Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
When President Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement, he also pulled us out of paying any additional money to the so-called “Green Climate Fund” (GCF). Sorry, no more green for the greenies’ fund. This is the fund which has been given $7.2 billion dollars of taxpayer money from a variety of countries. It is the fund that countries around the world have been pushing hard to get their hands on. It is also the fund that was supposed to be given $100 billion, so they could parcel it out for corrupt third world politicians and greedy UN rent-seekers to swim around in for decades … dream on.
So let me start with the basics of the GCF. In 2017, all of the countries around the globe emitted a total of about 33 gigatonnes (“Gt”, 10^9 tonnes) of CO2. However, those countries that emitted just under two-thirds of the total CO2 contributed a total of zero dollars to the GCF. Not one penny.
Yep, that’s right. The countries currently emitting almost two-thirds of the total CO2 aren’t putting up a penny for the Green Climate Fund (GCF). Not China. Not India. Not Brazil. Not Russia. Not a host of countries. Only the lucky few have to pay, because … well, “because history” seems to be the favored explanation …
Next, as has often been the case until recently, the US was among the biggest suckers on the planet. Three countries, the US, Germany, and Japan, have put up nearly half of the $7.2 billion dollars that the GCF is currently wasting … but no more. We’re out of that money-losing game.
To see just how bad the GCF waste is, I took a look at the Green Climate Fund “mitigation” projects. These are the projects that are supposed to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted. To date, there have been 22 of them, with a total funding (GCF + other public and private) of $6.9 billion dollars.
And according to their undoubtedly rosy predictions of CO2 saved by windmills, solar panels, building insulation, and the like, all of the projects together will save just under two gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2. Two billion tonnes! That’s a huge weight of CO2 … but what does that all mean?
To understand it, let’s convert that to parts per million by volume (ppmv) of CO2. At present, we’re at 410 ppmv. Back in 1750, we were at about 278 ppmv of CO2.
And according to the UN IPCC, that increase in CO2 is claimed to have caused a temperature increase of 2.0787°C. The reason for the number of decimals will become apparent in a moment.
Now, to increase the atmospheric CO2 concentration by 1 ppmv, you need to emit about 16.8 Gt of CO2. The Green Climate Fund has avoided the emission of 2 Gt of CO2 … so IF their estimates are correct, and IF we got all of the savings today, instead of 410 ppmv it would make the CO2 concentration 409.88 ppmv.
And in turn, this would make the claimed temperature increase caused by CO2 to be smaller … at 2.0771°C.
So IF their estimates are correct, and IF we got all the savings today, and IF CO2 actually were the secret temperature control knob for the planet … if all that were true, the total of all the projects funded by the GCF would cause a temperature reduction of … wait for it … 0.0015°C.
How small a temperature change is this? Well, if you walk up a flight of stairs, which is about ten feet (three metres) vertically, there is a temperature difference due to the change in altitude. How big a difference? Well, temperatures drop about one degree C for every hundred metres you go up in altitude. So in climbing a flight of stairs, you’d experience a temperature drop of about 0.03°C. Three-hundredths of one degree. Far too small to detect without special instruments.
But that’s still twenty times the possible temperature reduction from the $6.9 billion dollars wasted on these GCF mitigation projects, a reduction which was only 0.0015°C. So we’ve spent $6.9 billion dollars for a POSSIBLE decrease of about the temperature difference from the floor to half-way up to your knee … be still, my beating heart …
Or we could look at it another way … how much would we have to spend to drop possible temperatures by one measly degree? Since we are spending $6.9 billion for a possible theoretical drop of 0.0015°C, that would mean that a drop of 1°C would cost us a mere $4.6 TRILLION DOLLARS … with absolutely no guarantee of success.
And people are still whining about the US pulling out of this cockamamie Green Climate Fund??? Does the phrase “Don’t throw good money after bad!” still mean anything these days?
w.
PS—QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE DISCUSSING. I get grumpy if you don’t, but that’s not the point. The point is, without an exact quote, nobody (possibly including you) is clear just what you are referring to.
The green blob will defend the hypothetical .0015 degree reduction as a “good start”.
Ooops…make that .0016…My Unicorn just farted !!! PEE U!
” a drop of 1°C would cost us a mere $4.6 TRILLION DOLLARS “…don’t give them any ideas
…and what Tom said
We could spend $4.6 trillion now on the chance of lowering temperatures by 1 degree, or we could save that money and use it to adapt to whatever happens in the future. Suppose we are about to return to an ice age. Spending trillions to lower temperatures would not only be a waste of money, it would actually make things worse. Why not wait to see if we actually have a problem that needs to be solved before trusting the unreliable output of climate models?
Yes, but it’s Other People’s Money so… it’s a good thing.
/sarc
Actually, money is magical. So is wealth. It can be produced instantly and without limit.
Having asked many socialists or other “leftists” over the years about this, their only account for the source of wealth is that it self-generates, apparently out of wishful thinking.
Magic has been outlawed. All non-communal activities and results shall be punished. Only the Grand Oz may speak and has spoken. No awe, illumination , spontaneity or inspiration is allowed. Burn the books,.. burn the ‘divergents’ at the stake,… bow to the consensus, and mob as it is truth and the real. {oops,… just kidding,.. it’s the shepple i worry about,..}
Actually look at the attacks on members of the Trump administration. Hitler had his brownshirts. Now we see the greenshirts in action.
Actually, they should be called blueshirts. I believe most of the Resistance (now turning to outright Sedition) is being sponsored by blue-waveless Democrats.
Looks more like the early stages of the formation of the Red Guard to me, especially when you merge the actions on campus with those of the Antifa.
Laura,
Unfortunately the magical money tree only works if you are a banker and then
it is called “Quantitative Easing”. For example the US Federal Reserve has created over 2 Trillion dollars to buy bonds from banks since 2008, the British central bank created about 300 million pounds to do the same and similarly the EU has done so as well. The rich have done extremely well out of this while screwing the rest of us.
The Federal Reserve (they seem to think) conjures magic dollars of money out of a magic hole in the air via a process of magically stuffing magic dollars of cost into their magic hole in the air and making the magic dollars of cost disappear into cyber space ….. or some other magic place?
Magic money is simply a natural impossibility unless you have dollars of magic cost and magic holes in the air that connect to cyber space to which magic cost can be applied as a suppository or as a laxative so that the magic holes can be ‘unlocked’ and can then ‘move’ magic money to the nation’s commercial banking system……for laundering?
Another conspiracist who’s goal is to crucify those who have more than he does.
To get more wealth the left just prints more money and adds a zero to the value of each domination…a ten dollar bill becomes a hundred…see, it’s easy.
First Germany backed off the co2 reductions plans several years ago to use an absolutely horrific fuel for electricity. Now Germany has gotten mealy mouthed about their financial contributions.
“On May 2nd, the federal cabinet adopted the second government draft for the 2018 budget, the key figures decision for 2019 and the financial plan containing guidelines for budget planning and allocations to individual budgets until 2022. It is now becoming clearer what the German government is planning for international climate finance in the coming years, and it’s not looking good. The plans would not only fall short of Chancellor Merkel’s promise to double climate financing by 2020, they would also not amount to a fair overall contribution by Germany toward reaching the international target of $100 billion in annual climate finance. The Bundestag will have to make significant adjustments in the budget discussions.”
from : https://www.germanclimatefinance.de/2018/06/12/climate-finance-germanys-2018-federal-budget-promised-doubling-quietly-dropped/
” that would mean that a drop of 1°C would cost us a mere $4.6 TRILLION DOLLARS ”
We would never make it, because by that time, most of us will be burning scrap wood and whatever we can scrounge just to keep warm as well as heating scrounged food in order to stave off starvation.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Lomborg has covered this before, but it’s also good to see Willis trying to make sense of their mitigation fra-d and con trick.
