Kentucky lawmakers hear climate science skepticism from attorney general’s office | Kentucky
FRANKFORT — A litigator for the Kentucky attorney general has challenged the role of carbon dioxide emissions in warming the world’s climate, despite near-total agreement among scientists that the clean gas is a major contributor to warming.
Speaking to state lawmakers on Thursday, Vic Maddox, a special litigation attorney for Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman, cited the work of two physicists — William Happer and Richard Lindzen — who insist there is no climate emergency and have long challenged or questioned the scientific consensus on climate change. Maddox pointed to two recent publications — an eight-page paper from June, published in an open-access archive maintained by Cornell University, and a two-page paper from July.
According to Maddox, Happer and Lindzen argue that carbon dioxide has become a “weak greenhouse gas” due to the “saturation effect” and that the more carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere, “the less warming effect it has.”
Maddox was among several witnesses who appeared before the legislature’s Interim Joint Committee on Natural Resources and Energy, which was discussing the implications of new federal rules that require coal-fired power plants and new natural gas power plants to capture 90% of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions by 2032 if the plants intend to operate beyond 2039.
Earlier this year, Kentucky generated more than 70% of its electricity from burning coal, according to federal data, an outlier in the country as utilities have transitioned to cheaper alternatives such as natural gas or renewable energy. Coal is considered the “dirtiest” fossil fuel in terms of carbon dioxide emissions from burning it for electricity.
Coleman, along with other Republican state attorneys general and investor-owned utilities in Kentucky, is challenging the rule which he calls a “radical green agenda that would only leave Kentucky in the dark.”
Maddox, in explaining the attorney general’s legal efforts to block the Biden administration’s rule, said the EPA should consider physicists’ conclusions about the role of carbon dioxide emissions.
“We think the EPA should consider this, and we think as these cases move forward, there may be an opportunity to present this type of material to the court for consideration,” Maddox said. “The question here is … is carbon dioxide really a significant greenhouse gas at this point? Is it causing the problem that the EPA wants to solve, and will its elimination or reduction actually result in the outcome that the EPA seeks?”
Scientists have reached a near-universal consensus that Earth’s climate is getting warmer primarily because of human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide emissions, which are a major driver of global warming. Scientists have also refuted a theory, dating back more than a century, that the atmosphere will warm at a much slower rate because it is already “saturated” with carbon dioxide.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body comprised of the world’s leading climate scientists, in its latest synthesis report found that greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, have “unequivocally” caused global warming with impacts on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, increases in extreme heat events and rising sea levels likely attributed to climate change.
When asked by the Lantern about Happer and Lindzen’s skepticism about climate change, Maddox did not address the issue directly and stated that the models predicting climate change by the IPCC were inaccurate and “so inadequate that they cannot predict what has already happened.”
Maddox referenced a book by Steven Koonin, another physicist who worked at the U.S. Department of Energy under President Barack Obama, in his criticism of the IPCC. That book has been criticized for being misleading, using straw man arguments to attack climate science or falsely claiming that climate science is not settled.
Rep. Jim Gooch Jr., R-Providence, asks a question about legal challenges to the federal rule on fossil fuel power plants in Kentucky during the July Interim Joint Committee on Natural Resources and Energy. (LRC Public Information)
In a 2021 article in National Review, physicists Lindzen and Happer criticized the Biden administration for signing the Paris climate agreement and “joining the crusade against a supposed ‘climate emergency.’ We use the word ‘crusade’ deliberately, since the climate frenzy resembles medieval crusades against foreign infidels and homegrown heretics. There is even a children’s climate crusade.”
The two physicists in that article insisted that there is no climate emergency: “Nor will there ever be. None of the sensationalist predictions—dangerously accelerating sea-level rise, increasingly extreme weather, deadlier wildfires, unprecedented warming, etc.—are any more accurate than the fire-and-brimstone sermons used to whip up fanaticism in medieval crusaders.”
Last year was the warmest since global records began in 1850, at 1.18 degrees Celsius (2.12 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 20th-century average of 13.9 degrees Celsius (57.0 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Annual global temperatures have risen at an average rate of 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade since 1850 and more than three times that rate since 1982, NOAA reports.
Rep. Jim Gooch, the interim committee co-chair who has previously denied the science of climate change, asked in response to Maddox’s presentation whether government leaders would be willing to subject citizens to higher electricity rates “because of the so-called existential threat of climate change.”
“The leaders in this country are really trying to force us to switch fuels, which would reduce the amount of coal,” Gooch said, noting that coal-fired power plants were being built overseas while the U.S. government “rejects” them. “It’s a real problem.”
