Fuel is being burned. Fire creates heat. We use about 1/3 of the heat. The rest goes into the air. The heat cannot be cooled because cooling hot things requires even more heat to compress the refrigerants to cool off the hot stuff. Can the heat be mitigated? So far, .. sadly, no. In addition humans need both heat and cold to live. People live better with energy and they live longer.

******************

Here’s a truth the radical left is unwilling to admit: That ‘manmade’ global warming is a fraction of the thermal forcing in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is a trace gas that is only 3%-4% of thermal forcing in the lower troposphere. In the big picture, earth is still at historic lows in terms of carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures.

Most importantly: There is no guarantee that giving central planners control over the U.S. economy will even work, except to give the central planners more power, handicap the nation competitively, and enrich political allies of the Democratic Party.

China is the biggest polluter on the planet and is unlikely to abide by the Paris Accords. This will put the American economy at a further disadvantage, even as the U.S. has reduced its emissions over time with an essentially marketized economy.

One of the first actions of the Biden administration was to rejoin the Paris Peace Agreement and to cancel the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. These are actions that would appear to benefit the non-complying Chinese regime, which experienced economic growth amid the global pandemic. It was the only major country to record economic growth in 2020. Its GDP reportedly rose 6.5% in the fourth quarter.

The Biden administration’s actions have hamstrung America’s ability to economically compete with China. As Daniel Turner succinctly put it in Real Clear Energy:

I’ve written here before about the great gift to China which is the entire Biden energy agenda. At the same time he will be watching Canada’s oil go to China, Biden will be buying Chinese wind and solar technologies with borrowed American tax dollars. Meanwhile, Russia will be selling its natural gas to Europe, while America will join the other eunuchs of the Paris Climate Accord to keep China and Russia laughing at all of us.

After early lockdowns from the Chinese government responding to the pandemic, air pollution levels eventually rose to pre-pandemic levels, Reuters reported in May 2020. In November, the head of the International Energy Agency Fatih Birol assessed that China’s CO2 emissions in 2020 would be higher than in 2019.

Compare the United States, which has steadily in the main cut its carbon dioxide levels and diversified its energy portfolio. Notably, the United States saw its greenhouse emissions continue to drop under the Trump administration. Inside Climate News noted the trends from 2005-2019.

These are the power usage trends for the United States over that time period.

Advertisements

“U.S. net emissions declined 12 percent from 2005 to 2017 due to a range of market- and policy-related factors,” the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions reported.

The United States’ carbon emissions dropped by 10% in 2020, due largely to the pandemic, CNN reported in January 2021. America’s market economy was thus a better steward of the environment than the communist Chinese.

Views: 1