In fact this is the biggest fra-d of the last hundred years and makes Bernie Madoff look like a choir boy. Even Dr Hansen said that Paris COP 21 is just “BS and fra-d and believing in S&W energy is like believing in the Tooth fairy and the Easter bunny”.
When will they wake up? It’s not like this is difficult to understand.
Swallowing BS has become so normalized that when the truth is spoken or printed, it is dismissed because we hear almost entirely total garbage. To spend/waste such massive amounts of money which could go to more useful things like clean water for all humans to give the equivalent of 6-8 inches in altitude is totally absurd.
Yes, there are not even any guarantees that all this money (how convenient that it goes to the rent seekers that bang the drums for the climate change scare) will make the slightest bit of difference.
If you think about it, we just need to grow up(vertically and metaphorically) to achieve that .0015 degrees. Problem solved. Can I have the money? I can think of some really useful things I could do with those billions.
High Treason: “[…] that all this money (how convenient that it goes to the rent seekers that bang the drums for the climate change scare) […]”
That’s the tell that it’s all a con.
Yes, the fact that those that scream the loudest about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and the meaningless “climate change” are the ones that stand to rake in massive amounts of money should be getting any sane person asking questions. Equally, the refusal to debate the issue should be alerting people to the massive con. It is a classic tactic of liars and con men to evade scrutiny as well as create an emotive plea to get you to sign on the dotted line before you can ask questions.
It is just so obvious.
“To spend/waste such massive amounts of money which could go to more useful things like clean water”
Like
https://www.greenclimate.fund/-/fiji-urban-water-supply-and-wastewater-management-project (This project has 92.3% co-financing)
“The project will strengthen water supply through the design and construction of a new water intake by the River Rewa, with a pumping station, wastewater treatment (WWT) plant, clear water reservoir, and pipeline to increase water production by 30,000 m3 per day. This will improve climate resilience by taking water from further up the river system to avoid salinity. Wastage will be reduced through meter replacement and improved leak detection and repairs. Wastewater management will be strengthened by upgrading and increasing the capacity of the Kinoya WWT plant, improving sewer coverage, and adding new treatment facilities. The project will also strengthen water management and delivery capacity of the responsible institutions.”
or
https://www.greenclimate.fund/-/simiyu-climate-resilient-development-programme
“A holistic approach will be adopted to address these two main drivers for the population’s resilience: sustainable provision of water and farming conditions. The government’s community based adaptation planning will be strengthened, and the climate resilience of water supply infrastructure, sanitation services and agricultural practices will be improved. A community-driven approach will ensure the targeting of the most vulnerable in both the urban and rural population, whilst improving the implementing capacities of local and central government structures.”
And these projects, however nice, have what to do with climate? Typical left management. We need money for X or (fill in an apocalyptic ending of your choice)! We spent it on Y, cause it sounded nice. Any you may ask, what about X? Oh yeah, we need more money.
Midwest Travler,
If you don’t know, why don’t you look it up? Sure, it’s easier to make assumptions (or listen to someone else do so), but then you never know if you are right or wrong. Be aware if you follow the link Willis provided that he has filtered the results to show only mitigation projects and ignored all the adaptation and “crossover” ones that address both mitigation and adaptation.
Lets reduce CO2 emissions and make money at it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQRQ7S92_lo
The utilities that install the Sidel CCU System will get refunded in full over 10 years.
The CO2 will continue to create full time jobs for many, and with over 90% of the CO2 being removed and transformed, President Trump will be able to show those countries from the Paris Accord that America is doing their part for the environment, and it’s good for America.
Make America Great Again. When we brought this to the DOE in 2014 they rejected this technology. It is affordable and it would be good for the coal industry.
Here’s a far better use for “the precious air fertilizer”:
https://sunshinehours.net/2017/11/11/omg-ha-ha-ha-co2-recycling/
https://euobserver.com/environment/139726
…exactly as envisioned by Dr. Friedrich Riedel nearly a century ago:
http://sealevel.info/1920sciamCO2
The Socialists are EverMore’ers.
When they come up short, as they inevitably always do, their solutions are always that they needed to spend “Ever More” of OPM.
If 40% of GDP didn’t work, then 50%. When (not IF) 50% of GDP doesn’t solve all the Socialist’s claimed societal problem, their solution is of course then try 60% of GDP, and so forth. Because it is really about Power.
Ever more. In the quest of Power for the Few over the Many.
But is it on time and on budget? Return on investment (ROI) are the underpinnings of a well run organization. Who are they accountable too, who are their stake holders. I do not see this in their mission statement. Is there a phone number I can call to reach the complaints department?
The purpose of government is to stay in power.
To do that anything beyond the illusion of competence need not be achieved, and even then its only necessary to appear less incompetent than the natural opposition.Or be just competent enough to eliminate them .
Try looking beyond the mission statement.
The stakeholders are diverse. Try a search for the word, “stakeholders.”
There’s the Independent Integrity Unit, https://www.greenclimate.fund/independent-integrity-unit#p_p_id_56_INSTANCE_7QbVo0OXy5hN_ There is also the Independent Evaluation Unit https://www.greenclimate.fund/independent-evaluation-unit and the Independent Redress Mechanism, https://www.greenclimate.fund/independent-redress-mechanism – these two have their own websites.
The contact numbers are found under “Contacts” in the description of each program.
And the left believes Trump is crazy? He’s the one with common sense to get us out of this madness.
But, the Children!
Not the ones dying all around us but the future ones
Buried within this wonderful discussion is the SOLUTION to Global Warming! Cities in the Sky! Yes … just like in so many Science Fiction Films … we will simply elevate our cities to escape rising global temperatures. If climbing the stairs can so dramatically reduce temperatures, then let’s start climbing. And don’t forget that Uber is nearly ready to deliver a fleet of flying cars …
We won’t have to worry about the rising tides … and just think of all the Capitalist JOBS that will be created as we elevate our cities into the cooler regions of about 10,000 ft. Above the heat, and above the tonnes of Co2.
PS … knowing that MY President got the US (and my tax dollars) OUT of this faux green boondoggle makes me even MORE pleased to have voted for the BEST US President in my lifetime of 62 years. My President is a …
Cool walking, smooth talking, straight smoking, fire stoking
Cool walking, smooth talking, straight smoking, fire stoking …
President … yeah!
This scam has always been about the money.
Thanks Willis. And thanks to the POTUS!
But. There is always a butt.
Greens in the left coast State of Washington have an idea for a fund of their own. They call it a fee, I call these things stealth taxes.
Washington activists and politicians have a grand tradition of not using the word “tax” if at all possible.
WA: I-1631
“I-1631 proposes to institute a $15 fee per metric ton of carbon starting in 2020, and an incremental increase of $2 (adjusting for inflation) each year. There are exemptions . . .“
3 Jul: ClimateChangeNews: Board meeting turns ‘toxic’ as UN climate fund runs low
Rich and poor country representatives clash over policy priorities and replenishment at Green Climate Fund board meeting
By Megan Darby
With developing countries complaining their priorities were not properly represented, it took nearly two days to agree on the agenda for the meeting.
