On January 26, 2022, Roger Pielke Jr. posted an interesting article on SubStack entitled “Is the World Ready for Good News on Climate?: A new assessment of plausible futures suggests reasons for considerable optimism on climate policy” According to Pielke, “Here is what we found: Using our more restrictive criterion, we have identified 71 of your 1,311 scenarios that remain plausible based only on what actually happened 2005 to 2020 and that number is cut in half, to 35, when we also consider the 2020 IEA projections to 2050.”
The “your 1,311 scenarios” is a reference to the pre-2005 projections of future climate outcomes forecast by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change or IPCC. The article also refers to the term “Deep Decarbonization” which means reducing the amount of human generated carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere. The goal of the Paris Agreement is to reduce the emission of CO2 enough to limit the warming of the planet to 2.0 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. The idea is that whole world must pull together to reduce the use of fossil fuels since it is the use of fossil fuels, generally in the form of gasoline, diesel and coal, that are considered to be the primary contributors of the CO2. Natural gas, though a fossil fuel, is considered to be less of a problem but is still on the chopping block for future curtailment.
But here is the deal. The whole effort is based on either a misguided notion about carbon dioxide or an actual cabal of elitists looking to make a buck on the backs of the middle class and the poor. The latter has nothing to do with helping humanity. It is just about money and power. Unfortunately, the latter is the likely case.
Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring gas that is part of the circle of life. It helps humans regulate their oxygen intake and aids in the growth of plants. Most of the World’s CO2 is contained in the oceans. A slight increase in ocean temperatures will result in a small increase in atmospheric CO2 as the warming oceans release all kinds of gases. The gases come out of the warming oceans about 800 years after the warming occurs. We actually know that. Even Al Gore showed that effect in his famous graph in his film An Inconvenient Truth. He just misread the graph. It is clear that the global temperature increases first, then 800 years later, the CO2 increases. Gore made a lot of other incorrect statements and projections in that movie as well. Unfortunately he also made a lot of money by selling his error to the general public and even earned a Nobel Prize.
Atmospheric CO2 has little to nothing to do with average global temperatures. So, the effort called “Deep Decarbonization” is a waste of time and money. We will need more fossil fuels in the future, not less. And we need more nuclear power plants. What we really need is more affordable and available energy. It is energy that provides the electricity we need. If you want to electrify everything, you better start working towards providing the energy to produce electricity and stop dreaming about free electricity from the Government. It doesn’t work that way. Even Elon Musk knows that.