Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Renewable energy is so cheap and convenient compared to fossil fuel and nuclear power, a brutal regime of carbon taxes is required to force people to move to using renewables.
600% Gain in Carbon Prices Vital to Rein in Global Warming
By Stephen Stapczynski
4 March 2021, 10:00 GMT+10 Updated onThe world’s governments will need to significantly increase the cost of emitting carbon dioxide in order to keep global warming at bay.
That’s according to energy consultant Wood Mackenzie Ltd. To stop global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degree Celsius from pre-industrial levels, carbon prices must surge to $160 per ton of CO2 by 2030, up from a global average of $22 at the end of last year, it said in a report Thursday.
…
The price of carbon permits has recently climbed to a record in Europe amid speculative buying and efforts by policymakers to lower emissions, but Asian nations have lagged behind. Japan is consideringrevising its carbon tax, which is one of the lowest in the world. In China, online carbon trading is set to begin by the end of June.
Governments need carbon policies to push industries into adopting greener options for energy, such as hydrogen, WoodMac said in the report. That can be accomplished via carbon prices, direct incentives or tax policies, the consultancy said.
…
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-04/a-600-gain-in-carbon-prices-vital-to-keep-global-warming-at-bay
Something I don’t understand, previous energy revolutions were rapid and voluntary. For example, when cheaper, more convenient kerosene replaced whale oil after kerosene hit the market in the 1860s, the whaling industry collapsed in a little over a decade, as people flocked to the better option.
One day economists will unravel the mystery of why renewable energy is having such an uphill battle replacing fossil fuel, despite multiple claims that renewables are the cheapest option.
Of course, its just barely possible that people who claim renewables are cheap are not taking all relevant factors into consideration. For example, when you factor in the cost of all that extra infrastructure required to provide backup power in the event of an extended outage, like the recent Texas ice storm, renewables seem very expensive indeed.
The costs of living in Stone Age squalor that only Unreliable Energy can provide are incalculable according to the high priests!
Who would want to live with dependable, cheap energy when our lords and masters have decreed it to be selfish and heretical!
Yes. 600% gain in carbon tax theft needed to rein in any chance of prosperity, normalcy, humanity.
Believers in this bulls,,,t all earn over $600 a miniute ( sorry not earn steal )
I doubt that Bloomberg has any idea of the yearly human input of CO2 into the atmosphere. It was about one tenth of one ppm from 1980 until 2019.
~Monty Python
In this case it could be RobinWood and his LTD band of Merry Mackenzies
I really fear for the world when all the media is panicking and crowing about the impending doom of an extra fraction of °C in warming – how in the world can that be a problem? Why are they so credulous of the doomsday scenarios? Oh yah, I forgot – it gets clicks to their page and eyeballs to their ads. They don’t care how much money is wasted on Rube Goldberg schemes to produce green power or how much hardship they bring to people’s lives – Climate change policies are racist, they affect the non-white, non-Democrat-millionaires more than any other flavour of humanity.
How about Bloomberg cedes all of his wealth to the government for ‘ruinables and carbon’ and leads a life of austerity ? He can live in a cardboard box down by the lake. He’s not needed in the world and we could survive just perfectly without him.
What about a van down by the river instead?
Love the appellation “ruinables”! Even better than “Grauniad.”
Why is 1.5 degree Celsius the magic number? Why not 1.6? or 1.0004? or 2? or 10? Why???
It’s about getting the right balance between scary but sciency. 1.5C is relatable whereas 1.0004 completely confuses doomers
Nothing says “SCIENCE!” like round numbers, dontchaknow.
A decade or so ago, the number was 3C.
Then when it became obvious that temperatures would not reach that level, it was reduced to 2C.
Then when it became obvious that temperatures would not reach that level, it was reduced to 1.5C.
HADCRUT is working on it.
Next stop? Any predictions?
MarkW has it right. The alarmists keep lowering the bar as the temperatures don’t behave the way they predicted.
For decades, the various AR reports of the IPCC cited 3 degrees as the best estimate of climate sensitivity, with the lower limit of 1.5 degrees “highly unlikely” [you could look these up]. Yet if 0.8 degrees of warming occurred from 1850 to 2019 at the same time as CO2 increased from 285 to 410 ppmv, because of the logarithmic relation between CO2 and warming, the MAXIMUM warming we should expect is 0.8[log2/log(410/285)] = 1.5 degrees. This assumes ALL of the warming was due only to CO2 and related feedbacks (unlikely, since there are dips or hiatuses in warming, even as CO2 continues to increase).
The 3 degree estimate was based on 1 degree due to an increase in CO2 directly (computed from accurate models of infrared spectroscopy), with another 2 degrees due to positive feedback from increased water vapour (the main greenhouse gas).
