Sen. John Kennedy (R-La) questioned Department of Energy Deputy Secretary David Turk today before the Senate committee on appropriations to discuss the 2024 budget request for the Department of Energy.
The following remarkable exchange ensued during the testimony, and it should be used to confront every climate change activist, believer, hysteric and expert, constantly and repeatedly, until they are forced to admit the truth:
Sen. Kennedy: “If you could answer my question: if we spend $50 trillion to become carbon neutral in the United States of America by 2050, you’re the deputy secretary of energy, give me your estimate of how much that is going to reduce world temperature.”
Turk: “So first of all it’s a net cost, it’s what benefits we’re having by getting our act together and reducing all of those climate benefits, we’re seeing …”
Kennedy: “I’m gonna ask again, maybe I’m not being clear: if we spent $50 trillion to become carbon neutral by 2050 in the United States of America, how much is that going to reduce world temperatures?”
Turk: “This is a global problem so we need to reduce our emissions and we need to do everything we can –”
Kennedy: “How much if we do our part is it going to reduce world temperatures?”
Turk: “We’re 13% of global emissions–”
Kennedy: “You don’t know do you?” Kennedy asked, stunning Turk who had his mouth agape. “You don’t know, do ya?”
Turk: “You can do the math–”
Kennedy: “You don’t know do ya Mr. Secretary?” Kennedy again asked.
Turk: So we’re 13% of global emissions–” Turk said.
Kennedy: “If you know why won’t you tell me?”
Turk: “If we went to zero that would be a 13% less pollution.”
Kennedy: “You don’t know do ya? You just want us to spend $50 trillion and you don’t have the slightest idea whether it’s going to reduce world temperatures. Now I’m all for carbon neutrality, but you’re the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Energy and you’re advocating we spend trillions of dollars to seek carbon neutrality – and this isn’t your money or my money, it’s taxpayer money – and you can’t tell me how much it’s going to lower world temperatures? Or you won’t tell me, you know but you won’t?”
Turk: “In my heart of hearts there is no way the world gets its act together on climate change unless the U.S. leads.”
Kennedy asked one more time, and gave up.
Turk could not answer the question because no one can. Even climate change scientists can’t. They can’t answer the question because the United States can’t single-handedly do anything to stop climate change or even slow it down without massive, enforced carbon commission release crack-downs world-wide, which are not going to happen in the absence of the world government the Left so dearly seeks, and which will not occur absent cross-the-continents violence that will make climate change look like a light summer rain shower.
The United States also can’t dramatically cut its 13% of global emissions without economically crippling itself and its citizens, causing other existential problems. And even if it did, and if the world actually followed our lead, there is not sufficient certainty that climate change predictions and models are accurate to be able to state that the Earth’s temperature won’t go up anyway…or go down.
This is the reality of the climate change policies that the Biden administration believes must dominate U.S. industry, regulations and individual freedoms: 50 trillion dollars spent that is urgently needed elsewhere and that the U.S. already can’t afford, to accomplish something that can’t be accomplished, based on theories that can’t be proven, by a nation that knows it will only work, maybe, if every other country follows its lead, when it also know they won’t.
Best of all, the policies will be overseen by bureaucrats like Turk, who can’t even say what all the spending will do, because he doesn’t know.
Thank-you, Senator Kennedy.
Ethics Alarms 
About atmospheric carbon, I’ve been doing some serious digging into this topic and here are three related blog posts. please read them in order…
Global Atmospheric Carbon & Fossil Fuels
Electric Cars & Reducing Atmospheric Carbon
Inquiring Minds Want To Know!
This topic is also on my list of absurdities in the USA.
Epidemic Levels Of Absurdities Are Infecting Our Society
This is also “do something” at its most ludicrous: spend 50 TRILLION to appear to do something because in your heart of hearts, it will set an example for others to do..something.
Their whole line up of arguments are absurd, but yet there are hordes true “settled science” believers out there that have completely swallowed their propaganda narrative hook, line and sinker. They are cultish and brainwashed.
Sigh; were ALL the Climate Criminals to demonstrate, if inadvertently, the (heh!) refreshing candor of UNIPCC official/UNIPCC working Group III, Lead Author-2007 AR4 (similar to a U.S. cabinet secretary) Ottmar Edenhofer:
(bolds/caps/italics mine throughout)
“First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community.
