Democrats’ Climate Policy Is a Fraud
Even Democrats don’t want to hear about ‘climate change’. The words were barely mentioned at the convention, and every transcript I examined omitted the once obligatory Biden modifier “existential.”
The reason isn’t a mystery. Joe Biden’s policies are having not the slightest effect on ‘climate change’ and yet somebody will still have to pay Ford’s $130,000 in losses per electric vehicle in the first quarter.
This sum, a calculation shows, is equal to $64.80 per gallon of gasoline saved over four years of average driving. And yes, this amounts to a ludicrously costly subsidy to somebody else to use the gasoline that EV drivers are paid to forgo.
Voilà, the flaw in the Biden strategy from the get-go, which completely defeats the goal of reducing emissions.
Regular readers may feel vindicated by a new study this week in the prestigious journal Science. It examines 1,500 “climate” policies adopted around the world and finds only 63—or four percent—produced any emissions reductions.
Even so, press accounts strained to muddy the study’s simple lesson so let’s spell it out: Taxing ‘carbon’ reduces emissions. Subsidizing “green energy” doesn’t.
In fact, this should be old hat. One of the most cited papers in climate economics is 2012’s “Do alternative energy sources displace fossil fuels?” by the University of Oregon’s Richard York.
His answer: not “when net effects are considered.”
Mr. York and a colleague returned with a 2019 empirical paper showing that while “renewable energy sources compose a larger share of overall energy production, they are not replacing fossil fuels but are rather expanding the overall amount of energy that is produced.”
This result can’t really surprise the Obama-Biden Democrats, who sponsored a 2013 National Research Council study of their own, led by a future Nobel Prize winner no less. For similar reasons, the author didn’t mince words, concluding that green subsidies were a “poor tool for reducing greenhouse gases and achieving climate-change objectives.”
Yet this poor strategy Mr. Biden would later quadruple down on with upward of $1 trillion in taxpayer and energy consumer money.
I won’t rehearse the official lying that went into selling this folly, especially in the form of Mr. Biden’s laughably named Inflation Reduction Act. But nothing in presidential memory resembles Mr. Biden’s record of exceptionally foolish choices in office.
You know the litany: the second Covid spendathon that caused nine percent inflation, the border collapse, the Afghanistan withdrawal, his attempt to appease Vladimir Putin after lying about a Russian connection to Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Mr. Biden’s ‘green-energy’ strategy was wrongheaded by every bit of economic advice, with nothing to show now except billions added to the deficit and a budding disaster from forcing Detroit to build EVs the public doesn’t want.
So let us welcome the new Science magazine study. “Backfire” was a term already turning up in the economics literature for policies that claim to reduce emissions but actually increase them.
‘Green-energy’ subsidies, in the first instance, subsidize extra ‘fossil-fuel’ consumption to produce battery minerals, wind turbines and solar panels. U.S. policies particularly incentivize oversize SUVs whose net emissions are greater than any gasoline-fueled miles they could possibly displace.
When Washington spends hundreds of billions to lure some drivers to use EVs, guess what? It ends up making gasoline cheaper and more available for other consumers around the world to use.
The 2023 data have arrived. ‘Fossil-fuel’ use, emissions and ‘green’ energy all have grown right alongside each other, as economics predicted. Global emissions finally broke the 40 gigaton threshold, having doubled since 1984.
A few years ago the United Nations climate panel dropped its once-standard emissions scenario RCP 8.5 as unduly pessimistic. It may have to be revived.
RCP 8.5 was a model of emissions under systematically bad global economic policies, such as Biden’s ‘green-energy’ trade wars and industrial pork barrel, that inhibit the global economy’s quest for energy efficiency.
Obama handler David Axelrod ventured on CNN this week that the Democratic convention had turned out to be a “values-laden” affair, short on “policy specifics.”
This understates how thoroughly the convention left voters having to guess how Kamala Harris will act on a myriad of issues. Their only guide is apparently that she doesn’t kick puppies and Donald Trump does.
Every scintilla suggests Harris nevertheless would bring better natural judgment than Biden. But because she, like America, has been swathed in the New York Times’s unanalytical, uncritical cheerleading, she will still likely be dumbfounded to learn the truth about Biden climate policies.
