Posted on 12/30/2019 10:37:52 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Switch to energy-efficient light bulbs, wash your clothes in cold water, eat less meat, recycle more, and buy an electric car: we are being bombarded with instructions from climate campaigners, environmentalists, and the media about the everyday steps we all must take to tackle climate change. Unfortunately, these appeals trivialize the challenge of global warming, and divert our attention from the huge technological and policy changes that are needed to combat it.
For example, the British nature-documentary presenter and environmental campaigner David Attenborough was once asked what he as an individual would do to fight climate change. He promised to unplug his phone charger when it was not in use.
Attenborough’s heart is no doubt in the right place. But even if he consistently unplugs his charger for a year, the resulting reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions will be equivalent to less than one-half of one-thousandth of the average person’s annual CO2 emissions in the United Kingdom. Moreover, charging accounts for less than 1% of a phone’s energy needs; the other 99% is required to manufacture the handset and operate data centers and cell towers. Almost everywhere, these processes are heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
Attenborough is far from alone in believing that small gestures can have a meaningful impact on the climate. In fact, even much larger-sounding commitments deliver only limited reductions in CO2 emissions. For example, environmental activists emphasize the need to give up eating meat and driving fossil-fuel-powered cars. But, although I am a vegetarian and do not own a car, I believe we need to be honest about what such choices can achieve.
Going vegetarian actually is quite difficult: one large US survey indicates that 84% of people fail, most of them in less than a year. But a systematic peer-reviewed study has shown that even if they succeed, a vegetarian diet reduces individual CO2 emissions by the equivalent of 540 kilograms – or just 4.3% of the emissions of the average inhabitant of a developed country. Furthermore, there is a “rebound effect,” as money saved on cheaper vegetarian food is spent on goods and services that cause additional greenhouse-gas emissions. Once we account for this, going entirely vegetarian reduces a person’s total emissions by only 2%.
Likewise, electric cars are branded as environmentally friendly, but generating the electricity they require almost always involves burning fossil fuels. Moreover, producing energy-intensive batteries for these cars invariably generates significant CO2 emissions. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), an electric car with a range of 400 kilometers (249 miles) has a huge carbon deficit when it hits the road, and will start saving emissions only after being driven 60,000 kilometers. Yet, almost everywhere, people use an electric car as a second car, and drive it shorter distances than equivalent gasoline vehicles.
Despite subsidies of about $10,000 per car, battery-powered electric cars represent less than one-third of 1% of the world’s one billion vehicles. The IEA estimates that with sustained political pressure and subsidies, electric cars could account for 15% of the much larger global fleet in 2040, but notes that this increase in share will reduce global CO2 emissions by just 1%.
As IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol has said, “If you think you can save the climate with electric cars, you’re completely wrong.” In 2018, electric cars saved 40 million tons of CO2 worldwide, equivalent to reducing global temperatures by just 0.000018°C – or a little more than a hundred-thousandth of a degree Celsius – by the end of the century.
Individual actions to tackle climate change, even when added together, achieve so little because cheap and reliable energy underpins human prosperity. Fossil fuels currently meet 81% of our global energy needs. And even if every promised climate policy in the 2015 Paris climate agreement is achieved by 2040, they will still deliver 74% of the total.
We already spend $129 billion per year subsidizing solar and wind energy to try to entice more people to use today’s inefficient technology, yet these sources meet just 1.1% of our global energy needs. The IEA estimates that by 2040 – after we have spent a whopping $3.5 trillion on additional subsidies – solar and wind will still meet less than 5% of our needs.
That’s pitiful. Significantly cutting CO2 emissions without reducing economic growth will require far more than individual actions. It is absurd for middle-class citizens in advanced economies to tell themselves that eating less steak or commuting in a Toyota Prius will rein in rising temperatures. To tackle global warming, we must make collective changes on an unprecedented scale.
By all means, anyone who wants to go vegetarian or buy an electric car should do so, for sound reasons such as killing fewer animals or reducing household energy bills. But such decisions will not solve the problem of global warming.
