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US Senator Kerry's climate nostrums will make the patient worse

By James Rust - posted Friday, 21 March 2014


On February 16, Secretary of State John Kerry gave a long speech in Jakarta, Indonesia on climate change policy and ripped into those who disagreed with his thinking saying, "We simply don't have time to let a few loud interest groups hijack the climate conversation.... We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts.... The science is unequivocal, and those who refuse to believe it are simply burying their heads in the sand...." 

Secretary Kerry also said scientists claim climate changes are leading to drought, wildfires, rising sea levels, melting polar ice, plant and animal extinctions, and other extreme conditions. The solution, Kerry said, is a new global energy policy that shifts reliance from fossil fuels to cleaner technologies. He noted President Barack Obama is championing such a shift and encouraged others to appeal to their leaders to join.

Tens of millions of Americans take offense to an American Secretary of State on foreign soil labeling them "a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts." There is no precedent for such actions.

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Historical data covering almost one million years show no significant role of carbon dioxide changes on temperatures. The scares about global warming (climate change) are due to a multitude of computer models that predict present and future global temperatures and events like sea level rise. All models overestimate current and future global temperatures. Secretary Kerry read off a list of climate catastrophes that have centuries of data showing their occurrences when carbon dioxide levels were not increasing. Surprisingly, during the recent period of increasing carbon dioxide many of these events are less frequent and powerful.

The preceding paragraph covers a lot of climate science that show most of Secretary Kerry's statements are false. Evidence is found on the Internet from a group of scientists, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, and their most recent report Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science. Another report by Popular Technology lists 1350 + peer-reviewed papers challenging global warming by categories such as Arctic, sea level rise, temperatures, etc.

Secretary Kerry's remarks are political and attempting to convince American's the nation should adopt policies to reduce fossil fuel use and lead the world in a United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Paris 2015. Statements by UN individuals associated with the climate treaty give insight on future policies. Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said in a 2014 interview at Bloomberg News, "China is also able to implement policies because its political system avoids some of the legislative hurdles seen in countries including the US... Key policies, reforms and appointments are decided at plenums, or meeting of the governing Communist Party's more than 200-strong Central Committee. The National People's Congress, China's unicameral legislature, largely enforces decisions made by the party and other executive organs."

Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III, gave the following interview with Neue Zurcher Zeitung November 14, 2010 : "De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy." 

Edenhofer replied, "First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole."

These individuals, as well as Secretary Kerry and President Obama, want a new world order where the United States cedes sovereignty to demands of the United Nations.

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Fossil fuel use is the lifeblood of developed industrial nations. It has eliminated hunger, poverty, lack of shelter, drudgery, and provided healthier, more comfortable, and longer lifespans. The United States is blessed by having over one hundred years or more supply of inexpensive or moderate cost deposits of each of the fossil fuels - coal, oil, and natural gas. Secretary Kerry, along with President Obama and his supporters, want to eliminate use of the nation's abundant, reliable, and economical fossil fuels and replace them with renewable energy sources - wind and solar - whose present state of technology make them expensive, unreliable, and impractical to scale up to the size of present fossil fuel capabilities. These policies will substantially lower the standard of living for Americans and condemn developing nations to perpetual poverty.

Secretary Kerry's solutions to the non-existent global warming problem can be compared to the pre-20th century medical practice of bloodletting - patients not cured and many die.

All of Secretary Kerry's and President Obama's plans to relieve "Climate Change" are a total waste of money. Society has used common sense to mitigate natural climate change for many thousands of years. Umbrellas were invented to make traveling more comfortable during rainfall. Secretary Kerry's plans are similar to using government to tell the public to open umbrellas during rainfall. With the U. S. government sinking in debt $2 billion per day, do we need to waste tax dollars on agencies to tell us to do what we would naturally do?

Damage to the nation's economy by climate and energy policies of Secretary Kerry and President Obama require examination. The public needs to thoroughly study these issues and make decisive votes in the 2014 and 2016 elections.

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About the Author

James H Rust, Professor of nuclear engineering (retired Georgia Tech) and policy advisor The Heartland Institute.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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