Perhaps we should say “if” she chooses to hear the truth. Because there’s a good chance she would keep throwing your money and mine on the pyre to avoid admitting a mistake.
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David Hamilton Russell
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One word, “Thermalization,” proves that the GHE is 1/200th of what the consensus states:
Consensus: GHGs absorb IR energy from the surface and re-radiate half of it back to the surface.
Reality: Premise: 1) GHGs make up less than 0.5% of the atmosphere; 2) thermal equalization (all molecules at any given altitude have on average the same temperature). As both of these premises are textbook facts, therefore by deduction:
GHGs absorb IR from the surface, use 99.5% of it to warm the other 99.5% of the air via molecular collisions (conduction) and radiate the residual 0.5% of what they absorbed, half back to the surface.
Thus, the GHE is 1/200th of the consensus belief (0.5% divided by 100% = 1/200th). Another way of saying this is that at all times 99.5% of the thermal mass is in the non-radiating, non-GHGs which cannot warm the surface, and in the lower troposphere, the real GHE is to warm the non-GHGs nearby. Q.E.D.
Extra credit: If you stipulate that the official temperature response to 2X CO2 (aka, climate sensitivity) will be between 1.5C and 4.5C based on the consensus rendition of the GHG, then without challenging the logic of that range, what is the revised range of temperature responses to 2X CO2 with the GHE actually being 1/200th its consensus response?
[That’s right: zilch…. 0.0075C to 0.0225C]
AGW …… R. I. P.
The above analysis obviates the need to consider feedbacks because it includes all sources of feedbacks (other GHGs). It’s a continuous explanation until the percentage changes (premise 1). And it reduces climate sensitivity to the percentage change. A double of CO2 from 420ppm changes GHE percentage to from 0.5% to 0.5420% after thermalization. Immaterial.
And the reality is much worse. While all the NCGHGs have almost the same specific heat on average as the collective non-GHGs do (~1), WV’s specific heat is 80% higher (1.8), which means it takes 80% more energy to raise WV 1C than to raise all the other GHGs 1C. As WV is 3 times as plentiful on average in the atmosphere as the total of the NCGHGs, its component in the mix makes the 1/200 ratio closer to 1/400. The GHE as a radiative phenomenon basically is non-existent.
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Herb Rose
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Hi David,
The level of CO2 is 442 ppm or .00442% (not .5%). For every molecule in the air there are 1000 on the surface so the 442 CO2 molecules must not only heat other molecules in the air but also 1 billion molecules on the surface, which provide the energy to heat the gases in the atmosphere..
Herb
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David Hamilton Russell
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With respect, I know that. My 0.5% includes ALL the GHGs, not just CO2. The internet says WV, while highly variable, averages 0.2% to 0.4%. I used 0.4%. The other GHGs collectively add up to less than 0.1%. Hence: 0.5%. Since I include all the GHGs, not just CO2, the notion of feedbacks becomes moot, as feedbacks always include the extra impact of one GHG on another. But in my analysis, there are no other GHGs, as it includes them all up front. Cool, huh?
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Herb Rose
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Hi David,
N2, O2, and argon make up 99.9% of the gases in the atmosphere. Water is not GHG as it absorbs heat from the surface and carries that heat up in the atmosphere where it is released into space. You do not become warmer when sweating because the evaporated water is reflecting back to you.
If you consult a water phase chart it shows that water cannot become a gas at the surface below its boiling point. The water in the atmosphere is in the form of micro droplets of liquid water. This can been seen with a tea kettle where the water first appears as a clear gas then becomes visible droplets on cooling. These droplets then disappear on further cooling. They are not gaining the energy needed to again become a gas.
Herb
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David Hamilton Russell
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WV is a gas and it does absorb IR at earth temperatures. I haven’t a clue why you are arguing that it isn’t a GHG. I know of no place where the oceans reach the boiling point, yet WV screams out of the oceans. Get a new water phase chart. Water can evaporate at many temperatures given varying atmospheric pressure water boils at less than 100C in the mountains. Steam has no water droplets and is invisible.
