Games with levelized guesses don’t take all the hidden costs into account
via CFACT
May 26, 2024 at 04:31AM
Month: May 2024
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on WUWT. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. This notice is required by recently enacted EU GDPR rules, and since WUWT is a globally read website, we need to keep the bureaucrats off our case!
via Watts Up With That?
May 26, 2024 at 04:05AM
By Paul Homewood
h/y Dennis Ambler
From the NY Post:
We endlessly hear the flawed assertion that because climate change is real, we should “follow the science” and end fossil fuel use.
We hear this claim from politicians who favor swift carbon cuts, and from natural scientists themselves, as when the editor-in-chief of Nature insists “The science is clear — fossil fuels must go.”
The assertion is convenient for politicians, because it allows them to avoid responsibility for the many costs and downsides of climate policy, painting these as inevitable results of diligently following the scientific evidence.
But it is false because it conflates climate science with climate policy.
The story told by activist politicians and climate campaigners suggests that there is nothing but benefits to ending fossil fuels, versus a hellscape if nothing is done.
But the reality is that the world over the past centuries has improved dramatically — largely because of the immense increase in available energy that has come mostly from fossil fuels.
Life spans have more than doubled, hunger has dramatically declined, and incomes have increased ten-fold.
While the impact of climate change is likely negative, it is enormously exaggerated.
We constantly hear about extreme weather such as droughts, storms, floods and fires, although even the UN Climate Panel finds that evidence of them worsening cannot yet be documented for most of these.
But much more importantly, a richer world is much more resilient and hence much less affected by extreme weather.
The data shows that climate-related deaths from droughts, storms, floods and fires have declined by more than 97% from nearly 500,000 annually a century ago to less than 15,000 in the 2020s.
At the same time, the costs of the climate campaigners’ calls to “just stop” oil, gas and coal are massively downplayed.
Currently, the world gets almost four-fifths of all its energy from fossil fuels. If we quickly ended our use of fossil fuels, billions would die.
Four billion people — half the world’s population — entirely depend on food grown with synthetic fertilizer produced almost entirely by natural gas.
If we ended fossil fuels quickly, we would physically have no way to feed four billion people.
Add the billions of people dependent on fossil fuel heating in the winter time, along with the dependence on fossil fuels for steel, cement, plastics, and transport, and it is little wonder that one recent estimate shows abruptly ending fossil fuels would lead to 6 billion people dying in less than a year.
Most politicians suggest a slightly less rushed end to fossil fuels by 2050.
This slower pace would avoid billions of people dying outright, but the downsides are still immense.
The latest, peer-reviewed climate-economic research shows that efficiently reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 will cost a staggering $27 trillion per year on average over the century.
That is one-quarter of the world’s current GDP.
The same research shows that the benefits will be just a small fraction of that cost. The policy is prohibitively expensive for little benefit.
A good analogy is to consider the more than 1 million global traffic deaths annually.
Traffic — like climate change — is a man-made problem. Like climate change, it is something we could entirely solve.
If scientists were to only look at how to avoid the million traffic deaths, one solution would be to reduce speed limits everywhere to 3 mph.
If heavily enforced, this would almost entirely eliminate traffic deaths.
Of course, it would also almost entirely eliminate our economies and our productive lives.
We would laugh if politicians said we should “follow the science” and stop traffic deaths by reducing speeds to 3 mph.
As we do with traffic, in the climate debate we should take a sensible approach. This means focusing on short-term adaptation to build resilience, and long-term investment in R&D for green energy.
Innovation must drive the price of reliable, green energy down below fossil fuels, eventually making sure everyone can switch to low-carbon alternatives.
When politicians tell us they are “following the science,” they use the claim to shut down open discussion of the enormous costs of their policies.
“The science” informs us about the problem, but is not the arbiter of solutions.
Democracies are.
Sudden, dramatic cuts in fossil fuel consumption will have huge downsides — which their backers would rather ignore.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
May 26, 2024 at 03:51AM
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Gas bills are projected to rise by around £1,000 to pay for wind power under official plans currently being considered by the Energy Secretary.
Claire Coutinho received a report earlier this year that suggested moving some or all green levies from household electricity bills to gas bills, or shifting them into general taxation.
Both proposals, presented by officials at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), have been put forward amid concerns that the weight of green levies on household costs is stifling progress on net zero.
But they could prove controversial because of the likely costs to households relying on gas, as well as it being seen as fairer to apply levies to electricity bills.
A new analysis by Cadent, a gas distribution company, found energy bills would rise by £1,045 a year for millions of homes reliant on gas by 2035 if Ms Coutinho opted to move all green tariffs from electricity bills to gas bills.
It calculated that low-income families would be hit the hardest by the move, which would account for almost half (47 per cent) of energy bills for households reliant on gas.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/25/gas-bills-could-rise-by-1000-to-pay-for-wind-power/
Would the Telegraph stop calling these GREEN LEVIES, and call them what they really are – SUBSIDIES FOR WIND FARMS?
And let’s be absolutely clear – this would be a punitive tax on gas, designed to make it too expensive for people to use.
The Government has run into one of the inherent self contradictions of the Net Zero nonsense. They want us to use electricity for everything, such as cars and heating, but have also had to massively subsidise renewable energy, thus making the electrification option unaffordable for everybody.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
May 26, 2024 at 03:38AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 