Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, making personal lifestyle changes has very little impact on anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
These Scientists Are Radically Changing How They Live To Cope With Climate Change
When the US government is doing nothing to stop climate change, do your personal choices even matter? Here’s how climate scientists are — and aren’t — changing their lives.
Zahra Hirji BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on April 23, 2019, at 10:00 a.m. ET…
If everyone who already cared about climate change “reduced their carbon emissions to zero, it doesn’t actually change very much,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Making your home energy efficient is nothing compared to laws that would require all buildings to be greener. Buying solar panels for your roof doesn’t pack the same climate punch as electric companies relying more on solar farms, and less on coal plants, to feed the grid.
“Agitating and voting and writing letters and op-eds,” Schmidt said, “make far more sense” for promoting systemic change.…
Schmidt is fine with people changing their lives because it’s fulfilling. But he doesn’t want the public to get the impression that the only way to save the planet is by abstaining from certain products or not traveling. “I don’t think that is where we want to end up,” Schmidt said.
His philosophy is: “Individual actions are not really the solution, but there’s no reason that you should unnecessarily pollute the atmosphere.”
Neither Schmidt nor Zelikova have given up flying entirely, but they have tried to cut back by combining trips or using virtual conferencing software. Schmidt became a vegetarian, driven both by animal welfare and climate concerns, and Zelikova aims to only buy meat from ranchers with sustainable grazing practices.…
Read more: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zahrahirji/scientists-climate-change-action
I’ll take climate scientists’ commitment to reducing their personal carbon footprints more seriously when they start teleconferencing major events like IPCC meetings, instead of holding massive fly in climate jamborees with 10s of thousands of participants.
Changing your habits won’t change things, but forcing everybody to change will work. Yeah.
But I thought that 97% of Climate suckers believed in the Cult of Climate Scientology. Gee Gavin, do you mean that so few people follow the supposed 97% consensus of Climate Prognosticators that all true believers wouldn’t alter a thing if they reduced their carbon output to Zero point Zero?
Sounds like that purported 97% bullocks is really somewhere around 3% instead.
If everyone who already cared about climate change “reduced their carbon emissions to zero, it doesn’t actually change very much,” said Gavin Schmidt,
If the entire United States reduced their carbon emissions to zero, it doesn’t actually change very much.
What was it ? An immeasurable 0.02 deg C ??
What’s worse is that he KNOWS that.
That was a modelled 0.02 deg C.
Using RCP 8.5!
Was that for the Paris Agreement or the Obama EPA’s “Clean Power Plan”, meant to kill the coal industry?
Top shelf models.
If EVERY country in THE ENTIRE WORLD reduced its “carbon emissions” to zero, it wouldn’t do jack shit.
Because CO2 doesn’t “drive” the Earth’s climate. It never has, it isn’t now, and it never will.
Why is the gravitational temperature effect not taken into account when discussing the greenhouse effect, the earth energy budget and greenhouse gases and their contribution to global warming?
It is claimed that the black body radiation from earth should be 255K but the surface of the earth is in average 288K. The difference is due to the presence of greenhouse gases mainly CO2. Should not the gravitational effect of gases on the temperature of about 9.8degK/km be taken into account?
https://objectivistindividualist.blogspot.com/2017/05/mgh-not-greenhouse-gases-provides-warm.html
Isn’t this the reason why the surface is hotter than 255K?
It certainly should, Louis, and this discrepancy isn’t being given nearly enough attention in my view. Lots of people here, including Anthony and Willis, and Dr. RG Brown, argue (with no evidence whatsoever) that there is no gravito-thermal effect. They are disagreeing with Loschmidt, Feynman, Graeff, and plenty of other physicists who can explain the effect quite straightforwardly. We really should sort this out to everyone’s satisfaction, because it’s going to be very difficult to make a functioning model of the atmosphere without taking this effect into account.
