Oren Cass joins John Stossel to talk about the Paris Agreement and how climate “catastrophists” are harming the debate over on how to adapt to the changing global climate. Video and transcript follows. This video is part of a special collaboration with John Stossel and City Journal contributors.
Transcript
John Stossel: Another hot year. Global warming! What will we do about that? Politicians for most every country promised to deal with it by signing something called the Paris Climate Agreement. But when President Trump took office he said,
President Trump: “The United States will withdraw.”
Stossel: What? We will withdraw? We, alone?
Al Gore: President Trump isolated the United States with his reckless and indefensible decision.
Stossel: My neighbors in New York agree with that, and so do most of the media.
Wolf Blitzer: A lot at stake, potentially for the planet.
Stossel: Really? I bet they don’t even know what was in the agreement. I didn’t.
Oren Cass: Paris Accord was somewhere between a farce and a fraud.
Stossel: Manhattan Institute senior fellow Oren Cass is one of the few people who’ve actually read the Paris Agreement and also the commitment set in by every country.
Cass: You don’t even have to mention greenhouse gases in your commitment if you don’t want to. You send you in any piece of paper you want, we’re gonna staple them all together, and we’re gonna call that the Paris Accord. Everyone sent in a piece of paper and they stapled it together and held it up and said this is amazing.
Tung Chee-hwa: China has made a major commitment.
Stossel: So what’s in the commitments that every country made?
News anchor: India has ratified the Paris Climate Accord, committing the world’s fastest growing economy to limit carbon dioxide emissions.
Cass: What you find is they either pledge to do exactly what they were already going to do anyway, or pledged even less than that. China for instance, said we pledged to reach peak emissions by about 2030. Well the United States government had already done a study to guess when Chinese emissions would peak and their guess was about 2030.
Stossel: Peak doesn’t mean stop, it just means stop increasing.
Cass: That’s right. So in fact China promised they will continue increasing their emissions for some time to come. And yet, China was actually one of the better pledges. India made no pledge to limit their emissions at all, they pledged only to become more efficient. But they proposed to become efficient less quickly than they’re already becoming more efficient.
So their pledge was to slow down. You know, my favorite was Pakistan whose pledge was to reach a peak at some point, after which to begin reducing emissions, and so you can staple those together, and you can say we now have a global agreement.
But what you have is an agreement to do nothing. And if anything you’ve gone backwards because whereas in the past you could have criticized countries and said hey, why aren’t you doing anything? Now we have an agreement that says in fact, we will applaud you for doing nothing.
President Obama: We came together around the strong agreement the world needed.
Cass: Obviously President Obama got a lot of political mileage out of that, but the climate didn’t get much at all. The one country that showed up in Paris with a very costly, ambitious target was the United States. So President Obama took all the zero commitments from everybody else, but threw in a really expensive one for us.
Stossel: Super expensive! Obama pledged to reduce American emissions by a quarter. Of course it’s true that the United States produces twice as much greenhouse gas per person as China and India, so isn’t it on us to do more?
Cass: Even if we zeroed out our emissions tomorrow and the future of climate change is still a question of what happens in China and India.
Trump: We’re getting out.
Stossel: When Trump said he was leaving the Paris Accord, he was trashed by politicians across the world.
UK Prime Minister May: I’m dismayed at the U.S. decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement
Stossel: President Obama said, “This administration joins a handful of nations that reject the future.”
Cass: If the future is worthless climate agreements that everyone goes to Paris to talk about, then first of all that’s a very sad future, and it’s one that we should be proud to reject.
Stossel: The earth is warming. Man may well be increasing that. But the solution isn’t to waste billions by forcing emissions cuts here while other countries do nothing while pretending to make cuts.
Trump was right to repudiate this phony treaty. Most of us didn’t even know how phony it was. But now, we do.
The US never agreed to the Paris Climate Treaty. The Senate never even considered it never mind approved it.
If you call a dog’s tail a leg how many legs does a dog have? Four. Saying different doesn’t change the facts.
If you call a treaty an agreement..,
Sorry, it is an agreement. For us taxed in the EU.
The US Constitution provides one mechanism by which these United States can enter into legally binding international agreements: The Treaty Clause.
https://www.heritage.org/constitution/articles/2/essays/90/treaty-clause
Since the Paris Farce was not legally binding and not submitted to the Senate for ratification, it’s a meaningless piece of paper. It was an agreement between Barrack Hussein Obama and 194 other nations.
