Watch Full Video of testimony & hearing HERE.
Morano’s full testimony here:
Watch 3 excerpts of Morano Testifying Below:
https://youtu.be/X4xVzeq6w4Ehttps://youtu.be/VcY8x28XRHg
Morano verbal testimony excerpt: “The UN IPCC is an organization that has been accurately called a political body masquerading as a science institution… let’s take a look here at how ‘settled’ climate science is:
- Climate change caused more rain, according to a study in the journal Nature, it also causes more rain, but less water.
- Climate change causes less snow, according to an IPCC UN scientist, but it also causes more snow. They changed that when we had record snow here on the East Coast, within a couple of years of 2010 that decade became the snowiest on record and then everyone started talking about, ‘did we say less snow? No, climate change causes more snow.’
- Climate change causes Antarctica to lose ice, it also causes Antarctica to gain ice.
- Climate change causes dull autumn leaves, but it also causes more colorful autumn leaves.
- Climate change makes for saltier seas, but climate change also makes for less salty seas.
- Climate change increases the spread of malaria, but it also decreases the spread of malaria.
- Dengue fever will increase with climate change, but can also decrease with climate change.
- The U.S. will see more lightning strikes thanks to global warming, but actually lightning strikes may drop.
- San Francisco will get foggier summers, San Francisco will get less foggy summers.
- Hurricanes will increase due to climate change. Hurricanes will be less according to climate change.
Opposite predictions, no wonder Governor Wolf is confused.”
Pennsylvania Capital-Star – October 28, 2019
A testy hearing featuring both nationally known climate skeptics and an Ivy League expert in climatology played out Monday before a state House committee. The handling of the controversial hearing — the third on climate change featuring dissenting voices this year — by House Environmental Resources & Energy Committee Chairman Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, led at least one Democratic lawmaker to walk out. Metcalfe at one point turned off the microphone of the panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Greg Vitali of Delaware County. He also threatened to have a University of Pennsylvania climate researcher sitting in the audience thrown out when she cried “not true” during testimony by a noted climate skeptic.
The hearing came in response to Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s Oct. 3 announcement that he wants Pennsylvania to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a nine-state cap-and-trade program that puts a price on carbon emissions. The program only applies to electricity production, and is expected to raise between $250 to $400 million in revenue annually. Echoing other Republicans in the Legislature, Metcalfe at the time called Wolf’s announcement an instance of executive overreach.
Two people who testified before the committee — Gregory Wrightstone, a geologist with connections to the natural gas industry, and Marc Morano, a congressional staffer turned prominent climate skeptic — tried to downplay the danger of climate change while painting advocates as alarmists.
…
After testifying, Marinov listened to testimony from Morano, who in rapid succession laid out a number of contradictory news headlines on climate change’s impact. At one point, Morano claimed the oft-used “97 percent” statistic on climate change consensus was “pulled out of thin air.” From the crowd, Marinov responded “not true.” Metcalfe then threatened to have anyone who interrupted testimony removed from the hearing.
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One testifier argued that hosting a hearing to present both sides of the climate change debate was akin to hosting a debate on whether the Sandy Hook shooting actually took place. The committee’s Republican chairman told his Democratic counterpart that he was out of order and to turn off his microphone.
David Masur, executive director of PennEnvironment, an advocacy organization, argued that even inviting testimony from individuals who doubt the need to reduce carbon emissions was akin to debating whether whites were the superior race, whether the Sandy Hook shootings took place or whether the world is flat. [Climate Depot note: Masur also compared climate skeptics to Holocaust Deniers during his testimony.]
Metcalfe condemned Masur’s remarks, saying that his staff had received Masur’s prepared testimony late Sunday and hadn’t had sufficient time to review it – otherwise, he said, Masur would’ve been directed not to make such statements. “If the testimony wouldn’t have come in late last night, we would have caught that there was such disparaging remarks … from Mr. Masur with PennEnvironment,” Metcalfe said. “To make the types of comparisons he did and try and disparage people on the other side of the argument, ultimately, I think shows the type of arguments that he’s proffering.”
