The Democratic Party continues to rush ever further into the climate swamp. The left wing of the party accepts climate junk science and now wants to implement rapid decarbonization as national policy through a so-called “Green New Deal” (GND). See also here. They have added many non-climate aspects including providing economic security “to all who are unable or unwilling to work.” This post, however, is limited largely to economics. Presumably most readers of this blog understand why I believe that the scientific basis for climate extremism is invalid, and whatever is done under GND will have no significant effect on temperatures even if fully carried out. Using the GND, however, will make decarbonization even more expensive.
One of the problems with the GND is that it ignores the huge costs of accelerating changes in the basic equipment used to provide energy. This is very expensive and vital equipment for a modern economy. The problem is that this equipment is very long-lived, and moving to new equipment that can use different technology or different fuels is very expensive. Changes in technology/fuel are much less expensive if implemented gradually so that aged, less useful equipment can be retired when it is near to retirement anyway. But the GND proponents want to do just the opposite: Use the power of government to push change rapidly rather than when the old equipment is about to be retired anyway. If the entire civilian airline fleet must be retired within 10 years and replaced with high-speed trains, the cost will be much higher than if the transition is made gradually as it becomes more obsolete and will need to be replaced anyway. But somehow the GND proponents never seem to have understood this. This particular proposal is lunacy, of course, but making the changes slowly would reduce the cost enormously.
Hopefully, the Democratic Party will perceive this reality before they waste ever more of other people’s resources on a decarbonization campaign that we can already say will not accomplish its objectives. They are already bucking history, which has brought about a pronounced shift from lower density, less reliable fuels such as wood and wind to higher density, more reliable fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. And they are all for government intervention to bring this about despite the lack of a basis for such intervention. Bucking the trend to higher density, more reliable fuels is a difficult change even for governments to bring about. An additional problem is that economic markets usually make much better decisions on shifting technologies while governments have a rather consistent record of making bad decisions in guessing what the technology/fuel winners will be.
So GND is clearly one of the most expensive technology/fuel approaches to implementing decarbonization. Germany has already tried it by more gradually reducing the use of coal and nuclear fuels. and it appears to be a major disaster with sky-high electricity prices and increasingly unreliable energy availability. Why should we repeat their disastrous approach, but in an even more extreme manner?
Obviously much better policy would be to eliminate government intervention in the choice of energy technologies and fuels. But since decarbonization will not make any significant difference in temperatures, at least use a more economically rational approach.
Some recent news….
Senator Feinstein of California supports teaching climate change. Is teaching a hoax a responsible agenda for a political party? No, it’s a pact with the devil. It shows how climate change is dragging down the Democrat party and revealing its socialist core. Barney Frank and others are backing off the Green New Deal given its over the top economic absurdity.
Trump is taking advantage of the profound muddle of the Democrat socialist party to introduce a review of climate change as a national security threat. In a world with. Nuclear proliferation, terrorism, loose borders, and high speed missiles, the climate hoax is absurd as a threat. Climate change is absurd even without genuinely troubling threats. A comparison of climate fantasy to actual national security threats is a great context for starting to reveal the massive hoax perpetrated by the climate industrial complex.
Getting new leadership into the department of justice is welcome. It’s past time to toss hillarys and Obama’s Russia collusion hoax onto the ash heap of history.
In time, the association of democrats with hoaxes may be noticeable to independent voters.
Our current warming is stalling. Arguments about which recent year is the hottest is a waste of time. The difference in global temperature for a given year, betwixt various candidate-for-hottest years, varies by a minuscule amount, usually considerably less than the uncertainty error introduced during measurements.
The democrats’ alarmist position is not tenable. There have been earlier warmings during this interglacial, the earlier, the warmer, and all took place before the level of co2 changed. The Medieval Warming Period (MWP) was a global event and at least as warm as it is now. There are 6,000 boreholes scattered across the globe which show conclusively that the MWP trend was global. (A good discussion on the boreholes can be found at Joanne Nova’s website.)
Other peer-reviewed MWP studies show, in the case of each investigated site, that it was at least as warm during the MWP as at the time of that recent study. While this says nothing directly about our current warming it speaks volumes about the credibility of those who insist on DENYing that the MWP was global and likely warmer than now. It also becomes plausible that our current warming may be a natural warming.
Why do the alarmists DENY (ironically) that the MWP was global and at least as warm? Probably because they cannot explain the MWP since there was no co2 increase during that period. Even worse for them, with no co2 increase there is no water vapor feedback. (All the alarmist computer models ASSUME that water vapor feedback is the actual culprit, causing 2 to 3 times the temperature increase as brought on by the supposed co2 increase. The computer models cannot begin to replicate the MWP, and that fails one of the basic requirements for the validity of such a model. Certainly the earlier warmings during this interglacial were not influenced by a flat co2 level so had nothing to do with human activity.
