When an elected political leader get into office, the media wait to see if he fulfils any of his campaign promises, and will often needle him or her about an apparent slowness to do so. With President Trump it is rather the office. He said that if elected he would withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change, and he has now done so. Instead of saying,’Well, he’s done what he said he would do’, there seems to be a chorus of incomprehension. ‘But surely you only said those things to get elected’ seems to be one theme. ‘How dare he!’ seems to be another. Some of the reactions are so way out that they are nutty. Here is Tom Steyer, a billionaire environmentalist in the US, in a tweet: If Trump pulls the US out of the #ParisAgreement he will be committing a traitorous act of war against the American people. What on earth does he mean?
Anthony Watts has a fine collection of these viscerally angry comments on WUWT. I don’t find them funny, or the whole thing funny. They give me the shivers. In this essay I’ll concentrate on just two elements of the issue. The first is what Trump actually said (his explanation), and the indication that there are two Trumps, the madman we read about in the media, and the one who is actually in office, making decisions that are in accord with what he said in the campaign before his election (yes, I know that Hillary Clinton won a per cent or more in votes, but they weren’t in the right places for her to be elected).
You can read the full text of what the President said here. It’s not a bad speech, and quite accessible. In it he says that he is prepared to go into negotiations for a new agreement, without saying what he would need in it.. He sets out the number of jobs that might be lost if the Agreement were implemented (I won’t go into that, because it’s all conjecture: he will choose his figures and others will produce their own). The core of his argument, at least as I see it, is twofold: first, that China is allowed to do whatever it likes in terms of greenhouse gas emissions for the next thirteen years, while the USA would be committed to lower its own. That is plainly unfair, since it would mean both great industrial expansion for China, and a large increase in GGE for the world, and continue the export of American manufacturing to Asia. Second: what difference would the Paris Agreement make to lowering ‘global temperature’ anyway? A tiny amount. Let him state it in his own words.
Even if the Paris agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree – think of that; this much – Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Tiny, tiny amount. In fact, 14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from America – and this is an incredible statistic – would totally wipe out the gains from America’s expected reductions in the year 2030.
On both those points I think he is right. I’ve have given up any attempt to imagine why those most vociferous in wanting ‘action on climate change’ are not campaigning outside the Chinese Embassy demanding that the Chinese follow the approved Green line. Setting aside whether or not Australia is a carbon sink in net terms, it makes no sense for Australia to do anything at all while China can do what it likes. Our contribution to global warming is minuscule compared to that of China.
On the second point, four years ago I did my own homework on the effect on global temperature of cutting industrial activity, so I could have told President Trump all that myself. And again, none of the climateers wants to get into a talk about the relationship, though MAGICC, the little algorithmic tool that NASA invented for just such a purpose, is available to everybody. If stopping coal and gasoline use isn’t going to lower temperatures and keep us away from the dreaded 2 degree C increase (the real danger now is apparently an increase of 1.5 degrees C), then why on earth are we doing it? It drives up energy costs and makes everybody’s cost of living greater than it would be otherwise. Yes, you could talk about peak oil, or morbidity among people who live around coal mines. But the day of peak oil keeps coming (it was first forecast for 1957, if memory serves), and making coal-fired electricity safer (it is still much the cheapest and far and away the most reliable, even given the subsidies that solar and wind get) is a job we can undertake further ourselves.
I think that those who want to excoriate President Trump for what he has done here need to concentrate on those two points, for they are the nub of his argument. If you think he’s wrong about them, fine. Set out your own argument and show why it is better. I would not expect Prime Minister Turnbull to follow his example, and apart from the rising cost of energy here, already referred to, what Australia says and does about climate change is simply irrelevant in the wider world.
Since his Inauguration it is plain that President Trump has a mighty battle on his hands. It is with the mass media. They did not approve of him before he was elected, and they seem to hate him since. Of course, he has made things difficult for himself by pointing out what he sees as the errors in the media’s treatment of him, and he refused to attend the Press Corps dinner, which was a real slap in the face. I have some sympathy for him, because the American mass media were pretty well uniformly on Hillary Clinton’s side during the campaign.
But a consequence of this rift, or abyss, is that what we read and see of him in Australia is incredibly one-sided. Nearly all our news comes to us via the American media, Reuters and AP. Worse, we don’t even realise that it is one-sided. The consequence is that many of my friends and acquaintances feel that the Donald Trump they see in five-second grabs on TV is the Real Trump, where I would call it the Alternative one. I should say at once that I don’t know where I would find evidence of the Real Trump in the Australian media. But you can poke around in the Internet to find bits and pieces that aren’t shown through the mass media lens, such as his attendance at the G7 meeting, where he did not agree that climate change was a burning issue.
Sooner or later he is going to have to make peace with the media, and that will be difficult. For the moment, his action is being criticised, but what we hear is how nobody likes it, not why his argument is faulty.
