Guest Post By Willis Eschenbach
Well, I see that the Canadian climate scammers are no better at simple arithmetic than Philadelphia schoolteachers. Here’s the brilliant Canadian plan—make direct air capture (DAC) of CO2 compulsory. DAC means extracting CO2 directly from the air and pumping it deep underground where it won’t escape. In theory.
From the article:
Canada’s DAC protocol isn’t just about voluntary credits—it’s laying the groundwork for DAC to be integrated into compliance carbon markets, where credits are legally required rather than optional. Currently, compliance markets such as the EU Emissions Trading System and California’s Cap-and-Trade Program dominate global carbon trading.
This transition would dramatically increase demand for DAC credits by allowing major emitters, from power plants to manufacturing facilities, to purchase DAC offsets to meet government-mandated reduction targets. This shift would significantly scale up investments in DAC infrastructure, driving costs down over time.
Gosh, that sounds like climate nirvana. What’s not to like?
As usual, the devil is in the dollars … here’s how that works out.
Canada’s full federal budget is about CAD$450 billion. (CAD = Canadian Dollars)
Canada emits about 550 million tons of CO2 per year.
Per the article again:
According to CDR.fyi, over 1.6 million tons of DAC carbon credits have been purchased to date at an average price of $470 per ton.
CAD$470 per ton times 550 million tons/year ≈ CAD$260 billion per year.
They’re proposing that an amount equal to 60% of Canada’s total Federal budget be spent on Direct Air Capture (DAC) each and every year … which will do nothing. Nothing will be produced. No Canadians will be enriched. Nobody will be fed or clothed. Nothing of value will be created.
As I’ve said before, anyone proposing some climate plan like this should be required by law to publish their calculations regarding the savings in temperature from their genius idea. Here are the calculations for their plan, using the IPCC assumptions. Please note that I’m not saying the IPCC is right to claim that CO2 is the temperature control knob. I’m just using their assumptions to calculate the effects of climate policies if they are right.
After some thought, I stumbled across a simple way to estimate the relationship of CO2 emissions with temperature using the IPCC assumptions. However, I first need to give my trigger warning for those with math allergies. Fear not, it’s just multiplication. Here’s the warning:
With that out of the way, Figure 1 below shows the calculations. Instead of using emissions to calculate the change in atmospheric CO2 levels, then using atmospheric CO2 changes to calculate the change in CO2 forcing, and using those forcing changes to calculate the expected change in temperature, I thought I’d cut through the fog.
I decided to leave out all the intermediate steps, and simply see what the relationship looked like between emissions and temperature.
Figure 1. Berkeley Earth yearly surface temperature, and surface temperature estimated from cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions using the formula at the top of the figure. Emissions are in gigatons, Gt, which are one billion tons, or 10^9 tons. And as a reminder, correlation ≠ causation. I can get about as good a correlation with temperature using population in place of emissions … but I digress …
Note the simplicity of this method. If the IPCC is right, avoided temperature rise in degrees C is the total of the CO2 emissions avoided in gigatons, times .0008 degrees C per gigaton.
So for example, I find this:
How many tons of co2 emissions per year does the Block Island wind farm prevent?
About 40,000 tons per year
Despite its modest size, the wind farm, which cost about $300 million to build, still represents a significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions — about 40,000 tons per year.
Again assuming that the IPCC claims are correct, using the conversion factor of 0.0008°C per gigaton of CO2 emissions avoided, we find that Block Island is responsible for an avoided warming of 0.00000003°C per year.
Clearly a “significant reduction” … here’s more about the Block Island fiasco.
Here’s another example. In 2022, the IEA said:
Increased deployment of clean energy technologies such as renewables, electric vehicles, and heat pumps helped prevent an additional 550 Mt in CO2 emissions.
Sounds impressive, all right … but when we convert it to temperature, it works out to an avoided warming from all of those technologies of 0.0004°C per year … gonna take a while at that rate.
To return to Canada, at the CAD$470 per ton Direct Air Capture (DAC) cost referenced above, the 7.4 Gt of avoided CO2 emissions by 2050 will cost about CAD$3.5 TRILLION dollars.
And for that gigantic expense, the POSSIBLE THEORETICAL cooling in 2050AD will not be a tenth of a degree. It will not even be a hundredth of a degree.
It will be a pathetic six-thousandths of a degree. Lost in the noise. Unmeasurable.
Canada is proposing spending trillions for an outcome too small to measure, 0.006°C of avoided warming by 2050. How did this ever get to be thought of as a reasonable course of action?
Finally, please don’t say “But if Canada does it the rest will follow their noble example!” or the like. First, the Chinese and the Indians won’t follow, they’re realists. Next, people in almost every other country are waking up and realizing that spending $3.5 TRILLION for a possible cooling of 0.006°C a quarter century from now is bull goose looney, not to mention totally unaffordable.
Fun fact for today. Only three countries remain devoted to the chimeric idea of “Net Zero By 2050″—Canada, Australia, and the UK. The Commonwealth needs to wake up. People are getting fooled. Here’s what the Canadians think they are doing.
Wow, pretty impressive! CO2 emissions have gone flat! Let’s throw more money at it!
However, out here in the real world, this is what the Canadian change looks like.
No matter how many trillions of dollars the Canadians waste on emissions control, it will make no difference. Canada could go to net zero tomorrow. It would make no difference.
WAKE UP, DEAR FRIENDS!
Here, after a bone-dry January, the “Pineapple Express” is headed toward the US Pacific Northwest again. Starting at midnight, we’re slated to get five inches (125 mm) of rain in the coming week.
So once again, the world is constantly changing. What’s not to like?
My very best to each and every one of you,
w.
As Always: I ask that when you comment you quote the exact words you are discussing. I can defend my words. I can’t defend your interpretation of my words.
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