Climate: What we are doing to address climate

Related:

• Climate Hypocrites Part 1
• Climate Hypocrites Part 2

Summary

• Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased.
• The physics says this will lead to warming.
• Ice packs in many areas have retreated. This is thought to be caused by human-induced climate change, primarily from burning fuels that emit carbon.
• Climate activists believe we can organize a highly complex sequence of decades long activities to control the climate via proxy.
• If we don’t act some say humanity will be extinct by 2030 (not a typo).
• Global elite demand we change our ways – but as shown in the Climate Hypocrites Part 1 and Part 2, they will not change their own ways and continue to lead a globalist lifestyle of luxury. Their emissions of greenhouse gases are more important than your emissions.
• Many climate activists, including youth activists, live a life of global luxury but say the rest of us should revert to lock downs, without future travel (travel has minor impacts on carbon emissions compared to almost everything else). As described in the above links, they travel all about the world telling the rest of us that travel should be banned.
• Many climate activists promote solutions that are not sustainable and will have little if any benefit. Their goals are something other than climate modification. For example, some activists say we must ban meat – and if you agree with that, do you also agree we must ban all pet dogs and cats? According to a UCLA study, pet dogs and cats consume 25% of meat in the U.S. Is banning all pets a politically supportable measure?
• Extinction Rebellion says their goal is that support from just 3.5% of the population will enable them to rule the world – thus not only the end of capitalism but the end of democracy itself. Thunberg tells us we must destroy capitalism but offers no alternative -> we must end of democracy and freedom and succumb to rule by technocratic elite who are smarter than us inferior peons. In their own words, their goal is to end capitalism and democracy and establish a global world order with the elite in charge.
• Models are notoriously poor at predicting the future – Covid-19 disease models were so poor that in October 2022, the CDC discontinued publishing model outputs because, in the CDC’s own words, they had “low reliability”). Yet we now are relying on climate models to plan for wealth redistribution – “reparations” – for imagined future climate disaster costs that exist in climate model scenarios.
• Today we blame routine and common weather events that are within the range of past weather events on “climate”. Based on this hype, we are planning for wealthier nations to send $2 trillion (by 2030) to countries where citizens openly discuss their government’s corruption – much of this money will line the pockets of government ministers – and do nothing for climate.
• Personally, we have done everything we can reasonably accomplish and estimate that we have cut our household carbon emissions to 1/10th that of typical U.S. household.

If climate change is real (and I assume it is), the elite are not acting like it is a real issue

WHAT WE HAVE DONE

We have cut our overall carbon output to about 1/10th that of the average American household (estimated using 3 different online carbon emission calculators).