There is always a funny side. People are now blaming Trump’s action fore the bad weather they are having or, in the case of some Australian skiers, cheering him for the early arrival of the snow season. Cartoonist Josh, whose work has been here before, offers his take on it.
About media bias: Here’s a German example from election night, one of these great ooops! front pages:
Andrew Bolt fact checks some of the ridiculous claims about Trump’s decision to leave Cop 21. Some of the extremists are barking mad.,
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/warmists-defied-trump-pu lls-out-of-paris-climate-deal/news-story/74be2828bd9ffc0825d9237d736b6 f8f
And check the latest data and you’ll understand why Lomborg and Hansen are correct about Paris COP 21.
The US co2 emissions are now at the same level as 1997 after a big reduction since 2007.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/CO2_Emission/timeseries/national
And China’s co2 emissions have boomed since 2000. In fact China now emits over 3 times the co2 emissions today than it did in 1998. That’s over a 300% increase in just 19 years. Unbelievable but true, just check the data.
Here is that excellent evidence based Bolt link again. I hope it works this time.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/warmists-defied-trump-pulls-out-of-paris-climate-deal/news-story/74be2828bd9ffc0825d9237d73
Just to add more important data, here are Chinese co2 emissions from 1980.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emis sions#/media/File:Carbon_dioxide_emissions_due_to_consumption_in_China .png
And here are all the countries co2 emissions on the real planet earth. Note that China passed the USA in 2007 and now emit 29.5% , India 6.8%, USA 14.3% and OZ a WHOPPING 1.2%. And India hasn’t really started to develop yet , and some economists expect it to rival China post 2050. China and India now emit 36.3% of the world’s co2 emissions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emis sions
R
Here is that Wiki link again. Scroll down to see China co2 emissions 1980 to 2009. Hope it works this time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
I think you can never go wrong by following the money. Many people in many nations have been promised billions for ‘compensation, mitigation, and adaptation’. Much of this money was going to come from America, and now is not.
None of the potential recipients care about the climate, but all of them care about the money.
Thanks for bringing this very relevant subject up, Don. Very well dealt with.
Even our own resident blitherer invents trumped-up, stupid claims like: “So the United States Liar-in-Chief has moved us all one step closer to catastrophe.”
As they say in the US: The stupid, it burns.
Thank goodness for the rare Trumps of this world when we are being over run by these deliberate liars, fabricators and desperados.
The power of ideology to consume all rationality knows no bounds.
The real message here is how can the public ever expect to get any honest reportage of the scientific facts from this preponderance of one-eyed media.
“Even if the Paris agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree – think of that; this much – Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Tiny, tiny amount. In fact, 14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from America – and this is an incredible statistic – would totally wipe out the gains from America’s expected reductions in the year 2030.”
Don, you quote predictions, you found on the dark web somewhere, for the 2100 based on a protocol that calls for ongoing revisions, is very superficial. If you read, just occasionally, you would know that the Paris agreement calls for the targets to be re-evaluated every 5 years, with the first evaluation in 2023. As the evidence for AGW increases or decreases, so too, will the targets.
The Paris agreement seems well structured, in the circumstances. Countries can opt in and out as the politics of AGW within each nation ebb and flow, without bringing the whole structure to a halt. The US is “out” for now. But, there will be consequences for the US, and they will be back.
David, as usual, you read too quickly. First, that is Trump speaking. Second, I’ve done the work myself, and he’s in the right area. Lomborg has done it too, and ditto.
And, mirabile dictu, you can do it too. Go and read my essay of four years ago, and do the work. It’s not hard, especially for such a statistically gifted person as yourself. And then tell us whether it makes any difference what the US does about emissions, let alone us in Oz.
Don I wrote
“.. you quote predictions, you found on the dark web somewhere, ….” and you tell me it was Trump. Well. …. my point exactly.
The Paris agreement calls for another 15 scheduled international meetings between now and 2100 i.e. 1 every 5 years. Each meeting will allow for some adjustment in the targets. Its a silly, dare I say Trump-like argument, to expect the settings agreed to at the first meeting will see the world thru the next 83 years with no further modification.
My advice to you, is if you find your self in agreement with Trump, about anything, you should change your mind.
David, It is sad to have to say so, but you are unendingly silly.
Because I have done the work…and so has Lomborg.
Hmm.
Ross, you risk remaining in the undendingly silly basket too. Your supercilious ‘Hmm’ comes before you have shown any indication that you know what you are talking about. But here is ‘Doing the work for Dummies’:
1. Go to the link to my essay of four years ago (above).
2. Read it.
3. Go to the link which will get you to MAGICC.
4. Decide what level of ECS you want.
5. Decide how much you want to curb industrial activity, and for how long.
6. Press the button.
7. Play around with the levels and measures.
8. You will find a microscopic lowering of temperature whatever you do.
9. Say, ‘Ah, that’s what Don did.’
10. Go back into your box, and drop the condescension.
11. Say to yourself: I’m not as smart as ai think I am.’
12. Repeat a few times.
Don! You found a handy dandy calculator! Twiddle the knobs, and there you are!