“I have never served on a board that is this dysfunctional and toxic in my life,” said US representative Geoffrey Okamoto, as the discussion dragged on…
***As well as the US withholding $2bn of its pledge, the pot has lost some $1bn in value due to exchange rate fluctuations since 2014, officials reported…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/07/03/board-meeting-turns-toxic-un-climate-fund-runs-low/
Thanks for that, Pat. That was actually the article that set me to write about this. Most amazing statistic? That out of seven billion dollars or so, they managed to lose a BILLION DOLLARS from “exchange rate fluctuations” … say what? Were they keeping it all in Venzuelan Pesos, or what? How could they lose that much? There’s more to that story, I reckon …
w.
If they had the money in British pounds they would have lost even more over the last two years alone.
This almost sounds like someone was speculating with the money and bet on the wrong horse. Or it was just flat stolen and this is their cover story, so the UN doesn’t have to admit they lack the competence to even manage a fund.
If they were keeping the fund in Euros (the great stable Euro), it would have lost 14% of it’s value (in US $) from 01/01/2014 to present. A $1B loss would then equate to a an original value of $7.14B, which sounds about right…
I told an older lady about all this and the fact that East Asia including China’s increases more than negates every other countries’ attempts to mitigate and she said but God told her that we have to do something. When she asked me if I believed in God and I said no, she didn’t want to talk to me anymore.
Once the various religious denominations became involved in climate change, this is an example of what can happen.
oh ye of little faith;-) roflmao
God told her that we have to do something.
=========
What is wrong with prayer? I have never heard God say “send money”.
“God told her that we have to do something.”
Agitate for new forms of nuclear power now and research into fusion power later. And for a switch from oil to natural gas for home heating and big truck fuel. Those will be cost-effective.
Must be handy to have a god so vague that you can interpret his words in any way you please.
Seriously: It is difficult for God (or high spirits) to reach people, but it happens once in a long while. He certainly would not be so vague – quite the contrary. He would give simple, down-to-earth, understandable advice. First he would try to educate the recipient – slowly and patiently. This first step usually is also the only one, as people are stubborn, prejudiced, etc..
More important than that, God doesn’t interfere with the follies of fallen man (like the Climate-scam). To people who nearly despair of the stupidity of all that he might lend an ear though.
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/07/03/board-meeting-turns-toxic-un-climate-fund-runs-low/
“Board meeting turns ‘toxic’ as UN climate fund runs low”
Ah, sweet schadenfreude!
Poor, starving babies, only “$2.8 billion left” in the piggy bank. How tragic.
Hansen et al 1988 says, “A warming of 0.5°C… implies typically a poleward shift of isotherms by 50 to 75 km…”
I think that’s a bit high, but if we accept that estimate then 0.0015°C of warming would be equivalent to a poleward shift of isotherms of (50 to 75) km × (0.0015°C / 0.5°C) = (0.150 to 0.225) km = 492 to 738 feet, which is about two typical city blocks.
Willis, you are usually keen on accuracy. You should amend this totally wrong statement that Trump has pulled anyone out of Paris Agreement. He has so far done NOTHING written or legal to that end. He has just said US “will be” pulling out, and that was now rather a long time ago that he said it.
The part about the Green slush fund is correct and is probably the most important but that is just a policy change which can be reverted just as easily in the future by him or any future president.
“He has so far done NOTHING written or legal to that end.” He doesn’t have to. He doesn’t agree. There is nothing binding in this “agreement” to address by the United States which he represents. No legal ramifications. If they expect something more they need to ask Obama.
Greg, Mark beat me to it. We were never officially bound to the Paris Agreement. All that bound us was Obama saying we’d follow the rules of the Paris Agreement. Obama didn’t even try to get the Paris Agreement past the Senate, in which case we would have been bound by it … he knew that would fail.
So now Trump has said we will NOT follow the rules of the Paris Agreement, and that’s all that is needed. We’re not obligated to do anything.
Obama famously and foolishly said:
Sadly for him, but fortunately for us, what is done with a pen and a phone can just as easily be undone with a pen and a phone …
Best regards,
w.
Agreed…. however had TPP been passed by the Senate we would have legally been bound by both the Paris Agreement AND the CPP plan. Obama had the TPP written so that it was the legally binding enforcement mechanism for both.
“TPP”? “CPP”? Translate, please?
Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Clean Power Plan.
I think all the fireworks we are shooting off tonight just canceled out what that $6.9 billion bought… 😉
A dollar is about 15 cm long. The distance to the sun from earth is some 15 trillion cm, so a trillion dollar bills end to end would reach the sun. So the cost of that 1C, if in fact CO2 works that way, would be a ribbon of dollars two return trips earth to sun and back to Mercury in length. The 7.2 billion would make a ribbon of dollars a million km long, enough to wrap around the equator 25 times. Even the small number could have been used for some projects to make a difference in the 3rd World.
So if we simply stood on top of all the dollars spent the change in altitude would have provided the same amount of cooling.
The same or even greater amount of cooling.
I think it is generally agreed that on NASA GISS figures the world is warming at the rate of 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade.
Ocean warming is a fraction of that.
Unless Global Warming comes out of the blocks like Usain Bolt in the next few decades, the world can spend $nil and still come in well under an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050.
Am I deluded here?
Has the contrary view taken hold namely that we will pass a “tipping point” and have runaway CAGW?
Who believes this?
The 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050 is from the start of the Industrial Revolution and it has already gone up by 0.8 degrees Celsius, ( at least 0.6 due to “Adjustments”, which we are not allowed to talk about), so there is only 0.7 degrees Celsius to go before 2050.
If it does warm suddenly, without a substantial increase in water vapor, wouldn’t that invalidate the carbon based AGW hypothesis as well.
How is CO2 weighed? That is… is weight derived by volume of gas at some set temperature or as if it were a liquid? And are the measurements consistent across the world? Do the different countries get to decide how to measure their CO2 emissions?
Co2 is weighed like anything else. On a scale or set of scales effectively. Weight is not derived from volume but from number of molecules. What space they occupy or whether they are liquid solid or a gas does not alter their weight (measurably).
Surely it is worth putting these numbers in context
The US contribution was nearly 4 billion. The US’s GDP was 18 Trillion in 2016
while the government’s deficit is about 1 Trillion. So a 4 billion contribution is
a drop in the bucket that would not be noticed. Similarly the global GDP is currently
about 76 Trillion so again actually a spend of 4.6 Trillion is also actually a fairly low
number. You can think of it as being about 5 years worth of US government deficit or
alternatively it is equal to about 5 times the annual cost of the US military.
Furthermore much of that 4.6 trillion would go on providing jobs for people around the
world and so would not be wasted.
It would be wasted if spent on the wrong jobs.
I have no obligation (per my tax dollars) to provide jobs for anyone anywhere. I don’t want a dime to go to the fund, much less billions. I came to WUWT I an attempt to make sense of the climate change howls and I stand convinced that it is all a scam. I will not willingly contribute to the scam.
Percy Jackson
Four billion dollars is a “drop in the bucket”? On what planet?
Water Wells for Africa puts in village level wells for $8,000 each. Four billion dollars would buy water wells and provide clean water for half a million villages … but instead we’ve poured it down a rathole for no gain. Well, not no gain … a theoretical possible gain of a cooling of 0.0015°C.
But you think it’s just fine to waste money, I guess.
Look, you can always find a bigger number to compare something to … so what? The idea that $4.6 TRILLION dollars is a “fairly low number” doesn’t pass the laugh test. You don’t seem to realize how big a trillion dollars is. Here’s a way to visualize it.
