How Climate Policy Went Wrong

A scientist’s aerosol research hints at why America’s energy suicide isn’t helping.

Veteran NASA scientist James Hansen is among the most famous scientist-activists in the field and also among the most honest, deriding international agreements like Kyoto and Paris, insisting on the necessity of nuclear power, calling Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act an “Orwellian” giveaway to special interests.

His latest particulates research, which has been featured repeatedly in the New York Times and Washington Post, is inspired by his oft-stated belief that artificial particulates may be necessary in coming years to cool the planet. One line the press won’t quote, though, is his group’s explanation of how they reach their particulates estimate. “Aerosol impact,” they write, “is suggested by the gap between observed global warming and expected warming due to GHGs based on ECS inferred from paleoclimate” (emphasis added).

If that sounds like a lot of spitballing based on a missing variable extrapolated from two different kinds of estimates that are already fuzzy to begin with, it is. Though I will spare you the interpretation, its sheer iffiness is admirably representative of the climate modeling enterprise overall, from which all forecasts flow.

The scientific effort is noble but becoming more and more beside the point. Long before we know which climate forecasts are right, thanks to the inevitable nerds at the Congressional Research Service or Government Accountability Office we’ll know in detail how many trillions we spent on climate subsidies that had no effect on climate.

Another truth may arrive sooner, perhaps even this winter. U.S. natural-gas supply is perfectly ample but activists have prevented the necessary pipelines to meet demand in the Northeast. A recent report by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. indicates that last year New York City came dangerously close to running out of gas to maintain apartment-building heat. Had the gas failed, restoring heat to thousands of buildings would have been a job of months, not hours, as technicians went door-to-door relighting boiler pilot lights.

Between the lines of the government report as well as Mr. Hansen’s, we have a picture of Americans on a path to commit energy suicide in the name of climate change while doing nothing about climate change.

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