Ahhh, So that’s what Don did. And Bjorn, I’m guessing.
Do you think President man/child uses the same handy dandy calculator?
Or perhaps one of his Corporate Cronies who stand to benefit, ‘did the work’ for the dummy?
As you say, climate is a complicated business. Or not, apparently.
I am not as smart as I think I am, Don. (thankfully, you don’t suffer this illusion)
But then, I’m not President of the United States of America either.
So no harm done.
Have a great day, Don.
I’m struggling to replicate your results Don. I used this: http://live.magicc.org/ with the defaults for “Change Climate parameter” and “Carbon Cycle Settings”, and then ran three reduction scenarios:
RCP3PD peaks at about 1.7C in 2058 and then starts to decline
RCP45 keeps climbing but tapers somewhat, it’s at about 2.2C in 2058 and 2.54C in 2090
RCP85 keeps climbing with no taper, it’s at about 2.8C in 2058 and 4.3C in 2090
Try Points 7 and 9, Jimbo.
‘Don and the Magic Calculator.’
I was hoping to find evidence of point 8, especially the “whatever you do” part. I wouldn’t call those deltas “microscopic” at all.
Bjorn Lomborg backs Trump’s decision and correctly predicts that COP 21 will be a costly failure. Simple maths ,science and common sense and after they waste endless trillions $ on this idiocy we will see no measurable change to temp at all by 2100. Dr Hansen is correct, Paris COP 21 is a fra-d and BS.
Of course S&W energy are a taxpayer funded sick joke and will collapse as soon as they cancel the subsidies. This has happened all around the world and 99% of the funding is yet to be found from all the countries who’ve signed up. What a mob of con merchants these people are and yet most taxpayers are still unaware of this giant, corrupt Ponzi scheme rip off. The world’s taxpayers are expected to fund this garbage for decades and have no measurable return on their investment. Why aren’t more pollies and journalists speaking out, because this so called mitigation of their so called CAGW is the largest and most easily understood con trick in history? Here’s Lomborg’s article.
http://www.thegwpf.com/bjorn-lomborg-trump-is-right-to-reject-paris-climate-deal-its-likely-to-be-a-costly-failure/
A sensible and accurate editorial from the WSJ that further explains the stupidity of the COP 21 agreement.
http://www.thegwpf.com/wsj-growth-innovation-are-better-forms-of-climate-insurance/
WSJ: GROWTH & INNOVATION ARE BETTER FORMS OF CLIMATE INSURANCE
Date: 02/06/17
Editorial, The Wall Street Journal
President Trump announced the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement on Thursday, to the horror of green elites world-wide.
If the decision shows he is more mindful of American economic interests than they are, the other virtue of pulling out is to expose the fraudulence of this Potemkin village.
In a Rose Garden ceremony, Mr. Trump broke with the 2015 agreement, starting the formal four-year withdrawal process: “We’re getting out. And we will start to renegotiate and we’ll see if there’s a better deal. If we can, great. If we can’t, that’s fine.”
This nonchalance inspired a predictable political meltdown, with the anticarbon lobby invoking death, planetary disaster and a permanent historical stain. Billionaire Democratic donor Tom Steyer called it “a traitorous act of war against the American people,” while Barack Obama accused his successor of joining “a small handful of nations that reject the future,” whatever that means. Get ready for another march on the White House.
But amid the outrage, the aggrieved still haven’t gotten around to resolving the central Paris contradiction, which is that it promises to be Earth-saving but fails on its own terms. It is a pledge of phony progress.
The 195 signatory nations volunteered their own carbon emission-reduction pledges, known as “intended nationally determined contributions,” or INDCs. China and the other developing nations account for 63% of annual global CO 2emissions, and their share is rising. They submitted INDCs that pledged to peak the carbon status quo “around” 2030, and maybe later, or never, since Paris included no enforcement mechanisms to prevent cheating.
Meanwhile, the developed OECD nations—responsible for 55% of world CO 2 as recently as 2000—made unrealistic assurances that even they knew they could not achieve. As central-planning prone as the Obama Administration was, it never identified a tax-and-regulation program that came close to meeting its own emissions pledge of 26% to 28% reductions from 2005 levels by 2025.
Paris is thus an exercise in moral and social signaling that is likely to exert little if any influence on atmospheric CO 2 , much less on global temperatures. The Paris target was to limit the surface temperature increase to “well below” two degrees Celsius from the pre-industrial level by 2100. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Joint Program conclude that even if every INDC is fulfilled to the letter, the temperature increase will be in the range of 1.9–2.6 degrees Celsius by 2050, and 3.1–5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100.
