Nick Pope
Contributor
Only a small percentage of climate policies instituted globally have actually resulted in any significant emissions reductions, according to a study published earlier in August in Science, a respected scientific publication.
The new study, titled “Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades,” used artificial intelligence to assess 1,500 different climate policies pursued across 41 nations between 1998 and 2022, aiming to determine which types of policies have prompted significant emissions cuts. The study’s analysis found that only 63 of these policies constituted “successful policy interventions,” meaning that just 4% of the measures evaluated in the study’s sample effectively reduced emissions. (RELATED: Supreme Court Delivers Massive Blow To Biden’s Climate Agenda)
“Across four sectors, 41 countries, and 2 decades, we found 63 successful policy interventions with large effects that reduced total emissions between 0.6 and 1.8 [billion metric tons] of [carbon dioxide],” the study states. Moreover, most of the emissions cuts observed in the study were the result of two or more policies having a combined effect.
“We have a lot of policies out there that have not led to large emission reductions, and more policies do not necessarily equate to better outcomes,” Nicholas Koch, the head of the policy evaluation lab at Germany’s Mercator Research Institute and one of the study’s authors, told NewScientist. “What we observe is that the most frequently used policy tools, which are subsidies and regulations, alone are insufficient. Only in combination with price-based instruments – such as carbon prices, energy taxes – can they deliver substantial emission reductions.”
In other words, subsidies and regulations generally will not compel economies to bring down emissions without complementary policies that directly tax energy use or impose outright bans on certain practices like burning coal to produce electricity, according to Koch.
Richard Tol, an economics professor at England’s University of Sussex with expertise in the economics of climate policies, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the study’s results are indicative of fundamental issues with green subsidies.
“If you estimate the impact of 1,500 policies, you would expect 75 of those to be statistically significant as a statistical fluke. They found only 63,” Tol told the DCNF. “Anyways, subsidies can be effective in the short run, less so in the long run as they make the offending activity more profitable. For example, a subsidy on energy saving (say, home insulation) makes energy cheaper so that people use more. Besides, many ‘green’ subsidies are designed to reward political allies rather than reduce emissions.”
Other critics of the West’s climate policies have pointed out that continued use of fossil fuels, and especially coal, by populous countries like China and India will blunt global emissions reductions while Western countries saddle themselves with the high costs of an energy transition.
China is by far the world’s leading emitter, more than doubling American emissions, while India is the world’s third-largest source and emits more than all 27 countries in the European Union put together, according to the World Resources Institute.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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I will suggest that much of “green” programs are motivated by a hostility for industrial society, not a real desire to affect climate change. Those peons are getting too uppity, and we just can’t have that! All the lumpenproletariat deserve are a pair of sturdy sandals, and tofu.
Some doctors now say walking barefoot is good for your feet- so we’ll skip the sandals and just have the tofu. /s
Include hostility to the free market in that hostility to industrial society. Add in hostility to Western civilization and you got it covered.
Phony hostility please. It’s all phony, disgusting make-believe to the kids that you’re an activist and leader while banking checks from the silly people who fund their NGOs or from the taxpayer. They already got the talking part done a Trillion or two $$$ ago and they’ll keep on getting the talking part done for as many more Trillion $$$ as they can get away with.
There is a simple fact that few acknowledge or even recognised.
There is no current technology that enables weather dependent electricity generators to produce weather dependent electricity generators.
I had Perplexity AI determine a solar system for my house at 37S to produce 10kWh per day though May. It arrived at 7kW of north facing panels tilted at 47 degrees to horizontal and a 50kWh battery. I think I could get away with a smaller battery because I stated 4 consecutive overcast days, But there is always some sunlight making it to the ground at 37S.
I then asked how much coal would it take to mine the materials in Australia; export to China; convert to solar panels, battery and associated system hardware; then return system items to Australia. It arrived at 12.6 tonne of coal (seems low because the $40k system cost would buy around 40t of coal).. I then asked how long would 12.6t of coal supply 10kWh per day if burnt in an efficient power station. It arrived at 9.5 years,.
So there is a net return on the coal expended if the system lasts 9.5 years without any ongoing energy requirements.
