Cuba Becomes The First Country To Reach Net Zero. Shouldn't We Be Celebrating?

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Cuba Becomes The First Country To Reach Net Zero. Shouldn't We Be Celebrating?

  • There it was on the front page of Saturday’s New York Times: with a small assist from the United States, the island nation of Cuba has almost entirely ended the use of fossil fuels. Finally, we have the first country in the world to achieve the climate movement’s Holy Grail and nirvana — Net Zero! Or at least a very close approximation.

  • This should be cause for a huge celebration.

  • You would think that the Times, which has been demanding the elimination of fossil fuels for at least a couple of decades, would be leading the celebrations. But weirdly, now that Cuba has finally shown the way, the Times chooses to put a completely different spin on the achievement. The headline and subheadline are (print edition): “U.S. Choking Oil Deliveries To Cuba Ports; Military Action Brings a Nation to Its Knees.”

  • The piece reports that the Trump administration is helping Cuba to achieve Net Zero by preventing oil tankers from landing there. Somehow in this piece, that is spun as a bad thing. It has brought Cuba “to its knees.”

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End Of The Endangerment Finding: Will "Net Zero" Ever Get Back On Track In The U.S.?

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  • This morning, EPA released the official Federal Register version of its Rescission of the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding as to motor vehicles. The Federal Register cite is 91 F.R. 7686. This official version of the Rescission, in printed, single-spaced and triple column format, is only 111 pages, versus the 436 pages the previous preliminary version; however, the text appears to be substantially unchanged.

  • It only took literal minutes for the first lawsuit challenging the Rescission to get filed. Here, via the website of the Union of Concerned Scientists, is a copy of a Petition that they say was filed today on behalf of a large group of environmental and “health” organizations.

  • Without doubt, among this large group of Petitioners and others in the climate and environmental Left, many people have been working feverishly to come up with the magic litigation strategy to get their beloved Endangerment Finding reinstated and then, they hope, to get their government-mandated national “net zero” energy transformation back on track.

  • But is there any litigation strategy that can actually accomplish those goals?

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EPA's Greenhouse Gas "Endangerment Finding": Finally Gone

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  • On Thursday (February 12) President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin held a press briefing at the White House where they announced the issuance of the final rescission of what is known as the “Endangerment Finding” — the 2009 Obama-era regulatory edict purporting to find that CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” are a “danger to human health and welfare.”

  • The regulatory document finalizing the rescission then came out the next day, February 13.

  • The Rescission Document has the title “Rescission of the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding and Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards Under the Clean Air Act.” It is 436 pages long. In this version, it appears in standard double-space typed format, with no page numbers. Although there is a table of contents, the lack of associated page numbers makes it extremely difficult to find anything in the Document.

  • Within a few days, the Document will then appear in something called the Federal Register. The text will not be changed (other than that they reserve the right to correct errors); but the format will be substantially different — single-spaced and with multiple columns on a page. Publication in the Federal Register is what starts the clock ticking for deadlines to challenge the rescission in court.

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More On The Federal Judicial Center And The Attribution Scam

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  • As discussed in the previous post, the Federal Judicial Center’s recently-updated Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence contains a new chapter on Climate Science. That chapter focuses on the promoting the hocus pocus of “attribution” studies that seek to blame every latest hurricane or flood or drought on human emissions of CO2, and thus on fossil fuel producers in particular.

  • In my post, I characterized the authors’ write-up of the methodology of these attribution studies as relying on “logical fallacy,” and as “double-talk and bafflegab.” But I think that I inadequately articulated the nature of the fallacy. So I will try to correct that here.

  • The heart of the problem is that science is all about hypotheses being subject to empirical test against real world evidence.

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The New Federal Reference Manual On Scientific Evidence: All The Smartest People Get Hoodwinked By The Climate Charlatans

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The New Federal Reference Manual On Scientific Evidence: All The Smartest People Get Hoodwinked By The Climate Charlatans

  • It is truly remarkable how easy it is to fool the smartest people. And especially when you tell them they are helping to save the world.

  • So something called the Federal Judicial Center has just come out with a new edition, the 4th, of something called the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. The publication date appears to be December 31, 2025.

  • The idea that the federal government, and in particular the judiciary, needs a reference manual on scientific evidence seems to date from the 1990s. The courts, then as now, were facing an increasing volume of cases involving complex scientific evidence; and meanwhile almost none of the judges are trained in science. Best to provide them with a good grounding in the basics. Fortunately, back in the 60s Congress had established something called the Federal Judicial Center as a “research and education agency” of the judicial branch. Here was the perfect opportunity for that bureaucracy to expand their mission and budget.

  • In this latest version of the Reference Manual, the FJC has totally lost its way. Somehow, it got captured by a clique of climate charlatans who have inserted a lengthy section that is anti-science and based on logical fallacy. And many dozens of seemingly smart people who were supposedly reviewing this have gotten hoodwinked.

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"Affordability": Two Theories Of How To Achieve It

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"Affordability": Two Theories Of How To Achieve It

  • “Affordability.” That’s the new political mantra of Democratic politicians. Or maybe it’s one of two mantras, the other being that deporting illegal aliens makes ICE the modern-day “Gestapo.”

  • So, how to achieve “affordability”? There are two approaches, which are essentially opposites of each other. Can they both be right?

  • Approach Number 1 is that the government orders producers not to increase prices, and sometimes also offers handouts of one sort or another to favored constituencies to reduce their effective costs. Approach Number 2 is that the government mostly keeps out of the relationship between producers and consumers, and thereby makes the producers reduce their costs if they want to attract customers.

  • My observation would be that there exists an enormous amount of evidence on this subject, all of which supports that proposition that Approach Number 2 works, while Approach Number 1 is counter-productive. But maybe that’s just me.

  • So there was Mikie Sherrill last week in Newark, getting inaugurated as the new (Democratic) Governor of New Jersey.

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