Such forecasts are highly uncertain, which is inherent when scientists attempt to predict the future behavior of a system as complex as global climate. The best form of climate-change insurance is a large and growing economy so that future generations can afford to adapt to whatever they may confront.
A more prosperous society a century or more from now is a more important goal than asking the world to accept a lower standard of living today in exchange for symbolic benefits. Poorer nations in a world where 1.35 billion live without electricity will never accept such a trade in any case, while Mr. Trump is right to decline to lock in U.S. promises that make U.S. industries less competitive.
The surest way to “reject the future” is to burden the economy with new political controls today, because economic growth underwrites technological progress and human ingenuity. These are the major drivers of energy transitions that allow people to generate more wealth with fewer resources. Energy intensity—the amount of energy necessary to create a dollar of GDP—has plunged 58% in the U.S. since 1990, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Over the same period, intensity declined merely 37% in OECD Europe, 20% in Japan, 22% in Mexico and 7% in Korea. China dropped by 133%, but working off a far more wasteful initial base. Superior efficiency helps explain why U.S. carbon emissions fell by 145 million tons in 2016 compared to 2015, more than any other country. Russia was second, at minus 64 million tons. Over the past five years U.S. emissions have fallen by 270 million tons, while China—the No. 1 CO 2 emitter—added 1.1 billion tons.
All of which make the claims that the U.S. is abdicating global leadership so overwrought. Leadership is not defined as the U.S. endorsing whatever other world leaders have already decided they want to do, and the U.S. is providing a better model in any case. Private economies that can innovate and provide cost-effective energy alternatives will always beat meaningless international agreements.
Don, very pleased to read your post. It’s terrible that the media simply do not report what was said. I wonder how Trump could make peace with the media or they with him ? Journalists seem to be advocates and partisans, not reporters of fact. I cancelled my SMH subscription some years ago because they could never tell a story straight.
He can’t make peace with them and had Hillary Clinton been elected they would have been the same. Obama didn’t get a dream run from them.
That’s right, marg. And our ABC is similarly unbiased too.
The NY Times are up to their old tricks of pulling hard at the heart strings of the gullible. They try and promote the delusion that Glacier park has suffered from CAGW but the data clearly shows no warming trend at all. But of course the NY Times are not interested in the temp data because it would interfere with their BS story.
http://www.thegwpf.com/nyt-peddles-more-global-warming-science-without-numbers/
And Rupert Darwall notes that the US will gain a lot by leaving the COP 21 “pigs might fly’ economic fiasco. Everything the EU has tried over the last couple of decades has been an economic disaster and yet they condemn the US because they’re too smart to repeat their idiocy.
http://www.thegwpf.com/rupert-darwall-why-trump-is-right-to-ditch-the-paris-agreement/
La Belle France, je regrette tant
votre debt, quatre-vingt-dix percent
of GP, votre unemployment rate
of dix percent et social-welfare
spending, trente-un et point cinq
percent of GP. Alas poor Paris,
quel ratio Horatio!
Yes, beth, it’s not as if they [or the rest of us villeins] have any security margin to be taking risks with.
Can you believe the MSM hysteria this morning after Trump tweeted that his travel bans need to be upheld following the latest killings on London Bridge by the usual suspects.
The killers aren’t ostracised, only their critic.
The ABC, this Sunday morning, told us that a spokeswoman for President Trump has finally said that he ‘believes in climate change’, and went on to tell us that the vast majority of scientists also believe in it. And then, for good measure, told us that someone has modelled the rise in sea levels and pronounced that koala habitats are threatened. This stuff is so stupid. The sight of the press corps in Washington trying to nail the President down, ‘does he believe in climate change, yes or no?’ It’s like asking someone whether they believe in the tooth fairy
You don’t ‘believe’ in climate change (code for: humans are doing dreadful things to the planet by burning coal and petrol). You look at the argument and evidence, come to a view and explain why you have this view. And people criticise me for using ‘religion’ as a target for ‘climate change’!
What a mad world we live in.
Yes Don, a lot of people today will believe anything. I’ve ask people to show me the evidence that the world is a more dangerous place today because of so called CAGW.
There is plenty of evidence that we are much wealthier, much healthier, and live much longer lives etc, but the media seem to want to make up silly stories that support their delusions. I could list all of their CAGW icons but why bother.
Here’s Dr Rosling’s 2 videos again where he tries to dispel their ignorance about our modern world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo&t=21s
“You don’t ‘believe’ in climate change (code for: humans are doing dreadful things to the planet by burning coal and petrol). You look at the argument and evidence, come to a view and explain why you have this view.”
Very nicely put, Don.
I just took the liberty of quoting those words in a letter to the editor of a local rag who was getting agitated over the usual predictions based on evidence-free ideology.
What is the point of this rant? Get a grip.