The one individual action that citizens could take that would make a difference would be to demand a vast increase in spending on green-energy research and development, so that these energy sources eventually become cheap enough to outcompete fossil fuels. That is the real way to help fight climate change.
* * *
Bjørn Lomborg, a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School, is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. His books include “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” “Cool It,” “How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place,” “The Nobel Laureates’ Guide to the Smartest Targets for the World,” and, most recently, “Prioritizing Development.”
So he’s saying AOC is right?
The vegan diet is nothing more than enabling the land-grabbers that are destroying the developing world and killing off indigenous activists who are trying to stand their ground and live on their land. It is actually counter-productive to the causes in question since the land grab directly contributed to the burning of the Amazon as well as decreasing carbon sequestering grassland in favor of factory farms.
I have said for years that all the left care about are “Good Intentions”
They don’t care if what they believe is true, works, is needed or helps and it is irrelevant even if what they do makes a problem worse! Only that they had good intentions
When I have a liberal say “At least I have good intentions!” I reply with the question; “What is it that greases the skids to Hell?”
The AGW math is all off - we are heading for a new Ice Age
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYoOcaqCzxo&list=PLHSoxioQtwZcog7iR-ka7EwaxB4ny8Dq-&index=15
We already spend $129 billion per year subsidizing solar and wind energy to try to entice more people to use today’s inefficient technology, yet these sources meet just 1.1% of our global energy needs. The IEA estimates that by 2040 – after we have spent a whopping $3.5 trillion on additional subsidies – solar and wind will still meet less than 5% of our needs.…by pointing out that solar and wind consume FAR more concrete, coal, steel, copper, cobalt, and lithium than do conventional power plants; they aren’t dispatchable power; they all require a 100% backup plant (either energy storage or combustion turbines); have HUGE environment-destroying disposal problems; and chop up bats and raptors by the millions.
You realize that if you leave a light on on a room a few extra seconds to walk over and plug in or unplug the phone charger when not in use...the extra energy going into the light probably offsets the energy saved by not having the small leakage current going into an unused charger.
1) Kill the human race
2) Athropogenic CO2 emissions ‘stop’
3) Greenhouse effect ‘stops’
4) Sea levels don’t rise
5) No one is around to appreciate it
6) IRONY!
Caveats on #4: The sea levels wont stop rising because average temperatures have been rising naturally since the last glaciation, AND, even when they do, it’s only a problem for humans, which is my point about irony. If humans are the problem and you hate them, and climate change is a problem and hurts humans, then the problems negate themselves, or at least can be considered karma.
Oh yeah, the polar bears.
Polar bear ghosts, please meet wooly mammoth ghosts. Have a chat.
Now this article raises a great point. For every radical thing environmentalists want, there are a lot of really terrible things that happen to the environment as a result. If you want solar power, you need to mass produce solar cells and batteries. Gotta love those chemicals.
CO2 is not your enemy. Wake up.
"It also takes a tremendous amount of energy to raise the oceans even 1c "The ocean contains a colossal 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 litres of water! To heat it, even by a small amount, takes a staggering amount of energy. To heat it by a mere 1˚C, for example, an astonishing 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy are required."
Well, unfortunately for every ton of water there is only a kilogram of air. Taking into account the relative heat capacities and absolute masses, we arrive at the astonishing figure of 4,000˚C."
https://principia-scientific.org/chemistry-expert-carbon-dioxide-cant-cause-global-warming/
Anthony Watts / August 13, 2018
Scientists trace atmospheric rise in CO2 during deglaciation to deep Pacific Ocean
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Long before humans started injecting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal, the level of atmospheric CO2rose significantly as the Earth came out of its last ice age. Many scientists have long suspected that the source of that carbon was from the deep sea.
But researchers haven’t been able to document just how the carbon made it out of the ocean and into the atmosphere. It has remained one of the most important mysteries of science.