This fact is hugely important right now. California’s ability to regulate vehicle emissions hinges on a demonstration that this regulation is necessary. If EPA can be forced the acknowledge that zeroing out US CO2 emissions will do jack squat for temperature, then California’s marginal emission reductions from motor vehicles will, by definition, do eve less than jack squat. At that point, there is no plausible argument that the Clean Air Act waiver for California is “necessary” for CO2, and the waiver must be rescinded.
‘What’s worse is that he KNOWS that.’
That’s one of the problems I have with all these lukewarmists who will argue all day about how many angels can dance on the end of a pin in THIS forum, but never seem to find the time to correct any of the REAL whoppers being spread by the press or alarmist activists.
Gavin Schmidt could reduce his very own personal emissions by getting his mouth sewn shut, and encouraging others of his ilk to do the same thing. And walk to those IPCC conferences. That would impress me humongously.
Sorry, Mods, if I sound too annoyed, but I spent the weekend getting a bodacious lot of photos of geese and various species of ducks, and all the fishing people I ran into think that the Greenbeans and CAGWers and Ecohippies are nuts. None of us saw any of those self-important twits out admiring the wind-driven high surf on Lake Michigan, or doing a bird census count, or on the hiking trails looking for emerging wildflowers and nesting birds.
I think we should just wall them up in cities, charge them a fee and require a permit to leave the environs of their habitat (cities), and arrest them if they violate the rules outside the walls. I only say this because after my jaunts to the wetlands (I did hear frogs, but didn’t see them yet), it was as plain as daylight that the ecohippies and self-aggrandizing snobs like Emma Thompson and Hansen don’t really care about the planet at all, as George Carlin observed several years ago. They only care about the attention they can get for going to those demos.
Gavin and the Birth strikers can just commit mass suicide, which will reduce their emissions to zero immediately.
Well, then the bodies start degrading, which releases methane. Then there are the coffins, ground, etc: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-your-death-affects-cl_b_6263152
You just can’t die your way out of Climate Change.
Hear, hear! Either corral them in the cities or dump them somewhere where they have to manage without fossil fuels.
So maybe only the 97% of doomster scientists have to reduce their carbon emissions to zero rather than all of us? Sounds fine by me and carry on with the noble cause chaps.
Even David Buckel couldn’t get away from fossil fuels in his self immolation.
Whats worse we will have to be duped before we will understand the truth that the flim flam will result in fossil fuel for the blessed, read Gavin and the rich and famous he gets to hang out with like Emma Thompson, and leonardo dicrapio. They might as well paint signs on their private jets “fossil fuel for me but not for thee.”
He is right as now more than half of the people no longer believe so they have to have compulsion and know it.
As a so called scientist can he explain how corporate solar panels are any better than private ones at producing electricity at night or corporate wind farms when the wind does not blow.
Personally I will take them seriously when they invite sceptics to ask questions publicly and answer them plausibly and politely with no name calling.
Nah. Changing your habits won’t work, sending your money to places like Washington DC will allow Gavin and the other climate scientists to save the world. /sarc
Gavin was politically smart, in that green people can stop sacrificing, saying it does not matter since… scientists told me the only way to save the earth is through government (regulations) forcing everyone. There, so don’t call me a hypocrite!
No doubt Gavin is happy with the Government using the police powers of the State to enforce it’s “climate action” agenda on everyone else, rather than having people voluntarily under free will and personal choice make changes.
That allows the Elites to buy indulgences and buy favors from the rulers to get their personal climate exemption.
There are several prominent examples from the 20th Century how that form of government played out for the masses.
Just had an argument with a friend, who started down the wrong path, stating that she wishes hamburgers would cost $35 so people who make better choices… this led to ‘there are too many people’. She said she did not want this country to end up like Russian from where she came.
I said her misguided ‘good intentions” were terrifying to me… It went back and forth, but did not resolve.
Ask your friend if she wants a government powerful enough to force every citizen to do what the government politicians/bureaucrats think is good for them? What if she personally disagrees with a pronouncement? Does she think government politicians/bureaucrats are infallible? Does she think government politicians/bureaucrats should have the power to limit free speech for the betterment of society?