FYI here is a link to story about the destruction of Koala habitat.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-04/climate-change-putting-australias-koalas-at-risk/8586538
Perhaps you should yourself get a grip onto something else. What you cite is a story, nothing more The woman has modelled sea-level rise. Evidence? Nil. Link to her modelling? Nil. Sea-level rise has been discussed here on a dozen occasions, and yet you put forward a ‘story’ as evidence of something.
Back into the unbendingly silly basket for you.
Has Trumps decision on Paris, in any way changed the science?
No.
But Trump is for Trump, his corporate cronies, and the foolish minority of Americans who voted for ‘change’.
Three and a half more years.
From Clive James’ essay in yesterday’s Australian. “They just collect the money, like the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, who has probably guessed by now that the sea isn’t going to rise by so much as an inch; but he still wants, for his supposedly threatened atoll, a share of the free cash, and especially because the question has changed. It used to be: how will we cope when the disaster comes? The question now is: how will we cope if it does not?”
No wonder everyone’s hysterical about Trump. Billions of dollars in handouts straight down the gurgler.
Yes, Bryan, when the US is already well ahead of the ROW in reducing emissions, Trump knows the climate swamp needs draining too.
“The United States contributed $1 billion to the global Green Climate Fund, but the world’s top polluters contributed nothing, David Asman reported.”
Don Aitkin @ at 2:27 pm
Go to Step 5. “Decide how much you want to curb industrial activity, and for how long.”
We do not want to curb industrial activity, at all! We want to curb CO2 emissions. There is a world of difference, that you struggle to understand.
Now go to steps 10 thru 12.
There are many examples of shoddy “science” being trotted out by the incompetent/venal. From our ANU and our ABC have a look at this piece of codswallop: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-02/sea-level-rise-may-drive-coastal-nesting-birds-to-extinction/8580102
I guess the good Doctor (!!!!!) just didn’t remember that sea level rose by over 100m at the end of the last ice age. Rather more than the 17cm over the last century, and at a much higher rate than the present one or two mm per year.
I must eat some cornflakes – perhaps I’ll get a doctorate and research funds in my packet too.
I guess the ABC also gains kudos for airing this claptrap.
I saw that. The guy must have missed the lectures on evolution.
And also, Colin, these Pied Oystercatchers [ours are a different subspecies but that is the Australian and world’s common name] always nest on the beach often near a creek mouth and are always vulnerable in the event of rare flooding or storm surge as are many shore birds. But they always nest above highest tides. Crap science.
Unbelievable nonsense from Dr.Bailey and further evidence that academics remain wet behind the ears.
Lomborg in this article outlines the case for a new approach to develop new renewable energy alternatives. He once again warns that COP 21 is absurd and will see no measurable change and yet waste trillions $ along the way. He also repeats his claim that it is 99% unfunded, something that 99% of the world’s taxpayers probably don’t understand at all. Here’s his way forward and the link.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/a-path-forward-after-the-paris-climate-agreement/article35180420/
BJORN LOMBORG
A path forward after the Paris climate agreement
BJORN LOMBORG
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Jun. 02, 2017 5:00AM
Bjorn Lomborg?is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It.
Like the Kyoto Protocol before it, the drastically over-hyped Paris climate treaty has fallen victim to political and economic reality.
Now that President Donald Trump has officially pulled the United States from the accord, it is time to declare the entire Kyoto-Paris approach to global warming dead and buried. Instead of scrapping over the treaty’s corpse, this is an opportunity to try a new, better and more efficient approach to solving global warming.
Right now, the chances of anything so constructive seem slim. Rhetoric is overheated to the point of absurdity. Environmental campaigners condemn Mr. Trump for dooming the entire planet to a fiery Armageddon, yet claim rashly that the treaty could survive without the United States. It will not, and it should not.
The hyperbole and outrage can’t hide the truth: even with the United States included, the treaty was not going to make much difference to global warming. Its grand rhetoric was never matched by the actual carbon-cutting promises within its pages. A lot was made of the treaty’s fanciful pledge to keep global temperature rises as low as 1.5 C. But that would have been impossible in all realistic scenarios other than a devastating global recession.
The UN’s own Framework Convention on Climate Change estimates that even if every country had made every single cut promised in the treaty to the fullest extent, CO2 emissions would only drop by 56 billion tons by 2030. Keeping temperature rises below 2 C – a less stringent goal even than the treaty promise of 1.5 C – requires a reduction of around 6,000 billion tons of CO2 emissions across the century.
So, even if Hillary Clinton had beaten Mr. Trump and had kept the United States in the treaty, and even if every single national leader on the planet (and their successors) had unflinchingly stood by every single treaty promise for year after year, regardless of economic downturn or political crisis, the Paris Treaty would have left 99 per cent of the problem in place.
Before Mr. Trump axed the treaty, many environmentalists quietly acknowledged this. They praised the agreement regardless, because of the political value of world leaders focusing on climate change and because they believed that much larger carbon-cutting promises would come later.