Alarmists declared there was no explanation (argument from ignorance) for the current warming so it had to be due to human activity (via increasing co2 level). They programmed their model accordingly, so the resulting temperature projections are not surprising.
There are hundreds of peer-reviewed MWP studies, with new confirming studies continuing to show up regularly. The website co2science.org has cataloged almost every such study. Alarmists claim that Dr. Idso, the proprietor of co2science.org, is a skeptic. So what? Idso is merely the librarian. The studies were all peer-reviewed and undertaken by researchers across the globe and from numerous different countries. Alarmists also claim these peer-reviewed studies were “cherry-picked”. Really? Hundreds of studies performed by other reseachers unrelated to Dr Idso, and the study results are also consistent with data from elsewhere, such as the receding Mendenhall glacier and boreholes. Further, these studies can be easily replicated since they don’t include such things as controversial models or dubious statistical machinations. The data is available.
A subset of these MWP studies directly address temperature which is the relevant subject for this discussion. (Others studies involved such things as floods, droughts, vegetation,etc. ) An example, of a relevant study is the Greenland (gisp2) study (which can be googled independently from co2science.org. This study shows, among other things, that Greenland was warmer during the MWP than it was at the time of that study.
Then are other types of data available which also confirm the MWP. The receding Mendenhall glacier (Alaska) recently exposed a shattered 1,000 year-old forest, still in its original position. No trees, let alone a forest, have grown at that latitude anywhere near that site since then.
So far we have Europe (even admitted by rabid alarmists), Greenland, and Alaska, all distant from each other, and each warmer during the MWP than now. As an aside, ancient vineyards have been found where grapes cannot be grown today. Burial sites have been found below the perma-frost. Vikings have apparently successfully mapped most of the Greenland coastline.
Alarmists have no interest in acknowledging either the MWP peer-reviewed studies or all the other accompanying and confirming data. They instead ignore or, when confronted, claim the studies are “cherry-picked” or that the MWP warming was not “synchronous”. Both of these claims reflect their desperation. How can hundreds of studies, independently performed by researchers around the globe, be “cherry-picked”? The studies are also consistent with the trend shown by both the 6,000 boreholes, and by other data. The requirement about synchronous is laughable because most alarmists go back into the1800s and calculate our warming increase from back then. But what about the global cooling from 1945 to 1975? That is indeed not synchronous with the warming. So, now they are relegated to talking about the period from 1975 forward. Unfortunately for alarmists, there are also areas during this period which also experienced no warming. By imposing their own constraints on the current warming it also does not qualify as a global warming. (I’m sure the alarmists are already desperately working on revising their talking points, poor babies).
We know that this supposed capability of co2 to influence warming diminishes rapidly as co2 increases, and co2 has already doubled 8 times. Co2 may have long since shot its wad.
But these folks also have some problems when applying the greenhouse gas (GHG) theory to the open atmosphere. Satellites detect heat escaping to space and that is not possible from within an actual greenhouse. (That also explains where some of their missing heat may have gone.) The GHG theory, when applied to the open atmosphere, brings with it a NECESSARY (but not sufficient) condition: there must be an accompanying warmer region about 10km above the tropics. Despite decades of temperature recordings, that required “hot spot” has never been found, and this is not because of missing data. The temperature recordings above the tropic are available, both below and above 10km. This issue only sees the light of day when some alarmist researcher naively claims to have “found” that hot spot. This supposed “finding” involves (1) DENYing the actual data and (2) speculating as to where that hot spot went. The results do not qualify as evidence, and also appears to conflict with scientific method.
Finally, the water vapor feedback is also affiliated with the GHG theory. Without justification for that feedback it should be withdrawn. Certainly the assumption itself, that water vapor feedback is 2 to 3 times that of the supposed temperature impact directly caused by co2 is also open to question.
The alarmist computer model temperature projections themselves reflect these problems. The difference between computer projected temperatures and the subsequent actual temperatures continues to widen.
In addition to the cost of an accelerated switch of energy technoligies, the GND also would have us accelerate investment in technologies characterized by declining costs. I can’t think of a case where investing in declining prices made economic sense. Let others make that investment and wait for lower/lowest cost to buy in, instead.
It is troubling the Democratic Party has become so deeply irrational. It asserts belief in a failed claim of climate change. Then it wants to institute programs that cannot work to fix the nonexistent problem. And thirdly the costs would be needlessly high and ruinous.
There is not just one mistake, but rotten thru and thru. It is self parody. One lousy fantasy followed by others. The party has no ideas worth advancing. False narratives and fantasies detached from how economies can actually work.
In the event that the Democrats gain more political power in future elections, implementing such bizarre impractical ideas wil do a terrible disservice to society.