Rep. Greg Vitali, the Democratic chairman, disputed whether there was anything wrong with Masur’s remarks. “For the record, Mr. Masur’s remarks were not disparaging, in my opinion,” Vitali said. “In fact, they were very compelling.”
“Representative Vitali, you are out of order, and your opinion wasn’t asked for,” Metcalfe replied. “But I think that any citizen, reading that, would recognize … those types of remarks are disparaging, trying to make that type of an alignment with people that oppose your ideas. Please shut your microphone off, sir. You’re not recognized at this time.”
Left to right in the photo: Chairman Darryl Metcalf, Marc Marano (CFACT’s Climate Depot), Gregory Wrightstone, Kevin Dayaratna (Heritage), Gordon Tomb (Commonwealth Foundation) Dr. David Legates (Climatologist – U. of Delaware)
Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, chairman of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, addresses a hearing Oct. 28, 2019.
Testimony of Gregory R. Wrightstone, Geologist, Author and Expert Reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Wrightstone STATEMENT TO THE PENNSYLVANIA House
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Morano notes on hearing:
Secretary, Department of Environmental Protection Patrick McDonnell touted 1/3 jobs in Pennsylvania are from “clean” energy — He claimed that was twice number of workers in fossil fuel industry. But how much energy do these “clean” energy workers produce?
There are “90,772 Clean Energy Jobs Across Pennsylvania.”
But the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that: “For the 2017 reporting year, 14.2% of the electricity sold to the state’s retail customers was generated by qualifying alternative energy sources, and almost 0.3% was solar power.”
And nationally in the U.S.:
And in 2017: Obama touted green energy ‘investments’ at solar facility employing 5 workers, relying on $54 million in taxpayer subsidies — ‘That comes out to $10.8 million in tax-dollar subsidies per employee’ look at the amounts of energy produced per sector. (This tally does not include electricity generated by nuclear, hydroelectric and geothermal power plants.)
* 398,000 natural gas workers = 33.8% of all electricity generated in the United States in 2016
* 160,000 coal employees = 30.4 % of total electricity
* 100,000 wind employees = 5.6% of total electricity
* 374,000 solar workers = 0.9% of total electricity
Climate activists set to be a disrupt Pennsylvania climate hearing?! Activists shown up in audience in tinfoil hats! Locally sourced tinfoil? pic.twitter.com/f9OAwU3rjw
— Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) October 28, 2019
Don't they care about the earth!? "Aluminum has a heavy manufacturing footprint. It takes a whole lot of energy to mine bauxite ore from the earth and then process it: Producing 1 ton of aluminum ingots requires 170 million British thermal units of energy and = 12 tons of CO2"
— Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) October 28, 2019
Penn evn. witness compares climate skeptics to "holocaust" deniers at PA House climate hearing
— Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) October 28, 2019
"Green energy ‘investments’ at solar facility employing 5 workers, relying on $54 million in taxpayer subsidies — ‘That comes out to $10.8 million in tax-dollar subsidies per employee’
— Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) October 28, 2019
Should we care about how much energy all of these 'clean' energy workers produce!?
398,000 natural gas workers = 33.8% of all electricity generated in U.S in 2016
* 160,000 coal employees = 30.4 % of total electricity
* 100,000 wind employees = 5.6% of total electricity— Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) October 28, 2019
https://twitter.com/ginkmeister13/status/1188838533680848898
https://twitter.com/Roccothedog5/status/1188845852808351744
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Hearing Agenda
Opening Remarks: Secretary Patrick McDonnell Department of Environmental Protection
Kevin Dayaratna Senior Statistician and Research Programmer The Heritage Foundation
Dr. David Legates Professor of Climatology University of Delaware
Tom Schuster Senior Campaign Representative, Sierra Club Beyond CoalCampaign
Gregory Wrightstone Geologist/Author Wrightstone Geologic Consulting
Rob Altenburg, Esq. Director of Energy Center PennFuture
David Masur Executive Director PennEnvironment
Gordon Tomb Senior Fellow Commonwealth Foundation
Dr. lrina Marinov Climate Scientist University of Pennsylvania
John Walliser, Esq. Senior Vice President, Legal & Government Affairs PA Environmental Council and Chairman to the DEP Citizens Advisory Council
Marc Morano Communications Director Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and Founder, Climate Depot
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Submitted Written Testimony of Marc Morano, the Publisher of CFACT’s Climate Depot
Author of Best Selling “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change” & former staff of U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee
The Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee
Hearing: “Pennsylvania CO2 and climate.”
