Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Guardian has inadvertently revealed the utter futility of throwing trillions of dollars of borrowed government money into the bottomless renewable energy pit.
Joe Biden could bring Paris climate goals ‘within striking distance’
Biden’s presidency could help reduce global heating by about 0.1C if plans fulfilled, say experts
Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent
Sun 8 Nov 2020 22.32 AEDTThe election of Joe Biden as president of the US could reduce global heating by about 0.1C, bringing the goals of the Paris agreement “within striking distance”, if his plans are fulfilled, according to a detailed analysis.
Biden’s policy of a target to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and plans for a $1.7tn investment in a green recovery from the Covid crisis, would reduce US emissions in the next 30 years by about 75 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide or its equivalents. Calculations by the Climate Action Tracker show that this reduction would be enough to avoid a temperature rise of about 0.1C by 2100.
However, Biden is likely to face stiff opposition to many of his proposals, from the Republican party nationally and at state level, while his room for manoeuvre will be limited by the Democrats’ showing in the Senate. If legal challenges to his plans are brought, they will be decided by a heavily conservative supreme court.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/08/joe-biden-paris-climate-goals-0-1c
Hey I can play this game too – if I get $1700 of that cash, I promise to cut back on eating Chilli beef. Paying a billion people to eat less chilli beef would likely have a comparable impact on global warming to spending the money on renewables. The EPA estimates CH4 accounts for 10% of observed global warming. The study I linked estimates human activity like raising beef cattle and eating chilli beans is responsible for up to 40% of detected CH4 emissions.
Alternatively the cash could be used to give all the cattle in the world that special seaweed supplement the CSIRO discovered, which is supposed to cut back on intestinal methane production.
To put this level of expenditure into perspective, the cost of launching a 0.03C manned mission to Proxima Centauri using technology developed in the 1950s has been estimated at around $2 trillion. I’m not saying that building a starship is a reasonable use of $2 trillion of taxpayer’s money, but the first step in mankind’s expansion throughout the galaxy would surely be a lot more fun than spending all that money on reducing global temperature by an amount which cannot even be directly measured.
And of course, the obvious point – if it costs $1.7 trillion to reduce global warming by 0.1C, we now have a Guardian provided method of estimating the cost of eliminating our alleged impact on the global climate, reducing global warming by 1.0C: 1.7 x 1.0C / 0.1C = $17 trillion.
You get eight starships for that kind of money, enough to start your own United Federation of Planets.
via Watts Up With That?
November 8, 2020 at 08:59PM
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