“But one must say clearly that WE REDISTRIBUTE DE FACTO THE WORLD’S WEALTH BY CLIMATE POLICY.
“Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this.
“ONE HAS TO FREE ONESELF FROM THE ILLUSION THAT INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE POLICY IS ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY.
“THIS HAS ALMOST NOTHING TO DO WITH ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ANYMORE, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”
Taken out of context…?
Not out of context at all, Paul!
Climate change is the perfect sham. It’s a “crisis” that the public doesn’t really understand and no one can really measure. The proposed fixes cost an exorbitant amount of money that the public can’t even begin to comprehend. And those in charge won’t ever say what will fix the problem, except that the next bunch of trillions will do it.
Then guess what? Nothing will change with the climate and the alarmists will say, “Saving the planet is just around the corner. All we need is another $50 trillion…oh, and people need to give up their homes for 2-room efficiencies, trade their gasoline-powered cars for bicycles, give up meat, and stay at home.”
Then guess what? Nothing will change with the climate and the alarmists will say, “Saving the planet is just around the corner. All we need is another $50 trillion…oh, and people need to give up…”
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Thank you, Rep. Kennedy, for revealing just a tiny bit of the scam.
My apologies…SENATOR Kennedy.
It’s also quite absurd that there are arrogant human beings out there that think they can somehow “control” climate changes that are dictated by Mother Nature.
If we lead, China is going to follow?
Ha, ha!
Who cares if the writers strike, this guy can get a side gig writing jokes for late night talk shows.
We don’t deserve Sen. Kennedy.
jvb
The “heart of hearts” thing is a tell. This is a religion, based on faith and served by acolytes.
Hmmm…interesting point. And you know what is said about church and state…
Distilling this to its core, it seems more likely this climate change push has an agenda completely different than actually addressing climate change.
Climate change is simply their cover story. All they ever do is publish their vague gloomy assertions of what can/will/might happen is we don’t spend 50 trillion dollars.
Sen. Kennedy has exposed them, but who will listen?
BTW. Do the combined world governments even have 50 trillion dollars?
Bingo, Ed.
“Distilling this to its core, it seems more likely this climate change push has an agenda completely different than actually addressing climate change.”
Do tell!
Just a rough theory of mine (which anxiously awaits public financing…) suggests that part of that different agenda is based on its adherents’ general hatred of humans….at least those who don’t think/act the right way.
The Medieval Warming Period (MWP/~ 800 to 1200 AD) saw GREAT INCREASES in human population and longevity due to advances in food production/availability, improved farming techniques, agricultural methods (domestication of plants and animals), nutrition, trade, an increase in arable land, and a favorable growing climate to boot.
Scary thought to Human Haters, am I right?
It gets worse.
The MWP’s population increases & mobility also saw the spread of Catholicism and other religions which assumed a larger societal role; many of the great European Cathedrals were built during the time.
Now, what’s more horrifying to the Human Haters than just more of what they hate?
Howse about more of what they hate being people of faith, which is to say, not thinking the way they should?
To paraphrase Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko: “That’s the one thing you have to remember about Lefties; they love animals and hate people.”
Well, the global temperature rose about 0.2 degrees (C) in the 20th century due to massive industrialization. So, 13% of that is 0.13(0.2 degrees) = 0.026 degrees. That should be a decent estimate. Well worth the $50 trillion. Of course, China will increase their carbon dioxide emissions by that much in the next year alone, making our suicidal sacrifice irrelevant. Currently, the China generates more kWh of electricity per capita from fossil fuels than Oklahoma does and that number is rising dramatically every year.
Despite the fact that China uses more electricity per capita than many European country and China generates more of their electricity from fossil fuels than any developed country, China is treated as a developing nation and exempt from carbon emissions regulations. Why is that? Is it he the same reason the media won’t report negatively on Tic Tok?
