Posted on 02/15/2020 6:42:22 AM PST by Kaslin
After three years of apocalyptic wailing and gnashing of environmentalist teeth over President Trumps decision to withdraw from the job and economy killing Paris Climate Accord, it is ironic that the one country that faces the brunt of criticism from climate change zealots such as Greta Thunberg is leading the world and the European Union in lowering emissions and promoting cleaner energy, such as natural gas, all the while not hurting the economy:
Despite shrieks of terror from the left about how President Donald Trumps presidency threatens the existence of Earth and thus mankind, the fact is that under his leadership, America continues to lead the world in total emissions decline.
The United States saw the largest decline in energy-related CO2 emissions in 2019 on a country basis -- a fall of 140 [million tons], or 2.9%, to 4.8 gigatons], the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) revealed in a report Tuesday.
The entire European Union, which consists of 28 nations, meanwhile only lowered emissions by 160 million tons total, or roughly 5.71 mt per nation.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The United States saw the largest decline in energy-related CO2 emissions in 2019 on a country basis — a fall of 140 [million tons], or 2.9%, to 4.8 gigatons], the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) revealed in a report Tuesday.
The entire European Union, which consists of 28 nations, meanwhile only lowered emissions by 160 million tons total, or roughly 5.71 mt per nation.”
We should threaten Europe that if they don’t match our reductions, we will impose “climate change tariffs” on all their goods.
Beautiful! I thoroughly enjoyed reading that. Thank you for posting.
Cant do the comparative math here. What is % of EU decline?
This is so cool! Thank you again, Mister President!
First off; it never was about the “climate”, isn’t about the “climate” now and never will be about the “climate”
What it’s about is the raping of America’s, and the world’s, “unwashed masses” of trillions of dollars in new regulations, fees, fines, permits, etc. etc. to fund the communist one-world government. Here in the USA the communist’s “legalized theft” programs (taxes) are just not providing enough cash flow to fund their rabid agenda so they have to seek other sources to hoodwink the “unwashed masses”. “Climate change” is the perfect hoodwink...or so they think. They drool over the trillions they could reap from it. They also drool, and have wet dreams, of the confiscation of the trillions in our IRAs/401ks...IF they could do so without getting shot.
Communism and islam, both, should be outright banned in this country.
When we take credit for CO2 reduction that is not needed, we are playing the Greta game. Greta’s crowd is not going to give us any credit for saying, “We’re not so bad — our emissions are lower than theirs.”
We should stop all new “climate change” regulations until the rest of the world catches up to us.
The rest of the good news that goes with this is that it all happened while the USA was growing economically.
Trump got the economy roaring again, while we still reduced emissions.
Those two are what makes this so great.
Any kind of waste is money lost.
Capitalism works best on providing investment in energy savings and cost reductions.
Consider that we can do this while not using government to impose it is a good thing.
Companies and individuals love to save money. If enhancements in technology to reduce waste do so, while still optimizing power or heat, that’s great!
And does anyone know how we could reduce the man-made atmospheric carbon load to ZERO? First get over this superstitious fear of the use of nuclear energy to generate electricity. All the older uranium-fueled nuclear energy generation plants are almost at the end of their engineered lifetimes, and shall have to be phased out over the next few decades if not sooner. Ramp up the engineering on Thorium-fueled Molten Salt nuclear generation plants which have a GREAT number of advantages over the older Uranium-fueled light water reactors.
For one thing, they are, by their very nature, not subject to a runaway reaction and a disaster like Chernobyl, or utter failure of backup redundancies like the Fukushima Daiichi accident, both of which led to wide release of radioactive material. When a Molten Salt plant exceeds critical temperature, the molten salt is simply dumped into a containment basin, where its radioactivity is well contained. And another advantage, if it may be called that, is the thorium fuel by itself is fissile, not capable of initiating a chain reaction, unlike fissionable material, capable of a self-starting chain reaction, like Plutonium-239, Uranium-233, or Uranium-235. But seeded with small amounts of fissionable material from “spent” uranium fuel rods, the thorium can then be started on a sustainable fission decay under much more controlled conditions, and continue to “burn” the fissionable products, thus eliminating need for long-term storage facilities that would have to be in place for perhaps centuries. Also, Thorium-Fueled Molten Salt reactors are highly scalable, meaning larger or smaller units could be linked together to supply 24/7/365 baseline power for years, and could be placed in or near the locations of heavy consumption.
The disadvantage of Thorium-fueled Molten Salt reactors is that they do not produce Pu-239 as part of the operational process, and thus are useless for nuclear weapons production, which is why the Uranium plants were developed in the first place.
The technology exists, it has been done as a demonstration, and the need is there. Get cracking, America.
Why bother?
There's practically ZERO CO2 in the atmosphere now.
CO2 makes up 4/1000s of all atmospheric gases...that's damn close to ZERO.
(compared to 99% Nitrogen and Oxygen)
Well, I guess this is good for bragging purposes. From a perspective of true meaning, however, this is meaningless. Reductions in CO2 emissions will have not an iota of effect on the worlds climate. I dont think we should humor the gullible alarmists misguided delusions.
How soon till I can replace the whole-house, gasoline powered generator with one of these?
What size would be needed to power a typical house?
Creating energy from new sources, some yet to be developed, will inevitably be cheaper than digging or pumping energy out of the ground. And it will be cleaner by any objective standard. CO2 reduction is not a bad thing, especially if it costs less than not reducing as was the case with ours.
True but it’s a pretty critical gas even in the small amount that exists. If it truly went to zero you and I wouldn’t by typing away on our keyboards.
IF there was just zero, the planet would be mostly frozen.
Greta and AOC: nobodies of questionable intelligence elevated by the media into indisputable experts. All three have become quite tiresome.
Basically correct but misses the point. Fossil is not clean, although the left has coopted the word. Also extra CO2 winds up in the ocean with pH lowered from 8.2 to 8.1 in the last century. The pH was headed lower but at a much slower rate for the past million years. By 2100 we will lower the pH to the 7.7 or so. Once you add/subtract the daily cycle of about 1 unit that gives us a 7.2 at the low end which is pretty low.
Higher end pH is more damaging than lower end, so we were and are going in the correct direction. But we will stop at some point in a century or so, and we will probably start to reverse that drop to achieve a better planet. It will be free and easy at that point.
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