Date: Monday, October 28, 2019
Time: 8am-11am AM
Location: State Capitol – Harrisburg, PA
I want to thank the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee for hosting this hearing today on climate, energy and so-called “solutions” like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
It is with great interest that I am following Pennsylvania’s climate and energy debate. My family has deep roots in Pennsylvania. My father’s parents immigrated here from Italy in the early 1900s through Ellis Island and ended up settling in Scranton Pa. My mother’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from Italy and settled in Uniontown PA. My grandfather was a coal miner in Smock PA.
I am not a scientist, although I do occasionally debate scientists on TV. My background is in political science, which happens to be an ideal background for examining man-made global warming claims and its so-called “solutions.”
I am the author of the best-selling 2018 book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” reissued in 2019 with a bonus chapter on the Green New Deal.
I am the publisher of Climate Depot. A July 2019 study in the journal Nature Communications ranked me as the NUMBER ONE ‘climate contrarian’ in the media. I was ranked #1 out of 386 fellow climate skeptics.
I have attended nearly every United Nations environmental summit since 2002, including the Earth Summits in Johannesburg South Africa and in Brazil. I publicly debated the UN IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri at the 2006 UN climate summit in Nairobi Kenya. I have conducted interviews with UN IPCC scientists and documented how the UN twists and hypes and distorts science in order to push a political agenda.
I have been passionate about environmental issues since I began my career in 1991 as a journalist. I produced a documentary on the myths surrounding the Amazon Rainforest in 2000 and I was a fully credentialed investigative journalist with both White House and Capitol Hill press badges and I reported extensively on environmental and energy issues such as deforestation, endangered species, pollution, and climate change. In 2016, I wrote and starred in the film Climate Hustle, which was released in over 400 theaters in the U.S. and Canada.
In my capacity as Communications Director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee under Senator James Inhofe, I was a speechwriter and hosted the award-winning U.S. Senate blog. I released the first-ever U.S. Government “Skeptic’s Guide to Debunking Global Warming Alarmism” in 2006. I traveled to Greenland in 2007 with the U.S. Senate to investigate firsthand the climate change claims. I also authored the 255-page Senate report of over 700 dissenting scientists on man-made global warming originally published in 2007 and updated in 2008, 2009. In 2010, the number of dissenting international scientists exceeded 1000.
I am now the publisher of the award-winning Climate Depot and work daily with scientists who examine the latest peer-reviewed studies and data on the climate as well as the feasibility of the alleged “solutions.”
Governor Tom Wolf has issued an executive order demanding that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and it’s cap-and-trade proposals in order to battle what the Governor termed the “climate crisis.” The RGGI describes its programs as a “mandatory market-based program” to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Currently, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont all participate in the program attempting “to cap and reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector.”
Why would Pennsylvania want to subject itself to more outside interference in its energy policies?
I want to reflect on a little history. I was at ground zero for the cap-and-trade debates when I worked in the U.S. Senate when cap-and-trade bills were proposed back in 2007, 2008 and 2009.
I saw how grandiose claims about cap-and-trade for emissions was allegedly going to be “pro-market” and “efficient” and have very low costs or even make money. But as cap-and-trade grew closer to be defeated in 2009 and 2010, even climate activist Democratic Senators were forced to acknowledge the reality that such cap-and-trade schemes inevitably raise energy prices for absolutely no possible climate gain.
Cap-and-trade legislation has gone down in defeat in the U.S. Congress in 2003, 2005, 2008, and 2010. It passed the House in 2009, but the members of Congress who had voted for it got such an earful from their constituents when they went back to their home districts that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid never brought the bill up for a vote in the Senate because there were too many Democratic Senators defecting from supporting the cap-and-trade bill.
Now let’s examine why the Governor wants Pennsylvania to resurrect these failed policies of the past.
In 2019, Pennsylvania Governor Wolf not only has declared a “climate crisis” but he claims he climate efforts will somehow alter Pennsylvania storms and weather.