I dunno but I gotta say that I can’t really take any discussion of “Climate Treaties” seriously that fails to include the perspectives that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has gained in his little one-way chit-chats with “the Oceans”. I mean, like, “the Oceans” actually, kinda, sorta, speak to Sheldon…really…Really!…I”M NOT KIDDING!!!! (please Google: “cns news senator whitehouse says opponents of climate change regulations are guilty of grave sins).
I had to delete the rest of the comments due to unsuitable language for WUWT and individual directed personal attacks.Mod
I hope Barrack has a couple hundred billion stashed away someplace so he can live up to his agreement
I propose a Plutonium Emissions Trading (PET) accord/agreement/scheme.
Obama is playing golf in New Zealand….
David Middleton has it spot on. It’s a treaty, period. The POTUS does not have the unilateral authority to bind this nation to international treaties, and our “agreement” was therefore a sham.
‘Obama is playing golf in New Zealand….’
Quick, ban polluting intercontinental flights!
I just heard some guy on the radio say that we should open our border to the starving masses of the world because it isn’t fair that they were born where they were.
To what do we owe our good fortune? I would say it’s because of our culture. It’s things like the Protestant Work Ethic.
Many people have forgotten what made us great. The Democrat party is in the forefront of the forgetters. They have embraced the elites and seem happy with the idea that America should become a society where your class determines your life’s outcomes. Thomas Frank lays out the case in Listen Liberal. Some of them seemed to be getting the message after President Trump’s election. Now the message is lost. They’re spending all their time blaming Facebook for their loss.
The idea that America should put on a hair shirt and distribute her wealth to the needy of the world is just stupid. America should work on making herself better and showing the world how it’s done.
I can’t find the quote but some wit commented that the Paris Accord amounted to stealing from America’s poor folks and giving the proceeds to the corrupt dictators of the third world.
America is great because the people believed that they had a decent chance that their hard work and initiative would be rewarded. Things like the Paris Accord fly in the face of that.
Im not protestant. My dad used to say people from La Rioja worked harder because they had to make sure the crops were in before the first freeze in the fall. In my case I worked harder because I’m very competitive and I never liked coming in second. I don’t think being competitive has much to do with religion. For example, pagan Romans used to beat everybody like drums, and probably fell because they became puny due to diseases.
“America is great because the people believed that they had a decent chance that their hard work and initiative would be rewarded.”
And they had the freedom to follow their dreams. Personal freedoms is the secret ingredient that makes the United States a success.
The freedom to follow your dreams, and a government that is still small enough that when you succeed, you are the one to benefit from that success.
“I can’t find the quote but some wit commented that the Paris Accord amounted to stealing from America’s poor folks and giving the proceeds to the corrupt dictators of the third world.”
Christopher Booker (Daily Telegraph) said, a couple of years ago talking about windmills, quoting somebody, that never has such a means been found to take money from the poor to give to the rich!
This was because the councils in the UK did not invoke something called ‘compulsory purchase’ to make land available for a wind farm. Inexplicably, they agree to pay vast sums of rent to the landowners…..anything from £300,000 to £1million a year paid for out of taxes. No wonder big landowners were enthusiastic and wanted to put up more wind farms on their land. But it’s all to save the planet, of course. People living close to these monstrosities were less enthusiastic.
commieBob – March 21, 2018 at 1:44 am
Of course it is stupid, …… I agree with you.
But it IS NOT the hard-working productive Americans that are wanting to distribute their own earned income (wealth) to the needy of the world, ……… IT IS the non-productive “bleeding-heart” liberals, … the non-productive government “troughfeeders”, … the non-productive “troughfeeders” associated with public charities, …. the non-productive “troughfeeders” associated with said wealth distribution ….. and the non-productive vote-mining “troughfeeding” politicians …… who are all in favor of distributing OPM (other people’s money) to the needy of the world.
But the same “stupidity” is commonplace and much, much “closer-to-home” here in America, ….. whereby the same “non-producers” as noted above are all in favor of distributing tens-of-million$ of OPM (other people’s money) to aid, support and care for the “down n’ out” addicted drug users who refuse to and/or can no longer afford to pay for their drugs, …… or to purchase new “needles”, …… or to pay for their medical costs, …… or to pay for their legal costs, …… or to pay for their clinical “drug rehabilitation ” costs,
And, of course, the same “non-producers” as noted above are all in favor of spending tens-of-billion$ of OPM (other people’s money) on Law Enforcement Agencies to track down, capture, prosecute and imprison said drug users/addicts …… so that the aforesaid group can care for and rejuvenate said addicts.