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Herb Rose
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Hi David,
Water evaporates even when a solid, sublimation. If you were to do an experiment to see how much energy was needed to convert t0 C ice into steam you would need to add 720 calories/gram to convert it to 100 C steam. If something needs that much energy to evaporate it must significantly cool the surrounding area, yet you claim that gas will warm the area as a GHG. Utter nonsense, evaporation is constantly used to cool surfaces. Learn how to read a phase chart graph of water as temperature and pressure change.
Water comes out a tea kettle as transparent steam but quickly cools producing visible droplets. These droplets then disappear. Are you claiming the phases of water as it cools goes from gas, to liquid, to gas, to liquid, to solid?
If water were a gas in the atmosphere, with a molecular weight of 18, it would permeate the entire atmosphere like N2 (28) and O2(32), not be almost exclusively found in the troposphere.
In order for water to condense the molecules must get closer together but the atmosphere continually becomes less dense with increasing altitude, regardless of temperature.
If the water in clouds are droplets, what is keeping them in the air instead of dropping out? The answer of updrafts is absurd. If you look at clouds they have a flat bottom with bulges and dimples. The bottom remains flat and those dimples remain as the clouds move across the sky, which would not happen if updrafts and winds were keeping them airborne. As the clouds become denser and the sky becomes overcast the clouds maintain their altitude even as the air under them cools and condenses. Is the entire surface under an overcast sky producing an updraft to keep the droplets from falling?
Evaporation is the result of water absorbing energy, breaking some water molecules into hydroxyl and hydrogen ions, that then create liquid crystals with a negatively charged outer shell and a positive liquid center. The energy being absorbed is being converted to electric energy snd being stored and does not appear as radiated energy.
When the air around the liquid cools the energy is released warming the air and creating larger droplets as dew. The reason overcast nights are warmer than clear nights is not because the water in the -30 C air is reflecting heat back to the surface but because it is releasing stored energy heating the air.
Herb
David Hamilton Russell
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A GHG is: 1) a gas; and 2) one that absorbs and emits radiation under earth atmospheric conditions. Thus WV is a GHG. I never said WV warms the surface, and if you read my above analysis none of the other GHGs warm the surface either. Steam has no water droplets, by definition. When steam condenses, by definition it is not steam anymore. I feel I’m talking in a vacuum with you. What’s your point? Did I say clouds contain no water droplets? I don’t recall saying that. Nor did I say clouds are made of steam. I’m surprised you didn’t mention that cirrus clouds are made of ice crystals. I don’t recall even mentioning clouds myself. I cannot read any more of your post. It’s too goofy.
Herb Rose
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Hi David,
A GHG is a gas and absorbs and emits radiation under earth conditions.
Since the only temperature on earth where CO2 absorbs snd emits radiation is -80 I guess we can remove it as a GHG since those conditions rarely occur on earth. Water absorbs radiation at a broad range of temperatures but retains most of that radiated energy, not radiating it, making it a negative GHG.
There is dry steam, which contains no liquid water and wet steam that still contains liquid water, just as there is ice that is not all crystal and contains liquid water and solid ice that is all crystal. The two forms of steam and ice occur at temperatures above the boiling point and below the freezing point.
Herb
Herb Rose
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Hi David,
Let me explain what clouds are.
All matter above absolute zero both absorbs and radiates energy. If the amount of energy it radiates is greater than the amount of energy it absorbs it loses energy. If the amount of energy it absorbs is greater than the amount of energy it radiates it gains energy.
According to the experts CO2 is absorbing energy from the Earth’s surface and radiating more energy causing the Earth to become warmer.
A methane molecule is able to do this because it contains internal chemical energy so it reacts with oxygen to release this energy converting into H2O and CO2. This loss of internal energy causes a destruction of the molecule. CO2 is magically able to do this without the destruction of the molecule.
Clouds are a result of water releasing the stored energy, they absorbed at the surface, into space and condensing into larger visible droplets. Until you reach an altitude where there are clouds water is absorbing more energy than it is radiating.
The contention that water is radiating more energy than it absorbs in the lower atmosphere is absurd.
Herb
Jerry Krause
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Hi Herb,
You just wrote: “This can been seen with a tea kettle where the water first appears as a clear gas then becomes visible droplets on cooling. These droplets then disappear on further cooling. They are not gaining the energy needed to again become a gas.”