However, all computer models of spectra necessarily ASSUME a cloud-free troposphere. But the Earth is 62% covered by clouds. Clouds are made of liquid droplets or ice crystals which act as small Planck black bodies, absorbing essentially 100% of incident infrared (IR) emitted from the warm Earth, and then re-emitting IR at a lower surface temperature (a good absorber is also a good emitter – Kirchhoff’s Law, explaining why a parabolic dish is good at both receiving and transmitting e/m waves). Therefore any extra absorption by doubled CO2 below the cloudtops means exactly that much less absorption by the cloud particles.
This means that for clouded areas, the extra absorption on doubling CO2 occurs only in the shorter path length from the cloudtops to 10 km (the tropopause) where the air is thinner and the concentration of molecules is lower.
In addition, the absorption frequencies of CO2 from the vibrational ground state are essentially all saturated (i.e. doubling CO2 has no effect); any extra absorption must come from molecules in the v=1 first excited state of quantized vibration, and the concentration of these molecules decreases exponentially with decreasing temperature (i.e. increasing altitude). This explains why there are only two small pockets of extra absorption shown in the MODTRAN computed spectra available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing (the difference in area between the blue and green curves represents the extra CO2 absorption on doubling from 300 to 600 ppmv).
I calculate that water vapour feedback increases IR absorption by 32%; using r = 0.32 for an infinite geometric series, the total after positive feedback would be 1/(1-r) = 1.47 (i.e. a positive feedback of 47%). [Note: if one ASSUMES r = 2/3, then 1/(1-r) = 3, and that’s how they got 3 degrees from a 1 degree warming due to CO2 alone]
But it’s not that simple! Increasing water vapour also increases cloud cover (consider that in the tropics, water vapour goes up as the Sun rises in the morning, but this is followed by increased cloud cover and afternoon thunderstorms). A reasonable assumption about increasing cloud cover reduces net water vapour feedback to r = 0.1, so 1/(1-r) = 1.11 (i.e. only 11% net feedback).
The bottom line is that climate sensitivity is not 1.5 degrees (and 3 degrees is way WRONG), but close to 0.7 degrees, including feedbacks, when cloud cover is included. And people want to ruin the economy and the welfare of all but the super-rich (who will get richer by “investing” in enforced “green policies”) over a target of 1.5 degrees which can be achieved by allowing 2 doublings of CO2, from 400 to 1600 ppmv, and doing nothing about limiting CO2???
And the revenue … will go to? Ohhh yeahhh … “reparations” for climate injustice. Or … forgiving all student loans? Or … $22.00/hr minimum wage “like they have in Norway” according to AOC?
Or just line the pockets of lots of “Green” Non Profits to Fund more Eco-lawsuits?
Carbon dioxide has turned out to be such a scam! The alarmists and greedy have turned a benign gas into a monster.
History won’t be kind to these insane people. Unfortunately, the insane don’t know they are insane, so they go merrily along doing their insane things.
So what they are saying, people should starve and winter kill for the sake of a climate hoax
yes
Most of them believe that there are way too many humans on the planet. So massive die offs would fit right in with their plans.
GangGreen will do it.
The answer to all of this is really very simple. Marxism/socialism/globalism and what they ironically call ‘progressiveism’ produces no wealth. It can’t. Most of the world’s wealth was once (recently) in the hands of the middle class. Free market capitalism could make that happen again. The object of all these apparent catastrophes (covid and climate whatever, even AIDS) is solely to redistribute wealth and launch the political movement to destroy the middle class … while transferring their wealth to the media – tech giant – political swamp cartel.
Bingo!
Correct. The carbon tax they describe is designed to quickly remove money from workers and producers and to spend that money to destroy free market republics and democracy.
Rich elitists are able to line their pockets as they spend tax income on ridiculous schemes.
Cui bono ?
U2?
What a dumbass. Greenhouse effect is not even real. In any case, he should set an example, and run all his servers on wind mills and solar panels. Only then can he have a claim to some moral authority. What a joke otherwise.
He still wouldn’t have any moral authority. Nothing moral about impoverishing people.
Better to call him out a hypocrite with a chance of redemption rather than letting him run his mouth for free. No?
You know a well as I do, Zoe … these people realize “climate change”, the GHE and CO2 being the climate control knob is just the basis for propaganda. No one with half a brain and any understanding of the subject believes this crap any longer. There is virtually nothing to support it but 50+ years of failure.
“There is virtually nothing to support it but 50+ years of failure.”
Isn’t that the truth! It makes you wonder what exactly alarmists believe in. Everything they believed in, in the past has not come to pass. Yet they still believe. I guess that’s the sign of a fanatic.