“HA”, they have FREE “needle exchange” programs for the addicted druggies, …… so why don’t they also have FREE “cigarette-butt exchange” programs for the addicted smokers?
Liberals want OTHERS to do what they think they ought to do but do not want to do.
Gee, Sam.
You can tell us how you REALLY feel.
A “deplorable” Gums sends…
When I was 10 years old I asked my dad what a democrat is.
He told me a democrat is someone who wants to help everyone – with someone else’s money
czechlist,
Mine said that a democrat is the guy (or lady) that does not return the shopping cart to appropriate place … just leaves it in the next stall. So, that’s what I told my daughter when she was 10.
I guess the failed socialist is the guy that you see pushing it down the street with all his belongings in it.
commieBob, I suspect you would appreciate the essays of JR Nyquist.
I don’t remember the exact quote either, but I think it was something like”
The Paris Accord was stealing from the poor people of rich countries and giving it to the rich people of poor countries.
Now I hope someone can find the actual quote.
I would respect people who believe in fully equalizing wealth around the world if (1) they took in homeless people into every spare bedroom in their own houses, giving them free access to the fridge and freezer, stove, & laundry room, and (2) in their wills, gave nothing to their spouses, children and relatives, but all to the state which would wisely look after everyone equally.
“America is great because the people believed that they had a decent chance that their hard work and initiative would be rewarded.”
And it will no longer be great unless we build a wall because people over there don’t believe they have a decent chance or that their hard work will be rewarded. And we can show them they are correct by shipping them back there. And if I am not rewarded, it must be their fault and they took my decent chance away from me by coming here. They took my rewards too.
We were a nation of immigrants. We are now a nation of immigrants who say, Stay out.
No One is saying NO IMMIGRATION… the nation’s workers are simply stating the facts…NO MORE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION…that is what a wall helps to stop. Legal immigrants compete for jobs with the rest of us, but on a more level playing field because they are legally entitled to the same competitive, “fair” wages that we desire. Unfortunately, illegals operate in the shadows and work for less. PERIOD. Before 1965 we focused on immigrants that brought value and were willing to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, assimilate, learn the language… we even had a great name for it… “the melting pot” of America. Now, the immigrants are ghettoized, almost half take some form of Government assistance, and the 2nd language education requirement of our public school system is creating a language dichotomy that threatens our shared sense of values and culture.
We are not anti-immigrant. We believe in the rule of law. To quote Kennedy’s poet laureate, Robert Frost, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Not worthy they?
https://www.dglobe.com/business/4219777-taking-stand-students-workers-business-owners-participate-day-without-immigrants
They will working in a packing plant. Buy homes. Help rural communities.
I recall that when ‘agreement ‘ was at last achieved, the whole Press Office exploded into cheering ( seen on TV). Do we have no competent, rational, unbiased journalists left?
I saw one some years back. She was later forced to resign.
Look, ‘the cause’ is a club of right-minded good people. So of course the agreement is excellent. It was done by the right-minded. Oh it wasn’t? Well, the next meeting is soon and THEN we MUST get an agreement!! All the right-minded people will be there.
“I saw one some years back. She was later forced to resign.”
Sharyl Attkisson was one of the best network reporters out there (with CBS, I think) but the powers that be didn’t like what she kept coming up with when Obama was president, so they “encouraged” her out the door. She’s still always worth reading.
She’s also one of the few reporters willing to publicize the hundreds of stories linking autism to vaccines, incidentally. She isn’t an anti-vaxxer so far as I know, but she’s professional enough to admit that some credible stories exist.
The plural of anecdote, is not data.
I think there is a very good correlation between autism, its recent rate of increase in the general population, and the rate of change of the accepted definition of autism.
Bingo – When it comes to “Climate Change” we don’t, that’s for sure.
Maybe they were just happy to be packing up their hang-overs and heading home after listening to all the sanctimonious virtue signalling. I would have been losing my lunch by day 1.
Yes indeed.
And what other country does this sort of thing?
Nth Korea….for which we shake our head in disbelief, or out-right criticize.
But when the journalists did it – what happened?
Nothing….
Doesn’t that convey something to rational, clear thinking people (other than us here at WUWT)
Seems not so much.