• My home has six-inch walls with genuine R-19 (or better) insulation.
• We have triple paned, vinyl clad windows.
• We upgraded the attic insulation to R-60 (it’s more than R-60 since the insulation installer had excess material to blow in, so they did).
• We installed solar PV and solar energy powers 100% of our annual electricity (plus more).
• Solar PV charges our EV.
• Our home’s solar PV array is 1/2 the size of the solar PV array on the home across the street and 1/3d the size of another home’s array around the corner. Yet we produce almost 2 MWH of surplus electricity each year – because our home and use of energy is so efficient. This is why we have more than enough solar produced electricity to charge our EV for all local and regional travel.
• I continue to drive my old Honda Fit which averages 42 mpg. Based on overall life cycle energy costs, this is more carbon efficient than replacing with an EV. One analysis finds that at 200,000 miles of EV driving, an EV reduces carbon emissions by a mere -28% versus a similar sized gas car when considering total lifecycle energy costs. Personal EVs have little impact on global carbon emissions (see more on that topic, below) – but the world has fixated on EVs since people see cars but do not see behind-the-scenes industrial operations and electricity generation that goes into making them (or making anything else).
• We air dry laundry on a clothes rack, seasonally outside, or inside during the winter months.
• Our house is lit entirely with LED lighting, and we rarely have multiple lights on.
• Our home is heated by locally sourced wood pellets made from locally sourced wood waste; the UN says wood is carbon neutral (but since there is energy to collect, process and transport I disagree that it is entirely carbon neutral – but those energy costs occur for all forms of energy too).
• If we use electric heating – that comes from our heat pump which is twice as efficient as an electric furnace. We rarely use the electric heater (as I update this sentence in Nov 2023 it was 12 deg F/-10 deg C this morning and as I edit/update this in January 2024, the outside air temperature is 0 deg F.)
• Our house has AC (AC is the reverse operation of the heat pump) but we manage the summer time house temperature by opening windows at night and cooling down the home’s thermal mass, which remains cool – usually below 77 degrees, all day, without using AC. We live in a high desert – on the day I wrote this sentence in July 2023, the outside temperature is in the mid-90s but inside it is mid-70s F – and the AC hasn’t been on.
• The water heater is electric; we turn it to “Off” or “Vacation” mode when we leave. This is the largest single consumer of electricity in our home. When off, our daily electric consumption, mostly for the fridge and freezer, is about 2-2.4 KWH per day. Today, as I write this (July 2023), our solar PV array is producing about 29 KWH (our peak days occur in early summer at about 32-33 KWH). The solar PV array produces more power than we use for about 9 months of the year. The excess is “banked” through our utility intertie, from which we draw a small amount during about 3 months of winter.
• We compost all “green stuff” including kitchen scraps and yard waste.
• We eat little meat but we are not vegetarians. If you live in a northern climate, eating “vegan” means huge energy usage to transport fresh fruit and vegetables, year-round, so you can enjoy eating vegan in the wintertime. Think about that when feeling virtuous. UPDATE: After several years of drifting into almost entirely vegetarian eating, I developed numerous health problems that were fixed by abandoning vegetarian eating. The push for everyone to stop eating meat is reckless and dangerous. If you are considering this, you must consult your doctor, plus a registered dietician, take supplements, and have periodic blood tests, especially if you are an older adult. You cannot just casually drift into vegetarian eating. The reality is hardly anyone is actually vegetarian, a point missed in all the news media stories pushing this.
• There is not much we can do, personally, in terms of energy used in food growing, production and distribution, or other products and services, including health care. We have done what we can do directly.
• Many do not understand that if you reduce your personal footprint, energy is still used to produce and deliver food, products, and services that make your life possible. You don’t see that the way you see cars on the road. All transportation produces an estimated 28% of US carbon emissions – that’s about 10% for ships, large trucks, aircraft and railroads – and 18% for personal vehicles and small business vehicles (pickup trucks, vans, etc). The rest (72%) comes from (mostly) electricity generation and industrial processes – but you can’t see this, so you pretend this does not exist – and end up focusing on personal EVs. Driving an EV impacts your minor component of greenhouse gases – but only if your electricity is cleanly sourced. If we switched all light vehicles used by consumers and businesses to EV, tomorrow, we might reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as little as 5%. EVs are the major item everyone is pursuing yet their overall greenhouse gas reduction is near meaningless.
• Choices you make influence carbon usage, but sometimes, in ways you did not intend. If you live where 100% of your electricity comes from coal, then buying an EV may make things worse! Conversely, if you live in a place with nearly 100% of your utility power from solar, wind and hydro, investing in solar PV may have no impact on carbon reduction! In the latter case, you’d do better by purchasing an EV! I have an essay on that topic here. As an aside, our power utility gets two thirds of its electricity from coal and gas, which is down from almost 80% a few years back, after they recently closed a coal plant. Hence, for many, buying an EV here looks good – but burns more coal!

Public Health’s Covid Response Impacted Trust in Science

From 2020 to 2023, the actions of public health/epidemiology/pharmaceutical industry and social media celebrity scientists led to a loss of trust and confidence not only in public health but in all science.

We were pummeled with two and half years of public health inconsistencies, contradictions, incoherent, illogical and often irrational messaging, outright lies and daily “dueling experts” contradicting each other, and calling each other names. Most pandemics last 1-3 years and expire on their own, much like Covid did – in spite of, not because of the nonsense thrown at Covid. In 2019, the World Health Organization said that almost everything that was done for Covid – was known not to work or would only work briefly – but everyone ignored that and they did it anyway. At 2 1/2 years, the CDC estimated 77% of everyone in the country had had Covid-19 – in spite of all the mandates. A study published in early 2023 found the vaccines – which we were told were 95% effective at preventing infection – were, in fact, just 17% effective at preventing infection.

Many of us lost trust in “experts”. The “fix” for Covid was to implement non-sustainable actions. When they didn’t work, the experts blamed the people – and said we needed to lock down harder like China? Where they killed pets and welded shut doors on apartment buildings – only to have people die when fires broke out?

We see the same underway with climate enthusiasts – we must ban all travel, including a ban on all air travel from 2030 to 2050. We must ban consumption of meat. We must ban pet dogs and cats (they consume 25% of meat in the U.S.) We must end democracy and turn over control to an un-elected technocratic elite. Additionally, we must censor online comments that disagree with climate enthusiasts.

But climate enthusiasts, like the public health experts who violated their own mandates and directives – do not need to follow their own rules. Climate activists are as hypocritical as the public health hypocrites who ignored their own rules. (See Climate Hypocrites, Parts 1 and 2, in the rightmost column.)