The University of London professor emeritus Philip Stott has refuted the notion that governments can fiddle with CO2 emissions and get the desired climate they seek.
“Climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically selected factor (CO2), is as misguided as it gets. It’s scientific nonsense,” Stott has noted.
Meanwhile, Pittsburgh’s KDKA, the CBS affiliate reported: “The governor points to our most recent weather is reason enough (for RGGI climate efforts).
Gov. Wolf declared: “2018 was Pennsylvania’s wettest year on record. the storms that came brought pounding rain, causing floods in communities of all sizes.”
The first question is, are floods increasing? The peer-reviewed evidence and data clearly says no.
A 2017 study found on floods found ‘approximately the number expected due to chance alone’ – No ‘global warming’ signal
Another 2017 study in the Journal of Hydrology found no increase in floods – ‘Compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking’ – Extreme Weather expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. comments on new study: ‘New empirical study: Are floods increasing in North America and Europe? No (and consistent with IPCC.)’
Previous studies have unable to link extreme weather of droughts, heavy rain & storms to “global warming.”
As extreme weather expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. noted: “The bottom line on this new NOAA special report: If you are attributing any extreme other than heat waves to Anthropogenic Climate Change, you are on weak (or worse) scientific ground.” – Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. Rips flooding claims using UN IPCC quotes: ‘No gauge-based evidence has been found for a climate-driven, globally widespread change in the magnitude and frequency of floods’
Pielke Jr. : ‘How about IPCC SREX authors on floods? 5..4..3..: ‘A direct statistical link between anthropogenic climate change and trends in the magnitude/frequency of floods has not been established”
Another analysis by Tony Heller of Real Climate Science found that similar claims about bad weather were once blamed on “global cooling” fears in the 1970s.
Also, the U.S. federal government’s own scientific findings contradict Gov. Wolf’s claims of increased flooding. See: U.S. Geological Survey: ‘No linkage between flooding & increase in GHGs’ – Dr. Robert Holmes, USGS National Flood Hazard Coordinator: ‘The data shows no systematic increases in flooding through time’ – ‘USGS research has shown no linkage between flooding (either increases or decreases) and the increase in greenhouse gases.”
Despite the fact that evidence is lacking for increased flooding events, Governor Wolf is not alone in this magical thinking that government policies can alter bad weather patterns.
President Obama — just like Governor Wolf, has previously promoted this scientifically baseless notion that cap-and-trade legislation could somehow alter the climate or weather. Obama declared on June 24, 2009, that the congressional cap-and-trade bill would have huge climate impacts: “A long-term benefit is we’re leaving a planet to our children that isn’t four or five degrees hotter.”
But just a few weeks after President Obama made those remarks, his own EPA chief Lisa Jackson admitted the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill would not even detectably reduce atmospheric CO2 levels—let alone cool the planet.
But these emission plans wouldn’t even impact global CO2 levels, let alone global temperatures or storms — which are not getting worse on climate timescales.
Professor Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado rejected the notion that EPA or cap-and-trade style regulations would have any impact on climate or weather.
“The so-called climate benefits of the regulations are thus essentially nil, though I suppose one could gin some up via creative but implausible cost-benefit analyses,” Pielke wrote in 2014. “The US carbon regulations won’t influence future extreme weather or its impacts in any detectable way. Hard to believe I felt compelled to write that,” Pielke explained.
And former Obama Department of Energy Assistant Secretary Charles McConnell was brutally frank about President Obama’s EPA regulations on “climate change.”
“What is also clear, scientifically and technically, is that EPA’s plan will not significantly impact global emissions,” McConnell explained. “All of the U.S. annual emissions in 2025 will be offset by three weeks of Chinese emissions. Three weeks,” McConnell wrote.
In layman’s terms: All of the so-called “solutions” to global warming, whether from the U.S. EPA, the RGGI membership or any Governor’s mansion — are purely symbolic.
Pennsylvania’s membership in RGGI promises to resurrect cap-and-trade with all the same arguments.