Do you think she understands the complexity of life? Does it appear if she thinks she is always right? Does she think she has the right to dictate personal decisions to others?
Do you think she is someone that you want in your life? Is her dogmatic life view worth your apparent personal aggravation?
Knowing the “Why” of hamburgers costing $35 is crucial. Free market or government control/mandates?
If 95% can afford a $35 hamburger, no problemo.
If only 5% can afford it, Big Problemo.
Yellow Vest time. Declaration of Independence time.
on burgers. or NOT burgers
our local stupormarket is selling those fake burgers this week first time Ive seen them
sorta pink lke meatpaste;-/
but the price?
FORTY au$ a kilo!!!!!!
I could buy the best local grown well treated grass fed fillet for 30 to 35?.
hard to credit a few cents of grain and GM altered goop can be worth so much to virtue signal
This all started because she read the tripe related to the “impossible burger”. Marketing gets people to make decisions based on feelings. He husband is a major player in the marketing business. I just did a quick search on the impossible burger and can see where she got all of her “But the way cows are treated, ” “Global Warming”, and then the site tells people what should be done to get the government to get rid of their competition.
This kind of mind control makes me sick!
She said she did not want this country to end up like Russian from where she came.
And yet she advocates for a position that inevitably leads to a country just like the Russia from whence she came.
Oh the irony, I said said as much. She said, “I am looking at the big picture not the details” responding to my reasoning that he wishes were dangerous because of… I said no, she is not looking at the big picture, because the big picture is Freedom… that we can make our own decisions with minimal government intervention and theft of property. That is what made the US a place that you ran to, and your wishes are what created what you ran from.
Salute!
She must be very young.
A blogger back when Russia was gonna host the Olympics cranked out some good pieces that had Russian culture themes. Some pieces explained many things most of we folks in the “west” did not understand. I feel she was trying to place a good face on the country and needed visitors.
In any case, she also had a few blogs about how things were before 1989, and even later. So take a look and think about how the folks in the U.S. and some other countries might react if they were required to exist as depicted.
https://understandrussia.com/soviet-apartments/
and all the great fresh veggies
https://understandrussia.com/deficit/
Oh yeah……. tell Gavin and all the acolytes that in their utopian world they may have to “adjust” a bit.
There will be “required” changes in lifestyle required to reverse climate change. And they will not determine the changes!!! They will live in the apartments depicted in the blog and have the glorious selection of fresh avacados, celery, romaine lettuce, squash, tomatoes, carrots, beans, peas, etc. that the young lady’s blog depicts.
And, oh yeah, I forgot……. The “controlling authority” will determine if Gavin can study climate or geology or underwater basketweaving at school. You know, from each according to……
Gums sends…
Hamburgers only for the rich? And willingness to get rid of so many ppl who are well doing?
Sounds like the Soviet Union. They eventually eliminated production and productivity. A green dream, if you will, until you see it for real.
You are correct: She is from Russian and in the argument she said she does not want the US to turn into Russian where she came from. I responded that “getting the government to tell us what we should do would do would make us less like USSR???” I said it’s frightening to think people can come up with government control as the answer to all of their wishes, when the US was founded on freedom. Freedom to be an asshole if you like!
You are correct: She is from Russian and in the argument she said she does not want the US to turn into Russian where she came from. I responded that “getting the government to tell us what we should do would do would make us less like USSR???” I said it’s frightening to think people can come up with government control as the answer to all of their wishes, when the US was founded on freedom. Freedom to be an a$$hole if you like!
I wish windmills and solar panels would cost a trillion dollars each.
So that, you know, people would make smarter choices about how to generate electricity.
We can’t do anything meaningful individually, we need to do it collectively, in order to tame CAGW, and of course, we will need a leader for this collective to show us the way.
I’m available, if the World needs an Eco-Emperor.
Uhhh… that’s assuming the pay is good. If it beats my Social Security check then yeah, I’m in.
Oh, and minions. I insist on having minions.