Suppose your family started a business in the year one, when Jesus was born. But like you, they don’t care about wasting money. In fact, they were so prodigal that they were losing a million dollars each and every day.
Now, a million dollars would make you a millionaire in one day, it’s a lot of money. But your business was losing that much every day. And it continued to lose a million dollars per day, through the fall of the Roman Empire, through the Dark Ages, on past the Medieval times, up to the Victorian period, the Renaissance, and all the way to today, losing a million dollars each and every day.
So … having lost a million dollars every day from the year one up to the present, how many trillion dollars would your company have lost by now? A hundred trillion? Fifty trillion? Ten trillion?
Giving meaningless jobs to a bunch of third world bureaucrats and UN rent-seekers? That’s your brilliant plan?
Gotta say, amigo … anyone who lets you anywhere near a cash register or a checkbook is making a serious mistake …
w.
PS—How many trillions of dollars would your business have lost if it lost a megabuck every day for 2000 years?
Not even one … and think of all the wonderful things you could accomplish if you were to spend a million dollars on a new project every day. Four trillion dollars is NOT a “fairly low number”, no matter how many larger numbers you compare it to.
Willis,
The question is how does 4 billion dollars compare to the US government budget which is
about 4 trillion so the climate fund costs about 0.1% of the government’s annual budget and since it was not all paid in one year the cost per year was less. For comparision the Pentagon cannot account for nearly $800 million that it spent in 2016. So the green climate fund is roughly equivalent to an accountancy error in the Pentagon. Alternatively the US Federal reserve bought nearly 2 trillion dollars worth of bonds as part of its quantative easing program so again 4 billion for a green climate fund is a tiny amount.
Now for any number you can find ones larger or smaller depending on what you want to compare it to. 4 trillion dollars is huge compared to most people’s wealth (although it is only 40 times what Bezos is worth so even then it is not so large). But the important comparision should be to the global GDP since the money would be spent globally and would benefit everyone. And in the context of the global economy and assuming that the money would be spent over 50 years it is a relatively small amount.
Sorry Percy… but donating a 100 billion a year into a UN slush fund is not something rational people are interested in. Even IF it was being used, as they want you to believe, on Green projects… it is a total waste of money. More likely than not 90% of the money would disappear into “overhead” just like in the Clinton Foundation.
Alcheson – I never made any comment about it was something that should
be done or whether “rational” people are interested in it. My comment was that compared to the size of the global economy the amount of money needed is relatively small. The entire cost if done over 20 years would amount to about 50 dollars per person per year. Again for comparison the average health insurance premium in the USA is $300 per month. So it would add about $4 dollars per month to the average health insurance premium in the USA to combat climate change.
Percy Jackson
“…………to combat climate change”
Which, other than being a natural phenomenon, has never been proven to be affected by humankind or CO2.
The single event that can be attributed, empirically, to increased atmospheric CO2 is that the planet has greened by 14% in 35 years according to NASA.
If you want to compare numbers, try calculating what that benefit brings to mankind. Two continents the size of mainland USA worth of extra vegetation was how one of the reports authors described it.
Combating ‘climate change’ when it has demonstrated nothing but a positive outcome is collective green lunacy, and there’s simply no price one can apportion to that.
I won’t even go into the 120,000,000 million people the WHO* expects to die from conditions associated with burning wood and animal dung for cooking and heating by 2050 (just 32 years away) because they have no electricity. With the cash proposed for climate funds, innumerable coal, gas and nuclear power stations could be constructed in a short period of time to alleviate that suffering.
People are dying right now, yet wealthy nations seek to virtue signal by chasing a phantom cause.
*World Health Organisation.
HotScot,
You are right and people are dying right now from easily preventable causes all round the world. Yet Trump for example wants NATO countries to spend more on military rather than foreign aid. If countries all decided to cut military spending by 50% and divert that to stopping poverty everyone would be better off. But no-one seems to want to do that.
Percy Jackson
Foreign aid is a false dawn. It puts an entire country on welfare with no way to get off it.
Colonialism did more good than foreign aid ever has. Look at America. After kicking out the Brits it flourished. India would have been the same but for Ghandi, and there are still British colonies around the world like Bermuda and, up until 1997 Hong Kong was one of the worlds financial powerhouses.
When Mugabe kicked out the white farmers who ran Zimbabwe on colonial principles (it was only briefly a British colony) inflation went from 38% to 11,000,000% (yes, eleven million percent) and 80% unemployment. The new regime will undoubtedly negotiate new foreign aid deals Mugabe was denied because of his brutal marxist activities, but it will take generations just to stabilise the country, if it’s even possible. Over that time millions of people will die of poverty.
Far better to withdraw all aid, deal with the migration issue (which is an arguable case for foreign aid, to encourage people to leave) then encourage businesses to make the Zimbabwean government offers to buy land for industry and agriculture.
Simplistic, perhaps, but as it stands, foreign aid is about as much use as a plaster in a swimming pool.
My late father in law worked for the UN and said the UN was well aware that at best, only 50% of aid, be that financial or physical, reached the people it was intended for. The bulk of it was trousered by government officials and their quasi Mafia networks.
HotScot,
Colonialism was not a net benefit for any colonial country. Prior to the English invasion India was the richest country in the world and after it it ended up as one of the poorest. The British enslaved millions of Africans transported across the sea and worked them to death. 99% according to some estimates of Native Americans died after Columbus “discovered” America. Belgians raped pillaged and plundered the Congo and I could go on and on. Empire building was popular because it brought in wealth and not because the Europeans thought they were doing people a favour by conquering them.
Percy Jackson
“Western colonialism was, as a general rule, both objectively beneficial and subjectively legitimate in most of the places where it was found, using realistic measures of those concepts. The countries that embraced their colonial inheritance, by and large, did better than those that spurned it. Anti-colonial ideology imposed grave harms on subject peoples and continues to thwart sustained development and a fruitful encounter with modernity in many places.”
Excerpt from the abstract of a paper written on the subject in 2017:
The case for colonialism
Bruce Gilley
Department of Political Science, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA
Unfortunately, you probably won’t be able to get a copy of it online. Despite it being peer reviewed and accepted for publication, it was withdrawn by it’s author because the editor of the Journal it was to be published in received death threats to him and his family.
Gilly refused to risk any harm to them, so a valuable, scientific document has been buried by unscientific shrieking from activists.
As for your contention that India was the richest country in the world before colonisation, that may be true, however:
“Trading rivalries among the seafaring European powers brought other European powers to India. The Dutch Republic, England, France, and Denmark-Norway all established trading posts in India in the early 17th century. As the Mughal Empire disintegrated in the early 18th century, and then as the Maratha Empire became weakened after the third battle of Panipat, many relatively weak and unstable Indian states which emerged were increasingly open to manipulation by the Europeans, through dependent Indian rulers.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_India
I don’t like using Wikipedia, so apologies, but for an overview it can sometimes be useful. Clearly, the country was in dire political trouble.
And without wanting to be rude, if you simply accept the rhetoric that colonisation was universally evil, then you should wholly accept the concept that AGW is a fact. After all, the messages come from the same people.
Percy, if you believe that “Colonialism was not a net benefit for any colonial country”, then you’d be surprised at the large number of people I’ve met in ex-British colonies who said “Boy, I wish the British were still in charge” … and by “people” I mean local people, not expatriates. In a number of countries, the Colonial times are looked back on with fondness by a reasonable section of the population as a time free of the tribalism, rampant theft, tyranny, nepotism, and widespread corruption that plague so many modern ex-colonies.
