At 'America First Energy Conference', solar power is dumb, climate change is fake

By Collin Eaton

 

Literature left on a chair during the America First Energy Conference 2018 in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., August 7, 2018. Picture taken August 7, 2018. REUTERS/Edmund D. Fountain

 

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Pumping carbon dioxide into the air makes the planet greener; the United Nations puts out fake science about climate change to control the global energy market; and wind and solar energy are simply "dumb".

 

These are among the messages that flowed from the America First Energy Conference in New Orleans this week, hosted by some of the country’s most vocal climate change doubters - and attended by a handful of Trump administration officials.

 

The second annual conference, organized by the conservative thinktank the Heartland Institute, pulled together speakers from JunkScience, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the Center For Industrial Progress, along with officials from the U.S. Department of Interior and the White House for panels that included: “Carbon Taxes, Cap & Trade, and Other Bad Ideas,” “Fiduciary Malpractice: The Sustainable Investment Movement,” and “Why CO2 Emissions Are Not Creating A Climate Crisis.”

 

The day-long conference reflected the political rise of global warming skeptics in Donald Trump’s America that is occurring despite mounting scientific evidence – including from U.S. government agencies - that burning oil, coal, and natural gas is heating the planet and leading to drought, floods, wildfires, and more frequent powerful storms.

 

A similar conference blasting the link between fossil fuels and climate change last year drew then-Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, who was appointed by Trump to reverse Obama-era climate initiatives and roll back regulation hindering drillers and miners but who has since resigned in a flurry of ethical controversies.

 

The U.S. officials who joined included White House Special Assistant Brooke Rollins, Interior Department Assistant Secretary Joe Balash, and Jason Funes, an assistant in the office of external affairs at Interior. They praised the administration’s moves to clear the way for oil industry activity, and steered clear of commenting on climate change.

 

But their presence gave climate change doubters at the conference a boost: “It’s a step in the right direction,” said self-described climate change doubter Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama, referring to the U.S. officials in attendance.

 

In an email, Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift said department officials “speak at thousands of conferences every year and share ideas with a diverse group of individuals.” A White House spokesperson did not immediately comment.

 

Tim Huelskamp, president and CEO of the Heartland Institute, said the views presented at the conference – once on the fringes of U.S. politics – would be proven right.

 

“The leftist claims about sea level rise are overblown, overstated or frankly just wrong,” he said in an interview. Regarding the United Nations' findings on climate change, he said it was "fake science" motivated by a desire for "power and control."

 

“COMING SOON”

Evidence of sea level rise, however, is strewn across the state that hosted the conference.

 

New Orleans has been ravaged repeatedly by hurricanes that scientists say will become stronger and more frequent due to climate change. And the rest of Louisiana is losing coastline at one of the fastest rates on the planet due to sea level rise and encroaching industry, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

 

"It’s a nice world they live in," said Steve Cochran, campaign director of Restore the Mississippi River Delta, an environmental consortium involved in coastal restoration programs, referring to the attendees of the America First Energy Conference. "It’s not the world we live in."

 

The Governor’s Office of Louisiana, a state that has earmarked tens of billions of dollars to fend off coastal erosion and relocate a Native American tribe from a sinking offshore island, did not respond to requests for comment about the conference.

 

In the conference exhibit hall, the words “Coming Soon!” in big orange letters framed a Heartland Institute advertisement for the fifth volume in its “Climate Change Reconsidered” book series. Attendees also passed around a book titled “Dumb Energy: A Rant Against Wind and Solar Energy.”

 

The more than 40 speakers praised Trump for withdrawing from the Paris climate accords, a global agreement to fight climate change mainly by cutting carbon emissions; and for rolling back regulations to allow oil companies to lead the biggest energy surge in the nation’s history.

 

But they warned that proponents of the U.S. oil and gas boom are still locked in an epic struggle with climate activists in academia and within federal agencies.

 

“The deep state is real,” said Congressman Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, addressing the conference. “They’re certainly anti-fossil fuel.”

 

Higgins joked about renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, saying there is probably a conference somewhere in the United States where people are talking about “how the future of the world’s engine will be provided by rainbow dust and unicorn milk.”

