August 02, 2025

Department Of Energy Report On The Impacts Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions

August 02, 2025/ Francis Menton

On July 29 — the same day that EPA initiated the process of revoking the absurd “endangerment finding” that demonizes CO2 emissions from energy production (covered at Manhattan Contrarian here) — there was another equally momentous development on the energy front at the federal government.
On that day, the Department of Energy released a lengthy Report with the title “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.” (Although the Report bears a date of July 23, the 29th appears to be the date when it was signed by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and officially released.)
The Report is attributed to something called the “Climate Working Group,” consisting of five prominent members of the climate skeptic community: John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Ross McKitrick, and Roy Spencer.

July 29, 2025

EPA Finally Proposes To Rescind The Endangerment Finding

July 29, 2025/ Francis Menton

It’s been a long time coming. But today the EPA, through its Administrator Lee Zeldin, finally began the formal process of rescinding the so-called “Endangerment Finding” (EF).
The EF is the 2009 regulatory action by which the Obama-era EPA purported to determine that CO2 and other greenhouse gases constitute a “danger to human health and welfare.”
That Finding then formed the basis for all subsequent federal greenhouse gas regulations, including efforts of Obama and Biden regulators to force the closure of all power plants running on coal and natural gas, and to mandate increased vehicle mileage to levels that no internal combustion engine could meet.
EPA initiated the rescission process today by means of an announcement in a speech by Zeldin, who appeared at an event in Indianapolis, and also through this document, titled “Reconsideration of 2009 Endangerment Finding and Greenhouse Gas Vehicle Standards.”

July 26, 2025

July 26, 2025/ Francis Menton

How quickly things change.
It was barely more than a year ago that climate activists and federal bureaucrats thought they had maneuvered the internal combustion engine (ICE) automobile to the brink of extinction.
ICE vehicles had become like dinosaurs, inferior to their new competitors the EVs, and therefore headed for the scrap heap of history. Customers were flocking to the trendy new EVs, which were seeing rapidly rising sales.
And the all-powerful federal bureaucracy was going to give the final push to put ICE vehicles out of their misery.

July 23, 2025

July 23, 2025/ Francis Menton

During the first half of 2025, a new record was set for the number of deaths caused by climate and weather disasters. Can you guess what that record was?
If you read left-wing media sources, and believe anything they say, you might think that the recent record has something to do with a large and growing number of deaths. Recent articles in sources like CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and CBS News all explicitly claim that climate change is making weather events “deadlier,” or leading to increasing numbers of deaths, or some variation of that same message. I’m sure if you checked thirty such “mainstream” news sources over the past year, all thirty of them would have pieces parroting that same narrative.
Therefore you might be surprised by the actual record that has been set: The first half of 2025 (January to June) has seen the fewest number of deaths from climate and weather disasters of any first half year this century.

July 21, 2025

July 21, 2025/ Francis Menton

It all began a couple of months before the 2016 presidential election. That’s when candidate Hillary Clinton began accusing Russia of interfering in the upcoming contest, and simultaneously accusing her opponent Donald Trump of “urging” the Russians to engage in some unspecified form of “hack” as the means of interference.
From the New York Times, September 5, 2016:
Hillary Clinton accused Russian intelligence of interfering with the American election, implying that President Vladimir V. Putin viewed a victory by Donald J. Trump as a destabilizing event that would weaken the United States and buttress Russian interests. . . . “We’ve never had the nominee of one of our major parties urging the Russians to hack,” Mrs. Clinton said in a news conference. “I want everyone — Democrat, Republican, Independent — to understand the real threat that this represents.”
The accusations of Russian interference in the election accelerated from there, and then really took off after the election, in December 2016 and January 2017.

July 18, 2025

July 18, 2025/ Francis Menton

How quickly things change.
It was only two years ago, in 2023, that I was writing posts compiling long lists of quotes from climate activists warning that all assets used for production of coal, oil and gas were about to become obsolete and “stranded.” After all, wind and solar were (supposedly) cheaper and cleaner for generating electricity, which could then power anything and everything. Therefore anyone stupid enough to make further investments in producing fossil fuels would lose everything. Here is one such post from June 2023, and another from February 2023.
If you look today, you can still find predictions in 2025 that fossil fuel assets will shortly become “stranded.” (Here is one from Bloomberg from March 6: “Investors Risk $2.3 Trillion of Stranded Fossil Fuel Assets.”). But such predictions are becoming fewer and fewer.
Instead, what looks far more likely is that large portions, if not the entire business, of “renewable” electricity generation from wind and sun is likely to get “stranded.”