Doesn’t negate your points, although you fail to mention that disease killed most of the “Native” Americans (who are no more “native” than you or I). I’m just saying that with Colonialism, there was a lot of good along with a lot of bad … welcome to the real world.
w.
Those diseases would have been introduced as soon as Europeans started contacting the natives, regardless of whether or not colonies were created.
Willis,
There is no doubt that the process of de-colonisation could have been handled a lot better. And it is almost impossible to untangle the effects of colanisism both positive and negative and how it was ended not to mention the fact that counter-factual histories are almost always highly selective. But for example consider the case of Ireland – the country in western europe that was colonised for the longest and it was also the poorest for a long time. Does anyone really want to claim that Ireland was better off after being invaded by England? Similarly Wales or the scottish highlands?
Oh, ho! Talking about my ancestors here, boy. Who were engaged in constant inter-clan warfare, raiding their neighbors, and were, in essence, “savages.” The English, for all of their errors after taking them over, made lives there far better than “nasty, brutish, and short.”
Go peddle your complete ignorance of anything whatsoever elsewhere, please.
The notion that prior to colonization India was the richest country in the world is one so stupid that only someone with zero connection to the real world would believe it.
Mark,
Look at how much money went into India thanks to the spice trade. And how many Roman authors for example complained that all of their wealth was ending up in India. Furthermore in general the longer a region in India was under British rule the poorer it ended.
And all the world would be peaceful if we just put down our weapons and sing Kumbaya together.
It really amazes me how many people are utterly convinced that the only reason why we have defense departments is so that government can make rich people richer.
If the only purpose is to make jobs, take away their shovels and give them spoons.
Red94ViperRT10
That’s precisely what renewables offer. I believe it takes 70 renewable employees to produce the same energy as a single coal worker.
Job creation on steroids.
You seem to be suffering from the delusion that government spending creates jobs.
It doesn’t. At the absolute best it just moves jobs from one part of the economy to another.
Same with tariffs, they just take jobs from the unfavored parts of the economy and move then to those that have the ear of politicians.
You would be better off spending that money employing people to dig holes and then fill them up again, over and over. At least that would not waste precious resources building windmill and solar farms that only destabilize the power grids they are connected to. Not that I’m an advocate of such an expenditure since that would be a colossal waste of human labor as well as a form of government welfare. And I can think of a few million taxpayers that would love to have those billions back in their pockets. Your defense of this sounds a lot like Nancy Pelosi’s “crumbs” remark. Elitist and arrogant.
Even FoE (not my favourite organisation) are pretty critical of the GCF – for their own reasons of course: https://1bps6437gg8c169i0y1drtgz-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/GCFperformanceCheck_V6_Final.pdf
Thank you for that FoS document, John Hardy.
It’s great comic relief. Here’s one of the FoE’s complaints:
You really can’t make this stuff up. It astonishes me that a lot of leftists really do think[sic] that way.
Intersectional feminist post-dialectical assemblage criticism of science as a racist, colonialist social construct.
It’s no wonder that they never get anything useful done.
The bottom row on the classroom screen is so ironic: “Words have meaning”; this is after demolishing the meaning of words which have been in the vocabulary for centuries. I guess they take the Humpty-Dumpty view.
Fantastic article – thank you! I’m planning to do some non-commercial motion graphic video’s (mainly for YT) picking apart the Gorebal warming fanatics claims – Do you have any problems with me essential ‘animating this article’? Full credit & links will be given. Happy to send you a preview of it before I post to YT
Clare, I toss my words on the electronic winds in the hope that they will land on fertile ground. You are more than welcome to do what you wish with any or all of my poor contributions.
And yes, I would love to see the preview. It would make me feel like a Hollywood insider …
w.
‘Poor contributions’??? That’s about as accurate as one of Mann’s claims! – Just finishing a 30 min doc on 4th Indu Revolution – The coming war on jobs. Then, I’ll be focusing on climate change but instead of trying to cram it all into 30 mins, the subject warrants a series. The absurdity of their claims (most of which I learn from here) is just begging to be laid out in visual form and I’m relishing the prospect of churning these out on a full-time hobby basis
Go Clare!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the type of thing needed by sceptics.
🙂
Nice! Are you thinking of something like the PragerU series, but with longer run-times?
http://prageru.com/playlists/what-science-reveals-about-climate-change
What’s your YouTube channel?
I’m curious: what tool(s) do you use to make your videos, Clare?
Weird – only now does your reply show up. I had tried to reply to the notification email
but couldn’t see your reply here..so I posted a new comment addressed To Whom It May Concern. Anyway, here it is my reply in case you missed it
Are you thinking of something like the PragerU series, but with longer run-times? – Yes, more than happy for suggestions of style/content, etc
What tool(s) do you use to make your videos?
MAYA (for character modelling & rigging – a control system so the character can be animated) plus Redshift for GPU rendering
3D COAT (UV & texturing – basically the coloring-in bit)
VUE (realistic 3D landscape/environments)
Adobe CC Suite (After Effects/Prem Pro/Potatoshop, etc)
Affinity Designer (because I hate Potatoshop)
What’s your YouTube channel? Currently I’ve just posted a few technical rigging tutorials which are of no relevance or interest to anyone here. But, once I’ve finished my doc (my first) then I’ve got to figure out what to do – create a channel solely about Gorebal warming, etc because I’ intend to create a long running series of them or post them along with all the other vid’s I intend to make on random topics such as Off-grid life-hacks, soap-making, etc.
Clare wrote, “Weird – only now does your reply show up. I had tried to reply to the notification email but couldn’t see your reply here..”
Interesting! I didn’t realize that notifications of replies get emailed BEFORE moderators approve a moderated comment.
The reason you didn’t initially see my reply comment is that, for some reason, it triggered “moderation.”
Moderators, do you know what the trigger was?
The usual trigger is having four or more links in a comment. I’ve learned how to subvert that trigger, {bwahaha!}…
…but I don’t know what triggered it this time.
I think it used to be possible to trigger moderation on purpose, by using the word “moderators” in a comment, but that apparently doesn’t work on this new system.
lol!!! There’s me thinking I was being a bit dumb – surely if I’ve got email notification then the comment must exist or does it?
Willis,
According to Bloomberg, the head of the Green Climate Fund, a former Australian diplomat called Howard Bamsey has just resigned after a “ disappointing” meeting of the Fund in which no new projects were approved.
One commentator says this is “ a low point “ for the organisation but hopes this is the “ canary in the coal mine” and not “ the nail in the coffin”!
But, but, doesn’t it feel good to be saving the planet, as long as it’s not my money. Oh wait it is! This is really about global government, so who gets the most votes, and the money?
Robber
Ah!
You spotted the fatal flaw in their plan.
No one gets to vote, that’s how Christina Figueres’s new political system works, not that she’s described how her new global politics works, but she want’s to scrap Capitalism.
“Don’t throw good money after bad!”
Hi Willis, couldn’t agree more with the above statement . Here’s some other spending that could go to a better cause.
” In the decade following Sept. 11, 2001, military spending increased 50 percent, adjusted for inflation. In comparison, spending on every other non-military program – things like education, health care, public transit, and science –grew by only 13.5 percent over the same time period”
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/how-military-spending-has-changed/
“The U.S. outpaces all other nations in military expenditures. World military spending totaled more than $1.6 trillion in 2015. The U.S. accounted for 37 percent of the total.
U.S. military expenditures are roughly the size of the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined.”
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/us-military-spending-vs-world/
Willis, When America is at war who runs the show, the military or the government?
jmorpuss
Are you suggesting democracy isn’t worth defending?