Doing what is necessary to meaningfully affect temperatures (assuming for the sake of argument that the alarmists are correct) would entail more drastic lifestyle changes than any individual would ever do voluntarily. Thus, government needs to be ceded the power to deprive individuals of enough personal freedom that government can force the requisite sacrifices down everyone’s throat.
Dinking around the edges of the “problem” by voluntarily scaling back airline travel or installing solar panels doesn’t reduce energy use enough. What we really need to do are things like outlaw private ownership of cars for everyone except the elites, and make ordinary citizens live within a mile of your workplace so you can bike to the office, or take light rail or other mass transit. If you need a car for a vacation, you can try to rent one of the governmentally-limited number of rental cars at whatever outrageous price is needed to keep demand in check. We need a smart grid capable of rationing everyone’s power usage to make sure people keep their thermostats in check during the winter and wear sweaters to keep warm, otherwise wind and solar just won’t cut it to satisfy electricity demand.
This is really what Gavin means. He just doesn’t have the intellectual honesty to say it.
Kurt and Tom You are very misinformed and simply wrong. Here is the one graph that destroys this ridiculous scam.
https://twitter.com/ATomalty/status/1120527877076865024
Interesting Alan. Why did you not fit a trend line instead of showing the flat average line?
Just eyeballing the data it does seem to have a small downward trend.
I’m always interested in evidence that is contrary to the 97% BS claims.
How does not showing the trend at one location “destroy” the scam?
Alan doesn’t understand the points Tom and I were making, which criticized Gavin Schmidt by saying that the logical end-point of of any solution offered by alarmists to their asserted climate crisis is the drastic curtailment of individual freedom.
Tom wasn’t advocating for a great “leader . . . to show us the way” – he was ridiculing Schmidt. I wasn’t advocating for smart grids or bans on private ownership of cars – I was noting that IF Schmidt and his ilk truly believe they are right, these examples were the types of actions that they must believe to be necessary but are too cowardly to say it, and they try to excuse their own prolifagate use of fossil fuels by arguing that their real climate efforts are in advocating for the government to assert this power over the masses, which they believe to be truly necessary.
Alan just wanted to post his link again. Your comments got picked.
I guess I should have included a “sarc” tag to my post. 🙂
It looks as if the activists want us to revert to how China was in the 1960s, equality except for the ruling class, everyone uses bicycles, the diet is very limited and mostly vegetarian (except for the wild life that gets eaten) and everyone has to wear quilted clothes in the winter as there is next to no heating.
– What about private jets?
– What about mega-yachts?
– Maintaining 2nd & 3rd vacation homes in winter destinations?
– Big mansions for two people.
Those do add up.
Now I’m one who thinks added CO2 is net beneficial, beneficial to both humanity and the biosphere, at least up to 2 doublings, = 4x pre-industrial (1,120 ppm).
But if you are one of the many who’ve been brainwashed into believing additional CO2 is harmful and will destroy the Earth. And thus life-giving CO2 is actually pollutant, as in some kind of religious belief about CC, and you also think the LIA was no big deal, then it is hypocritical in the extreme for the rich to continue to engage in those behaviors I list above.
Gavin is just trying to rationalize the moral quandary that the Climate Change believing Left has found itself in with its priests telling everyone to do as I say, not as I do.
As far as mega yachts go there is this one
https://www.moranyachts.com/luxury-yachts/black-pearl/?yacht-type=completed-yachts
Betcha that there is a huge diesel engine or gas turbine on that sailboat. Extremely expensive virtue signaling. I wonder the CO2 expenditures in constructing, operating and maintaining those high-tech sails?
Fersure. Those sails just look like giant spinnakers. They do not have the form to act as normal sails. The only photo they show of it really under sail power is in a tail wind.
It’s a classic executive yacht with vanity sails for fake eco-ness.
