Ornerynorsk, while we continue to squabble, US has made some small but important strides towards reducing emissions. The power plant and vehicle fuel efficiency initiatives demonstrates that the President and a sufficient amount of US government and citizenry agree that something needs to be done about climate change.
Beej67, assuming that CATO’s analysis is accurate, and I have severe doubts on that front, what are they, and you, trying to conclude? The EPA proposal (excluding all other emission reduction measures, including the vehicle fuel efficiency regulation) will not have a significant impact on future global temperatures, so we shouldn’t do anything? Let’s return to our McDonalds-only diet analogy. Finding it difficult to drop McDonalds cold-turkey, our friend decides to see what effect switching from coke to diet coke will have on his future health, while keeping everything else the same. Unsurprisingly, the estimates concluded that it will be beneficial but won’t mitigate his future health concerns completely. So are we to conclude that our friend may as well not bother switching to a more healthy beverage choice? And, furthermore, use it as an example as to why our friend shouldn’t make any positive dietary changes?
As is always the case with CATO and other such places, the only arguments they can make are by taking a microscope to one particular issue, incorrectly looking at it in complete isolation and then incorrectly expanding the conclusion to the big picture (or just flat out making stuff up). Yes, the EPA proposal is rather weak in the grand scheme and I would have rather it been more aggressive (are you also suggesting this?) but climate change mitigation won’t happen with a wave of a wand, it will take small but steady steps towards significant reductions. This is a big first step, especially in the US.
730 million metric tonnes of carbon pollution reduction is not meaningless. $55 Billion to $93 Billion in benefits is not meaningless. It doesn’t solve the issue of climate change, not by a long shot. It was never supposed to and everyone, including CATO, knows that. It was supposed to be and is a step in the right direction.
GregLocock, if you’d like to bring up the “pause” perhaps you should start with providing a counter-argument to any of my 13 previous posts on why the “pause” is a dead argument. You have continually said that temperature is a poor metric to use (expect when it comes to the “pause” apparently), now you chastise people for following your advice? It does not matter whether the metric is temperature, OHC (surface, deep and abyssal), humidity, glacial mass, ice extent, snow coverage or sea level, they all show signs of increased energy.
Regarding your plate tectonic theory (I believe geothermal flux is what you are actually getting at), here’s a few bits of literature for you:
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Stein and Stein, 1992
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Davies and Davies, 2010
Estimated surface heat flux = 47 +/- 2 TW, equivalent to 0.09 W/m^2. This is much smaller than the estimated 0.58 +/- 0.15 W/m^2 energy imbalance (using a very conservative value, by the way) and rather insignificant when compared to solar radiation at 341.3 W/m^2. Furthermore, the surface heat flux is very consistent, even over geological time frames, let alone over the past 50 years. Even if the surface heat flux went from 0 to 0.09 in the last 50 years, which it of course did not, it would be too small to account for the changes in climate noted.
Geothermal flux is not a valid counter-theory to recent climate change because:
- It is too weak (roughly 4 times too weak)
- It is too consistent (any change in geothermal flux over the last 50 years would be infinitesimally small)
So GregLocock, I ask you,
with geothermal flux proven to be insignificant, solar activity in decline and aerosols increasing, how have temperatures increased, OHC increased, humidity increased, sea level risen, ice extents decreased, snow coverage decreased, glacial mass decreased? If it were “natural”, then all those metrics would be moving in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, the theory that I prescribe to does a darn good job predicting and explaining the changes in those metrics.