There’s a new Christmas fantasy list for Climate-worriers. It’s a New York Times bestselling book (aren’t they all) and people are gushing …because it lists the same old solutions we’ve heard 100 times before, like using wind, solar, go vegetarian, walk to work, and (wait) educate your girls.
The PR material glows like the Sun. Wear your sunglasses and hazmat suit when reading:
Project Drawdown is the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming.We did not make or devise the plan—the plan exists and is being implemented worldwide. It has been difficult to envision this possibility because the focus is overwhelmingly on the impacts of climate change. We gathered a qualified and diverse group of researchers from around the world to identify, research, and model the 100 most substantive, existing solutions to address climate change. What was uncovered is a path forward that can roll back global greenhouse gas emissions within thirty years. The research revealed that humanity has the means and techniques at hand. Nothing new needs to be invented…
Project Drawdown’s ranked list of 100 climate change solutions has priced the whole planet-fixing kit at a cool $29,609 billion dollars (of other people’s money). Apparently this is cheap as it will save $74 trillion (trust me), and thousands of entreupeneurs have been sitting on their money waiting for a list like this.
All 100 are ranked through a kind of divination of a “Plausible Scenario” in a computer model. That calculates that wind turbines are ranked at 2, while nuclear energy is way down at number 20. Educating girls ranks 6th and family planning at number 7. Number one on the list is refrigerant management (and I’ll just say China, and a $2b HFC fraud). These people are not good with numbers. Who would trust them with a computer?
#6 Educating Girls (will stop storms):
The cause and effect chain is so long here you will need your 800 ft Sidewinder Cave and Wreck Reel to find your way back to the surface.
Educated girls produce fewer human babies which means less humans in 20 years which will make less CO2, which will trap less heat and reduce the size of the tropical hot-spot that doesn’t exist, and that will cause less rain and more rain in all the right places, so we get fewer floods and droughts and bad weather or something like that.
Another great benefit they tell us is that educated girls are “less likely to marry as children or against their will. ” Ponder all those poor unschooled girls who accidentally marry against their own will. Oops, damn, I got married today and I didn’t want to? How is educating girls supposed to make that less likely? Dear Warlord, I learnt my times tables, don’t marry me off?
Yes, sure, we all want girls (and boys) to get an education. We know the world is a better place when they learn to read and write (but not necessarily when they learn to turn atmospheric physics into a social justice campaign).
#63 Transport Teleprescence (is bound to save pigmy squirrels):
This idea implores people to do what conservative writers have been saying for decades and stop flying around the globe for meetings when they could use Skype instead. Telepresencing hasn’t caught on even with the IPCC — an organisation that is more panicked about global warming than any other. If the experts that live off the fear of climate change will not even telepresent their Olympic Annual COP Junket, what hope is there than any other less concerned institute will?
Somehow there are only 80 solutions on the list, not 100. Like everything in climate change, it’s exaggerated and nobody cares about the numbers.
Comment from MapTrap
The list goes from 1 to 80 in order of CO2 saved. Typical of people whose concern is about CO2 saving, with no consideration of money.
If you do what I did and drop the table into a spreadsheet, you can manipulate the data in terms of Saving/Cost per GT of CO2 saved. On that list Fridge Management goes from #1 to #62. Fridge Management is a no cost to implement, and negative $902 billion in savings, for a net loss of $10.06 billion per GT CO2 saved.