Bill Mckibben is founder of the 350.com movement and a leading prophet of climate doom. He has noticed all the virtue signaling by politicians and celebrities declaring “We are still in”, and is concerned that activists will mistake words for actions. His recent Rolling Stone article is:
How to Tell If Your Reps Are Serious About Climate Change
In the wake of Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, how serious are your elected leaders about fighting back?
McKibben provides Three Commandments for true believer climatists:
1. Thou shalt commit to converting to 100 percent renewable energy.
Gail Tverberg, Our Finite World:
In fact, I have come to the rather astounding conclusion that even if wind turbines and solar PV could be built at zero cost, it would not make sense to continue to add them to the electric grid in the absence of very much better and cheaper electricity storage than we have today. There are too many costs outside building the devices themselves. It is these secondary costs that are problematic. Also, the presence of intermittent electricity disrupts competitive prices, leading to electricity prices that are far too low for other electricity providers, including those providing electricity using nuclear or natural gas. The tiny contribution of wind and solar to grid electricity cannot make up for the loss of more traditional electricity sources due to low prices.
See also: Climateers Tilting and Windmills,
2. Thou shalt work to keep remaining fossil fuels in the ground.

G20 total energy usage including thermal generation illustrating the magnitude of the problem the G20 countries still face in decarbonizing their energy sectors. (thermal refers to burning of fossil fuels)
Roger Andrews at Energy Matters:
While governments fixate on cutting emissions from the electricity sector, the larger problem of cutting emissions from the non-electricity sector is generally ignored. In this post I present data from the G20 countries, which between them consume 80% of the world’s energy, summarizing the present situation. The results show that the G20 countries obtain only 41.5% of their total energy from electricity and the remaining 58.5% dominantly from oil, coal and gas consumed in the non-electric sector (transportation, industrial processes, heating etc). So even if they eventually succeed in obtaining all their electricity from low-carbon sources they would still be getting more than half their energy from high-carbon sources if no progress is made in decarbonizing their non-electric sectors.
3. Thou shalt resist natural gas as the most dangerous fuel of all.
Methane Facts:
Natural Gas (75% methane) burns the cleanest with the least CO2 for the energy produced.
Leakage of methane is already addressed by efficiency improvements for its economic recovery, and will apparently be subject to even more regulations.
The atmosphere is a methane sink where the compound is oxidized through a series of reactions producing 1 CO2 and 2H20 after a few years.
GWP (Global Warming Potential) is CO2 equivalent heat trapping based on laboratory, not real world effects.
Any IR absorption by methane is limited by H2O absorbing in the same low energy LW bands.
Methane has been rising from 1.6ppm to 1.8ppm in 30 years (1980-2010), assuming that it has not stopped rising, this amounts to a doubling in 2-3 centuries. In other words, methane can never have any measurable effect on temperature, even if the IPCC radiative cooling theory were right.
There is no danger this century from natural or man-made methane emissions.
An additional commandment comes from former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres:
4. Thou shalt bring emissions permanently lower by 2020.
Former UN climate chief: Only three years left to save the planet
The United Nation’s former global warming czar has published a paper claiming humanity only has three years left to avert dangerous global warming and meet the goals of the Paris climate accord.
To do that, Christiana Figueres says governments and businesses need to pony up $1.3 trillion a year by 2020 earmarked for “climate action” to decarbonize the global economy. That’s on top of boosting green energy and phasing out fossil fuels, mostly coal:
Clever as it is to substitute a 450 ppm target for 2C, the mathematics are daunting. Joe Romm:
We’re at 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year — rising 3.3% per year — and we have to average below 18 billion tons a year for the entire century if we’re going to stabilize at 450 ppm. We need to peak around 2015 to 2020 at the latest, then drop at least 60% by 2050 to 15 billion tons (4 billion tons of carbon), and then go to near zero net carbon emissions by 2100.
And according to the IEA, the clock has already run out. From the 2011 IEA World Energy Outlook:
“If internationally co-ordinated action is not implemented by 2017, we project that all permissible CO2 emissions in the 450 Scenario will come from the infrastructure then existing, so that all new infrastructure from then until 2035 would need to be zero-carbon. This would theoretically be possible at very high cost, but probably not practicable in political terms.”
“If we do not change course, by 2015 over 90% of the permissible energy sector emissions to 2035 will already be locked in. By 2017, 100%.”
Maria van der Hoeven
Executive Director
International Energy Agency.
World Energy Outlook 2011
Background at How Climate Law Depends on Paris
Summary
These initiatives are outrageous to reasonable people, but are perfectly consistent with the agenda of people like McKibben and Figueres. A synopsis of the plan is in a post called The Climatist Manifesto
Mission: Deindustrialize Civilization
Goal: Drive industrial corporations into Bankruptcy
Strategy: Cut off the Supply of Cheap, Reliable Energy
Tactics:
- Raise the price of fossil fuels
- Force the power grid to use expensive, unreliable renewables
- Demonize Nuclear energy
- Spread fear of extraction technologies such as fracking
- Increase regulatory costs on energy production
- Scare investors away from carbon energy companies
- Stop pipelines because they are too safe and efficient
- Force all companies to account for carbon usage and risk
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
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