 

David Legates, professor of climatology at the University of Delaware, argued that increased carbon dioxide emissions will not only leave the planet unharmed, but benefit plant life by allowing them to consume water more efficiently.

 

“So, you would expect, therefore, that this will be a greener planet,” Legates said.

 

Funes of the Interior Department spoke on a panel called “The Future of Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas,” alongside Joe Leimkuhler, vice president of drilling at LLOG Exploration Co. and Fred Palmer, who joined Heartland in 2016 after retiring from coal company Peabody Energy.

 

"Oil production under President Trump has increased 2 million barrels per day since the beginning of his administration," Funes said. "The U.S. is exporting four times as much oil as it exported a decade ago."

 

On the sidelines of the conference, Funes said he only attended the conference to speak about the nation’s surging oil production, and he refused to comment about the views of other speakers.

 

Efforts to reach Balash and Rollins were unsuccessful.

 

But on the dinner keynote address, Balash embraced the most obvious mutual terrain between the conference organizers and the Trump administration – the U.S. deregulation push.

 

“Last year, this administration rolled back 22 regulations for every one that it proposed,” Balash said. “Unfortunately, I think we need about a decade of that to get back to a reasonable place.”

 

(Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Paul Thomasch)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-08-10

I thought about this for years. What a waste of time that was. 

 

I finally found my answer though: "groupthink". 

 

After reading a bit about that, it all made perfect sense. What a relief. 

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”

 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Dumb is as dumb does. 

Why are they Worried?  

I can't see anything changing much soon.  

I can't see anything much in Beijing, Paris, Bangkok, or LA some days, period.  

You don't need Science, you just need to spend a bad day in any of these places,  and breathe... 

 

"Be Best"

 

 

Just follow the money-trail.  Who benefits if the fossil fuel industry is allowed to go unregulated?  Hint: It sure isn't the general public. 

Politicians are corrupt and America is burning.

"New Orleans is sinking, man, and I don't want to swim"

another few centigrades and there will be a claim that Celsius was wrong determining freezing and boiling points and that the true 25 degrees is the annual average in the-soon-to-be-great-again-USA, so there is no change at all.
also, the measurements of rainfall are fake because the level of water let out of dams to support agriculture and life are different from year to year, and forest wildfires are diminishing annually, depending on area of measurement.
Great ! can't wait to hear the next tidbit of not-fake news.

 

57 minutes ago, pegman said:

"New Orleans is sinking, man, and I don't want to swim"

New Orleans is sinking because they built it on a swamp and are pumping out the groundwater.

Nothing to do with sea level changes which have been negligible over the last 50 years.

1 hour ago, Berkshire said:

Just follow the money-trail.  Who benefits if the fossil fuel industry is allowed to go unregulated?  Hint: It sure isn't the general public. 

General public will get screwed one way or the other. Well, at least those with a bit of money will.

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”
 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Your right and most of those climate change believers are right there . The world has always changed ,the river Thames used to freeze over and they held fairs on it ,they used to grow grapes in England in the middle ages and as for rising sea levels once you could walk from England to France but then all the animals letting off wind raised sea levels.

Sent from my SM-A720F using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

18 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

New Orleans is sinking because they built it on a swamp and are pumping out the groundwater.

Nothing to do with sea level changes which have been negligible over the last 50 years.

'Nothing to do with sea level changes which have been negligible over the last 50 years.'

 

Try telling that to the people of Kiribati, whose islands are about to disappear into the Pacific. Or to the inhabitants of Newtok, a tiny village on the coast of Alaska that is about to be swallowed by the sea.

 

I think this graph speaks for itself:

 

Edited August 10, 20187 yr by rudi49jr

Why would anybody be so ignorant to make a blanket statement that solar power is dumb?

.

 

 

1 hour ago, BritManToo said:

New Orleans is sinking because they built it on a swamp and are pumping out the groundwater.

Nothing to do with sea level changes which have been negligible over the last 50 years.

Roughly 50% of greater New Orleans lies above sea level. That’s the good news. The bad news: It used to be 100% before engineers accidentally sank half the city below the level of the sea.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/how-humans-sank-new-orleans/552323/

That said, rising sea levels due to global warming will make solutions much more complicated.

