Blunderdale, a fictitious village located on a river bank, decided to build a levee to save its people (and their homes and businesses) from the devastation of flooding. After an exhaustive “100-year flood” analysis, world-renowned flood scientists informed the flood task force (village leaders appointed to save the village) that a 4’ levee would be required for protection against most floods, but that an 8’ levee would be required to ensure village safety against all floods.
Armed with this sobering advice, the village leaders sprang into action. After a series of deep brainstorming sessions, they decided that a 2’ levee would be their goal — not 8’, not 4’, but 2’. And, since its construction would depend on labor contributed by villagers on a voluntary basis, they hammered out a plan to construct one from costly and unreliable materials instead of much cheaper and much more available proven materials. When completed, the exorbitantly expensive structure would be 0.17’ high. Having bamboozled the credulous villagers, they celebrated their victory.
Even a 2.0o C rise will soon inundate low-lying population centers and create tens of millions of climate refugees.
Most of us would call such leaders despicable morons; in Blunderdale, the village leaders are the village idiots. After all, they are almost as underhanded and scandalously stupid as the world leaders (from 195 of the world’s 196 countries) who concocted the Paris Climate Accord — a plan to drastically reduce mankind’s consumption of fossil fuels and, consequently, emission into the atmosphere of the heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHG) that they believe to be the culprit behind global warming.
Climate experts (particularly those who support the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]) have informed them that, on its present course, the earth’s temperature is expected to rise to something in the range of 4.0oC by the end of this century. Some authors insist that an increase of 8.0oC is possible. Even a 2.0o C rise, which many believe is already baked into the climate cake, will soon inundate low-lying population centers (cities such as Miami and nations such as Bangladesh) and create tens of millions of climate refugees.
According to David Wallace-Wells, in an article in New York magazine called “The Uninhabitable Earth,” the projected 4.0o C increase will thrust Earth into another mass extinction. Judging by the subsection titles of his article, mankind will endure “heat death” (i.e., death from what Wallace-Wells calls excessive “wet-bulb” temperatures), the end of food, climate plagues, unbreathale air, poisoned oceans, perpetual war, and permanent economic collapse. Of the five previous mass extinctions, Wallace-Wells notes, “the most notorious was 252 million years ago; it began when carbon warmed the planet by five degrees . . . and ended with 97 percent of all life on Earth dead,” and that “the mass extinction we are now living through has only just begun; so much more dying is coming.”
Most of us would call such leaders despicable morons.
Ultimately, globalist leaders insist that such climate havoc can be avoided only by the immediate, wholesale replacement of energy derived from coal, oil, and gas with energy derived from the sun and the wind. The Paris agreement is the instrument through which their solution — a clean, carbon-free world that relies solely on renewable energy — will end fossil fuels, and capitalism. For “fossil capitalism,” which abruptly emerged in the 18th century, brought rapid economic growth (i.e., unprecedented, annually increasing wealth and prosperity) to many, but (allegedly) catastrophic climate change (Gaia’s revenge for the Industrial Revolution) to all. The hope, therefore, is that oncefossil fuels have been eliminated, the global economy will become more stable and equitable. Perhaps longing for the return to those halcyon days, Wallace-Wells reminds, “Before fossil fuels, nobody lived better than their parents or grandparents or ancestors from 500 years before, except in the immediate aftermath of a great plague like the Black Death, which allowed the lucky survivors to gobble up the resources liberated by mass graves.”
Immense effort has been expended to promote the idea that saving the planet with windmills and solar panels is within reach. The Obama administration, for example, incessantly touted the advances made in renewable energy technologies. Every new wind or solar farm was hailed by the news media as evidence of soaring efficiencies, plummeting costs, and their furiously growing compeitiveness with fossil fuels; soon, they would dominate. It was not technology that stood between climate catastrophe and planet salvation; it was the United States and a handful of knuckle-dragging Republican senators.
Of course, if any of this were true, then there would be no need for the generous taxpayer-funded subsidies that are required for the survival of both industries. Or, for that matter, for the Paris Accord, itself.
More than 90% of the renewable energy comes from hydroelectric and biofuels (which include GHG belchers such as wood and cow dung).
Yet even under the Trump administration, Obama-era boasts can still be found on the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy website: “The numbers are in and the verdict is clear: clean energy is on the rise, both at home and around the world.” In April, four enlightened senators — Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Edward J. Markey (D-MA), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) — introduced the 100 by ’50 Act, to make the United States 100% free of fossil fuels by 2050 — proposed legislation no doubt bolstered by climate gurus such as Stanford’s Mark Jacobson, who claims that the world could reach the 100% renewable goal by 2050. Surely we must be hurtling toward the 100% solution.
We are not. Not even close. Unfortunately, the glamour of solar and wind is based on a confluence of exaggeration, deceit, and propaganda. For example, a recent International Energy Agency (IEA) report exclaims that almost 14% of the world’s total energy supply is now produced from renewable energy sources. But hidden in the chart that shows the component contributions, it is found (with a calculator) that wind contributes a whopping 0.4554% to the world energy supply; solar and tide, together contribute even less — a miniscule 0.3450%. More than 90% of the renewable energy comes from hydroelectric and biofuels (which include GHG belchers such as wood and cow dung).