“Do we have no competent, rational, unbiased journalists left?”
They are out there, but they are vastly outnumbered by the partisan leftists posing as journalists.
Sara Carter!
Sarah Carter is a star. A very good reporter. And she practically has the field to herself since the Leftwing News Media refuses to cover any news that makes any Democrat look bad.
Keep it up, Sarah! The Obama administration is shaking in its boots. They didn’t think Trump would be elected so they didn’t cover up very well, and now all their corruption and treason is going to come out in the open. Despite the Leftwing News Media trying to run interference for the Democrats all the way.
The Leftwing News Media propagates one false narrative after another, in their efforts to muddy the waters about Democrat corruption, and Trump collusion, and to smear Trump and Conservatives.
The Leftwing News Media really are a danger to our personal freedoms, *all* of us, even the liberals, because once we throw our freedoms away, we probably won’t get them back. Electing Democrats/Socialists is throwing our freedoms away. They are not to be trusted with our future. They wouldn’t be elected if the Leftwing News Media didn’t go to bat for them, and distort the truth for them, 24 hours a day.
The thing is, the only possibility to see the Paris accord good is if we think “business as usual” is actually quite all right. Why people were so upset on Paris, was that it promised a lot of money from the EU and US to underdeveloped countries. And now that money is on stake. Of course it hurts.
I think the climate adaptation should be done by specialized insurances. For example, there should be products that bring money to a local government in case the rate of sea level rise much exceeds expectations. Of course, the insurance will be expensive and reinsuring is needed to cover sometimes huge losses, but the insurance is anyway requiring the client to try to adapt and reduce losses by itself. That’s the good thing.
The takeaway message is:
The Paris agreement was not about stopping emissions, or not even stopping emissions growth. It was about keeping one’s face.
Simple questions for you. Where do you think the money that is paid out by insurance companies for a covered loss comes from?
He answered that question: “Of course, the insurance will be expensive “
No Mark, the question is WHO is paying for the insurance? Hint: insurance is a pool of money that is paid for by those with a like fear of catastrophic economical loss if a certain condition comes about.
How many are paying for insurance against attack by extraterrestrials? Why not?
Obviously it is being paid by the cities, which means that it is being paid by the citizens of the city, who voted for politicians stupid enough to go along with the whole mess.
If the cities and counties of Kalifornia have anything to say about it, it will be Exxon and the oil companies paying for it.
Tom,
You are a smart & creative guy (moreso than me).
I think if YOU took the time and effort to present an entertaining and realistic (parody) model of insurance for “ET-attacks”, as well as “Zombie harm and/or actual conversion”, you would get more than enough buyers to make it worth your time. You could take a $10,000,000 policy out on your mother-in-law and present it to her as a gift.
You could also offer SLR insurance that covered damages that occur as a direct (or indirect) result of DeCappio’s jet-yacht related carbon footprint. The policy could be gifted to anyone … including his LDF foundation, dedicated to the health and wellbeing of all Earth’s inhabitants.
There might be some policy buyers.
Never mind, ET & zombie insurance already exists. (but you could still do the Leonardo insurance).
Money to saddle poor countries with pointless , expensive and inefficient energy systems? Gee! Aren’t we awesomely generous!?!
“Money to saddle poor countries with pointless , expensive and inefficient energy systems?”
‘Debt’ to saddle poor countries with pointless , expensive and inefficient energy systems?
….poor countries deserve a Moody’s credit rating too.
Climate adaptation should be done the way it always has been done. We adapt to the changes that ACTUALLY TAKE PLACE. We do NOT spend economically ruinous sums of money to nothing about a non-existent problem. Humans are quite adept at adapting to their environment. The sum of “climate changes” since the Industrial Revolution have been positive (i.e., slight warming), and present absolutely no cause for alarm. When things start cooling, then you can start worrying. But don’t pretend it’s the fault of human activities or that we can “save” ourselves by economic suicide, because that is exactly the WRONG thing to do REGARDLESS of the direction of climate change du jour.
to DO nothing about…
I’m with Tom in Florida!
The answer is taxpayers!
If people want to build, buy or live in flood zones, let them pay the insurance and rebuild costs.
Your “takeaway message” is wrong, hugs.
The takeaway message from the Paris agreement is that Western Civilization are morons while parasites around the world expect oodles of free cash for their elites, not for their citizens.
