Climate policies are certain costs for uncertain benefits

I caused another furious exchange on Twitter about climate change.  It started with someone asking the simple question of is the earth warming or not.  This was my reply.

The earth has been warming since the end of the little ice age in 1850. The question is not whether the earth warms or cools. The question is how much does CO2 have to do with it and the data says not much. The earth is warming but we do not have a problem with CO2.

Again my reply stated facts and science.  Though you would never know it from the media coverage there is a very good scientific argument that the recent warming had nothing to do with CO2.  My simple statements of facts and science triggered a COVID cultist that spawned a furious exchange between him and others supportive of what I had tweeted.

The cultist responded multiple times with links to newspapers declaring the hottest every, or glaciers melting.  I responded to none of his replies because his replies were nonsensical.  Something that the climate cultists do not understand is that evidence of warming is not evidence of what caused the warming.

Anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming is a ridiculous theory.  It is true that the earth is warmer than it should be because of greenhouse gases.  It is not true that adding more CO2 to the mix will cause run away warming.  There is simply not enough energy available to CO2 for that to happen.  Because their science is so shaky, cultists fall back on the claim that recent temperature increases are unprecedented and that is proof humans caused it.

Even if the warming was unprecedented, which it is not, there is no evidence it was caused by CO2.  The COVID cult wants you to infer the link by continually reminding you that it is hot now and we drive cars now therefor we caused this.  Their level of science is akin to me saying that because the sun rises every morning when I get out of bed I must be causing the sun to rise by getting out of bed.

Sometimes the cultist feel the argument that all bad things are caused by humans is not strong enough.  In those cases they resort to their second favorite tactic of simply making shit up.  According to US climate czar John Kerry, climate change kills 15 million people a year.

However, PPT’s complaint Monday, sent to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the State Department’s Office of Inspector General, noted Kerry’s figures appear to greatly overstate the death toll attributed to greenhouse gas emissions. 

There is absolutely no evidence to support this wild claim but Kerry is not the first one to make it or even believe it.  I was once in a discussion about alternate energy.  I told the group that I would not shut down coal fired generator stations until the last pound of coal was burned.  One woman in the group was appalled.  She told me coal fired generation kills people.  My response was to issue her this challenge.  I told her I would go to the cemetery with her so that she could point out each person who was killed by coal fired generators.  Then after our cemetery walking tour I would give her a list of millions of people who had been saved by coal fired generation and fossil fuels in general.

This is the most over looked aspect of the climate change debate.  Fossil fuels are enormously beneficial.  Millions of people have been saved by fossil fuels.  Modern medicine does not happen without reliable energy and emergency services are dependent on fossil fuels.  Firetrucks and rescue equipment burn hydrocarbons to save lives.  Even if you could prove that CO2 caused climate change which resulted in deaths (a huge stretch) you must weigh that against how many people will die by restricting hydrocarbons.

There is a cost and benefit to every decision we make.  The cost of eliminating hydrocarbons far outweighs any perceived benefit.  This math is so obvious that even some politicians have figured it out.  Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has already declared he is not on board with Justin Trudeau’s “unjust transition”.

Well, we don’t want to discuss this transition because we’re not implementing it in Saskatchewan,” said Moe. “We should not be marching down that same policy path of sacrificing our energy affordability and our energy reliability for an ideological target of reducing emissions.”

And, Sweden just announced they have abandoned “net zero”.  The Swedish press release showed more sanity than I have come to expect from government.  They stated the bloody obvious; eliminating hydrocarbons provides a dubious and undefinable benefit at a very high, well defined cost.

Experts have argued that lowering carbon dioxide emissions is not really a worthwhile goal for an individual country or globally.

The potential harms of the gas are uncertain and exaggerated while the benefits are overlooked.

Finally we are starting to have a real debate.  The climate Cult’s position is weak.  No one can even tell you how much the temperature will change by restricting CO2 let alone what tangible benefits that might bring.  The other side of the ledger is far more certain.  Eliminating fossil fuels will result in poverty and death.