EIA 2019 report shows developing nations CO2 emissions increasing 8.4 billion metric tons by 2050

If the earth gets 4 deg C warmer that would be a good thing.

I hate shoveling snow in September. 🙁

CO2 has consequences…

Here’s a REAL polar bear expert to tell you about some of them:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/29/polar-bears-arctic-sea-ice-environment

The projected growth in developing countries seems like a cornerstone argument against the extreme policies being put out by the UN. I think policy may be the weakest point of the overall alarmist framework that projects high levels of warming, high costs of warming, and finally absurd policy responses that make no sense under their own terms of costs and benefits.

Economists seem to typically argue for a carbon tax that would start low and rise fairly slowly, beginning at around $10/tonne at this time. However the key problem with a carbon tax is that as it grows it becomes more crucial that it is applied evenly worldwide. If half the world has a severe tax, high emitting industries will migrate to the other half of the world.

Politically I would consider it a pretty fair bet that there will not be a worldwide carbon tax at least until developing countries are well up the ladder. Probably post 2050 even in an optimistic pro-carbon tax outlook. This means that even though a moderate carbon tax is a reasonable climate change policy at low levels it will neither make a significant difference now when the cost effective level is quite low or later if it doesn’t go worldwide.

Meanwhile, given the UN’s projections both for expected warming and expected costs of warming, the Copenhagen Consensus group rates direct spending on research and development as having a benefit of $11 – $15 dollars per dollar spent. I think this is without taking into account side benefits like the fuel cost savings an actually viable replacement for fossil fuel energy would entail. (The report estimated this benefit alone could be greater than the money spent on research)

The policy bottom line is that subsidies, blocking development, and similar policies aimed at directly constricting CO2 output are not efficient or effective policies, especially so if you believe warming is likely to cause serious costs because they distract from actually effective policies. We know this for instance from the Paris Accord’s own projections of costs and effect – 1 -2 trillion a year to reduce 2100 warming by a third of a degree Fahrenheit. A carbon tax is theoretically ideal over the timescale of the century but will both have little immediate impact because with current technology a high tax would not have a cost effective impact on CO2 and it depends on basically all countries signing on. Meanwhile research and development might pay for itself independent of proposed warming costs. It also would potentially be funded by general taxes rather than directly imposing greater costs on civilians which has a much greater impact on low income people.

R&D is the best policy for the next few decades regardless of your viewpoint on global warming. It has the potential to find an energy replacement to displace the huge projected increase in fossil fuel use by developing countries. It has the potential to hedge against fossil fuel costs rising or starting to run out and a definite potential for improving future air quality.

I feel like policy is potentially the weak spot in the global warming semi-religious complex that has emerged with the UN calling for immediate cuts in CO2 aiming for zero emissions by 2050, a mere 20 years after China’s emissions are projected to peak.

The science of how much it will warm is contentious, and not something that is definitively falsifiable. It’s a worthwhile fight but the alarmist viewpoint seems to be baked in at least temporarily.

The science of how much warming is likely to cost seems reasonably set and has a lot of potential for debate because it does not predict disaster and it does not predict that high cost near term efforts are cost effective. The UN predicts costs of 2-4% of GDP in 2100 which contrasts very strongly against claims we should spend a similar amount of our likely much smaller current economy to ineffectively prevent.

It seems to me the science of what policies should be preferred is clear cut and absolutely not what the alarmists are proposing. Economists such as the Nobel winning Nordhaus propose that the most efficient century scale policy in response to projected 4 degree warming is to aim for 3.5 degrees with a carbon tax that starts fairly low. The Copenhagen Consensus group includes 7 Nobel laureates and proposes that the only effective current policy is research and development at a level of .5% of GDP, or Bjorn Lomborg’s suggestion of 100 billion dollars per year. Ten to twenty times less than the Paris Accord proposes, much more effective, and with likely benefits regardless of future temperatures. To me this may be the weakest point of the catastrophist/alarmist movement. Even if alarmism were actually completely true, the scientifically supported policies are not severely costly and may be beneficial regardless.

Maybe there’s an end run we can do around the debate here to prevent more wasteful policies that aren’t effective even in the alarmist framework.

European Union countries CO2 emissions went down (on average) by 23% between 1990 and 2016, while GDP went up by 53% in the same time. USA, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Russia had similar results. All mainly due to improvements in technologies e.g. engines and machines that are both more efficient and less fuel consuming (of course the two things are linked) and to economic growth in non-industrial sectors (of course IT servers drain a lot of energy, but anyway less than many factories).
Why then don’t they foresee a similar path to 2050? Just to keep pressure on us and make us believe that global warming is our fault for taking the car instead of catching the bus? I can joke about the latter, but I am serious about the former.

From the article: “Thus the huge world increase in global CO2 emissions based on the IEO forecast are accounted for solely by the world’s developing nations.”

Greta and her followers should focus on the developing countries, since they are worried about CO2 production. They need to go to the source of the “problem”.

Unfortunately for Greta and the rest, China’s leaders, the biggest CO2 producers in the world, don’t like human-caused climate change protests. I don’t know what the developing nations think about any protests. I’m guessing they are like China and not all that supportive.

Greta and friends have a “long row to hoe” to get CO2 reduced.

So more coal , more natural gas , more petroleum. How is that supposed to lower the byproduct of combustion, CO2 ?

Even if renewables would grow by 1000% in 2050 there would be more CO2 in the atmosphere than today.

Don’t tell Greta she could have a nervous breakdown.