Let’s state the stark reality:
Such planned emissions control as RGGI self-described “mandatory market-based program” with cap-and-trade, carbon taxes and other “climate regulations” serve only to raise energy costs for all with impacts hitting the poor and those on fixed incomes the hardest.
The National Bureau of Economic Research released a 2019 working paper. Climate author Donna Laframboise explained the report’s conclusion: “When US home heating costs fell, fewer people died.”
Laframboise: “In the authors’ words, we’ve known for decades that ‘mortality peaks in winter and that cold weather is associated with higher mortality.’ When home heating gets expensive, many people – especially the poorest members of our community – turn down the thermostat. But lower indoor temperatures are associated with an uptick in fatal strokes, heart attacks, and infections.” Laframboise adds: “There’s nothing heroic about a policy that consigns old people to shivering in the dark. That’s an attack on our most vulnerable. That’s a betrayal.”
And these higher energy costs due to attempts to limit CO2 emissions have absolutely no impact on climate, extreme weather or global emissions — even if you actually believed all the claims of the UN climate panel and former Vice President Al Gore — and you should not believe them.
Trying to centrally plan energy economies many years or decades into the future while factoring in economic growth, population size, technology, and the needs of a society that far into the future —is simply not realistic. International efforts like the UN Paris climate accord will also have no detectable impact on the climate—even if you accept UN science claims and models.
Federal emission plans have no measurable impacts on climate or global emissions.
And Pennsylvania’s efforts will not have an impact on climate or global emissions. Claiming the RGGI “mandatory market-based program” will impact climate in any way is not scientific.
University of Pennsylvania’s prominent geologist Robert Giegengack has noted, “None of the strategies that have been offered by the U.S. government or by the EPA or by anybody else has the remotest chance of altering climate if in fact climate is controlled by carbon dioxide.”
Danish Statistician Bjorn Lomborg has written about the UN’s international efforts to cap CO2 emissions through the Paris pact:
Lomborg: “The debate about the UN Paris agreement is “about identity politics. It’s about feeling good, but the climate doesn’t care about how you feel.” The bottom line? “If the U.S. delivers for the whole century on President Obama’s very ambitious rhetoric, it would postpone global warming by about eight months at the end of the century.”
Obviously, Pennsylvania’s climate efforts will not even be measurable. As Geologist Gregory Wrightstone noted earlier this month:
“So how much temperature rise would be averted by eliminating all of Pennsylvania’s CO2 emissions from coal and natural gas-fired sources? Using the calculations for predicting warming from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, if 100% of the state’s electricity generation emissions were eliminated, only 0.001 degree Fahrenheit in warming would be averted by the year 2050. This difference is well below our ability to measure global temperature,” Wrightstone wrote.
Wrightstone also noted:
“A review of the effects of the RGGI last year (by the CATO Institute) revealed that member states saw a 12 percent drop in goods production and a 34 percent drop in production of energy-intensive goods. This is likely attributable to a 64 percent increase in electricity prices in RGGI states between 2007-2015. Additionally, according to the study, the cost of wind and solar power has averaged two to three times the megawatt-hour rate as compared to existing conventional fuel sources. Any increase of renewable energy supplies would necessarily further the price increases to consumers.” Wrightstone called the RGGI’s policies an attempt to “impose a costly and economically crippling carbon trading system is an attempted end-run around the GOP to implement a tax without legislative approval.”
The 2018 CATO analysis also found:
“There were no added emissions reductions or associated health benefits from the RGGI program.”
“Spending of RGGI revenue on energy efficiency, wind, solar power, and low-income fuel assistance had minimal impact.”
“RGGI allowance costs added to already high regional electric bills.”
“The RGGI program shifted jobs to other states. A national carbon tax would shift jobs to other countries. A better policy to reduce CO2 emissions is to encourage innovation rather than rely on taxes and regulation. The United States has already reduced emissions 12 percent from 2005 to 2015, more than any other developed country with a large economy, mainly through innovations in natural gas drilling techniques.”
And analyst Roger Caiazza October 2019 analysis found the “RGGI invested $2.5 Billion for a token CO2 dip.”
