Science Inadvertently Exposes the Paris/Net-Zero Fraud

In a recent paper published in Science , Annika Stechemesser et. al. report that 63 out of 1500 climate policies “implemented between 1998 and 2022 across 41 countries from six continents” have been “successful” in terms of yielding “large emissions reductions” in furtherance of the Paris Agreement climate targets. They find “total emissions reductions between 0.6 billion and 1.8 billion metric tonnes CO 2 .” According to the EDGAR database, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in total for 1998 through 2022 were about 1105.2 billion metric tons (bmt) in CO 2 -equivalents (CO 2 -e). The upper bound of the “large emissions reductions” reported by Stechemesser et. al. is 1.8 bmt, or 0.16 percent of total emissions for that period. Let us assume 2.0 bmt as a crude but generous adjustment for the difference between the climate effects of CO 2 and CO 2 -e; accordingly, the “large emissions reductions” during 1998–2022 were 0.18 percent of the total. Assume, reasonably, that the climate effects of those reduced emissions would be observed in full by the year 2100. A highly conservative assumption is that the equilibrium sensitivity of the climate system (ECS) is 4.5°C, that is, that a doubling of atmospheric GHG concentrations would yield a temperature increase of 4.5°C, a figure much higher than those reported in the recent peer-reviewed literature (see fn. 8 ), and higher than the top of the “likely” range for ECS reported (see p. 46 ) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the Sixth Assessment Report. This assumption, accordingly, exaggerates also the effects of reductions in GHG emissions. If we apply the US Environmental Protection Agency climate model , the “large emissions reductions” reported by Stechemesser et. al. would yield a temperature reduction of 0.00247°C by 2100. That figure is two orders of magnitude smaller than the standard deviation of the surface temperature record of about 0.1°C ( 0.08°C to 0.11°C ). It would not even remotely be detectable. Consider now the costs of the “large emissions reductions” reported by Stechemesser et. al. The Climate Policy Initiative reports over $6.6 trillion in climate spending only for the period 2017-2022. That figure clearly is an underestimate of the economic costs of climate policies because it ignores the costs of adjustments engendered by the climate policies. But if we use the $6.6 trillion figure alone, that works out to $3,300 per ton of reduced emissions; the thoroughly dishonest estimate of the “social cost of carbon” from the Biden administration was about $190 per ton . Moreover, the $6.6 trillion figure implies a cost of $2.67 million per hundred-thousandth of a degree avoided. Does there exist a plausible benefit/cost test that would justify such massive costs yielding such trivial effects? Almost certainly without intending to do so, Stechemesser et. al. have exposed the true goal of the climate alarmist industry: … we have identified pricing as a particularly effective policy in those sectors dominated by profit-maximizing firms — namely, industry — but also the electricity sector in developed economies. … in sharp contrast to that of developed economies, we did not find any successful pricing intervention with large emission reductions in the electricity sector of developing economies, even though around 13% of policy adoptions or tightenings are pricing interventions. In other words, “pricing”—some combination of taxation, cap-and-trade systems, reduced consumption subsidies, etc.—is the policy choice reported by Stechemesser et. al. as most effective for emissions reductions in developed economies, but not for the less-developed economies, with the obvious exception of a reduction in consumption subsidies. Note that on a global basis, consumption subsidies are by far the dominant form of policy favoritism (or subsidization) for fossil fuels, implemented by governments democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian as a tool with which to maintain social peace. Therefore, perhaps without realizing it, Stechemesser et. al. implicitly are arguing for an increase in taxes applied to conventional energy—that is, fossil fuels—in the developed economies combined with a reduction in the consumption subsidies for fossil fuels in the less-developed economies. The obvious outcome would be some sort of international system of money transfers from the developed economies to the less-developed ones, similar to the Green Climate Fund , an abject failure by any definition. The actual climate impacts would be irrelevant. I am not suggesting here any dishonesty on the part of Stechemesser et. al. But their central framing of the issue—that utterly trivial reductions GHG emissions instead are “large”—combined with their empirical findings on the respective effects of pricing policies in developed and less-developed economies leads to an implicit policy recommendation of taxes and transfers making government bigger everywhere and the world’s poor ever more dependent on welfare rather than private sector incentives. This is utterly perverse. The post Science Inadvertently Exposes the Paris/Net-Zero Fraud appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI .