October, 2018, Part 4, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: Who Needs Paris (And Its Climate Agreement) and Screwing The Poor In California

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of man made global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control on our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical post listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims.

1) Just a couple of quickies today to wrap this month’s global warming discussion. We have previously discussed a few topics as they relate to the infamous United Nations Paris Climate Agreement:

• Trump was right to pull the U.S. out of the agreement since we as nation would have made all of the sacrifices while the rest of the world would make minor, if any, energy sacrifices.
• For instance, Pakistan’s pledge in the treaty was that they would reduce their carbon footprint an unspecified amount at an unspecified point in the future, hardly taking a bullet for the cause.
• India and China, along with other countries, continue to build thousands and thousands of coal burning power plants that would have wiped out any carbon reductions that the U.S. would have incurred.
• The agreement had no teeth in that there was no way to punish any country who did not meet their goals, it was more of a gentleman’s agreement.
• And as we recently reported, only nine out of the dozens and dozens of countries who actually signed the agreement have actually met their assigned carbon reduction goals, only a few years out from the agreement.

Trump, of course, got brutalized for the decision even though it was best for the American taxpayer and our economy. So how is the U.S. doing even though it is no longer bound by the agreement? Have we allowed our carbon footprint to explode, endangering the future of every living thing on Earth? 

Joseph Curl, writing for the Daily Wire website on October 28,2018, brings us up to date with the latest official statistics:

• Despite a red hot economy which should have resulted in higher and higher carbon emission levels, according to the EPA after Trump’s first year in office, our country’s greenhouse emissions actually went down despite not being a part of the Paris Climate Agreement.
• The EPA report found the U.S. carbon emissions went down 2.7% last year.
• A lot of this decrease was because emissions from U.S. power plants went down an amazing 4.5%.
• All of which makes Al Gore’s prediction/statement back in June 2017 sound so stupid today, another global warming prediction that apparently was also grossly wrong: "I think it [pulling out of the Paris agreement] was reckless. I think it was indefensible. It undermines America's standing in the world. It threatens the ability of humanity to solve the climate crisis in time."
• Another, non-EPA report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, found that U.S. carbon emissions from major energy sources dropped to the lowest levels since 1993 in 2017.
• Still another study from the June 2018 BP Statistical Review of Global Energy found that the U.S. led the world in reducing carbon emissions in 2017.
• The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) estimates that the U.S. reduced its carbon emissions by 42 million tons in 2017, far ahead of the second leading reducer, which, believe it or not, was the Ukraine, at a 20 million ton reduction.
• Canada, Spain, the European Union, and China, all of whom signed the Paris agreement, all saw their carbon emissions rise last year.
• China saw its 2017 carbon emissions go up a whopping 120 million tons, three times the size of the emission reduction of the U.S.
• The European Union increased its 2017 carbon emissions by about the same amount, 40 millions, that the U.S. reduced its carbon footprint in 2017.

So, Trump pulls the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement, and despite a red hot economy, the U.S. leads the world in reducing its carbon footprint. Many of those that actually signed the agreement actually added tremendous amounts of carbon emissions to the environment. Go figure, I guess Al Gore and global warming advocates were wrong AGAIN, when they predicted that exiting the Paris agreements would kill off humanity. 

The Paris agreement was a joke, an ego trip for Obama to strut around with in his pocket. It has no enforcement teeth, it was vague and non-committal in many areas, and it allowed the fastest growing economies, e.g. India and China, to bring havoc from an emissions perspective while the U.S. and its taxpayers would have paid the price.

2) The Freedom News Report website had a recent article that shows how out of control global warming enthusiasm is bad both logically and financially relative to the less wealthy in the world:

• The state government in California recently enacted legislation that would force the entire state to be carbon emission free by the year 2045 as it relates to its use of electricity.
• In other words, all electricity generated in the state by that date would have to come from renewable resources, e.g. solar and wind.
• The state’s governor, Jerry Brown, fancies himself a sovereign nation at least relative to the bogus Paris Climate Agreement we just finished discussing, claiming that his state was “sending a message to California and to the world that we’re going to meet the Paris agreement.”
• Given that California residents currently pay, on average, 60% more for electricity, and this proposed transformation will further increase the state’s power costs, this plan/dream will not come cheaply.
• For example, since renewable sources of power, solar and wind, are not constant and vary according to the current weather, massive amounts of storage would have to be set up to store non-renewable electricity generation for times when the wind was not blowing or the sun was not shining, further increasing the cost of the state’s electricity, the cost of which has been rising five times the national average over the past years.
• Research by the Boston based Clean Air Task Force estimates that for California to reach just 80% of its energy from carbon free sources, somehow a whopping 9.6 terawatt hours worth of electrical storage would have to be put online.
• With today’s technology, 9.6 terawatt hours of storage would require the purchase and installation of 500 million Tesla Powerwalls which currently cost $6,000….not including installation in order to constantly supply the state’s 40 million residents with uninterrupted electricity.
• As an aside, one wonder where the state would actually place 500 million Powerwalls, that would take up a lot of real estate.
• In today’s dollars, this comes out to a cost of $3 TRILLION or about $75,000 per resident (excluding installation costs).
• Even if you could find a way over time to reduce this cost by say 80%, you are still looking at a per resident cost of $15,000, the burden of which would be paid by the state’s resident’s.
• Thus, a California family of four would be on the hook for about $60,000 if the cost of this law’s impacts could be reduced by 80%, more than $60,000 if the cost did not come down that much.
• At that point, I would bet that the wealthier residents would say screw that and would install their own solar and wind projects to generate the electricity they need for themselves, something they could do for far less than $75,000 per person, further burdening the less wealthy residents who cannot afford their own power installation.
• Which is exactly is being anticipated by a coalition called “The Two Hundred,” a group of civic organizations who lobby for and try to protect the interests of less wealthy citizens.
• This coalition realizes that the burden for this ambitious and ego driven plan will eventually fall to those in the state that can least afford higher and higher electricity rates, a situation that will get worse with this carbon free by 2045 law and thus, they have filed suit to stop this plan.
• In the lawsuit, the group correctly claims that these types of policies “have a disparate negative impact on minority communities and are discriminatory against minority communities and their members.”
• Furthermore, “Every time they pass new regulations, the burden falls on the people who can least afford it,” Two Hundred representative John Gamboa reportedly said. “That’s the history of the environmental movement: They care more about spotted owls than brown babies.”
• The article points out that Germany’s effort to get to more renewable energy sources has seen the average cost of electricity go up 50% in the past ten years, a harbinger of what would happen under this new California law.

The U.S. is doing just fine, in fact better than anyone else, in reducing its carbon footprint even though it is not part of the Paris Climate Agreement. And California is screwing its lower income citizens just to chase what is becoming more and more likely, the global warming myth. More myth busting next month.

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