course of climate control (and thus industrial and land-use control). But Kyoto predictably failed, and the Paris climate accord of 2015 teeters, with COP27’s recent failure making COP28’s prospects look grim.
Palmisano’s memo cites the benefits for first-mover ‘green’ Enron. Enron, in fact, had no less than six profit centers tied to pricing carbon dioxide (CO2)–and seven if CO2 were capped and traded. The story of Enron as the darling of Left environmentalists has been well told elsewhere.…
“Learning is a process, not a destination. Bret Stephens should reconsider his reconsideration to educate his readers on the benefits of CO2 enrichment and positive weather/climate trends (including global lukewarming). And do it in such a way that instead of trying to fire him, the alarmists have to answer (not duck) the hard questions about their position.”
The intellectual case against climate alarmism and forced energy transformation has always been strong. Recent events have made this case stronger with more data contradicting climate model projections. The statistics of extreme weather events and global (luke)warming are hard to ignore. In addition, the “fat tail” of worst-case, extreme warming have been scaled back in the mainstream literature. All this is good news and an antidote for ‘climate anxiety’.
Given all this (isn’t this typical of neo-Malthusian scares?),…
“DeSmog’s methodology of listing the ‘denier’ qualifications, quotations, and activities–as if the debate was settled toward climate alarmism and forced energy transformation–is utterly unconvincing. Their growing list is impressive and a badge of honor, so let their project continue.”
Stephen Koonin has done much to help “mainstream” the problems with alarmism based on climate modelling–at least for the open-minded and curious. Humility must rule in the face of radical complexity. After all, what can be known in the absence of causal physical equations that are sub-grid scale anyway?
Climate models cannot be expected to “get it right,” if earth modeling is even possible. This is why data-data-data can and should drive the climate sensitivity debate.
Professor Koonin has been profiled relative to Andrew Dessler at MasterResource (here and here).…