That foolhardy assumption flew in the face of history. As early as 1998, the Kyoto Protocol was sold to the world as the solution to climate change. Every honest analysis showed that its impact would be trivial. Backers claimed that it was just the beginning. Similar to Paris, the carbon-cutting treaty wasted energy and distracted attention from any effective solution to climate change.
The Kyoto-Paris approach fails politically and economically. Even if the Paris Treaty had survived for now, it would have faced a massive hurdle in three years, when rich countries needed to cough up $100-billion a year in “climate aid” to the developing world. That is 10 times more than donors have managed to put together in the past five years.
And that’s only a fraction of the price tag. Today’s green solar and wind technology requires hundreds of billions of dollars in annual subsidies to achieve trivial temperature cuts. Trying to make significant cuts means shifting energy consumption from cheap fossil fuels to more expensive green energy. Even when done most effectively, this reduces economic growth.
We are told that green energy is becoming cheaper. But it can rarely compete with fossil fuels, and not at all when there isn’t sun or wind, instead requiring expensive backup. That is why the little renewable energy that is effective will happen anyway, while most of the rest requires vast subsidies and achieves little. The International Energy Agency finds that wind provides 0.5 per cent of today’s energy needs and solar PV, a minuscule 0.1 per cent. Even by 2040, if the Paris Treaty had kept going, after spending $3-trillion in direct subsidies, the IEA expected wind and solar to provide just 1.9 per cent and 1 per cent of global energy, respectively.
That is far from what is needed to transform our engine of development. To solve global warming, we need to invest far more into making green energy competitive. If solar and wind generation and storage were cheaper than fossil fuels, it wouldn’t be necessary to force or subsidize anyone to stop burning coal and oil.
Research for Copenhagen Consensus shows a green energy R&D fund worth just 0.2 per cent of global GDP would dramatically increase the chance of a technological revolution. This would be significantly cheaper and much more effective than the Kyoto-Paris approach. Economists calculate returns to society of around $11 for every dollar invested.
A technology-led effort could advance not just solar and wind but all alternative-energy technologies. Encouraging world leaders would be far easier than strong-arming and bribing them into cutting growth – but it is also something that a smaller group of countries could pursue alone, and reap benefits. A carbon price might support such a policy, but climate-change policy must logically be technology-led.
The Kyoto-Paris approach has failed. Now is time to finally stop trying to make fossil fuels too expensive to use, and instead invest in the research needed to make green energy too cheap for the entire world to resist.
Play Video 0:58
Pathetic left wing and most media comment has been well documented but here are some right wing comments:
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) tweeted that “the #ParisAgreement was simply a raw deal for America.”
Conservative radio host Mark Levin shared Ryan’s sentiment and said that, “President Trump’s speech respecting our withdrawal from the Paris climate deal was outstanding.”
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said he “commend[s] President Donald J. Trump for putting American jobs first.”
Author Ann Coulter also gave her input, tweeting to her followers, “Trump’s decision on Paris accord has lefties everywhere s******g bricks. Now if they could just s**t some rebar, we could build the wall!”
“President Trump mentioned that there were “constitutional and legal issues’ with the Paris Accord.
Why? Because Obama didn’t consult congress, which is REQUIRED by the U.S. Constitution before the United States is bound to any international agreement. Therefore, there NEVER WAS a LEGAL agreement. It was a usurpation of power by Obama, and for that reason alone it should be null and void.”
Trump: “it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree … reduction”
Aitkin: “On both those points I think he is right. ”
MIT (believed to be the mis-understood source):
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608015/trump-misused-mit-research-in-reasons-for-ditching-climate-deal/
Jimbo here are the audited details in the US govt EIA 2016 report and the link. I take it you can understand a very simple graph showing co2 emissions from 2012 to 2040?
Note that the graph shows just 8% increase from the OECD countries and a massive blowout of 51% from the NON OECD. In fact OECD emissions will increase by just 1 bn Ts pa by 2040 , but (China, India etc) NON OECD emissions will increase by 9.9bn Ts pa. That is about 10 times the OECD increase by 2040. What is it you don’t understand about this? AGAIN here is the link. But note also that OECD emissions in about 2007 were actually higher or about the same as the EIA OECD forecast for 2040. So effectively no increase in 33 years for OECD emissions.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/pdf/emissions.pdf
U.S. Energy Information Administration | International Energy Outlook 2016 139
Chapter 9
Energy-related CO2 emissions
Overview
Because anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) result primarily from the combustion of fossil fuels, energy consumption
is at the center of the climate change debate. In the International Energy Outlook 2016 (IEO2016) Reference case, world energyrelated
CO2 emissions331 increase from 32.3 billion metric tons in 2012 to 35.6 billion metric tons in 2020 and to 43.2 billion
metric tons in 2040. The Reference case estimates do
not include effects of the recently finalized Clean Power
Plan (CPP) regulations in the United States, which reduce
projected U.S. emissions in 2040 by 0.5 billion metric tons.
