For years liberty-loving Americans have suspected that the climate change crisis is more about increasing the power of the federal government than about slowing the earth's warming.
We got confirmation of that last week when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff admitted that the Green New Deal is really about changing the "entire economy," not climate change.
But a statistician for the Heritage Foundation pointed out at a recent conference that our federal "leaders" have been fudging the climate change numbers long before the Green New Deal phenomenon.
Speaking at the 13th International Conference on Climate Change, Kevin Dayaratna said that the true cost of carbon dioxide emissions can be "all over the map" because the numbers can be easily "rigged by politicians" to achieve their desired results.
The statistical models used by the Obama administration to set regulatory policy are flawed because they are highly prone to user manipulation, Dayaratna told conferees.
In fact, only one of the three models in use during the Obama years considered potential benefits, but did so with “outdated assumptions,” he said.
President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency defined the social cost of carbon as the “economic damages per metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions.”
Climate models seek to measure the long-term impact of carbon dioxide emissions. Dayaratna and his team at Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis adapted and tested two of the three models.
After making “very reasonable changes to the assumptions in the social cost of carbon,” Dayaratna said, they found that costs could drop dramatically anywhere from 40% to 200%. And under reasonable assumptions, he said, costs could become negative and thus net benefits to society.“The sheer fact that these models can be manipulated to get any result you want speaks volumes to their uselessness in regulatory policy and the danger of putting them into the hands of policymakers,” Dayaratna said.
The intended result of this statistical gymnastics, as AOC's chief of staff so blatantly put it, is to allow the federal government to "save" us by giving Washington bureaucrats the power to change the entire economy.
Some Americans might be falling for this crisis-mongering, but Convention of States volunteers aren't among them. They understand that our nation's problems can't be solved by the corrupt, inept, wasteful politicians in D.C., which is why they've thrown their support behind the Convention of States movement.
An Article V Convention of States can prohibit large-scale federal takeover of private industry by limiting the power and jurisdiction of the federal government via constitutional amendment. These amendments can clarify and reinforce the Founders' original vision of a small, restricted national government and restore that decision-making power to the states and the people.
Millions of Americans have voiced their support, and fifteen state legislatures have jumped on board.
What about you? Sign the Convention of States Petition below to add your name to the list!