The thing is any household in mainland Australia can use solar panels more efficiently than the grid because there is no cost of transmission in terms of capital, maintenance and ongoing losses.
China dominates production of WDGs because it now has high productivity coal mines. The latest longwall chocks are 7m high. These are for use in massive seams.
Plus, if the alternative was a CCGT plant instead, that would be more like 20 years for the same amount of carbon emissions.
Just one question…you asked “Perplexity AI”
Can any AI system be counted on to be truthful?
I’ve heard they can and do often make s#it up.
A good example of the insanity around “renewable” energy is in progress in Aberdeen Scotland.
They have a GBP40M solar to hydrogen project to make hydrogen to power 25 busses.
https://www.bpaberdeenhydrogenhub.com/the-project/
Aberdeen is located at 57N. Average December insolation at 57N is 50W/m^2.
You have to wonder how long the natural fuels needed to make all the solar panels and water electrolysers would power the 25 busses. My guess is for more than a century.
“”They have a GBP40M solar to hydrogen project to make hydrogen to power 25 busses.””
Scotland is oop north and as we all know, it’s grim oop north. And they certainly don’t make it any easier for themselves.
“”Two new ferries were ordered in 2015 to replace a fleet of failing vessels that have been serving Scotland’s remote islands every single day for 40 years. Construction began eight years ago. The elephant in the room is that they have not carried a single passenger so far. Not one.
…
The original contract, which was accused of being rigged, was supposed to cost £97m but mismanagement and a string of blunders, including installing the wrong cables on an entire vessel, means the final costs are likely to rob the public purse of £400m. The cash-cow project has been described as one of the biggest procurement disasters in the history of Scottish devolution.””
How Scotland’s ferry fiasco became a national scandal
https://news.sky.com/story/how-scotlands-ferry-fiasco-became-a-national-scandal-13113074
And they’re still not running.
It’s what happens when a government of any political hue in any country in the world gets involved in a major project of any kind.
Britain has an almost untouchable record on this failing. HS2 and the Queen Elizabeths are two that come to mind.
Government policy is rarely if ever the answer to anything.
Good government policy isn’t very noticeable to the average citizen who just assumes that government knows what it is doing, like for food and safety standards.
It’s usually reactive.
When human emissions of CO2 were reduced in 2020 by 6.3 percent, because of COVID lock downs and the the like, CO2 kept rising at the same rate.
Charts for Mauna Loa CO2
https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
Global patterns of daily CO2 emissions reductions in the first year of COVID-19
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-022-00965-8
Just keep those lockdowns coming. 😉
There are still regular screams from the climate glitterati for “climate lockdowns”
“Keep the peasants in their place.”
The language and the proximate reasons vary, but the purpose is the same.
They needed to ‘study’ why fossil fuel use is increasing faster than population?
The reduction in US CO2 emissions was largely due to frac’ing allowing natural gas to replace coal for generating electric power. This was done in spite of government policies regarding production of natural gas.
That will work as the experience of the UK shows: in the 17 years 1990 – 2007 the GDP per cap PPP grew from 35K USD to 51K USD while in the 17 years since the Climate Change Act (2008) the GDP per cap PPP has grown a mere 3K to 54K USD (Trading Economics).
The empirical evidence is overwhelming: energy use and economic wealth are closely linked, currently there is no way of maintaining and growing real wealth and for some quasi-religious reason simultaneously reducing CO2 emissions other than by the wholesale adoption of nuclear.
Energy use = wealth in obvious ways. Do your laundry with a washboard and tub, and your energy use is minimal. Laundry takes a long time, your hands get raw, the clothes don’t get real clean, but it allegedly “saves the earth.”
Use a washing machine, it’s quick and efficient, you can spend your time doing something less tedious, but you need steel and electricity for the washing machine. Both require more energy than hand labor.
The same principle applies to cars vs. trudging, tractors vs. mules, refrigeration vs. paltry, monotonous diet, taking an occasional vacation vs. being stuck at home, and so on.
“Wealth” is like that.
