“Everybody talks about the weather,” an old adage states, “but nobody does anything about it.” Don’t tell that to the climate alarmists who conflate weather with climate because humans are causing climate “disruption.” Experts from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, fixated on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, tell us to “do something about it.” At the very least, they say, improved climate prediction can prepare us for the crises to come.

There are three problems with his narrative (outside of its recent political rejection at the U.S. ballot box, which means defunding to come).

One, scientists increasingly realize that carbon dioxide’s role as a “greenhouse gas” is much lower than previously thought.

Two, cutting CO₂ emissions means slashing the use of fossil fuels that provide over 80% of America’s and the world’s energy enabling modern living standards and lifting billions of people out of poverty and disease.…

“FERC Commissioner Tony Clark seems to be about the only person currently on record to see what’s coming…. In Commissioner Clark’s words, each state with an approved plan ‘will have entered a comprehensive “mother-may-I?” relationship with EPA that has never before existed’.” 

If you’re an impressionable economist, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s powerplant carbon abatement proposal looks like a winner.  Different people have different costs of reducing emissions, and the draft rule proposes several alternative paths that a state might take in formulating its implementation plan. Flexibility allows a state (or possibly a group of them) to choose among direct limits on generator emissions, to implement policies that substitute renewables for coal, or to use a “portfolio” approach that includes increased end-use efficiency.  Just get EPA to sign off on your compliance plan, adhere to it, and you’ll be part of America’s low-carbon future.…

“When the history of the global warming scare comes to be written, a chapter should be devoted to the way the message had to be altered to keep the show on the road. Global warming became climate change so as to be able to take the blame for cold spells and wet seasons as well as hot days. Then, to keep its options open, the movement began to talk about ‘extreme weather’.”

– Matt Ridley, “Nobody Even Calls the Weather Average,” July 9, 2013.

Last summer, global warming was blamed for firefighter deaths, more thunderstorms, and poor lobster catches.

Last fall and so far this winter, the list has grown to include:

• Trillions of dollars of storm-surge flooding
• Bigger snowfalls
• Future Winter Olympics cancellations
• Drying Great Lakes
• Increased severe U.S.

“The President has bragged that ‘we produce more oil at home than we have in 15 years.’ Indeed domestic production rose from 5.6 to 6.4 million daily barrels in 2012 from the year before (12.5%). However, production from federal onshore and offshore areas has fallen significantly under his watch – and 96% of the above production increase was on state and private lands.”

President Obama insists he is determined to create jobs in America. He recently announced the creation of “promise zones” for five communities around the nation and a “manufacturing institute” aimed at fostering more high-paying jobs in energy efficiency.

He’s also said he has “a pen and a phone” to “sign executive orders and take executive actions that move the ball,” where Congress has failed to implement policies he believes are needed.…