You can sail into the wind with that sail configuration See the Maltese Falcon…:
The Maltese Falcon in the video was sailing half wind (wind coming from 3 or 9 o’clock), which is optimum for sail boats, thus being able to go faster than the wind. Sailboats are lively. The issue first comes when you have schedule to adhere to. It is the same with wind turbines, they are okay at times, but nothing you can build a society on, thus it is cheaper to exclusively build and maintain power stations that can deliver on demand.
You can sail into the wind with that sail configuration
which is great *when* there’s a wind to sail into. Not going to get to far when there isn’t a wind to sail into.
Rich folks with an alternative, reliable backup don’t have to worry about that.
Rich folks with an alternative, reliable backup don’t have to worry about that.
“ou can sail into the wind with that sail configuration
which is great *when* there’s a wind to sail into. Not going to get to far when there isn’t a wind to sail into.”
Well quite, there was a reason that the RN went to coal, then oil… the factual point at issue was would it sail properly not whether it was stupid…
…If everyone who already cared about climate change “reduced their carbon emissions to zero, it doesn’t actually change very much,” said Gavin Schmidt…
Supposedly people who care far outweigh the skeptics and deniers, so it should make a huge difference.
“Supposedly people who care far outweigh the skeptics and deniers, so it should make a huge difference.”
So, one way or the other: we’re living in the best of all worlds.
/ to be told Gavin Schmidt
Ha ha. That’s a real gotcha isn’t it. How many people actually care? yea, probably all of three people. The rest just want to care, or pretend to care.
Gavin lies not only by omission, but by commission as well; he is a central participant in all those National Assessments. In addition of lying about worsening climate in the CONUS, the Assessments fail to point out the futility of their recommendations for U.S. CO2 abatement; the Assessments do not point out the documented current and future emissions growth in China, India, Africa, etc.
If everyone who already cared about climate change “reduced their carbon emissions to zero, it doesn’t actually change very much,”
If everyone in the US reduced their carbon emissions to zero, it still wouldn’t change very much. Even if you believe all the AGW nonsense, you still can’t deny this.
It matters even less in the US, Australia, Japan, and Europe given China’s and India’s current CO2 emissions and emissions trajectories for the next 30 years. Trajectories in which the UNFCCC’s COP process has no hope of controlling or curtailing.
The only thing the developed West is likely to do is commit economic suicide and shrivel in military power. Which is exactly the path to allow China’s military to dominate all of East Asia and the Western Pacific, and use debtor-in-possession of African raw materials in a new era of Chinese colonial imperialism at the end of a bayonet and ballistic missile.
But Bill Shorten (opposition leader here in Oz) says…”We are going to take REAL action on climate”
(Not withstanding the fact the if aliens suddenly took Australia off the planet, no-one would notice the difference temperature wise)
How do you know aliens are not already in control of Oz leaders’ bodies?
Seems to me their is ample in-direct evidence for it.
Will all humans the anus forms first. Trouble with politicians anus growth does not stop after birth!
Gavin was very cagey; he was truthful about it not making any difference, but he didn’t mention China, India, Africa, etc. as being the main reason that anything anybody did in the U.S., indeed the whole Western World, would make any difference.
Of course then there’s the fact that Gavin is simply wrong, as CO2 has never been empirically demonstrated to drive the Earth’s temperature or climate. They simply ASSUME that to be true without any empirical support.
Which means absolutely nothing humanity does about ITS PITTANCE of CO2 emissions (compared to natural emissions) would change a damn thing anyway.
Translation:
Freedom, Liberty, and America’s Constitutional Rights that places all power in the hands Individual citizens … is awful. Only a Centralized bureaucratic Fascist Dictatorship that plans and controls everyone’s life will “save” the planet.
I don’t want to live on THAT planet, or with THOSE people … EVER!
Me neither!
“Zelikova aims to only buy meat from ranchers with sustainable grazing practices.”
What the hell is “sustainable grazing practices” other than a buzz word?