The Paris agreement is a sham. Kerry and Obama knew that they were not allowed to commit the USA to anything:
Sea level rise????? do you even read this blog. What Seal Level Rise. That is B.S. The only seal level rise is INTERGLACIAL…. that’s been going on for what….40,000 years. There’s no insurance for INTERGLACIAL time periods.
Now there is Alluvial Compression, Pumice Dissolution, Tectonic Slippage and Coastal Erosion… the main culprits for the alleged “Seal Level Rise”, but no one is going to insure against those geologic impacts either.
Want to solve the problem…change the very nature of mankind’s desire to live communally, close to the oceans and rivers. There Done.
What I find most disappointing was that Australia, knowing that Trump had promised to withdraw once elected – then choose to cut emissions in the name of the this fraud***
***James Hansen descriptor, not mine!
As the whole thing is a ” none problem” then a none soljtion to it is the right solution.
The snag is that most of the politions in the western world still appear to believe that we still have a prooblem & still want to force us to ” save the world”.
Soliution is to get rid of this nutty crowd of leaders & their ilk.
Mje
+10 M.J.Elliott
Politicians of the Left know it is a fraud but it is the road to world government and a socialist world via the corrupt UN and it’s UNFCCC and IPCC. Politicians of the Right are either too lazy or can’t be bothered to do the research. My local member (of the right), here in Australia automatically deletes all emails from me on this subject
Oh! FFS, people should stop giving gratuitous advice to others, telling them how they should spend their lives, how their countries should act. …..
You, the individual, are the primary force to enforce your future wellbeing and prosperity. You hold the tools, your intellect and property, to do that. You are the main incentive for your progress. You have invested your past in your property and prosperity.
If some character pops up and preaches that you owe a debt to the world because your past has damaged it, simply say that is a quaint idea and walk away. Do not get involved with guilt trips – you know best about your guilt, if any.
Beware of others who seek to gain your property or your share of it, for nothing more than threats or promises of harsh retribution. Keep the UN firmly in mind as leaders of the false prophet sect, forever asking more from you, while forever giving back less.
Be an individual who will not be bought or cowed. The whole rort will then become increasingly isolated, then die.
You hold the keys to a proper future. Use them firmly and wisely. Geoff.
Remember where you heard all of this first!!!!
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/tag/paris/
Whatever happens to the climate, we will adapt. The climate is BIG and is impervious to our puny actions.
Eeek, I had to stop watching when Al Gore appeared on my display.
I instinctively closed my eyes & went la-dee-da-da.
MODS, we need a warning label in the future.
The problem with Stossel’s, and indeed, Trump’s criticism of Paris is that it doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t attack the fundamental flaw in the thing, which is that it assumes we have a problem with our climate, and that man is somehow, in some way responsible for it. That is the Big Lie, and when you ignore it, you give the Climatists power.
Agreed! Stop giving them the slightest bit of credibility by even suggesting that “climate change” may be, to ANY extent, a human-induced catastrophe. It is pure nonsense.
even Stossel makes the erroneous evidence free assumption that we are still warming
The Paris accord was an attempt to back-door both the Treaty provisions of the Constitution, and the lawmaking process. As Obama did not have enough votes to pass the Clean Power Plan as law, the notion was to have it be enforced by his friends in the courts as compliance with the Paris Accord (which he did not have the votes to get passed as a treaty).
The green blob is still trying to use that approach of lawmaking by executive order, despite a lame legal rationale.
Yes and that kind of tactic is only OK when THEY do it.
At LAST – someone is actually READING the Paris ‘Accord’….
Perhaps a few more politicians (particularly in the West) should do likewise…
It’s just like Obama-Care & Congress — the details don’t matter, it’s the virtue-signaling that counts.
The whole lefty ethos pivots on one fundamental error —
“If the rich are getting richer, the poor must be getting poorer.”
Relativistic measures of monetary wealth is a complete nonsense!
Are we missing part of the story here? Surely they could find the time to mention the transfer of wealth to pay for other country efforts with borrowed U.S. government largess.
How does this accord do anything in the way of reduction? It is my understanding that the limits are little more than a suggestion with no consequences for exceeding them. Like a speed limit sign that says 60 MPH, if you feel like it. I may be mistaken, but isn’t the limit in terms of “per capita?” How does that work? The higher the population the MORE CO2 you can generate. Isn’t that counter productive?
