Would You Spend Trillions of Dollars to Reduce Earth’s Temperature by 0.05°C?

Someone actually bothered to look at the IPCC’s own models to evaluate the impact of all the different programs proposed as CO2 mitigation plans on Earth’s climate. The results are extremely impressive if your goal is spending gargantuan sums of money and impoverishing humanity to achieve almost nothing.

From the abstract of the paper (emphasis and formatting added):

This article investigates the temperature reduction impact of major climate policy proposals implemented by 2030, using the standard MAGICC climate model. Even optimistically assuming that promised emission cuts are maintained throughout the century, the impacts are generally small.

• The impact of the US Clean Power Plan (USCPP) is a reduction in temperature rise by 0.013°C by 2100.
• The full US promise for the COP21 climate conference in Paris, its so-called Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) will reduce temperature rise by 0.031°C.
• The EU 20-20 policy has an impact of 0.026°C, the EU INDC 0.053°C, and China INDC 0.048°C.
• All climate policies by the US, China, the EU and the rest of the world, implemented from the early 2000s to 2030 and sustained through the century will likely reduce global temperature rise about 0.17°C in 2100.

These impact estimates are robust to different calibrations of climate sensitivity, carbon cycling and different climate scenarios. Current climate policy promises will do little to stabilize the climate and their impact will be undetectable for many decades.

To illustrate the utter impotence of these asinine proposals, let’s take the first case: the US Clean Power Plan, which would strive to reduce carbon emissions by reducing coal based energy production. If these reductions are implemented and adhered to until 2100 (when most of the people reading this will be dead), the reduction in temperature rise would be 0.013°C.

Maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t seem like very much. Maybe some perspective will be helpful:

Everyone knows that as you go up a mountain, the air gets cooler. The rate at which non-condensing air cools with increasing altitude is called the “dry adiabatic lapse rate”. The rule of thumb states that for every hundred metres higher that you climb, the temperature drops by 1°C.

Now, a human being is typically around 1.7 metres tall, plus or minus. This means that other things being equal, the air at your head is about 0.017°C cooler than the air at your feet. And recall from above that the “impact of the US Clean Power Plan (USCPP) is a reduction in temperature rise by 0.013°C by 2100” …

Which means that after spending billions of dollars and destroying valuable power plants and reducing our energy options and making us more dependent on Middle East oil, all we will do is make the air around our feet as cool as the air around our heads … I am overcome with gratitude for such a stupendous accomplishment.

Okay then.

But that’s just one proposal for one country. What if the entire world successfully implements all its proposals by 2030 and maintains them until 2100? Far-fetched maybe, but let’s go with it.

Realistically, this would result in a 0.05°C temperature reduction by 2100.

Since it’s perfectly normal to experience a difference of 20°C in a single day, this is pretty much completely meaningless.

And again, this is all based on the IPCC’s own climate models, which have enough problems on their own but nonetheless are the basis for all the anti-carbon hysteria and fear-mongering.

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