Excellent question. I have no clue what all that pc, feel-good, virtue-signaling nonsense about “suss-stain-able” grazing is supposed to mean. But here is what I learned about “sustainable grazing” while spending one summer working on a 6k acre hay ranch in Southern Oregon. The ranchers I worked for ran about 200 head of cattle on a part of their property bordering a swampy lake. The cattle fed on the natural plant material found on the ground. Little or NO supplemental feed was necessary. The “sustainability” factor was that their cattle fattened up and bred new little calves … for FREE. Well, virtually for FREE … as with ALL ranchers, they lovingly,, and carefully monitored the health of their herd. If any of their cattle died suddenly … they would pay the local large animal Vet. to autopsy the animal to ensure no disease killed it which could harm the herd. They deeply cared about their cattle the way only a true Capitalist can … with their bank account. The death, or disease of their cattle would COST$ them everything. So they provided ALL that was needed for their animals. I suspect that people who talk about “sustainable” farming practices know NOTHING about REAL grazing. Nothing about real animal husbandry. Oh wait! Animal “husbandry” … that’s not pc to say, eh?
It’s the way ranchers stay in business as ranchers I presume.
Well you pay a leftist group or green mafia a fee and they give you a ticket that says “produced by sustainable grazing practice”. RSPCA, Sea Shepherd etc they are all into the scam.
Don’t forget WWF here
Does anyone know what Danegeld (gafol) means? Did it do the English any good?
Will Greenwash do companies any good? Will the WWF, etc. spare any company in the end?
OMG ! So TRUE! Here in the CA building industry I now have to hire “Greenpoint Raters” to file “Greenpoint” Forms to obtain a building permit in all the woke green intersectionalist cities of CA. It’s all about FULL Employment for the Environmental “Sciences” graduates.
Don’t forget about the hookers and blow at these conferences…never forget
Al Gore doesn’t have to go to COP After-party to get that.
“According to NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, making personal lifestyle changes has very little impact on anthropogenic CO2 emissions.”
Well that’s handy…..
Why do most climate horror dudes look like old soyboys?
I think we are all taking this the wrong way.
Let us look again at two bits of Gavin Wisdom;
““Agitating and voting and writing letters and op-eds, make far more sense” ”
and
“… he doesn’t want the public to get the impression that the only way to save the planet is by abstaining from certain products or not traveling. ”
So what we can take away from this is abstaining is bad and writing letters is where the real action is.
So I am going to refuse to abstain from coal fired electricity, meat, travelling, driving a turbo diesel, voting conservative and wearing leather and then write a letter to Sarah Sea Patrol tell her… well… not sure she can actually read, so maybe I will just attach a few pictures of lamb curry instead. That, according to Big Gav, will save the planet.
Job done. Time for beer.
The takeaway I got was virtual signaling (agitating and writing letters/OP eds) is good and the way to go, actually living the life you agitate for not so much.
If the ecohippies actually picked up their trash instead of leaving it behind, it might make a difference. But they don’t. They are the worst offenders and slobs I’ve ever run across – EVER. And I don’t want them anywhere near me, period.
Once again-if you can’t find a signal for anthropogenic CO2 in the atmospheric rate of change (https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/19/co2responsiveness/) then stopping a small part of the undetectable change will also be undetectable. In fact if all of humanity disappeared the rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere would barely change at all.
Gavin and co need to keep grants coming in to prop up their phony baloney jobs –
I guess its just photo selection like all the wide eyed open mouthed shots of AOC, but the likes of Mann,Schmidt, Gore, Flannery and the like always appear so smug and superior. Seems to be something they all develop over time.
Schmidt is actually correct that individuals lowering their carbon footprint won’t have much of an effect on CAGW, but neither would Socialist governments taking over the world economy and building wind/solar farms, and starting unicorn ranches, because ECS is a paltry 0.6C~1.2C..
Leftists don’t understand economics and fail to learn the lessons of history. If Socialists took over the world economy, the next fuel sources would eventually be be trees and home furniture..
Plus that “ECS” applies ONLY when “ALL OTHER THINGS” are “HELD EQUAL.” In the real world, ALL OTHER things are NOT “held equal,” the “feedbacks” are negative, offsetting feedbacks, and the “sensitivity” of climate (temperature) to atmospheric CO2 levels is, as a practical matter, ZERO.