Specifically: “These droplets then disappear on further cooling.” To where are they disappearing if they do not again become a gas?
Have a good day
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Herb Rose
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When water absorbs heat some molecules split into hydroxyl and hydrogen ions. This is why you must use a pH meter with s temperature probe that corrects for changes in temperature to get an accurate pH.
A hydrogen ion immediately attracts two water molecules to form a larger molecule with the structure
(2H-O-H+(right angle)-O-H2)+.
This structure is stable.
The OH- ion combines with to form an O/H\O/H\O/H chain that ends as a closed loop with a negative charge. Because of the attraction between positive and negative charges the loop forms around the the positive 2H-O-+-O-H2+ ion creating a liquid crystal with a positive charged liquid center surrounded by a negative outer shell. This crystal is too small to be visible and the IR energy absorbed is now stored as electrical potential.
The negative shell causes the liquid crystal to separate from the body of the water. It is the negative repelling force between the crystal and the surface that causes the crystal it rise in the atmosphere and holds its position there, despite gravity trying to pull it to the surface. (That is why clouds tend to have flat bottoms, looking like they’re resting on a surface).
In the air the crystal continues to absorb IR and create ions. This growth is thickening the shell and increasing the negative charge causing the liquid crystal to rise further into the atmosphere.
Since the energy field around the Earth increases with increasing altitude, the liquid crystal reaches its second melt point and begins to melt the outer layer of the shell, releasing electrons. These electrons remain on the surface of the crystal, held there by the positive charges in its center. It is these free electrons on the surface of the crystals that repels electrons on the Earth surface creating a positive charge under the cloud, instead of the normal negative surface charge.
When the melting breaches the shell the protons and electrons combine turning the electric potential back into heat and releasing it into space.
The neutralization of the negative charges in the cloud causes the electrons on the surface to surge back under the cloud, creating lightning as they rush back up to the clouds with their now relative positive charge. This produces excess electrons in the cloud resulting in lightning between clouds with different charges and the surface.
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David Hamilton Russell
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That was a very informative post. I learned something. Thanks.
Jerry Krause
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Hi Herb,
You explained everything you consider to know about water. But about a repeatable observation you wrote: “These droplets then disappear on further cooling.” And all your words in no way answered (addressed) the question: To where are they (the droplets) disappearing if they do not again become a gas?
Science is totally based upon a simple observations which you shared with us. I have a quotable wisdom: ‘The most obvious is the most difficult to see!”
Have a good day
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Herb Rose
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Jerry,
I did explain it but you did not understand. Th water droplets are being converted to small liquid crystals as the heat becomes the heat of crystallization.
Jerry, what do you think the humidity is in the cloud of visible droplets? Don’t the droplets appear because the temperature of the room is lower than the dew point? Water does not evaporate if the humidity is 100%.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Herb,
“Th water droplets are being converted to small liquid crystals as the heat becomes the heat of crystallization.” What are these “liquid crystals”? And why are they so small that we cannot detect them when we can detect (see) the presence of the water droplets?
Have a good day
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Jerry Krause
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Hi David,
Had to work a little to understand your reasoning. Had to work harder to identify whom you were. Of course I have forgotten your Texas university, But even if I remember I am still uncertain if you are the David H. Russell I believe I found.
Have a good day
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David Hamilton Russell
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The best answer to your question is that I’m just someone who has figured out that AGW is a fraud and never went to university in Texas. I have multiple proofs AGW is a fraud but the easiest one to understand is my above proof that the GHE is in reality ~99% a conduction matter and 1% a radiative matter (or less). This is because of thermalization, which per force must occur before radiation. Actually, it’s a statistical thing: of 100 GHG molecules at any and all times, 99 of them conduct all their energy to nearby non-GHGs and the 1 actually radiates. Thus the GHE is miniscule and the AGW thesis (based on the GHE) collapses to 1% of its consensus effect. So if the consensus claims a 3C climate sensitivity overstating the GHE by 100 fold, then the real GHE is 0.03C, which can be safely ignored.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi David,
Thanks for informing me that you are not the Texas profess0r I was considering you might be but “I’m just someone” is non-information. I already knew that. While you might not care whom I am beside my name.; I earned a Ph.D. bu studying the simultaneous diffusion of divalent cations of cadmium and lead in single crystals of sodium chloride (common salt with which many season their food) and potassium chloride. While the diffusion of these single divalent ions had in these single crystals had been done several times, so there was really nothing original about the experimental work if one took the time to mass vails within a reproducible millionth of a gram. However, the analysis of my experimental results had never been done. And a fact is I did more than 20 experiments over a period of more than a year without having a clue how I was going to do the analysis (the original part of my thesis research).
