In its pitch for a federal clean energy standard (CES), The Washington Post’s editorial board asks, “Will America do anything significant to slow climate change?”
Assuming America actually needs to do something to slow climate change, even if the Post’s editorial board got its wish for a CES, America still wouldn’t be doing anything to slow climate change.
Senator Jeff Bingaman’s (D–NM) Clean Energy Standard Act of 2012 would require at least 24 percent of U.S. electricity generation to come from politically defined “clean energy” sources by 2015. The mandate increases dramatically, rising to 84 percent by 2035. New natural gas plants, as well as already-built hydroelectric and nuclear plants, would receive partial credit to help meet the standard.
But a clean energy standard wouldn’t drastically reduce emissions, nor would it significantly impact climate change. The Energy Information Administration estimated that mandating that 25 percent of energy comes from renewable energy would reduce emissions by only 4.9 percent by 2030.
The cap-and-trade target was to reduce carbon 80 percent below 2005 levels of emissions by 2050. To put that number in perspective, climatologist Paul C. Knappenberger says that an 80 percent reduction would moderate temperatures by only hundredths of a degree in 2050—and no more than two-tenths of a degree by the end of the century.
The US already absorbs more carbon than it emits. All that’s needed for the rest of the world is to follow the example of the US.
Climate has always changed and always will. Our small contribution can’t be removed without giving up our modern society with all it’s benefits (to us). So we’ll do what we always do – adapt to things as they change. It’s what we’re good at and has made us successful.
I guess the US needs to reduce its population. Let’s deport the fraudulent climate team to the Sudan where their carbon footprint would be quite small. All of the researchers, the mainstream news media, and the Democrat Party can be sent to the Sudan cutting the US population in half and raising the average level of intelligence 10 fold.
Climate is merely the sum of the weather in retrospect. The only changes we can (and do) make to climate is altering (adjusting) the collected data. The climate change will slow to normal when the fraudsters reduce their rate of change.