And whilst there is no evidence whatsoever that justifies spending a penny on climate change, it’s clear that military spending is justified by radical Islamic aggression around the world, which the USA takes seriously.
HotShot
Democracy meaning “Rule of the people” sounds like the people are in control , but wait, if you look up the meaning for the word “rule” it means “to control” So what democracy really means is “control of the people”.
And what do you think happens to all the out of date weapons the US military has produced over the years???
“When President Obama announced US airstrikes in Iraq, most observers understood that the US would be bombing members of ISIS. What many did not know was that, in a twist of such bitterly symbolic irony that it could only occur in the Middle East, the US would also be bombing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of American military equipment.
Here’s why: in the decade since the 2003 US-led Iraq invasion, the US has spent a fortune training and arming the Iraqi army in the hopes of readying it to secure the country once America left. That meant arming the Iraqi army with high-tech and extremely expensive American-made guns, tanks, jeeps, artillery, and more. ”
https://www.vox.com/2014/8/8/5982501/the-us-is-now-bombing-its-own-military-equipment-in-iraq
One thing the US military needs is conflict to justify it’s spending and i put it to you that the US military create conflicts around the world so their people wont question their spending .
“This is a list of the world’s largest arms manufacturers and other military service companies who profit the most from the War economy, their origin is shown as well. The information is based on a list published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for 2015.[17][18][19][20][21] The list provided by the SIPRI excludes companies based in China.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry
jmorpuss
Irrespective of your demented interpretation of democracy, it’s the manifestation of it that’s important, you know, real life stuff. You might want to read Samuel Adams Speech to help you understand.
Why look! Imagine that, Anthony posted a copy of it yesterday: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/04/199977/
And there you go, off on the tired old conspiracy theory that America creates wars in order to send Haliburton in and profit from international aid to reconstruct. Then go in and bomb the equipment they provided to the Iraqi army to get more money, somehow?
The Americans undoubtedly bombed their own equipment, which is what the Russians should have done in Afghanistan, but didn’t. They just left untold equipment there which the Mujahideen put to good use, then Al-Qaeda, to turn the region into a poverty stricken wasteland.
To ship all the American equipment out of Iraq would have taken a huge logistical effort, over an extended period of time, during which much of it would have been pilfered. With the expense and risk involved, it was deemed prudent to destroy rather than recover the equipment. Perhaps not demonstrably economical on a spreadsheet, but then a spreadsheet doesn’t account for the wholesale damage that equipment would have caused had it fallen into the wrong hands. Not to mention the opportunity to be sold to, and reverse engineered by, opportunistic foreign governments.
Frankly, your contention that America deliberately wages war to profit from destruction is utterly preposterous. WW2 would have been an ideal opportunity, yet the US refused to join the UK in Europe fighting Hitler, until RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U Boat with 128 American citizen deaths. And the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, remember?
Then there was the lend – lease program. At it’s own risk, and with only the principles of civilisation as justification, America lent the UK $31.4 billion (equivalent to $427 billion today) which was only paid off in 2006.
Your treacherous beliefs insult the memory of every ally soldier who fought to defend your right to make insane propositions.
And there’s a much easier way of generating wealth to cover military spending, it’s called Capitalism, and free trade, which America used to be very good at.
“the US refused to join the UK in Europe fighting Hitler, until RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U Boat ”
Eh?
Roger Knights
“Eh?” what?
The sinking of the Lusitania brought the US into the first world war.
Hitler was only a corporal at that time.
It was the bombing of Pearl Harbor that brought the US into WWII.
And even then we probably wouldn’t have gotten involved in the European theater if Hitler hadn’t declared war on us.
MarkW
Yep, my mistake. My two brain cells tripping over each other.
“The sinking of the Lusitania brought the US into the first world war.”
Nope, that occurred in 1915. What got the U.S. into WW1 was the release of the Zimmerman telegram (intercepted and decoded by the Brits) in 1917, which offered Mexico assistance in regaining its lost lands in the U.S. SW.
Saved me some time there…
HotShot Ends his rant with
And there’s a much easier way of generating wealth to cover military spending, it’s called Capitalism, and free trade, which America used to be very good at.
“The ties between slavery and capitalism in the United States weren’t always crystal clear in our history books. For a long time, historians mostly depicted slavery as a regional institution of cruelty in the South, and certainly not the driver of broader American economic prosperity. ”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2017/05/03/the-clear-connection-between-slavery-and-american-capitalism/#445d95d07bd3
Debt, Underemployment, and Capitalism
The Rise of Twenty-First-Century Serfdom
“Working classes, en masse, have been corralled into legalized systems of education debt with false promises of “middle-class” lifestyles, only to be tossed into a job market that can no longer keep up with the system’s inherent deficits and inability to provide a living wage to the masses. Massive inequality and unprecedented wealth accumulation and concentration have paralleled uncontrollable costs of living and widespread housing insecurity for the working-class majority.”
http://newpol.org/content/debt-underemployment-and-capitalism
Serfdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom
jmorpuss
Oh dear. You deem to drag the subject further off topic to make a point, then introduce a magazine article to reinforce that point.
There’s a clue there, magazine articles don’t go down very well on this blog. It is devoted to science after all.
However, I will respond by saying that, it’s my understanding that the Klu Klux Klan was the brainchild of the Democratic party. That benevolent institution you seem to apportion with generosity and moralistic values. That socialist institution you admire which conforms to the same values as Venezuela, and innumerable other poverty riven countries who imagine that the state spending Other Peoples Money is a good idea. States that are internationally renowned for government corruption and citizen subjugation.
But that’s OK, because my parents and grandparents fought for your right to express your opinions. But try going to Venezuela and expressing those sentiments and I expect you would return to a free democracy a humbled man, if you returned at all.
I’m not sure about your country (I assume you’re American) but one of the greatest contemporary leaders of the UK, Margaret Thatcher, and her Conservative successors, left our country with a positive bank balance. The socialist government, which followed her, headed by Tony Blair, not only spunked all that money in his term as PM, but spunked much, much more, so much so that the whole country was groaning under immense debt.
Your term “Debt, Underemployment, and Capitalism The Rise of Twenty-First-Century Serfdom” defines the left, not the right. Witness Zimbabwe; Mugabie, a self proclaimed Marxist kicked out the colonial style white farmers and embarked on his destructive way. In, from memory, 1998, inflation was at a horrendous 35% (or so, exact figures escape me) and by 2015 inflation had risen to 11,000,000%. Yes, you read it right, eleven million percent. Today, there is 80% unemployment.
Please describe to me, or illustrate, where capitalism has ever done that badly?
Your description of working class servitude has been drawn from an amateurish, far left website you should realise, is extreme.
Evidently, you haven’t even read the description of Serfdom, from your own link, the first lines describe it thus:
“Serfdom is the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism. It was a condition of bondage, which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century.”
Read on and you will find: “The United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery also prohibits serfdom as a form of slavery.”
I don’t know whether you noticed or not, but the western world abandoned feudalism as a bad idea many years ago.
You are tossing about terms you don’t understand in the hope that some will stick, and you look clever.
And a little advice. If you want to insult me, the means by which to do so is to win an argument. Then I’ll be forced to apologise to you.
I could refer to you as jmorpussy, but I couldn’t possibly be that crass. It demeans me more than you.
I thank you for your indulgence.
That’s ridiculous nonsense, jmorpuss. The U.S. military doesn’t “create conflicts around the world,” and certainly didn’t create the wars in and around Iraq.
