Last week, the Biden White House bigwig John Podesta fessed up and told us all the Inflation Reduction Act was really about climate change, not inflation. The cost of that act has been re-estimated to be $1.2 trillion. Just saying.
Then, Mr. Podesta suggested that climate change was partly responsible for the catastrophic Maui wildfires, which, at last count, has killed 114 people. Of course, he did – never let a crisis go to waste. On the Sunday talk shows, Hawaii Governor Josh Green blamed climate change on the devastating fires. Of course, he did too, but more rational voices have suggested that fallen power lines are a strong possible cause of the deadly fires.
One reason for that is that green energy mandates and regulations from the Biden administration and the state of Hawaii may have forced the Hawaiian electric utilities to spend on solar and grid connecting systems instead of strengthening equipment and removing combustible brush. The Committee to Unleash Prosperity Hotline reports that Hawaiian Electric repeatedly requested the state regulators spend far more on fraying electric connections to prevent wildfire ignition, but Hawaii lawmakers wanted much more utility money directed at renewable sources.
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This tragic Hawaiian story coincides with breaking news over the weekend that an American Nobel Prize-winning scientist John Clauser has sent shockwaves by declaring the climate crisis narrative is a hoax. According to Slay News, the co-winner of the 2022 Nobel Physics prize and one of the world's leading authorities on quantum mechanics blasted "climate emergency" claims as a "dangerous corruption of science" that threatens the world's economy and the well-being of billions of people.
The American theoretical physicist joined hundreds of others in the World Climate Declaration in arguing against a climate emergency. In a recent speech in Korea, Professor Clauser said "misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudo-science."
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He later called it a hoax. All right. Mr. Clauser, by the way, joins scientists from Princeton and M.I.T. and many other places in saying this is not the immediate emergency so many of the left believe it to be. I'm just pointing this out. I now want to dig in to the Maui, Hawaii story. It is a terrible tragedy, but to keep blaming everything that happens on climate change and to keep talking about an existential threat is simply not borne out by science.
A number of famous scientists and Nobel Prize winners have made this case time and again, even while the Biden administration persists in its fiction and its fantasy and its wild spending. So, I'll just leave it there. We report. You decide.
This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow’s opening commentary on the August 21, 2023, edition of "Kudlow."