Having tamed the threat of a nuclear Iran with a daft stroke of diplomacy, Secretary of State John Kerry has now redirected his attention to an adversary equally as dangerous as the Islamic State terrorism lurking within our midst.
Just how dangerous? As he pointed out, “It’s hard for some people to grasp it, but what we-you-are doing here right now is of equal importance because it has the ability to literally save life on the planet itself.”
Kerry was referring to fighting diabolical influences of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) insidiously chilling in our very homes and offices. Speaking at a July conference in Vienna, he described them as " . . . exceptionally potent drivers of climate change — thousands of times more potent, for example, than CO2."
The meeting purpose was to amend the 1987 Montreal Protocol that would phase out their uses in all household and commercial appliances such as air conditioners, refrigerators, and inhalers.
Yes, and like ISIS threat escalation, Kerry warned, "Climate change is happening — and it is happening quicker than most of us ever anticipated."
Attributing a climate crisis to growing use of hydrofluorocarbons, he said, "Week after week, month after month, year after year, we continue to see new evidence, tangible evidence, of the danger climate change poses to our planet. Last year was the hottest in recorded history . . . but 2016 is on track to be even hotter."
This certainly isn’t the first time that the secretary of state has warned us of this dire emergency. Speaking at a Feb. 16, 2014 press conference in a U.S. Embassy-run American Center held in a Jakarta shopping mall he described climate change as the world’s “most fearsome weapon of mass destruction." He told the audience: “The science is unequivocal, and those who refuse to believe it are simply burying their heads in the sand. We don’t have time for a meeting anywhere of the Flat Earth Society.”
Yet if true, then why, do satellite instruments orbiting around an obviously spherical planet tell us differently? Other than naturally-occurring 1998 and 2015 El Nino temperature spikes, they haven’t recorded any statistically significant warming for nearly two decades.
And regarding last year being the “hottest in history," those same satellites show that 2015 was only the third warmest year since recordings first began in 1979.
Incidentally, satellite imaging also reveals that increased atmospheric CO2 plant-fertilizing “pollution” levels have resulted in significantly enhanced global greening.
Nonetheless, as one not inclined to let a perfectly good manufactured crisis go to waste, Secretary John Kerry has referred to climate change at the “most serious challenge we face on the planet.”
Accordingly, he stated that “Amending the Montreal protocol to phase down HFCs is one of the single most important steps the world could possibly take at this moment to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.”
Such a move, he said, could help to prevent a global temperature rise of 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, a remarkably precise projection in light of the enormous inaccuracies demonstrated so far by U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) computer models. In fact even the IPCC’s own 2001 Summary Assessment Report concluded: “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
“Staving off” highly speculative climate impacts comes at an enormous pain and cost. EPA’s climate-premised regulations based upon congressionally unintended executive branch abuse of the Clean Air Act has already succeeded in bankrupting the entire U.S. coal industry just as former presidential candidate, now chief White House resident promised he would. A 2015 McKinsey and Company study shows that all producers together lacked the $45 billion needed to fund their current debts, employee pension plans and reclamation liabilities.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy even admitted during a U.S. House hearing that devastating anti-coal CO2 restrictions attached to their so-called “Clean Power Plan” wouldn’t have any measurable impact on global warming. Nevertheless, she defended the policy because, “We see it as having had enormous benefit in showing sort of domestic leadership as well as garnering support around the country for the agreement we reached in Paris.”
Following coal plants, what’s next on EPA’s regulatory hit parade? Speaking in Vienna, Kerry left little doubt: “Already, the HFCs use in refrigerators, air conditioners, and other items are emitting an entire gigaton of carbon dioxide-equivalent pollution into the atmosphere annually. Now, if that sounds like a lot, my friends, it’s because it is. It’s the equivalent to emissions from nearly 300 coal-fired power plants every single year.”
So OK Secretary Kerry, rather than quibble about the fact that there will be no measurable benefits, why not set a noble example? Ban air conditioning in all of your agency’s offices anyway.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is the author of “Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom”(2015) and “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax” (2012). Read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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