Much of the growth in emissions is attributed to developing
nations outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD), many of which continue to rely
heavily on fossil fuels to meet the fast-paced growth of
energy demand. In the IEO2016 Reference case, non-OECD
emissions in 2040 total 29.4 billion metric tons, or about 51%
higher than the 2012 level. In comparison, OECD emissions
total 13.8 billion metric tons in 2040, or about 8% higher than
the 2012 level (Table 9-1 and Figure 9-1).
Germany has fallen for this mitigation fantasy at a faster rate than any other country in the EU. But they still generate 79% of TOTAL energy from fossil fuels and only 2.9% from geo, S&W and pay some of the highest electricity prices in the EU and the world. Here’s Germany’s pie graph from the EU based IEA.
http://www.iea.org/stats/WebGraphs/GERMANY4.pdf
And here is the IEA pie graph for World TOTAL energy, showing fossil fuels supply 81% and geo S&W supply 1.3%. Now Germany is opening up new brown coal fired power stations in the former East Germany. What a fra-d these con merchants are trying to pull on the rest of the world. But amazingly some so called educated people still fall for their con and truly believe this is the answer to mitigate their so called CAGW.
http://www.iea.org/stats/WebGraphs/WORLD4.pdf
Are the Coalition govt as stupid as the Shorten Labor opposition? If they agree to this it will mean a surrender to the barking mad lunar left and definitely no measurable change in temp/ climate etc by 2030 or 2040 or 2100.
But it will mean much higher electricity bills, plus everything else we buy and sell. As an added burden we’ll have a much more unreliable power supply to add to much higher costs as Aussie businesses try to sell their products into local and export markets.
Of course all future govts will promote and export as much coal and gas etc as long as there is a market, anywhere, any time. The hypocrisy and blind bi-polar mind set is beyond belief and just proves that they couldn’t care less about co2 emissions.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/turnbull-surrenders-his-biggest-weapon-to-labor/news-story/fbadf8ad41ffd99e114223bd3f9e19fb
>
>
> TURNBULL SURRENDERS HIS BIGGEST WEAPON TO LABOR
>
>
>
> Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun
>
> an hour ago
>
>
>
>
> First Malcolm Turnbull gave us a Labor-lite Budget.
>
> Now he’s likely to give us a Labor-lite global warming scheme:
>
>
> Labor will likely back a proposed low emissions target scheme and end the nation’s climate change wars, according to the party’s energy spokesman Mark Butler.
>
> Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel is due to deliver his long-awaited energy reform report to the Council of Australian Governments on Friday, with his recommendations expected to favour a low emissions target scheme (LET) to tackle climate change, originally proposed by the Coalition.
>
> Mr Butler said while Labor has advocated for a tougher Emissions Intensity Scheme (EIS) in the past, they would keep an “open mind” when the Finkel proposal is released with the view to put Australia’s decade-long climate policy debate to bed…
>
> His comments come as Opposition Leader Bill Shorten yesterday said Labor would commit to tackling climate change “in the most economically efficient way”.
>
> Are the Liberals mad?
>
> If they endorse the Finkel plan, as they are shaping up to do, they will not merely give us even higher power prices, even less reliable supply and even more job losses in coal-fired power stations, all for absolutely no gain to the climate.
>
> They will also have thrown away what they have claimed is their main weapon to win the next election – a battle with Labor over electricity prices, centrering on Labor’s mad plan to lift the renewable energy target to an insane 50 per cent.
>
> Labor is desperate for a credible reason to drop that target. Turnbull, but shifting to the Left, is likely to give them this great escape.
>
> And Australians will pay.
>
> What is the point of this “Liberal” government?
>
> UPDATE.
>
> Liberal frontbencher Michael Sukkar will give his colleagues a warning on The Bolt Report on Sky News tonight.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds?
There are too many links to my comment about MAGICC for me to add yet another one.. Ross [sorry, Jimbo] complains that he is having trouble replicating what I did. And that is because he is not replicating it. He is doing something else altogether. The reason seems to be that NASA has issued a new version of MAGICC. I don’t have the old one, though it’s probably in the wayback machine. All I can say is that using the one Ross has, quite reasonably, gone to will not do the same job. And I don’t have much time for the RCPs anyway, especially the 8.5, which I discussed in an earlier essay. I will see if anyone has the original version, and then try to work out what has happened to what was a quite sensible instrument.
It’s just a really interesting article that pertains to everyone who holds opinions on anything.
And here’s another … they’re off-topic but there’s no place for them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/opinion/donald-trump-poisons-the-world.html?