The only thing left is payment of funds by the USA and the other rich nations to the corrupt UN to distribute between corrupt UN officials and then the reminder to corrupt third world dictators. I seriously doubt anything of substantial CO2 reducing energy producing facility will ever be built.
The point of the accord was to transfer LARGE amounts of money from the west – particularly targeted the US – to the pockets of the EU kleptocrats who would then dribble small amounts into the pockets of third world dictators.
Progressives are Out Of Touch on a Biblical Scale; NAACP Should Demand Re-Direction of Climate Change Funding to Inner-Cities
If you go into a black community and poll the residents, I feel confident that none, not a single resident, would rank preventing climate change as one of their top 10 priorities. The social and economic statics of the black community are horrifying, and yet on MLK day 2018, the NAACP claims that “MLK’s Vision … Continue reading
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/01/15/progressives-are-out-of-touch-on-a-biblical-scale-naacp-should-demand-re-direction-of-climate-change-funding/
If you know any people that live in the poor part of town ask them what their Gas, Electric (Oil) bill is. It will flabbergast you. My wife used to do Tax returns, Quit often people would bring in these bills. They live in a 1,200 SqFt house and pay over $250 a month, average, from October till April! My home was built in the early 70’s (before the OPEC fiasco) and the largest heating bill we have ever had was under $125. And Obama’s Green Energy Efficiency program did little to nothing. The best they got was a higher efficiency furnace!
Yea, and Obama’s solution to the problem would be a subsidy, just like he did for healthcare. It is a backdoor way to making people dependent upon the Government for the essentials of life. The affordable healthcare act made healthcare unaffordable to most, making the subsidy the only way to get coverage.
Here is a paper published by the GWPF that exposes the actual legal obligations (or lack of them) on developing nations: Paris Agreement: A Blank Cheque For CO2 Emissions By China And India can be found at https://www.thegwpf.org/paris-agreement-a-blank-cheque-for-co2-emissions-by-developing-nations/
Geeezzzz, Dr James Hansen told us COP 21 was BS and fra-d in 2015 and Bjorn Lomborg supplied us with a PR study that proved his case.
This is very old news and Dr Hansen also said ( well before COP 21) that a belief in S&W energy is akin to believing in the Easter bunny and the Tooth fairy.
IOW these donkeys believe in Fairy tales.
Today S&W supplies just 0.8% of the world’s TOTAL energy and this will still be ZIP by 2040. Lomborg states that the world will waste 1 to 2 trillion $ a year for decades for no measurable change to Temp by 2100. Just think about that.
This is the greatest CON and Fra-d in history and yet nearly every govt believes this nonsense. Why is it so?
I’m reporting you to PETA for the bunny comment and the LGBTQWERTY community for the Tooth Fairy comment.
“LGBTQWERTY”
LOL!
The Paris Climate Agreement does nothing to reduce the total greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and does nothing to reduce the total greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gas is not CO2 but rather H2O. Molecuel per molecule, H2O is a much stronger IR absorber than is CO2 and CO2 is not at about .04 % of the atmosphere where as H2O averages between one and two percent. If we really want to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere we need to get rid of all artificial bodies of water and we need to get rid of irrigation based agriculture but the Paris Agreement does not do any ot that. If we really believe that the so called greenhouse gases are bad wiw should be reducing our human population the puts more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
One idea is for the rich nations to help the poor nations. The USA has a huge federal debt, huge annual budget deficits, and huge annual trade deficits. The USA is really a poor nation and we need to eliminate our federal debt, stop the annual deficits, and start generating annual trade surpluses before we can even think of helping any other nations. I would like to have an all electric car with a solar charging system to not only charge up the car but to allow me to live off the grid but I cannot aford it. I would like all this to be given to me free paid for by a rich nation like China but so far thah has not happened. If the burning of fossil fuels is so bad then the whole world should stop making use of all goods and services that involve the use of fossil fuels but that is not happening and the Paris Climate Agreement is not really making that happen.
The environmental lapse rate should correlate with the insulation effects of the atmosphere. The higher the lapse rate the more insulating is the atmosphere. If CO2 really affected climate then the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years should have caused at least a measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened. In terms of the measured effect of CO2 on the lapse rate over the past 30 years, the climate sensivity of CO2 is zero. The climate sensivity of CO2 being a small number is a good reason why no one has been able to actually measure it. Theoretically, a doubling of CO2 should slightly lower the dry lapse rate which is a cooling effect. Based on how CO2 should effect the dry lapse rate. the climate sensitivity of CO2 should be slightly negative. So there is reason to believe that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will help to reduce any global warming.