That’s how Earth could plunge into a full blown glaciation ~450mya with CO2 at TEN TIMES what it is now, which we’re supposed to panic about, and it was also RISING at the time.
That’s the consistent thing about Progressives. It’s always up to someone else to make and pay for the big sacrifices. For themselves, it’s just enough that they care and write letters.
I would say that personal sacrifices having to do with preventing pollution of other types make far more difference. Recycling, being careful how one disposes of used batteries and oil. Not littering. Those kind of things are far more important than what kind of vehicle one drives.
Btw in discussions I say that CO2 has increased from just under three to just over four molecules per ten thousand in a hundred years. Innumerate alarmists blink and think
More bull Schmid.
Gavin doesn’t want himself or fellow alarmists to make any sacrifices and uses the excuse that it’s a government concern. This is all very convenient and certainly aligns with what most people consider is the the real agenda of establishing eco solialism and the removal of capitalism.
Even if we were able to make reductions of CO2 emissions on an global industrial scale there would be no change in climate. None!
Gavin is right of course, but the demand for personal reductions is part of a general phenomenon, the activists refuse to demand what their theory says is necessary and effective, and instead concentrate on proposals which, in their own terms, will have no effect.
If they are right, the world as a whole needs to abolish the car, close down most industry, stop flying, and move the population and businesses into high density and energy efficient urban areas where everyone can walk or bike to shops (of which there will be a lot fewer) schools, businesses.
Not just the US, or the West, but China and India, the whole world, need to do this too.
You will find no-one in the US or Europe among the climate alarmed advocating this. In fact, its considered very bad taste to even notice that China is the largest CO2 emitter, or that it burns and mines more coal than the rest of the world put together. Commenters who draw attention to this on places like Arstechnica or the Guardian are quickly banned. As is anyone who points out that if the US were to vanish, the effect on global warming, if you believe the IPCC estimates, would be close to zero. So why demand it, then?
Instead they advocate measures which are at best useless and have no impact on global CO2 emissions. Paris. Electric cars. Wind turbines. Solar rooftop panels.
My own question for some years now, confronted with this, has been increasingly to doubt anyone believes any of the alarmism. If they did, they would be advocating policies which in their own view must be both necessary and effective to deal with the supposed emergency. Its clear China doesn’t believe it. No sign that India does. But does anyone in the West really believe it?
Surely if they did they would be advocating measures which would actually bring emissions down to single figures. But they never do. So at some point you have to ask if they believe what they claim.
Imagine, we have what people claim to be a vaccine against an epidemic which is predicted to if unchecked, wipe out three quarters of humanity, including in their own countries. The science is settled, only deniers dispute it. But they then refuse to advocate a global vaccination program which at the same time they claim to be the only protection. And they will not say why.
Do they really believe what they claim?
A quick way to defuse any of the climate obsessed is to ask if they are prepared to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against China, India, and any other “developing” nation that has rising or high CO2 emissions, in order to “force” them to stop.
If the answer to that is “no,” then NO should be the answer to ANY AND ALL “climate” policies, because in that case such policies would do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about so-called “climate change” – and THAT assumes that the “climate” pseudo-science is correct (and it’s NOT).
At last someone from NASA giving sound advise to people.
“Do what you like, because it doesn’t make any difference to the climate”
What took them so long?
Of all those school kids going on climate marchers, I just wonder how many refused to fly away on an Easter break holiday (offered by their parents) or will give up travelling the world for exotic photos for their Instagram accounts? No doubt a few will, but I suspect many won’t. As Emma Thompson, its the government’s reponsibility to create carbon-free aeroplanes. Which politicians does she expect to do that? Those who have made such a mess of Brexit?
I see this a slightly different way. Gavin realises that the scam has little more time to run before global temperatures fall, perhaps in an ice age. This comment means that he can say “we knew it all the time” and keep his job. This is typical of bureaucrats, they are right all the time by design!