I’m guessing a Marxist would say, ‘that’s the sign of deep propaganda penetration.’ I mean the same people also believe O’Biden got the highest vote count of any US president … and that the Kung-flu didn’t come from China.
If wind and solar had been the dominant energy form for 170 years, these type of people would be complaining about millenial cooling that we need to fix with fossil fuels. Buy low, sell high. The big money is in transitions, not stable blue chips.
The perception of what is moral is the only game the left plays.
If wind and solar had been the dominant energy form there would be no internet, mobile phones, cars, etc.
We wouldn’t be having this conversation across the world
In 1841 the average newborn girl was not expected to reach 43 years of age. Today we are double the average age of 1841.
But the reality is that there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. Hence reducing CO2 emissions will have no effect on climate.
If you are a lukewarmer it all makes perfect sense. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. That’s proof by itself, doncha know? Harrummmph!
When in the last decade of the 19th Century, Svante Arrhenius (a prominent and esteemed Swedish physicist) proposed that increasing CO2 would warm the atmosphere, he thought that was a good thing. Mindful of course that within the prior hundred years or so the world had struggled out of what became known as The Little Ice Age, a distinctly unpleasant period.
However, his compatriot, and even more eminent scientist, Knut Angstrom, decided to test this hypothesis and found that it was unsupportable by the rigorous experimental evidence. In spite of Arrhenius’ angst and bitterness, the scientific community accepted Angstrom’s conclusions as valid.
It was a British steam engineer and amateur ‘climatologist’ Guy Callendar who, in the late 1930’s, started the con rolling again, and here we are.
“Renewable energy is so cheap ….”.
So no more taxes on carbon (truthfully Carbon Dioxide), no more subsidies for private sector businesses installing wind and/or solar systems, no pricing manipulation to favour the unreliable minority energy suppliers.
Let them rise or fall, free market capitalism, no interference by governments picking winners and losers.
When will “developing nations” such as China be targeted, the globalists are manipulators and deceivers.
“”Renewable energy is so cheap and convenient“”
Oh yeah, on which planet.
Translate:
“”Other people’s money is so cheap and convenient“”
Does the translation actually require the word money?
Is that it – Misanthropy?
Wind and solar are not legitimate energy producers. They are rent seekers. Political parasites on the energy industry.
Heck, why not make it 6,000%? Note the careful wording in that headline. It’s not a 600% increase, it’s a “gain”. Yeah, right!
How does one get rich by bankrupting the world?
You take all the money from the world (taxpayers) and put it in your pocket.
There is a blocking high sitting over the UK right now, with minimal wind and solar power available for last six days.
Will the carbon scheme forgive people for not using wind power when there is no wind power available?
“There is a blocking high sitting over the UK right now”
It’s a good thing the UK is not running on 100 percent of those cheap windmills because they wouldn’t be running right now.
Anyone who can’t see this windmill/solar societal trainwreck coming should not be in the position of deciding our future.
And the whole thing unravels when one nation refuses to play the game or games the system to cheat the others. Therefore, given the human propensity to cheat, before deploying such a global system, we might try doing a small scale “test experiment” to learn something first.
And as Bloomberg covers Wall Street, that might be the place to start, and as the experiment to reign in Wall Street has been going on since the 1920s we already have mountains of data to formulate questions and answers, like:
Is Wall Street now working for the common man and the general betterment of society? Does Wall Street welcome new government regulations to help it police itself? Does Wall Street welcome investigations to get to the bottom of things? Etc, etc, etc….
It seems to me that once our intellectuals get Wall Street under control, they will be better positioned to move on to bigger fish, like the global energy market. IMHO
No, many nations are already gaming the system to cheat others. The whole thing won’t unravel until the biggest payer refuses, or becomes unable, to play the game.
Make no mistake, the “carbon tax” is both economy-destroying as well as middle class – destroying. It is a direct attack on our energy systems, negatively affecting both the electric grid, as well as transportation and heating. It lowers living standards, and hits both the elderly and poor particularly severely, ultimately resulting in deaths. But Big Climate doesn’t care. They are after Power, and of course, money.
A carbon dioxide tax is an attack on fossil fuels which makes it an attack on our entire economy. Going along with a carbon dioxide tax means you are going along with destroying our economy. Hear that, Republicans!?
Taxing fossil fuels is the worst thing we can do to our economy. Hear that, Republicans!?
Alarmists should have to prove that it is necessary to regulate CO2 before imposing a tax on it. There is no evidence that CO2 is harmful in any way to humans or the Earth. I repeat, there is no evidence that CO2 is harmful in any way to humans or the Earth.
Just saying CO2 is harmful or will raise temperatures does not make it so. These are unsubstantiated assertions which reasonable people should say require proof to be believed and acted upon.