Of course. Politicians finally figured out a way to tax the air we breathe, and they’re all over it like a Doberman in a butcher’s shop. Does anyone think that, even if CO2 somehow dropped to pre-industrial levels, any of the new tax-subsidy flows to renewables barons would halt? Anyone see Sadiq forking Khan or his successors ending the congestion charge and ULEZ?
“Only a small percentage of climate policies instituted globally have actually resulted in any significant emissions reductions…”
But, it’s NOT significant- if that word means meaningful. And considering the cost- it’s significantly, it’s worse than meaningless.
Yeah, yeah, but participating in a moral panic makes people feel like they’re “saving the world!”
So what if the moral panic doesn’t accomplish anything?
It’s a no-brainer: Emissions keep going up and they won’t come down.
This then encourages the dim [Nunu Labour] greens to conclude it therefore has to be harder, harsher and without pity, especially for the older cohorts of the population. In short, emissions must somehow be driven down.
Once governments were about making people’s lives better generation after generation. Now, government is about reining in the destructive [lower classes] people and protecting the climate (ha!) and the planet. In the current zeitgeist it seems that while Orwell was something of a prophet, he has unwittingly become the author of the manual, of our modern enslavement to all manner of critical theories imported most uncritically from the US Ivy League. Science can be a boon, but more often than not it gets in the way… and it is’t just the weather.
“”Doctors resign from BMA over union’s opposition to Cass review””
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/26/doctors-resign-bma-opposition-cass-review-puberty-blockers/
The BMA has gone – in the vernacular – woke. Have you ever heard someone in a maternity unit exclaim “it’s a non binary…”? Me neither. The NHS is as woke as they come. Chestfeeding, birthing parent, etc etc etc a real cess pit of “progressiveness”.
“”NHS tells staff to ask men if they’re pregnant before X-rays as part of ‘inclusivity’ drive””
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/nhs-guidance-men-pregnant-x-rays-b1175868.html
Thoughtcrime is back
“”The Telegraph reports today that she [Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper] is planning to drop the Tories’ guidance and significantly expand police powers to monitor and make records of supposedly hateful speech.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/28/the-dreadful-return-of-the-non-crime-hate-incident/
France has just bagged Pavel Durov. You can see where this is going. Labour binned the Free Speech Act as one of its first acts of government.
If you want to keep stuff private or even secret best go back to pen and paper and dead-drops etc.
Most climate policies are directed so that taxpayer money is given to a select few wealthy contributors to politicians for reelection. That the funds spent do not bring down emissions is not the point. This must be considered as a return on funding (I am calling this RoF) spent and political contributions received.
What is the percent return from actual funding policies with contributions received by those in Congress and Heads of Cabinet Departments that approve the actual expenditures? One must also consider those appointed to corporate boards including spouses, children and close relations.
Is there a group out there that keeps track of this?
That’s all well and good, but all taxing effort is meaningless unless we know what the payoff for paying them is. Governments do have to deliver results on policy, or they are just money sinks serving no purpose.
So in other words, how many degrees per increased tax dollar will the climate’s global mean temperature be reduced?
That is the reason for the taxing, isn’t it?
These policies are meant to collapse energy production, transport, manufacturing and agriculture, nothing to do with emissions or climate change. Don’t listen to their words, look at the results of their actions.
Not that it is needed or will make a difference, but the USA reduced CO2 output by encouraging a switch from coal to natural gas. This was done without a huge increase in the cost of electricity. We could do a lot more by fostering new nuclear reactor designs and construction.
I’m not surprised, since I always thought that at least with respect to solar panels, nature is more efficient :
The most efficient energy generated from solar irradiation is .. crude oil thanks to millions years ago photosynthesis and natural planet forces at work. Me think we should not waste oil to build solar panels.
In the same vein, the most efficient food supply based on solar energy is … a cow in a grassland which gives us milk, meat and some time ago even work and heat thanks to photosynthesis.
Economics principle : use the most efficient resources first.
I saw this article in AAAS/Science magazine and first blush it looks impressive buy look at the details and it is a dress up nothing more than a rehash by country / region of policies showing that a small percentage have been produced meaningful lasting results/impact on worldwide global warming. Issue is always how to measure worldwide impact from individual isolated national policies. Nothing burger.