The main reason that American-made weapons found their way into ISIS hands is by ISIS capturing them from the retreating Iraqi Army. That happened because, when ISIS invaded Iraq, our leftist leadership, i.e., President Obama, refused to provide our Iraqi allies with the air support that they desperately needed, to repel the invasion.
Under President Bush, the United States had spent a fortune building up a modern Army to defend the nascent democracy in Iraq. However, we didn’t build them an air force to support their army. That’s because they wouldn’t need an air force, since if their army ever needed air support they’d get it from the aircraft carriers of the U.S. Fifth and Sixth Fleets.
But they didn’t get it, because our pothead commander-in-chief refused to authorize it.
My mind is still boggled by the fact that in 2014, when ISIS was overrunning much of Iraq, and the headless bodies of our friends and allies were piling up along streets in conquered towns, and the retreating Iraqi army desperately, desperately needed American air support, Obama… took a vacation. As the ISIL blitzkrieg progressed, Obama jetted to North Dakota, where he visited a Sioux Reservation. Then it was on to a California fundraiser, and a visit and golf with some gay friends in Palm Springs. Then he weighed in on the argument over how to pronounce “gif.”
Apparently, no crisis was severe enough to make Obama take his job seriously. What could account for such astonishing dysfunction? That’s when I began to wonder whether he ever really gave up the choom.
The US spends more for defense than do other countries because we have more to defend.
First you have to convert Gt CO2 to Gt C.
2 GtCO2 / 3.67 = 0.545 Gt C
$6.9 billion / 0.545 billion tonnes = $12.66/tonne
What’s a tonne of carbon worth?
https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/OMB%20Circular%20No.%20A-4.pdf
(We generally use a 10% discount rate to value proved oil reserves.)
At a real world 7% discount rate, a tonne of carbon is worth…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/15/discounting-away-the-social-cost-of-carbon-the-fast-lane-to-undoing-obamas-climate-regulations/
Or less.
Brilliant, Willis! As somebody else pointed out, Bjorn Lomborg has made similar calculations in the past and used them to highlight the profligate waste and stupidity of this whole CAGW scam. However, your numbers and comparisons really nail the issue and gave me a good start to my day. I wish Clare the best in producing her video and hope it will find its way to WUWT for us all to enjoy…..and to the wider world, so more people can see what this UN sponsored theft is all about! Great article!
Thanks, Phil. If I’m allowed to post them here on WUWT, then I will – got a few more weeks on my current doc to finish first
Willis, if you’re ever in Eastern Ohio, you need to stop by. We gather around the lakeside fire pit seeking answers to the great questions. You’d be a hit. Oh, and bring Anthony.
Mods getting that ” page can not be displayed” message again-thought you should know.
To Whom It May Concern
I received an email notification about a reply to a Comment I had posted yet oddly I don’t see the original reply to my post in the comment section (am I being a bit dumb?) so I don’t who it was but they asked me…
Are you thinking of something like the PragerU series, but with longer run-times? – Yes
What tool(s) do you use to make your videos?
MAYA (for character modelling & rigging – a control system so the character can be animated) plus Redshift for GPU rendering
3D COAT (UV & texturing – basically the coloring-in bit)
VUE (realistic 3D landscape/environments)
Adobe CC Suite (After Effects/Prem Pro/Potatoshop, etc)
Affinity Designer (because I hate Potatoshop)
What’s your YouTube channel? Currently I’ve just posted a few technical rigging tutorials which are of no relevance or interest to anyone here. But, once I’ve finished my doc (my first) then I’ve got to figure out what to do – create a channel solely about Gorebal warming, etc because I’ intend to create a long running series of them or post them along with all the other vid’s I intend to make on random topics such as Off-grid life-hacks, soap-making, etc.
” a drop of 1°C would cost us a mere $4.6 TRILLION DOLLARS “
Well, if this actually worked, if we really could control climate and temperature, $4600 billions dollar is certainly huge, but a fair price. I mean : $500 per inhabitant, which could be invested in a few decades ? What bargain.
Where to I sign to INCREASE temperature. 5° seems fair to me.
At the contribution ratio of the Green Climate Fund so far, how much of that would come from the US? Some people credit President Reagan with precipitating the collapse of the Soviet Union by forcing them to undertake new military spending they couldn’t afford. I think the communists of the world learned their lesson and are returning the complement.
Alan Watt from, THE Alan Watt from Cutting through the Matrix?
If so, many thanks for all your incredible work!
Sorry; I don’t understand the reference, so almost certainly not.
Years ago an editorial in the WSJ noted that the Kyoto accords would cost an estimated $10 Trillion. The benefit would be a six year delay in the temperature trend. That is, we would hit the same temperature level, but it would be six years later.
This is a better way to frame the discussion than in talking about “degrees of temperature reduced.” We have a natural warming trend that is going to continue, driven by both natural and man made causes. When you frame the discussion this way, it becomes more obvious how futile are all these proposed expensive gestures. Even if someone accepts all the bad predictions of the most fearful CAGW proponents, that still doesn’t mean that we should take any expensive steps to prevent or to mitigate our own contributions to warming, whatever they may be.
If adjusting to a warming world will be expensive, then we can’t afford to have expended all our resources on expensive measures that were doomed to be futile and ineffective from the start. All these green energy prevention initiatives are illogical, even if you accept the mantra of AGW.
I wonder if the calculations of changes in CO2 emissions included the entire supply chain of the new projects? If these new projects replaced existing facilities, which are now idle, then the entire CO2 production of the supply chain needs to count. If the new projects are new capacity, then the difference in CO2 production in the supply chain vs. CO2 production in the supply chain of the, for example, fossil fuel, alternative count. Since renewable power generally costs more than fossil fuel power (or nuclear), and since the price of things often is closely related to the energy needed to make it, one wonders.
How could we spend $7B to raise the CO2 levels to 800-1200ppmv? We know that will have a positive impact on agriculture and food security.
lol.
4 Jul: ClimateChangeNews: UN climate fund chief resigns for personal reasons while board meeting collapses
In a dramatic conclusion to a meeting that failed to approve any finance for the developing world, Howard Bamsey announced his exit from the Green Climate Fund.
By Megan Darby
Howard Bamsey resigned as executive director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) with immediate effect on Wednesday, in a bombshell finish to a fraught board meeting…
It came as the four-day meeting in Songdo, South Korea collapsed with no decisions on 11 funding bids worth nearly $1 billion, or on how to top up the flagship climate finance initiative’s dwindling resources…
US representative Geoffrey Okamoto said it should be “donor-driven”, to the chagrin of development campaigners.
President Donald Trump is refusing to honour an outstanding $2bn US pledge to the fund.
“The gall of the Trump guy to say #GCFund replenishment process should be donor driven. Guess he’ll just sit down and shut up then,” tweeted Action Aid’s Brandon Wu…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/07/04/un-climate-fund-chief-resigns-personal-reasons-board-meeting-collapses/
Wow, sure makes me want to reach for my wallet and “help out.”
Reminds of the famous direct mail offer: Double your IQ or none of your money back!
Or, alternatively, the mad carpenter: “I’ve cut this board three times, and it’s still too short.”
$4.6 TRILLION DOLLARS
≠=============
That estimate is probably much too low because it assumes costs are linear. But they are likely exponential as the UN fund is likely going after the low hanging fruit first.
The cost to eliminate CO2 completely is likely 10 K to 100 K per person. With pop projected to peak at 10 billion people we are looking at 100 to 1000 trillion dollars to decarbonize the world.