To date, there is no evidence that CO2 is harmful or needs to be regulated. Prove it, Alarmists!
The Cult of CO2 is based on nothing but speculation. The alarmists want to destroy our economies based on nothing but speculation. If the alarmists disagree, then they should show us something based on more than speculation. I’ll go out on a limb here, and say they don’t have anything other than speculation to offer.
They could prove me wrong, but they won’t.
That ought to tell you all you need to know about the state of knowledge of CO2 and its interactions with the Earth’s atmosphere. We certainly don’t have enough information to start limiting fossil fuels or putting taxes on it. These alarmist fanatics are way ahead of themselves. Which is probably to be expected from fanatics.
And as an aside: What the hell is Senator Ted Cruz doing promoting the U.S. attending the Chicom winter Olympic games? How ignorant is that!
Attending the Chicom Olympics would be equivalent to the U.S. attending the Berlin Olympic games *after* it was known that the Nazis had murdered millions of innocent people.
The Chicoms deliberately murdered millions of people when they deliberately released the Wuhan virus into the world from Wuhan, China.
Attending the Chicom Olympic games would be normalizing mass murder.
You are starting to worry me, Ted.
And of course all those who claim renewables are cheap keep on using reliable fossil fuels.
Increase the price of food by 600% to eliminate obesity….good plan….
One day economists will unravel the mystery of why renewable energy is having such an uphill battle replacing fossil fuel, despite multiple claims that renewables are the cheapest option.
What mystery? Renewables are highly inefficient, are intermittent and only exist due to taxpayer subsidies.
Affordable energy is the name of the games and renewables are anything but affordable.
“What mystery?”
That’s the right question.
The truth is unreliable windmills and solar are not the cheapest option, even when they are working. When they don’t work, they are a disaster, like in Texas.
Has it not been proven beyond a doubt that renewables are incredibly expensive- and unreliable.(rhetorical).
Has it not been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the “climate scare” is not really about climate (rhetorical)
Here’s a short video that exposes the Carbon ‘Tax” Scam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8y_WsVvYQ8
Bloomy’s got a three point plan for Americans. He will make us starve, freeze, and become immobile.
What a damned lie.
The true cost of intermittency may be finding its rightful home
https://www.wsj.com/articles/wind-power-was-thriving-in-texas-then-came-the-freeze-11614871347
Wind farms who secured a guaranteed price for their output in exchange for buying in shortfalls in production from the market may now be bankrupt.
A pertinent excerpt would be appreciated. The Wall Street Journal doesn’t allow the full article to be read unless one has a subscription, so I probably missed out on some important data.
I did see in the article where Texas windmills provide about 23 percent of Texas electricity. That’s too much if they don’t have adequate backup. Which they did not. We had that demonstrated for us in February.
“I did see in the article where Texas windmills provide about 23 percent of Texas electricity. That’s too much if they don’t have adequate backup.”
True. No one in the know thought that wind would provide peaker power in this most unusual event. Rather, they are now deflecting from telling us what they actually DID plan for (or not) to back it up. Even in this fora, there’s no stomach for that.
If you don’t want to wait, it’s natural gas peaker capacity, which could have done the job. It has mostly been the most practical choice everywhere else – unless your well formation face to residential and well formation face to electric infrastructure is on low bid life support..
Hope you are among the tiny minority (of zero, so far) who is willing to get the facts before prejudging via your WUWT PC inclinations…
Renewable energy is cheap? How the H**L does one come to that conclusion?
1) First it has to have special laws so that it can even make a profit.
2) It has to have subsidies or no one will build it
3) It has to have some form of backup energy source to replace it when it isn’t working
4) It has to have long lines of transmission lines built to get the power to a consumer
5) It has all sorts of environmental impacts no one wants to talk about (just waiting for the first large tornado to go through a solar or wind farm; wondering if Texas bats will even exist in 20 years; large birds are being massacred)
6) There are no plans for the decommissioning or recycling of its infrastructure
Save Texas…no more “renewable energy” is wanted, build nuclear.
“5) It has all sorts of environmental impacts no one wants to talk about (just waiting for the first large tornado to go through a solar or wind farm; wondering if Texas bats will even exist in 20 years; large birds are being massacred)”
I saw a newpaper article the other day which told of how an energy company in California was going to start paying for the breeding of endangered California Condors to make up for the condors their windmills were killing. That’s real nice of them, isn’t it.
I wonder if they will start a breeding program for all the other species of birds they are killing every day with their windmills?
Whale oil is sustainable, superior to, and cheaper than kerosene. All you need to do is neglect the collection system and the rendering/refining costs, and assume that there is a constant year-round supply.