Watch: Morano on NTD News on NY’s Climate Superfund Act: ‘This was literally a cash grab by the state of New York, to shake down fossil fuel companies for money’

NTD Anchor: Marc Morano, Executive Editor and Chief Correspondent at ClimateDepot.com. Thanks for joining us, Marc. Can you break down this case for our viewers?

Marc Morano: Yeah, in the world of absurd climate change ideology and laws, this was one of the most absurd ones. In 2024, under Kathy Hochul, the state of New York claimed that from the year 2000 to 2018, the state was seeking damages caused by the fossil fuel industry in the form of coastal erosion, rising sea levels, and extreme weather. They wanted a giant slush fund of money poured into the state’s coffers—$75 billion—known as the Climate Superfund.

When they announced this, we knew immediately this was not going to hold up to federal scrutiny for a few reasons. First of all, the state of New York has not had warming over that period from 2000 to 2018, according to the database. Number two, extreme weather globally was not increasing. Hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, wildfires, and droughts showed no trend or declining trends on climate time scales of 30 years or more.

So, there’s no science to support it. This was literally a cash grab by the state of New York wanting to shake down fossil fuel companies for money. Of course, the Trump administration announced that they were going to come after these ridiculous laws through their Department of Justice, and now two federal judges have struck it down. It may end up in the Supreme Court, but I don’t think it will. This is just one of those absurd things where they wanted money from the fossil fuel industry, contrived a reason to try to get it, and failed.

NTD Anchor: I’d like you to go back to some of those data points you were sharing about those weather events. You said that there are no increases. Can you go a level deeper on that just so people can frame the issue?

Marc Morano: Look at peer-reviewed studies, but most importantly, the Bible for the climate activist: the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Multiple reports that they issue every five years or so admit, buried deep in the reports, that hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, wildfires, and droughts show either no trend or declining trends on climate time scales.

Certainly in the United States, in the case of tornadoes, big tornadoes (F3 or larger) are down since the 1950s. First of all, we’re in uncharted territory this year with no landfalling hurricanes in the Atlantic so far. The busiest decade for hurricanes was the 1940s, and looking back a hundred years, there has been no trend or a declining trend. Even heat waves in the United States—the 1930s reign supreme according to EPA heat data. So on every metric, the only place this increase in extreme weather exists is in the climate models.

What New York is doing is playing on people’s ignorance and treating climate predictions as reality. They say, “Because the weather is so much worse, this is caused by climate change.” They use a group called the Weather Attribution group. Essentially, this group comes up with models—which some people liken to a seance communicating with the dead—where they literally state, “ExxonMobil is responsible for 18% of the bad weather we’ve had.”

It comes down to unverified climate models written by a group whose stated goal is to assist with legislation to extract money from fossil fuel companies. Their goal is to claim every hurricane, flood, tornado, and wildfire is 18% the result of ExxonMobil, 17% the result of Chevron, and therefore they have to start paying up into a $75 billion fund. It’s insane. It’s a shakedown of the highest, most obvious order.

NTD Anchor: Now, I want to go a level deeper on this for people who are well-intentioned. They hear that the environment is getting worse and they want to do the right thing. So, the two things I was hoping you could break down a bit: what do experts or people who don’t go along with this say about global warming and this idea of CO2? Can you tackle those two points for people and explain what counters that narrative from actual scientists?

Marc Morano: If you go back to the modern environmental movement starting in the 1960s, it started to become fear-based—whether it was DDT, overpopulation, man-made global cooling in the ’70s, acid rain, or the Amazon rainforest scare with 30 football fields disappearing a minute and species extinction scares. By the time the early 2000s came along, they decided to go all-in on climate change. Virtually every other environmental issue was wiped away and it became strictly climate change—causing deaths, causing species loss, becoming the catchall for everything.

Beginning back in the 1990s, scientists said, “Wait, this doesn’t make sense.” They were immediately silenced, suppressed, and dissent was not allowed. As things became more extreme and consensus-oriented, no dissent was permitted—very similar to what happened during COVID if you went up against Anthony Fauci or the World Health Organization and were immediately deplatformed, canceled, and thrown out.

These scientists finally banded together. I worked in the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee during the end of the Bush administration into the Obama administration. Scientists from around the world began speaking out. We compiled a report of over a thousand dissenting scientists, and the common theme was clear: CO2 is not the control knob of the climate. Hundreds of factors control the climate, not just carbon dioxide.

Because these scientists disagreed, their papers were retracted and canceled. The entire United Nations framework was about consensus enforcement and silencing opposition. Scientists came out and said, “This is a bridge too far. There is no reason to fear carbon dioxide. Humans exhale it from our mouths. For 90% of Earth’s geological history, the planet had higher CO2 levels with colder temperatures. We are currently in the 10% coldest period of Earth’s geological history.”

The narrative just never held up, and the public became increasingly skeptical over the years—especially after the ClimateGate scandal. Even if you think CO2 causes some warming, the idea that a UN treaty or carbon taxes can reduce storms or lower global temperatures is absurd. Even the United Nations admitted recently that the entire UN Paris Agreement has utterly failed and that carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise. Today, 81% of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels—a 163% increase since the 1970s. The whole premise is an absolute scientific fraud from beginning to end.

NTD Anchor: Well, and of course, the point of all these fossil fuels is to improve human living and reduce suffering. So when you put it in that framework, it is quite startling to hear you lay it out this way. Marc Morano, thank you so much. Great conversation.

Marc Morano: Thank you very much. Appreciate it.