From this hypothesis comes their solution: drastic reductions in so-called greenhouse gas emissions, principally carbon dioxide, ‘CO2’, and rapidly so. To their minds, this would require widespread adoption of their preferred solutions – ending fossil fuels in favour of wind and solar power; pervasive and intensive electrification of the world economy, including the mandated adoption of electric vehicles, ‘EVs’, and batteries, everywhere.
They insist that slashing CO2 levels will not only benefit the world, but also the economy – as these new industries would provide jobs and other benefits.
The hard reality is that CO2, is a life-giving gas that is crucial for photosynthesis and thus the flourishing of all life on Earth. It is a trace gas – making up only .04% of our atmosphere. Most CO2 comes from natural sources like forest fires, volcanoes and ocean evaporation – not your SUV or natural gas furnace. The human portion of this tiny amount is the equivalent of 6 pennies in a jar of 10,000. Very awkwardly, CO2 levels in the atmosphere are uncorrelated with temperatures. It may look so in government computer models, but remember those catastrophically wrong Covid models that gave us devastating lockdowns, failed vaccines and exploding debt and inflation?
Even if we assume that CO2 is “pollution that is warming the planet” their wild proposals’ math doesn’t work out.
Professor Richard Tol of the University of Sussex, United Kingdom, wrote in a special issue of Climate Economics a sobering assessment of the ‘bad deal’ climate crusaders are trying to sell to the world, including Canada. He estimates their proposed climate policies’ costs to be 3.8 to 5.6% of GDP in 2100 compared to benefits of 2.8% to 3.2% of GDP – or excess costs of $900 billion to $1.98 trillion in today’s $90 trillion world economy.
The prohibitively large subsidies required fail the cost benefit test. To summarize: Tol suggests that the whole Green Transition ‘enterprise’ would lose money – in vast amounts. His view is not even the worst assessment of such radical disruptive policies.
Another expert who engages the “CO2 is pollution” bubble and has done the math is Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus think tank and a Hoover Institution Senior Fellow.
He assesses MIT researchers’ studies of the costs of attaining Net Zero (no net GHG emissions) by 2050, in the same journal, Climate Economics, and observes that these Paris policies would cost 8% to 18% of annual GDP by 2050 and 11% to 13% annually by 2100…. Averaged across the century, these promises would create benefits worth $4.5 trillion (in 2023 dollars) annually: “dramatically smaller than the $27 trillion annual cost that Paris promises would incur, as derived from averaging the three cost estimates from the two Climate Change Economics papers through 2100.”
To remove any doubt, these forecast costs would exceed total global annual capital investment of all kinds, and would crowd out everything else, impoverishing all humanity. expensive, destructive ‘solutions’, for a dubious, unproven catastrophe.
The Dubai COP28 flopped as all others have.
We need to stop the madness.
Republished from HERE.
Ian Madsen is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
9 comments:
I have a wish for 2024 that the Greens will take note of the real world that we are trying to keep alive - avoid polution by all means, which means stop making meaningless jet flights around the world for sumptious dinners and meaningless debate.
Excellent article Ian. We need much more open and informed public debate on the science, and the very very small extent of anthropogenic climate change. Articles like this need to be in the MSM to enable this and to provide strong counterpoint to those fostering climate panic. John R
Tony, do you mean to avoid pollution just by stopping “making meaningless jet flights around the world for sumptious dinners and meaningless debate”, or stopping making meaningless jet flights, full stop? If it’s just the former it’s not going to make any difference. If it’s the latter, forget it; the affluent world won’t stand for it. Nevertheless, there seems to be a hint here that that jet flights cause pollution.
No Amount of Subsidies Will Ever Make a Wind/Solar Electricity System Economically Feasible.
Unlike in business and finance, there are no criminal or civil penalties for those who promote policies based on fraud and misrepresentation.
Rather, net zero is similar to communism.Like net zero, communism was based on a lie: that it would outproduce capitalism.But it failed to produce, and belief in communism evaporated. When the collapse came, it was sudden and rapid.
The truth couldn’t be hidden. A similar fate awaits net zero.
Worse still Zero Carbon ideology would mean no farming or fishing , no transport , no food , no water , overflowing sewage , sickness , hunger and death of the majority of people who buy food , rely on water from the tap and sewerage disposal at the bathroom . Electricity and transport are minor impositions if your family is dying around you. Wake up the NZ Prime minister and leave your Zero carbon fantasy behind you.
Imagine how much could have been saved if there had not been 28 COP meetings? Tens of thousands fly in, food flown in.......never trust hypocrites.
Well written Ian. If only this intelligent analysis of the greatest lie ever told could be used to force feed every idiot global warming alarmist in the country. Even then I doubt that it would curb their appetite from their delusional religion. The fanatics are in the noisy minority counting on the silence of the large majority to promote their deranged propaganda at great and unnecessary cost to New Zealand.
Leaked documents showing the COP28 President, which was held by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) show they were plotting to make oil deals with Beijing. They were plotting to make oil deals with the Columbians. They were plotting to do oil and gas deals off the coast of Africa.
So, on the one hand, the Western media and the United Nations are telling Westerners that you need to dismantle your energy systems. You need to stop all your coal-fired power plants. Biden said he wanted to get rid of methane emissions? That would take out all the natural gas plants and take out 60% of our power generation in the United States.
The Arabs, communist Chinese, and the globalists are laughing all the way to the bank. They are not really working on fazing out oil or fazing out fossil fuels. They are working on fazing out the Western world, which is also known as Christendom or the ‘Free World.’”
The International meetings where aspirational goals for years ahead are grandly stated are a complete waste of time and CO2 producing energy. Assuming the bulk of world scientists are not all hopelessly deluded , serious action is necessary .We will need to reverse our expectation of a constantly improving lifestyle and revert to something akin early 20th century England and the 1950s, esp travel. Unbridled capitalism and democracy will not succeed. With these, instead of working to the solution the incentive is to exploit opportunities. Thus instead of prolonging vehicle lives, developing an economical light weight long life world car requiring minimum repeat manufacturing energy resources, we are obsessed with heavy elaborate short lived electric cars. World population will have to stop increasing and decrease (Te Pati and some other cultures note). The problem will be occupying everyone without blatant consumerism as today. Large idle populations are not conducive to civilised bahaviour, as any state housing complex demonstrates.
Post a Comment
Thanks for engaging in the debate!
Because this is a public forum, we will only publish comments that are respectful and do NOT contain links to other sites. We appreciate your cooperation.