(for example, China uses 5800 KWh/year per capita, Italy is 4900 kWh/year and the UK is 4600 kWh/year while Haiti is at 32 Kwh/year and Somalia is at 21 kWh/year)
A question I would like to ask the global warming alarmists: Since we want to HVAC the world and fix the global temperatures, why are we selecting the current temperature as the best one? If you look historically, times that were recorded as prosperous were much warmer than today (the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period) by several degrees. When the temperature cooled from those eras, societies collapsed. The Vikings that were farming Greenland died when the Medieval Warm period ended. We still can’t farm Greenland because it is still too cold. The justification for not allowing the temperatures to rise on the planet (as if they can actually control that) is that countries near the equator are poorer than northern countries today. However, this is a modern anomaly. Throughout history, the equatorial countries have been the prosperous ones and Northern Europe was an impoverished backwater. Think about the drab, drafty castles of Europe of 1200 compared to the lavish palaces of the Middle East. Think of Mexico City with 1 million residents in the 17th century while the tribes in Canada resided in basically huts. Not only does the ‘science’ of global warming have a lot of problems (like the models don’t work well and the ‘solutions’ are practically disastrous or unworkable), but the very assumption that a warming of the planet would be disastrous is historically unsound.
Anyone who says “in my heart of hearts” during a policy discussion should be given a pageant contest number and ushered out the door while doing a parade wave and saying “I really do want world peace”. That people take anyone seriously that said this is frightening. One thought on this. We have reduced our carbon footprint using natural gas and there was no government intervention required. In fact, we (the US) did better than any other nation during the same timeframe. Also, “something” is being done. Just because it’s no place you’ll ever be and isn’t front and center in your world doesn’t mean there’s not “progress” being made, such as it is. Whether it’s better than what we had or not is debatable but they are covering the high plains with wind and solar, dropping those turbines and solar farms like confetti along with the transmission lines and battery storage to accompany them. If the end result of millions of square miles of turbines in the middle of the country is a good or bad thing for the environment is debatable.
I always liked this question and answer about the climate. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YBf2PU_Bvog
Here’s a supplementary take-away: the people in charge of climate change policy are just not very bright, like this guy.
I think that is the appeal of AI. The people in charge of everything in this country are morons and they resent the fact that they need to rely on underlings to get anything done. Incompetent people don’t like to hire competent people underneath them, it makes them feel insecure. My suspicion is that these incompetent leaders think that with AI, they don’t need to hire the competent underlings, they can just ask the AI to solve the problems for them. The problem with that is that the AI only knows what it gets from its data set (the internet) and the answers on the internet are often wrong or so oversimplified to be useless.
What is the difference between a dim light and a bright light? Internet answer: “The amplitude of the bright light is larger than that of the dim light.” The internet gives a 19th century explanation that was replaced by Einsten’s 1905 discovery of photons.
What is voltage? Intenet answer: “It is a pressure that pushes electricity through a circuit.” This is an analogy, not an explanation of voltage.
My suspicion is that the Palestine, OH train derailment disaster was caused because the EPA asked the AI how to solve the problem. If you ask the AI how to dispose of vinyl chloride, it will say ‘incineration’. However, the ‘incineration’ used to dispose of vinyl chloride is a high-temperature cement furnace with emission scrubbers, not a train car blown open and ignited with flares. The latter is how the EPA (Environment Prevention Agency) caused the largest dioxin release in history.
Just think what a wonderful world we can live in when people like this EPA employee can use AI to solve the world’s problems without ever having to understand anything.
How about the following graphs for a visual comparison to show how absurd their arguments are.
National Trends of Carbon Monoxide Concentrations in USA from1980-2021
Source: United States EPA, Carbon Monoxide Trends
Global Temperatures Changes From 1983-2019
(notice the portion of the graph from 1980 – 2019)
Source: Climate Change: Global Temperature
Please note that as we intentionally reduced the carbon monoxide in the air across the United States by dramatically reduced our air pollution the global trends for temperature since 1980 have increased between 0.8-0.9°C from the arbitrary zero point 0°C they chose for the graph.
All we have to do is to take the information that the fools in the government are providing to us and use to prove their arguments are foolish.
Perhaps Kennedy will also invite some others from the administration to advise us on which criminal firearms uses would have been/will be prevented by their various proposed “gun
controlsafety” measures. Wishcasting should be considered non-responsive.