A new study, published today in the journal Nature Geoscience, provides some of the most compelling evidence for how it happened – a “flushing” of the deep Pacific Ocean caused by the acceleration of water circulation patterns that begin around Antarctica.
The concern, researchers say, is that it could happen again, potentially magnifying and accelerating human-caused climate change.
“The Pacific Ocean is big and you can store a lot of stuff down there – it’s kind of like Grandma’s root cellar – stuff accumulates there and sometimes doesn’t get cleaned out,” said Alan Mix, an Oregon State University oceanographer and co-author on the study. “We’ve known that CO2 in the atmosphere went up and down in the past, we know that it was part of big climate changes, and we thought it came out of the deep ocean.
“But it has not been clear how the carbon actually got out of the ocean to cause the CO2 rise.”
Lead author Jianghui Du, a doctoral student in oceanography at Oregon State, said there is a circulation pattern in the Pacific that begins with water around Antarctica sinking and moving northward at great depth a few miles below the surface. It continues all the way to Alaska, where it rises, turns back southward, and flows back to Antarctica where it mixes back up to the sea surface.
It takes a long time for the water’s round trip journey in the abyss – almost 1,000 years, Du said. Along with the rest of the OSU team, Du found that flow slowed down during glacial maximums but sped up during deglaciation, as the Earth warmed. This faster flow flushed the carbon from the deep Pacific Ocean – “cleaning out Grandma’s root cellar” – and brought the CO2 to the surface near Antarctica. There it was released into the atmosphere.
“It happened roughly in two steps during the last deglaciation – an initial phase from 18,000 to 15,000 years ago, when CO2 rose by about 50 parts per million, and a second pulse later added another 30 parts per million,” Du said.
That total is just a bit less than the amount CO2 has risen since the industrial revolution. So the ocean can be a powerful source of carbon.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/08/13/study-co2-rise-after-last-ice-age-didnt-need-man-made-influences-just-the-deep-pacific-ocean/
Wind power makes a great deal of money for the friend of the politician that gets the subsidy then absconds with the bond to clean up after as the company gets sold to investors who will get screwed for years until the company goes bankrupt and taxpayers have to detoxify several counties that have been sprayed with 90 weight for years.
[[3) Greenhouse effect ‘stops’]]
no it won’t- see my post above- man is not causing the earth to warm- not even close to causing it-
Until science unlocks the secrets of sustained and portable nuclear fusion, electrical powered transportation is little more than pure virtue signalling. Better batteries? What a laugh.
The environmentalists are even now talking about replacing fossil fuels with hydrogen fuel. We would have some rather glorious automotive accident explosions that would take out the better part of a city block then.
Technology needs to catch up with their ideology of environmental religion.And progenitors of the movement are largely socialist, unwilling to encourage the free market economy and wealth that could actually bring about the necessary technical innovations in nuclear fusion and hydrogen technology.Imagine, science is now wool gathering about environmental Greta Thunberg hoo haw, rather than investing institutional resources on real progress.
Buckminster Fuller would be laughing at them all if he were alive today, laughing at the maleficent, draconian programs promoted in his name, even at the institute in his name.
Nuclear Fusion: (This is where the big money should be invested)
Researchers Just Demonstrated Nuclear Fusion in a Device Small Enough to Keep at Home
I unplug my phone charger when I’m not using it anyway. No sense in paying more for electricity than I have to.
Is CO2 even a problem?
Me too.
Got tired of seeing that surplus electricity puddling on the floor.
Electric cars ain’t what they used to be.
Global warming alarmists probably thought that they would be able to spook everybody into submission (taxation without representation) with their initial propaganda campaign.
But thanks to PDJT pulling USA out of Paris Accord wealth redistribution scam, alarmists are now having to move the goal posts imo.
Remember in November!
MAGA! Now KAGA! (Keep America Great Always!)
I read somewhere that one electric car battery requires 500,000 KG of dirt and rock to be mined, moved and processed.
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