“Reductions of CO2 directly attributable to investments made from the auction proceeds only total 5% of the observed CO2 reductions from 2009 to 2017. Those poor results combined with $2.5 billion investments costs result in a nearly $900 cost per ton of CO2 reduced. That value far exceeds the social cost of carbon value contrived to prove the value of CO2 reductions,” Caiazza wrote.
When you expand the concept of the RGGI’s regional cap-and-trade program to a national carbon tax, the cost-benefit analysis still fails.
Spencer P Morrison, the Editor-In-Chief of the National Economics Editorial wrote on December 1, 2017: “CARBON TAXES & CAP-AND-TRADE INCREASE GLOBAL CO2 EMISSIONS. PERIOD.”
“In reality, carbon taxes are just that: taxes. They’re a money-grab disguised with good intentions. Worse still, carbon taxes will not reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, adopting carbon taxes in the West will actually raise global carbon emissions by offshoring economic activity from relatively environmentally-friendly places, like the USA and Germany, to places with lax environmental laws, like China.”
“Carbon taxes, or other analogous pricing schemes, are now prevalent in Western Europe, and are making headway in North America. For example, California recently joined forces with the Canadian Provinces of Ontario and Quebec to create an integrated cap-and-trade carbon market.”
“Taken together, these facts suggest that every factory pushed out of the West due to carbon taxes actually increases global emissions dramatically, and this will continue to be the case for decades to come.”
“Carbon taxes are a pipe dream.”
And former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie withdrew the state from the RGGI in 2011. Christie declared that RGGI was a failure that “does nothing more than tax electricity, tax our citizens, tax our businesses, with no discernible or measurable impact upon our environment.”
Summation:
The real success story here is that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have actually been declining in recent years. But that decline is not due to the heavy hand of regulation. A 2016 U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) report attributed the “increased use of natural gas for electricity generation” or fracking, as the reason for declining emissions. Pennsylvania has been doing it right by climate policy. If you are concerned about CO2 emissions, Pennsylvania’s fracking boom can be thanked.
Thanks in part to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s energy policies, the U.S. is leading the way globally — doing better than any of the Eurpean signatories — with CO2 emission reductions due to the natural gas fracking boom. The United States isn’t leading the developed world in greenhouse gas reduction because of cap-and-trade schemes. Unleashing our domestic energy with our technology has brought about this inexpensive, plentiful and affordable natural gas — that is the reason the U.S. is leading.
Pennsylvania is a national energy success story. Why would you allow your Governor — for purposes of virtue signaling, to threaten this energy success story of helping the U.S. convert to natural gas fracking?
Pennsylvania will be ceding the authority of its energy policies to the RGGI’s unelected bureaucrats. It will matter little who Pennsylvanians vote for if their own elected leaders will not be able to enact policies as they see fit.
RGGI’s climate “solutions” will only end up passing the taxes along to Pennsylvania consumers. But of course, the proponents won’t call it a “tax.”
Pennsylvania’s citizens will suffer. Energy, jobs, competitiveness and economic decisions will be transferred over to regulators who are not accountable to the voters and who will be in charge of decisions that will impact Pennsylvanians every day.
It will be turning over key state decisions to a multi-state consortium instead of in house. Why would Pennsylvania want to be influenced and regulated by states like New York, which has turned its back on science, energy, and technology by banning fracking?
Pennsylvania has a lot to teach the state of New York about energy policy, not the other way around.
Ultimately, joining RGGI will make Pennsylvania less competitive with other states and it will bypass the legislature.
RGGI will do nothing but saddle Pennsylvania with meaningless political feel-good climate change inspired regulations.
Fossil fuels have been one of the greatest liberators of mankind in the history of our planet. Is it greedy to want heat, A/C, lower infant mortality, longer life expectancy? Fossil fuels have been the moral choice in energy.
Limiting Pennsylvanians’ energy choices does not “address” climate concerns.
There is no need to be opposed to solar or wind power, but Pennsylvanians cannot allow proven, plentiful and cheap energy from fossil fuels to be banned or taxed for no benefit either to the climate or the state’s economy.
The Pennsylvania legislature and its political leaders should reject RGGI’s interference in the state’s energy economy.
Pennsylvania should reject these so-called “mandatory market-based programs” that will increase costs, bureaucracy, damage job producing and do nothing for the environment.