But earning a doctorate, in my case, required learning the previous fundamental knowledge that had been learned in physical chemistry, physics, and mathematics. And after more than three years of course work there was an oral prelim examination to see if one had acquired sufficient understanding of these subjects to qualify one for the doctorate degree.
I review this for you (David) because I will suggest you need to consider some things which commonly overlooked. This just as you have correctly pointed to things that you SEE which it seems not many others have SEEN. Which readers of PSI should consider.
You just wrote: “proof that the GHE is in reality ~99% a conduction matter and 1% a radiative matter (or less).” The problem isn’t yours; it is that \we don’t have a term to describe the exchange of kinetic energy between individual gas molecules, or atoms during an actual collision. “Conduction” implies the movement of something from one place to another. But your idea assumes a high energy molecule transfers energy to a molecule with lesser energy during the actual collision process. Do you agree?
Have a good day
(Fixed your e-mail error, rescued from spam bin) SUNMOD
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Jerry Krause
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Hi David,
Thanks for informing me that you are not the Texas profess0r I was considering you might be but “I’m just someone” is non-information. I already knew that. While you might not care whom I am beside my name.; I earned a Ph.D. bu studying the simultaneous diffusion of divalent cations of cadmium and lead in single crystals of sodium chloride (common salt with which many season their food) and potassium chloride. While the diffusion of these single divalent ions had in these single crystals had been done several times, so there was really nothing original about the experimental work if one took the time to mass vails within a reproducible millionth of a gram. However, the analysis of my experimental results had never been done. And a fact is I did more than 20 experiments over a period of more than a year without having a clue how I was going to do the analysis (the original part of my thesis research).
But earning a doctorate, in my case, required learning the previous fundamental knowledge that had been learned in physical chemistry, physics, and mathematics. And after more than three years of course work there was an oral prelim examination to see if one had acquired sufficient understanding of these subjects to qualify one for the doctorate degree.
I review this for you (David) because I will suggest you need to consider some things which commonly overlooked. This just as you have correctly pointed to things that you SEE which it seems not many others have SEEN. Which readers of PSI should consider.
You just wrote: “proof that the GHE is in reality ~99% a conduction matter and 1% a radiative matter (or less).” The problem isn’t yours; it is that \we don’t have a term to describe the exchange of kinetic energy between individual gas molecules, or atoms during an actual collision. “Conduction” implies the movement of something from one place to another. But your idea assumes a high energy molecule transfers energy to a molecule with lesser energy during the actual collision process. Do you agree?
Have a good day
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David Hamilton Russell
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I agree, but see no mystery about conduction. The net effect of atmospheric physics is that ~99% of the thermal energy is at present and all future times in the non-GHGs until the percentage of GHG to total gases in the air changes. That leaves only 1% in the GHGs with 1% of the total energy they absorb left to radiate after thermalization. As is necessitated by math, GHGs can only radiate what energy they have which is at all times 1% of what they absorb.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi David Hamilton Russell,
What do you consider the odds are that David H. Russell at Texas-AM University and you could, have had in rh
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Jerry Krause
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Hi David Hamilton Russell,
What do you consider the odds are that David H. Russell at Texas-AM University and you could, in the past, have had the same ancestor with your name? Especially if you check out what his interests as a professor are.
And I certainly want to have a long discussion with you here; to see what else we may agree upon. Have a good day
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Jerry Krause
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Hi David Hamilton Russell,
Are you familiar with this meteorological source of data (https://wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/rawMAIN.pl?orOALL)?
Have a good day
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