For those that believe in a radiative greenhouse effect, the initial radiametric calculations performed decades ago came up with a value for the climate sensivity of CO2 neglecting feedbacks of 1.2 degrees C. One researcher has pointed out that these initial calculations failed to take into consideration that a doubling of CO2 in the tropshere will cause a slight decrease in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere. That decrease in the lapse rate will cause a reduction of the climate sensivity of CO2 by more than a factor of 20. So now we have a value for the climate sensivity of CO2 excluding feedbacks of less than .06 degrees C.
An important part of the AGW conjecture is that H2O provides a positive feedback to any CO2 based warming. The idea is that CO2 based warming causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere which causes even more warming because H2O is also a so called greenhouse gas with LWIR absorption bands. The IPCC really is not sure how strong this positive feedback effect is but they seem to like to use numbers like 3. H2O is actually a stronger absorber of IR than is CO2 and according to greenhouse gas theory is by far the primary greenhouse gas so much so that the addition of CO2 is trivial. However; the AGW conjecture ignore’s the fact that besides being the primary greenhouse gas, H2O is a primary coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere transfering heat energy from the Earth’s surface, which for the most part involves some sort of H2O, to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization. According to some energy balance models, more heat energy is moved by H2O via the heat of vaporization then by both oonvection and LWIR absorption band radiation combined. The net cooling effect of H2O is evidenced by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly less than the dry lapse rate. Hence rather than amplify the climate sensivity of CO2 by a factor of 3 a more realistic effect would be to reduce the climate senisvity of CO2 by a factor of three yielding a climate sensivity of CO2 of less than .02 degrees C which is a trivial amount.
The AGW conjecture depends upon the existance of a greenhouse effect caused by trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere with LWIR absorption bands. A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of LWIR absorbing heat trapping gases. A real greenhouse stays warm becaue the glass reduces cooling by convection. It is a convective greenhouse effect that keeps a real greenhouse warm and not a radiative greenhouse effect. So too on Earth. Gravity and the heat capacity of the atmosphere act to provide a convective greenhouse effect that keeps the Earth’s surface on average 33 degrees C warmer than it would be otherwise. 33 degrees C is the amount derived from first principals and 33 degrees C is the amount that has been observed. No additional warming has been observed that could be attributed to a radiant greenhouse effect. The radiant greenouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, on Earth, or on any planet in the solar system with a thick atmosphere. The radiant greenhouse effect is science fiction so hence the AGW conjecture is science fiction. Without a radiant greenhouse effect the climate sensivity of CO2 cannot be greater than zero.
It is tempting at first to believe that CO2 causes waming because it has LWIR absorption bands but the reality is that all good absorpers are also good radiators and heat transfer by convection and couduction dominates in the troposphere. CO2 does not trap heat any more than any other gas in the Earth’s atmosphere. If CO2 were a great insulator then there would most probably be some engineering applacations there CO2 was uses as an insulator but no such applications exist.
There is evidence in the paleoclimate record that warmer temperature cause more CO2 to enter the atmopshere which is because warmer water cannot hold as much CO2 as cooler water, but there is no real evidence that the additional CO2 adds to any warming. Climate models, really computer simulations of climate, that have hard coded in that more CO2 causes warming. beg the question and hence are useless in terms of acertaining whether CO2 affects climate. These climate models have failed to adequately predict today’s global temperatures and hence have been wrong. If anything these simulations show that icreasing CO2 is not the cause of the climate change we are experiencing today.
Considering all what I have presented above, a good value for the climate sensivity of CO2 would be zero. Hence adding CO2 to the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels has no effect on climate. Based on the paleoclimate record and and the work done with models one can conclude that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has not control..The conclusion is that the Paris Climate Agreement will have no effect on the Earth’s climate. Rather than wasting time and money trying to solve problems that mankind does not have the power to solve we shold be expending that same time and money trying to solve problems that we do have the power to solve.
treaty (n) – a formally concluded and ratified agreement between countries.
Whoops. Can’t use ‘treaty’. Don’t say it’s an agreement. That would constitutionally require 2/3 Senate cofirmation. Hmmm …. How about ‘accord’.
accord (n) – an official agreement or treaty.
Ahh. Shucks!