Make no mistake, these climate schemes are nothing more than the regulatory state and its promoters trying to use the “global warming” scare to get legislation passed that would otherwise not stand a chance.
Instead of keeping fossil fuels in the ground, it is time to proclaim proudly that Pennsylvania has been doing it right on energy.
Pennsylvania should instead keep RGGI’s cap-and-trade/carbon taxes in the ground:
And permanently bury energy raising policies and their job-killing impacts.
Simply stated: Pennsylvania’s entry into RGGI alleged “mandatory market-based program” would bring about real economic pain for no absolutely no climate gain.
As Halloween approaches. It is time for the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to pound a stake through their heart of this energy, job and economy-killing plan and halt Governors Wolf and RGGI’s interference in Pennsylvania’s awesome energy bonanza.
Thank you for your time today.
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Endnotes:
Basic Climate Science Science background information:
CO2 is not the “control knob” of the climate
There is a lack of connection between higher levels of CO2 and warming. During the Ice Age, CO2 levels were 10 times higher than they are today.
There are many, many factors which impact climate – including volcanoes, wind oscillations, solar activity, ocean cycles, volcanoes, tilt of the Earth’s axis, land use, CO2 is just one factor, and not the control knob of the climate.
University of Pennsylvania geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack has declared “CO2 is not the villain that it has been portrayed.”
Today’s levels of roughly 400 parts per million (PPM) of CO2 are not alarming. In geologic terms, today’s CO2 levels are among the lowest in earth’s history.
“Climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically selected factor (CO2), is as misguided as it gets. It’s scientific nonsense.” – University of London professor emeritus Philip Stott has noted.
Atmospheric scientist Hendrik Tennekes, a pioneer in the development of numerical weather prediction and former director of research at the Netherlands’ Royal National Meteorological Institute, has declared: “I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached.”
According to Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore: “We had both higher temperatures and an ice age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they are today.” An Ice Age occurred when CO2 was 10 times higher than today.
The world is not going to end in 12 years due to “climate change.”
Green New Deal pusher Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) famously predicted in 2019: “We’re Like the World Is Going to End in 12 Years if We Don’t Address Climate Change.”
But relax. AOC is wrong. Climate Tipping Points date back to at least 1864. Explained: “As early as 1864 George Perkins Marsh, sometimes said to be the father of American ecology, warned that the earth was ‘fast becoming an unfit home for its “noblest inhabitant,”and he warned of “climatic excess, as to threaten the depravation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the species.’”
In 1989, the UN was once trying to sell their “tipping point” rhetoric to the public. U.N. Warning of 10-Year ‘Climate Tipping Point’ Began in 1989 – According to the 1989 AP article, “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ‘eco-refugees,’ threatening political chaos.”
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Related:
Morano slams climate myths at Pennsylvania State House
If you ever wondered why climate campaigners fear Marc Morano enough to demand he be silenced, check out this rapid fusilade of facts:
“The UN IPCC is an organization that has been accurately called a political body masquerading as a science institution… let’s take a look here at how ‘settled’ climate science is:
- Climate change caused more rain, according to a study in the journal Nature, it also causes more rain, but less water.
- Climate change causes less snow, according to an IPCC UN scientist, but it also causes more snow. They changed that when we had record snow here on the East Coast, within a couple of years of 2010 that decade became the snowiest on record and then everyone started talking about, ‘did we say less snow? No, climate change causes more snow.’
- Climate change causes Antarctica to lose ice, it also causes Antarctica to gain ice.
- Climate change causes dull autumn leaves, but it also causes more colorful autumn leaves.
- Climate change makes for saltier seas, but climate change also makes for less salty seas.
- Climate change increases the spread of malaria, but it also decreases the spread of malaria.
- Dengue fever will increase with climate change, but can also decrease with climate change.
- The U.S. will see more lightning strikes thanks to global warming, but actually lightning strikes may drop.
- San Francisco will get foggier summers, San Francisco will get less foggy summers.
- Hurricanes will increase due to climate change. Hurricanes will be less according to climate change.
Opposite prediciions, no wonder Governor Wolf is confused.”
You can watch this potent exchange and others at CFACT’s Climate Depot.
