This updated review of Virginia and Climate Change was commissioned to provide current information to policymakers after multiple climate change-related proposals were made in early 2026 by the newly installed governor and the state legislature. Predicated on the state’s need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to forestall a purported climate crisis, the proposals would have huge economic impacts on the commonwealth’s citizens and businesses.

Soon after taking office, newly elected Governor Abigail Spanberger announced that Virginia would rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). RGGI is a consortium of New England and Mid-Atlantic states that imposes a tax on fossil fuels to reduce their use and emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from their combustion. The intended result of RGGI is to increase the costs of electricity from coal and natural gas-fired generation sources to make electricity generated from so-called “clean” renewable sources (wind and solar) more
economically attractive.

Claims of rising temperatures, severe weather and dangerously rising sea level, along with dire predictions of more of the same—all purportedly driven by man-made emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2)—have been used to justify the efforts of Virginia’s government to control the
uncontrollable: Earth’s climate.

Within this report, we ask and answer the following questions:

• Is Virginia currently experiencing more extreme weather and negative environmental degradation due to increasing temperatures?
• Are the models used to predict future changes accurate enough for the Commonwealth of Virginia to take drastic, and likely economically harmful, measures?
• If the Commonwealth of Virginia did reduce its CO2 emissions as envisioned, what effect would this have on global and local temperatures?
• Is the current warming, combined with increasing CO2 levels, harmful or a net benefit?

To answer these questions, some of the world’s top experts in various fields have compiled the data, science and facts. A summary of the specific findings is as follows:

Severe Weather: The frequency of natural disasters worldwide has not been increasing since about 2000, despite modestly rising temperatures and increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration, countering claims of linkage with increasing natural calamities.

Temperature & CO2: Worldwide average temperature records since 1850 show periods of both warming and cooling, demonstrating questionable direct correlation between temperature and CO2 levels.

Heat Waves & Droughts: Both have declined in Virginia over the past century. In fact, the most severe heat waves and droughts occurred more than 80 years ago.

Virginia Temperature in Future Context: Computer models on which Virginia’s climate programs are based have regularly overpredicted warming in recent decades. A methodology so flawed has no place in deliberating climate policies, as it provides no reliable forecast of future temperatures.

Climate Change & Agriculture: Consistent with worldwide trends, Virginia crop yields have been increasing for more than a century primarily due to increasing CO2 levels, a longer growing season, judicious use of nitrogen fertilizer and improved farming practices.

Regional Sea-Level Rise: There is no acceleration in sea-level rise as recorded by tide gauges. However, local rises can have a strong geological component, as is the case in Virginia, where the rise is amplified by the well-documented isostatic rebound of land along the eastern seaboard.

Meaningless Climate Programs: Using the methodology of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the amount of global warming “mitigated” by eliminating all of Virginia’s CO2 emissions from 2010 onward (assuming a climate sensitivity of 2.0 °C) amounted to 0.0021 °C (0.0038 °F) by 2100—a number too small to be measured or felt.

Conclusions: There is no correlation between CO2 emissions and the safety of Virginians. In fact, the weather has been relatively benign in recent decades and agriculture in Virginia has benefited from modest warming and increasing CO2 levels. Efforts to modify the climate are economically wasteful and meaningless in their effect

Download the complete report here:

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