10 minutes ago, scorecard said:

Why would anybody be so ignorant to make a blanket statement that solar power is dumb?

.

 

 

 

 

A coal baron perhaps?

 

 

Coal is cool. 

 

I want a coal-powered car.

 

Next tRUmp will be touting the need to re-open buggy whip manufacturing plants.

 

 

 

 

 

 

55 minutes ago, ivor bigun said:

Your right and most of those climate change believers are right there . The world has always changed ,the river Thames used to freeze over and they held fairs on it ,they used to grow grapes in England in the middle ages and as for rising sea levels once you could walk from England to France but then all the animals letting off wind raised sea levels.

Sent from my SM-A720F using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app
 

Roughly 97% of climate scientists agree that global warming is occurring and is human-caused.  So you know more than the scientists?  May we ask what your qualifications are to render such judgement?  Nevermind, you don't have any.

 

 

1 hour ago, BritManToo said:

New Orleans is sinking because they built it on a swamp and are pumping out the groundwater.

Nothing to do with sea level changes which have been negligible over the last 50 years.

Its a song not a serious comment.

 

Best check your claim on levels though!

15 minutes ago, scorecard said:

Why would anybody be so ignorant to make a blanket statement that solar power is dumb?

.

 

 

Money from fossil fuel industry...

Goes quite well with a fake president-like alcohol and cigarettes 

Roughly 97% of climate scientists agree that global warming is occurring and is human-caused.  So you know more than the scientists?  May we ask what your qualifications are to render such judgement?  Nevermind, you don't have any.

 

 

97% do not you show me where 97%agree and have not been proved false

 

Sent from my SM-A720F using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

 

 

 

3 hours ago, Berkshire said:

Just follow the money-trail.  Who benefits if the fossil fuel industry is allowed to go unregulated?  Hint: It sure isn't the general public. 

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-koch-brothers-dirty-war-on-solar-power-193325/

That it´s happened in USA says it all. The people in that country actually voted a hotel owner to be president. Hillarious, isn´t it?

Edited August 10, 20187 yr by Get Real

27 minutes ago, mikebike said:

Its a song notheck your claim on levels though

1

A mate of mine has a beach house, been visiting him there for the past 50 years, the sea is still where it was, and his house is still dry.

Funny how all these sea level increases are places you've never been!

1 hour ago, rudi49jr said:

Try telling that to the people of Kiribati, whose islands are about to disappear into the Pacific.

That's easily explained by interglacial isostatic adjustment.

Newtok, Alaska didn't happen, as the same process will be lifting the tectonic plates in that area higher.

34 minutes ago, Berkshire said:

Roughly 97% of climate scientists agree that global warming is occurring and is human-caused.

100% of climate scientists are employed by governments and organizations with agendas of fear.

Quite frankly I'm surprised 100% don't agree, talk about biting the hand that pays you.

2 hours ago, rudi49jr said:

'Nothing to do with sea level changes which have been negligible over the last 50 years.'

 

Try telling that to the people of Kiribati, whose islands are about to disappear into the Pacific. Or to the inhabitants of Newtok, a tiny village on the coast of Alaska that is about to be swallowed by the sea.

 

I think this graph speaks for itself:

 

Source?

It's a scientific fact we're experiencing global warming due to manmade activity. Just as it is a scientific fact the earth is not flat and God didn't create it.

 

But there is no point in a discussion about this with non-believers, they won't be convinced until they drown, and even then they'll probably attribute it to something else.

48 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

A mate of mine has a beach house, been visiting him there for the past 50 years, the sea is still where it was, and his house is still dry.

Funny how all these sea level increases are places you've never been!

Your one subjective story has almost convinced me... can you show me a snowball to confirm?

18 minutes ago, stevenl said:

It's a scientific fact we're experiencing global warming due to manmade activity. Just as it is a scientific fact the earth is not flat and God didn't create it.

 

But there is no point in a discussion about this with non-believers, they won't be convinced until they drown, and even then they'll probably attribute it to something else.

Reminds me of a scene in 'Erik the Viking':