BY DAVID REAGOR
Los Alamos County Councilor

Two Los Alamos County citizens, Cornell Wright and Steve McLin, have performed a great service to the county during their terms on the Board of Public Utilities. The complex world of climate change is full of uncertainties and our community is best served by such citizens paying highest attention to policies that are proven reliable. The departure of these two dedicated public servants have come at a time where our utilities are in flux. The carbon free power plan has been cancelled by others and our current contracts with our largest electricity provider, Uniper, will be terminated as the company is pulling out of most of its business in the USA. This introduces a new period of uncertainty where the loss of their leadership is a potential problem for the county. They have both been replaced by climate alarmists that could place our whole utility system at risk.

This is a critical time and the board has been facing recommendations from the Los Alamos Resiliency, Energy and Sustainability (LARES) Task Force work group that are based on climate alarmist ideas that are potentially very harmful. The first deceit in LARES is that we actually matter. We are so small that our emissions have an insignificant weight in a global world. The second deceit is that Carbon Dioxide has a strong effect on climate. There are some deceptive results, such as “the hockey stick curve” that is heavy in data processing and does not reflect the raw temperature data. A full study of such issues can be found in the book “Unsettled” by Steven Koonin. He was the Department of Energy Undersecretary for Science during the Obama administration. The book concludes that global warming is so weak that the most publicized climate models clearly fail and the observations are just not threatening. Another good summary was produced by Judith Curry “Climate Uncertainty and Risk: Rethinking our Response” and illustrates that the financial and social structure of climate funding prevent honest discussion within the field. 

Repeating these long discussions of climate alarmist failures cannot fit here, but I just add the argument that the whole debate is over. The development of China, India, and other large third world countries have really ended the climate debate. In 2015 China announced that they had completed their national grid, meaning they have run power to every village in China. India is not far behind. Brazil is roughly the same as China and Pakistan is close to India. The biggest wave of third world electrification is behind us. According to the United Nations about 90% of the homes in the world have electricity.  We are certainly past the inflection point and approaching a plateau in Carbon Dioxide production from electricity generation. In transportation these large third world cities are committed to mass transit systems that are already in place. If we take a city like Shanghai, with 50 million people, there would be no place to park or drive personal automobiles for the masses. It is like New York City, where a personal car is just expensive trouble. There are a few special countries, USA, Canada, Russia, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and possible a few others, where the low densities of people and large spaces lead to a demand for personal automobiles, but these countries are already developed. They will produce little additional Carbon Dioxide from transportation. The last big Carbon Dioxide source is industry, but they are rapidly switching from coal to natural gas for thermal processes. This is consistent with carbon goals, but actually driven by costs. Summing up, the global Carbon Dioxide budget is mostly in place. The weak climate changes we see represent the end of the panic.

Lastly, I would like to point out that when former President Barack Obama bought his beachfront houses in Maui and Martha’s Vineyard that he knows sea level is going nowhere. This what all the elite’s try to buy. It is the smart money at work. His investment is secure and the climate crisis story is just rhetoric to fool voters.