That would take between 1000 and 10,000 years if the 100 billion per year UN climate fund was fully funded and on the job.
Given that actual funding is just a tiny fraction of what was promised the job can be expected to take even longer.
Excellent post Willis!
It seems that you have dropped a “nuclear dry ice bomb” on the Green Climate Fund. How can there be any chance of survival?
The Left has long been into wealth redistribution. Internal redistribution in many western democracies are a variety of social programs. Today most of that money is redistributed from those that work and produce to those that don’t but a large percentage to government bureaucrats. The other form of wealth distribution, international redistribution, starts with the belief by those on the left that every western democracy got wealthy exploiting and taking advantage of third world or less economically advanced countries. There have been many international wealth redistribution programs, e.g., the Marshall Plan, foreign aid, the UN, etc. Today it is unfettered technology transfer, allowing countries like China to move from 1930s technology to 21st Century tech in a few decades instead of centuries. Yet the big one today is of course “fighting” the evils of global warming. The Left in the west see such wealth redistribution as deserved or proper punishment of the west due to the evil doings of the past and as an opportunity to bring capitalism to its knees.
But there is a simple solution to the 0.0015°C problem which was pointed out at a Paris Accord follow-up meeting in Berlin; much more money.
However the devil is in the details, it is so tedious (the exact word they used) to set up a system for the distribution of this huge amount of money. But this brilliant committee had a simple solution to this unfortunate challenge:
They would simply give the money to the green NGOs, because they had the organization required to solve this vast problem.
“They would simply give the money to the green NGOs, because they had the organization required to solve this vast problem.”
Kinda like the wolf guarding the hen house …D’OH !
Willis, that essay was just too good!
Great. A change that you can calculate but never measure, the climate warrior equivalent of counting the number of angels on the head of a pin. Once again, you demonstrate that this is a religious rather than a scientific argument. Think of payments to the Green Climate Fund as modern day indulgences to the Church of Global warming. Cheers –
So if the outside temperature drops by 0.0015 C for climbing 1/20 of a flight of stairs, will the greenies give me $6.9 billion the next time I take a step up?
This could become very lucrative for mountain climbers!
Thanks for pointing out the futility with such simplicity. I had not worked out the numbers the way you have, but my intuition has informed me that the Green Climate Fund was, and has always been, a green crock.
Send a copy of your figures to the UN, with a note to have some of their “experts” confirm the numbers. Yeah, right, like anybody will pay any attention to that. When a mission statement requires human fault, too many jobs and too much status stand to be lost by going against that mission statement.
Clearly, the whole scene has veered far, far away from sound reasoning, moving ever more furiously towards sound bites to reinforce those jobs and status.
Robert,
I have spent a great deal of time trying to get my Provincial (Ontario) and Federal governments to tell me what numerical relationship between emissions and temperature they are using to cost-justify and monitor the effectiveness of ‘environmental’ programs.
No state secret is guarded more carefully than this!
Hello Willis, You wrote an article years ago that I still reference….it was called something like “How much would you buy”….if my memory serves me correctly you estimated in that article that it would cost 1200 Trillion dollars to mitigate 2 degrees Celsius…now though, quoting from above numbers it is roughly 9.2 Trillion to mitigate 2 degrees Celsius,
How has this number changed so dramatically?
Gaelan, every one of these plans (Kyoto, the California climate laws, the claimed EU reductions, the Paris Agreement, and the Green Climate Fund) has a different amount of money that they claim it will cost. They also each have a different amount of CO2 that they claim will be “avoided” if we follow their goofy ideas.
Of course, the costs are always underestimated and the CO2 avoided is always overestimated, but in any case, that’s why the numbers are different in each case.
w.
Thank you Willis….so many thimbles, how in the heck do we keep our eyes on the pea(s)?!?!
Good people like you, Mr Watts, Mr McIntyre…..the list has been getting longer and longer since 2006…
Thank you sirs and madams
One can look up the Green Fund salary structure – minimum is $75K running to six figures and they complain about being short handed. Me me me …. I’m here!!
“However, those countries that emitted just under two-thirds of the total CO2 contributed a total of zero dollars to the GCF.” They instead contribute to the GCF projects in their home countries.
“Three countries, the US, Germany, and Japan, have put up nearly half of the $7.2 billion dollars that the GCF is currently wasting.” Wasting by giving people access to electricity, increasing crop resilience and access to markets, facilitating investment, providing clean water… Why didn’t you talk about the “adaptation” projects? You did not even mention them, and they are a big part of the picture. There are 76 projects total, some that are both adaptation and mitigation. Adaptation is often about agricultural resilience when storms, flood, drought, etc. destroy crops, and water management. In other words, food security. That seems like a pretty good thing.
How about on a per capita basis? Swedes are contributing over $60/pp. The U.S. would have contributed less than $10 per person, had we fulfilled our pledge. For the price of a cup of coffee (well, an iced latte, maybe) we could still be in the Paris Agreement. I would gladly give that just to take our place as world leader, but we evidently don’t want that anymore.
“The Green Climate Fund has avoided the emission of 2 Gt of CO2 … so IF their estimates are correct, and IF we got all of the savings today, instead of 410 ppmv it would make the CO2 concentration 409.88 ppmv.”
If your math is right and it takes $7 billion, a cost shared by governments, investors, individuals and NGOs (not just by tax payers!) to halt the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere, that would be a heck of a bargain.
But I don’t understand your math. The GCF is potentially avoiding the emission of only a portion of that which causes an increase in ppm, so wouldn’t temperature still rise? According to the site as of now, the avoided emissions are only 1.3 B tonnes, anyway. https://www.greenclimate.fund/what-we-do/portfolio-dashboard I don’t think that’s the whole point of the mitigation projects, though. They provide electricity to communities that need it. They help increase energy use efficiency. They trigger investment.
9 Trillion . That’s 9 000 billionaires or 9 million millionaires.
I’m just wondering..if you really want to curb emissions .. and environmental damage by human activity .. and acid rain .. and .. ocean acidification … and cars .. and …overfishing of the oceans … and .. so on.
If you REALLY WANT to do any of these things… how effective would 9 Trillion worth of contraception be?
If you look thru his list, you see that most of the projects are basically renewable power sources. So, first, he should be comparing to the cost of power sources replaced, not $/ton of CO2 saved. Second, because it is a small amount saved compared to the whole, that is irrelevant, like saying I don’t haf to pay my taxes because no one would miss my little pittance.
I love seeing actual math instead of propaganda! Well done!
LOve this matter od act approach to the realities i of the big green climate disaster mitigation snake oil scam. “Do the arithmetic” David MacKay. NOthing in the climate change science and certainly not in the phoney CO2 reduction measures makes snese if you simply follow y the facts, or enumerate the hypotheses. Because pseudo science can never be proven right by independnent validation.
Willis, you state that, “according to the UN IPCC, that increase in CO2 is claimed to have caused a temperature increase of 2.0787°C”. I have not seen this elsewhere. Would you give a source, please? It puzzles me because I thought that the great UN/IPCC objective was to avoid an increase in average global temperature of 2.0 degrees C. from pre-industrial times before 2100. If we have already surpassed the 2.0 degree C. barrier that supposedly will produce catastrophe, I wonder where is the catastrophe. Has someone misplaced it?
$6.9 billion to reduce two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions? If true, that would be an incredible bargain (by comparison with other projects to date), but of course the question is how this was measured. It would seem that the Green Climate Fund’s methodology for measuring the emissions reductions from projects, or for assessing the credibility of the project sponsors’ methodologies, needs a bit of work.