Wind energy and solar energy combined therefore supply 0.8% of the world’s energy supply. Why did the IEA obscure this pathetic quantity? In view of the critical importance of wind and solar energy to the success of the Paris accord, the lede should have exclaimed: “After decades of research and development, bold claims and promises, untold billions in industry subsidies, and the soaring hopes of the world that solar panels and windmills will save the planet, the total contribution of solar and wind to the world’s energy supply is, essentially, zero.” The title should have read: “Planet Doomed by Feckless Plan of Globalist Clowns.”
Can we get to 100% solar and wind energy by 2050? Of course not. Solar and wind can’t even keep up with the world’s demand for new energy. The whole idea is what the late CambridgeUniversity physicist David J C. MacKay called an appalling delusion. And even if climate gurus such as Hillary Clinton (who, if elected, had promised to build 500,000,000 solar panels, with, of course, taxpayer money) had their way, there is not enough land on which to install these sprawling monstrosities. As energy expert Robert Bryce pointed out, just the wind farms in Mr. Jacobson’s grandiose scheme would require “a territory nearly twice the size of California.”
The $100 trillion total also includes “climate aid” of $100 billion annually, paid by rich countries to get poor countries to buy windmills and solar panels.
But let’s say that mankind implemented the lesser scheme, the Paris Accord. And let’s say that it was scrupulously executed — that is, the emissions reductions pledges of all 195 nations were fully met, annually, through the end of the century. What would be the cost? According to Bjorn Lomborg, it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 trillion. This staggering amount includes lost GDP growth, increased taxes (e.g., $3 trillion to pay for subsidies over the next 25 years), and higher household electricity expenses. A Heritage Foundation study of the effects of the Paris agreement on only the US economy, and only through 2035, found that there would be an overall annual average shortfall of nearly 400,000 jobs (200,000 manufacturing jobs), a total income loss of more than $20,000 for a family of four, an aggregate GDP loss of over $2.5 trillion, and increases in household electricity expenditures of between 13% and 20%.
The total ($100 trillion) also includes “climate aid” of $100 billion annually, paid by rich countries (the ones that caused climate change in the first place) to poor countries (the ones that lack food, shelter, clean drinking water, sanitation, medicine, education, indoor plumbing, electricity, transportation, and any reasonable chance of escaping crushing poverty) to get them to buy windmills and solar panels.
What is the expected effectiveness of the plan? That is, by how many degrees will the end-of-century global temperature rise be reduced? An analysis by Lomborg found that fastidious adherence to the agreement, maintained throughout the century, would reduce the global temperature rise by 0.17° C. An MIT analysis found a similar result, 0.2° C. Thus, if the end-of-century temperature rise is the mass extinction-causing 4° C that the signatories believe will occur without the Paris accord , then, with the Paris accord, the end-of-century temperature rise will shrink to only, well, a mass extinction-causing 4° C.
With full knowledge that their plan would have absolutely no influence on diminishing catastrophic global warming, the leaders from 195 countries signed the Paris accord. Having surreptitiously united the world behind a $100 trillion scheme that would be of no help to Mother Earth, if she even notices, they celebrated their achievement. Sacré bleu!
Except for the United States, which withdrew its commitment in 2017. Against the passionate pleas of climate change elites for the US to remain, President Trumpannounced the withdrawal at the G20 Summit in Hamburg. Global leaders (including climate change luminaries such as Pope Francisand former President Barack Obama (who signed the Paris accord in 2016) were distraught. A storm of hysterical sanctimony billowed forth from Hamburg, condemning Trump’s decision — as if the Paris agreement would now fail without US participation.
With the US withdrawal, the end-of-century temperature rise will be reduced by 0.16° C instead of 0.17° C.
“G20 closes with rebuke to Trump’s climate change stance,”screeched a CNN headline.Trump has made a “historic mistake which our grandchildren will look back on with stunned dismay,” blathered the Sierra Club. “G20 leaders reaffirm support for climate change action and stand against United States,” cried ABC news. And on and on and on.
By Lomberg’s analysis, the US contribution to the Paris accord’s effectiveness was 0.011° C. Thus, with the US withdrawal, the end-of-century temperature rise will be reduced by 0.16° C instead of 0.17° C. With or without US participation, the Paris scheme is an appalling delusion.
Our grandchildren may look back with stunned dismay on the fact that Mr. Trump was the smartest one in the room of climate change, towering over the global village idiots, who muddled along in futility, spending trillions erecting solar panels and windmills, monuments to their unfathomable incompetence, as earth’s temperature relentlessly edged its way up to 4°C,and mass extinction.
Climate change skeptics have many legitimate reasons to reject the Paris accord. But climate change believers should be its most vehement opponents. Since it does nothing to reduce the global temperature that they think is rising to catastrophic heights, it will do nothing to prevent the horrors that they think are coming. Their only consolation will be the eventual elimination of fossil capitalism, an extinction that, they hope, will reward mankind with a more stable global economy based on renewable energy and economic equality — this, somehow, after the global economy springs back from “permanent economic collapse.”
By then, however, who will remain? Thinkers such as Wallace-Wells (who warn that “so much more dying is coming”) believe that 97% of mankind will be dead by then. The “lucky survivors” will no doubt spend their days huddled in the shade of solar panels and windmills, skulking out on moonlit nights “to gobble up the resources liberated by mass graves.”