Carbon dioxide increases are concerning – but the technocratic elite tell us how to live our lives, while they spew vast planet-sized clouds of carbon. Their direct message is they do not believe what they are preaching.

Much of what the media tells us about climate is false (there are many books that discuss how the media engages in misinformation, disinformation and exaggeration about climate – promoting unlikely scenarios to hysterical levels of fear). If you get your climate information from mass media or social media, you are a victim of propaganda messaging. Read Factfulness by Hans Rosling, or SuperAbundance, or Climate Uncertainty and Risk by Judith Curry, Ph.D., to learn more about this.

Doomerisn has taken hold, rather than hope: Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion says we are all going to die and we are engaged in a “murder project” to destroy humanity. Exaggerate much?

Climate has become Covid 2.0 where the experts ignored their own rules: Speaker of British House of Commons suggests Covid lock downs were a dry run for climate lock downs

Yes – really, The Speaker of the British House of Commons said that – the goal is “climate lock downs”.

The effect of the last three years is to have lost trust in institutions, science and scientists. Public health burned up its reputation, and did massive collateral damage to science itself. Celebrity epidemiologists on media and social media, spouting dueling inconsistent nonsense, engaging in bullying and calling each other names, made it worse.

After living through Covid rule by technocratic elite – did we stop the spread of Covid? No, almost everyone eventually had Covid at least once.

Why should we have confidence that government efforts to control climate will produce more benefits than harms?

Most government Covid programs run by elites were ineffective at best, incompetent at worst, and their mandates were routinely ignored by the elite – and had little to no impact on Covid.

The mostly likely outcome for climate is the same – mandates by technocratic elite (already documented as ignored by the elite), are likely to cause excessive harms while accomplishing little or nothing for the climate.

It’s as if none of what they had us go through made a difference – and certainly little of what they promised us was true. By early 2023, it was about day 1,500 of 15 days to flatten the curve …. and yet, a better description might have been just 15 more booster shots to flatten the curve…

At best, their rules yield “winners” and “losers”, where the winners are the globalized, technocratic elite in charge while the rest of us are the losers.

My confidence in government control of climate is the same as confidence in public health: which is none.

Sorry if that viewpoint disappoints you. The elite and the hypocrites have destroyed our ability to trust them. And it is not my fault they destroyed our trust – it is due to their own actions.

That said, it makes sense to continually seek efficiency improvements and effective energy reductions – regardless of whether climate change science is real, or less than estimated, or just messed up. You do not need to “believe” in climate change to adopt that approach. Therefore, I will continue to cut our own greenhouse gas footprint and continue to seek improvements in efficiency and effectiveness and will see if we can reduce even further than our 1/10th of the footprint of a typical American home.

I, however, will not spend everyday spewing fear and hysteria, and engaged in self-flagellation over not being “pure enough” but will focus on solutions – not virtue signaling – and will not tell everyone else how to live their lives.

Afterward

In the Climate Hypocrites Part 1 and Part 2, I have listed the behaviors of numerous advocates for strong climate actions and mandates on the population.

Climate activist Sophia Kianni’s behavior, documented in Part 1, and that of other climate activists, such as ER, really, really, really, really rubbed me the wrong way. Kianni is a global elite, global traveler who co-chaired a manifesto saying we should not travel – but not only is it okay for her to travel the world, everything is about her – look at those posts of hers from around the world and at COP27 – it’s all about self-promotion that she is better than the rest of us peons. At 20 years old, she confuses her wealth, youth, and pretty privilege for intellectual fire power. In 2022, I visited Europe for the first time – and I’m 3x her age. But since I was born at the peak of the baby boom (a fact over which I had no control), I am the one at fault for theoretical catastrophic climate change.

Kianni and many others come across as self-centered, narcissistic, wealthy kids telling the rest of us how to live our lives while they go about their elite lifestyles, preaching how virtuous they are. Almost none of them participate in developing solutions – that requires study and work in science and engineering. Instead, they study public policy and political science, learn to milk a career as professional whiners, and jet about the globe telling the rest of us to fix things because we are the horrible people.

If they truly cared, they’d develop skills to invent solutions – but no, they’d rather be professional whiners galivanting the globe. Climate change activism is a global travel club – there are always more speeches to give, more conferences to attend. Over 97,000 attendees and over 4,000 media were registered at COP28 – the 28th annual confab which, after 28 years, has accomplished precisely nothing. It’s a private jet destination and travel club for the elite.

Behaviors of climate activists have become a turn off.