The ‘Cure’ for Climate Change Is Far Worse than the Disease
Nicolas Loris
May 6, 2014 at 8:18 pm
Manmade greenhouse gas emissions already are causing gloom and doom and adversely affecting our way of life. That’s the conclusion of the National Climate Assessment released today by the Obama administration. But before we trade our Buicks for bikes, it’s important to highlight the climate realities and show that the administration’s proposed policy solutions will drive up the cost of energy for Americans and have no meaningful impact on climate.
Although the planet has warmed over the past six decades and a broad consensus exists that part of that warming is attributed to manmade emissions, what we’re seeing and where we’re headed is not toward climate catastrophe. As my colleague David Kreutzer writes, the climate threats do not match up with reality. Sea levels are rising but not as fast as projected. There have been no significant trends for floods, droughts, hurricanes or tornadoes. Although the report does not address hurricanes, it does admit that “other trends in severe storms, including tornadoes, hail, and thunderstorms, are still uncertain.”
The report has a variety of serious problem. Many of the models the federal government relied on to promulgate these regulations projected a 0.3-degree Celsius warming over the past 17 years, when in reality no warming occurred (although CO2 emissions have increased). Since 2011, 16 experiments published in peer-reviewed literature found the equilibrium climate sensitivity (the effect that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would have), is 40 percent lower than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the NCA project. In other words, a lot of variability exists in projecting what impact increased GHGs will have on the planet, which has serious implications not just for future temperature projections but all the other scary scenarios NCA outlines.
What’s most troubling is, even if climate change were occurring at an unsustainable rate, the administration’s policy prescriptions will not fix anything but will further harm the economy. The proposed limits for carbon dioxide emissions essentially would prohibit the construction of new coal-fired power plants and force existing ones into early retirement, driving up the cost of energy on American families and businesses. Higher energy prices shrink production in consumption, resulting in less income for families, more people in the unemployment line and less economic growth. And even if we were to stop emitting greenhouse gas emissions entirely, we would not moderate the Earth’s temperature more than a few tenths of a degree Celsius by the end of the century.
Some of the NCA’s policy solutions are even more invasive. The report says greenhouse gas reductions is one of the co-benefits of replacing short vehicle commutes with biking or walking and reducing your red meat intake to reduce the amount of methane emitted from the animals we eat. Not that federal government nudging and taking away choice from consumers and businesses is new. Over several decades the Department of Energy now has set efficiency regulations for more than 50 commercial and industrial products, including everything from dehumidifiers to illuminated exit signs. DOE touts these regulations not only as ways to save energy and money for consumers but as greenhouse gas reducers as well.
What today’s report and the latest data show are that the cure for climate change, as envisioned by the Obama administration, is far worse than the disease. Congress needs to step up and stop the administration’s costly and ineffective solution to a non-problem.
Great essay. I am sticking with the climate scientists. Years of research cannot be dismissed.
The issue of Climate Change and man-Made Climate Change, typically get fuzzied together in the “scientific facts”. I definitely accept that there is Climate Change, but I have doubts about the actual effect human behavior is having on it. However, I can accept that I may be wrong. My biggest problem, though, is the Climate Change “cure”. If you think your Prius and new lightbulbs make a difference, you are clueless. How on earth are we expected to do anything when the biggest polluters in countries like China and India have no intention of honestly joining in. For us to go it alone, simply means we add an even bigger economic disadvantage to our already bad one when it comes to competing economically with these emerging nations. Also, the “cure” will have to run through our political process and you know how corrupt that is. Billions (that we don’t have) will leak from allocated funds into black holes. Snake oil salesmen like Al Gore don’t help the cause. The argument is we have to do something. Maybe, but the complications involved are mind boggling.
This is the key quote: “What today’s report and the latest data show are that the cure for climate change, as envisioned by the Obama administration, is far worse than the disease. Congress needs to step up and stop the administration’s costly and ineffective solution to a non-problem.”
In fact if the goal was truly to reduce CO2 because that is what you honestly believed was causing global warming the most imediate thing we could do is 1- massively increase the amount of natural gas fuel we are using which significantly reduces current CO2 from other fuel (this is in fact why our CO2 levels of growth are decreasing). 2- build nuke power plants like mad to replace all the electricity provided by fossil fuels. Nukes have zero CO2.
However if reducing CO2 is just an excuse to increase government power then you would find reasons to fight against reducing CO2 in those easy solutions and propose “costly ineffective solutions” as this so accurately points out.
Allow yourselves to accept the fact that the hardest-core zealots among those who promote the notion of anthropogenic climate disturbance believe exactly none of what they are saying, but are primarily obsessed with the notion that the earth is already about six-times overpopulated with humans, and you’ll begin to comprehend their unaccountable willingness to lie about science, and engage in brazen overstatement and egregious fear-mongering, both to defame their political opponents, and shame poorly-informed individuals worldwide into believing that for them to bring new additional human lives into the world is both an insult to polite society, and a sin against nature.
In the private sector, follow the money; in the public sector, follow the power. If a private company commissioned and issued a report whose conclusion recommended that everyone buy their product, we’d all see it for the self serving action it would be. When the government commissions and issues a report whose conclusion recommends that they be given yet more power over the form and amount of our energy consumption, we should be equally skeptical.