The detachment from reality of those who actually believe that the recent international climate agreement in Paris is anything but a dangerous and potentially expensive charade has become especially irritating.
The goals identified in Paris are obviously unachievable, and have no direct tie-in to reducing "global warming." Convincing evidence of the link between carbon dioxide generation and allegedly rising global temperatures doesn't exist. In light of this reality, someone really needs to ask the AP's Karl Ritter how much Kool-Aid he had to drink before he informed readers on Thursday morning that the "PARIS CLIMATE GOALS MEAN EMISSIONS NEED TO DROP BELOW ZERO" — and then attempted to take that goal seriously.
Ritter told readers about incredibly expensive, exotic, unproven and logistically burdensome methods world leaders might mandate to go about "removing more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than humans put in it," involving getting rid of "about 50 billion tons (of "greenhouse gases) a year, mostly carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels for energy." They include "planting more forests, which absorb carbon dioxide naturally as they grow, and combining bioenergy with carbon capture technologies." Then as Ritter noted, "there's the issue of finding places to store the carbon dioxide once you've captured it." Yeah, we're supposed to bury huge volumes of CO2 under rocks.
Although he did acknowledge in an early paragraph that "some observers (are) wondering whether politicians understand the implications of the goals they signed up for," Ritter waited until Paragraph 27 of his 30-paragraph report to include even a non-specific contrarian viewpoint:
Oliver Geden of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs said the temperature goals governments adopted in Paris don't match the actions nations are taking to limit emissions.
"It's so easy to have this kind of target," he said. "I don't understand that given the history of the (U.N. climate talks), everyone is taking this seriously."
Mr. Geden is right that no one should be "taking this seriously." But, sadly, they are, especially in the United States, where President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and most of the Democratic Party treat "climiate change" as a more important priority than defeating worldwide Islamic (but they never use that word) terrorism.
Ritter fell right in with Obama and Kerry, calling the Paris agreement "historic. For the first time all countries agreed to jointly fight climate change, primarily by reducing the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases."
The evidence that China, to name just one country, is involved in the "climate change" fight is razor-thin to non-existent. In fact, China is the worst "climate change" offender on the planet. If the climatistas were honest with the world, they would acknowledge that:
- China has blown past the rest of the world in absolute generation of CO2. At current rates of growth, it could pass the U.S. in carbon generation per person in 10-15 or even fewer years.
- Its current plans demonstrate that it has no intention of letting up on its use of fossil fuels to grow its economy.
- The "climate change" agreement has done and will do nothing to hold back China's efforts until at least 2030 — and that's if we're to believe that China takes a separate agreement with the U.S. made last year seriously.
- China, as a designated "underdeveloped" country, would, according to the Paris agreement, be in line to get "climate change" mitigation aid from the world's developed countries.
Fortunately, as American Energy Allicance President Thomas Pyle has noted, the Paris agreement is "non-binding," meaning that a future sane administration in Washington, if one ever arrives, could choose to ignore it without negative consequence.
Here's just one example, for context, of how China is singlehandedly undermining the warmists' goals, while they stand by silently with barely visible complaints.
China has 1,171 coal-fired plants which "are under construction or being planned" — after adding "about two 600-megawatt coal plants a week for 7 straight years." By contrast, the United States, at the end of 2012, had "1,308 coal-fired power generating units spread across 557 power plant sites" — and isn't building any more.
Yet the AP's Ken Ritter actually entertains the notion of net emissions below zero, and that readers should take the idea seriously. What a sick joke.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
