Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 7, 2016. The event 
was focused on the “threat” of climate change. A CNSnews.com posting “EPA Chief: Climate Change Is Certain But You Can’t Predict the Future” related the comments made by the Administrator at that meeting.
A CNS News reporter asked the Administrator the following question:
“According to the Energy Information Administration – although alternative and renewables are growing slightly – fossil fuels will still account for 80 percent of U.S. energy needs through 2040. Federal data also shows that U.S. carbon emissions are at almost a 20-year low right now. How do those facts fit into the picture the EPA is painting of the U.S. energy landscape?”
McCarthy responded as follows:
“I think just as climate change is a long-term issue – clearly addressing that is, but I don’t think anyone disputes the direction in which the world is heading,”
“How quickly it gets there – including in the U.S. – is going to be up for debate, but what I always have to constantly remind people – and this is again, maybe, an infatuation with new technology for me – is that no one could have predicted what the world looked [sic] like today 20 years ago,” she said. “No one. Zero.”
McCarthy then compared phone technology to the transformation from fossil fuel to other energy sources.
“If you told me 30 years ago there wouldn’t be a phone in my house, sitting on a wall, I would have thought you were nuts, right?” McCarthy said. “And now nobody is investing in land lines. Would you?
“And so the world changes dramatically, and I think in the energy world, it’s not going to be different, because people are looking for continued opportunity for investment,” she said.
“Frankly, a lot of the investment that would have been made before is so old and has not been invested in that now there is an opportunity for significant investment [in alternative energy], and that is going to be, I think, in a direction which we are seeing the energy world is heading,” McCarthy said.
“So I think you’re going to see an escalation of that transition moving forward,” she said.
Well for those of you that are having trouble understanding what she said, it matches the title of the CNSnews posting title: “Climate Change Is Certain But You Can’t Predict the Future”. She knows climate change is certain. So do I. But I don’t know if it is going to mean increasing or decreasing temperature, for example.
The paragraph, beginning “Frankly, a lot of the investment that would have been made before its so old ………….” is somewhat of a mystery to me. Its pretty much anyone’s guess how that could be put into words that we could understand.
She has said on many occasions that she does not understand the science of this issue. And it is apparent that she is just mouthing platitudes that she has heard around the office. For example she is contradicting what the Federal Government experts in the EIA say that in 2040 the mix of energy used in the US will still be about 80% from fossil fuels. Apparently the EIA experts should be replaced by some of her office experts.
She did not respond at all to the question of US CO2 emissions.
cbdakota
Climate Change Sanity 