Another interesting read.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Teaching-Humility-in-an-Age-of/
RCP8.5 means Representative Concentration Pathway *.5, and it offers a bizarre, and in my estimation, quite unlikely view of the world in 2100. You can read my astringent commentary on it at http://donaitkin.com/pssst-do-you-want-some-rcp8-5/
What is really sad is that Ross [sorry, Jimbo] is compelled to use these summaries, rather than play around with the data himself. Not the same exercise at all.
“The reason seems to be that NASA has issued a new version of MAGICC. ”
NASA? I don’t think they’re involved with MAGICC are they?
“I don’t have the old one, though it’s probably in the wayback machine. ”
The best you could hope for there is that they may have captured the html pages that let you do the data entry. All the maths is done on in the back-end and there’s no way for Wayback to capture that, as it’s not visible to the client. But NCAR et al have always released that executable as well, so you could potentially rebuild it I guess.
“then try to work out what has happened to what was a quite sensible instrument.”
By all accounts it still is, and it completely refutes your bogus claim that
“8. You will find a microscopic lowering of temperature whatever you do.”
“What is really sad is that Ross is compelled to use these summaries, rather than play around with the data himself. Not the same exercise at all.”
I think that was I, not Ross, but in any case you did invite “whatever you do”; it seems that invite now comes with caveats.
Look on the bright side, at least you haven’t sent your “My Perspective” series off to the printer yet. It’s much easier to correct the online version than the printed one. Perhaps blogs are better than novels.
Yes, NASA invented it, to the best of my knowledge. I don’t have the time to do any new work on this, but i’m writing to see what others have done.There was certainly no doubt at all in 2013 that anything we might do in curbing industrial activity would have other than a minuscule impact on temperature. Even Flannery thought we wouldn’t see a difference for a thousand years.
I woke up at 3 am thinking that it wasn’t Ross but Jimbo…
“Yes, NASA invented it, to the best of my knowledge.”
It came out of the University of Norwich originally, and more recently NCAR in Boulder CO. And even our University of Melbourne is a big contributor. Source: http://wiki.magicc.org/index.php?title=MAGICC_team
“There was certainly no doubt at all in 2013 that anything we might do in curbing industrial activity would have other than a minuscule impact on temperature. Even Flannery thought we wouldn’t see a difference for a thousand years.”
I think that’s your misunderstanding of what was said. Flannery said temperatures wouldn’t drop for a thousand years, presumably relative to some benchmark. That’s a vastly weaker statement than “anything we do will have a minuscule impact on temperature”. This whole effort is about arresting the rise in temperature, it’s not about getting us back to 1930 temperatures, or even 2017 temperatures. I don’t know of anyone who’s trying to do that.
As a simple example (consider it a theoretical example since you don’t much fancy RCPs). In none of those three runs I did do the temperatures get anywhere near as low as today’s levels right out to 2100. So Flannery’s statement that temperatures won’t drop any time soon is entirely consistent with those three graphs. But your statement that anything we do will have a miniscule impact on temperature is clearly inconsistent with those graphs. What we do now will have a _major_ impact on the temperature in 2100, at least according to those graphs.
Now I don’t you don’t believe in those models/graphs, but we can save that argument for another day. The point is if they were correct, then Flannery’s statement is correct, and yours is wrong. Neither Flannery’s statement, nor the MAGICC calculator, support your position, but you seem to be claiming they do.
Surely you can see the distinction between trying to make a number go backwards and trying to slow how far forward it goes? Just because we can’t do the former is no reason not to do the latter.
Down at the coal face even the EU are finding it very difficult to reduce co2 emissions. While the US has reduced its emissions by resorting to the use of gas and they have certainly reduced emissions for the last 5 to 10 years.
But the EU problems can be seen at this link and the brexiting UK have had the largest reduction of emissions by a long way. The rest of the EU will miss them when they leave.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/06/while-dissing-trump-for-pulling-out-of-the-parisagreement-the-eus-co2-emissions-are-on-the-rise/
Japan is testing a new coal technology that makes coal fired plants much more efficient, much cheaper to operate and reduce emissions of co2.
Coal will be used for a long time into the future and combined with new technology is just more evidence that we should be abandoning joke energy sources like S&W.
http://www.thegwpf.com/new-coal-revolution-may-change-everything/
Will Turnbull throw away his strongest weapon against the Labor party? Here is Andrew Bolt’s editorial from the last night.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/liberals-go-laborlite-on-warming-too/news-story/a880d064ef88230e5e875cc25a96b0c7
And many more recent paleo studies that shows us that our climate today is not unprecedented or unusual at all.
http://notrickszone.com/2017/05/29/80-graphs-from-58-new-2017-papers-invalidate-claims-of-unprecedented-global-scale-modern-warming/#sthash.ktF0tSb7.E96q0zXo.dpbs
What I don’t understand is that if humans are causing such catastrophe why would we be wanting more of them. The alarmists seem to be the very same people wanting more immigration.
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