Energy

Climate Scientist: Obama Can’t Keep His Global Warming Promises

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

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Andrew Follett Energy and Science Reporter
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President Barack Obama will meet with world leaders Friday to sign the Paris Climate Agreement, but the plan won’t slow global warming according to a climate scientist who spoke to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Obama will promise the world Friday that America will cut carbon dioxide (CO2) by 26 to 28 percent by the year 2025, even though the Supreme Court prevented Obama’s Clean Power Plan from being implemented in February.

“President Obama should rescind his emissions pledges made under the Paris Climate Agreement for two primary reasons,” Chip Knappenberger, a climate scientist at the free-market Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “The first is that I don’t believe that human-caused climate change is a “problem” that rises to a level which requires solutions which may jeopardize future well-being through energy restrictions/price increases, and secondly, it appears highly unlikely that US energy policies will actually come close to meeting his emissions targets under the timeframe that he has promised.”

The Clean Power Plan was expected to cost a staggering $41 billion annually. Yet, the plan wouldn’t have had a large impact on global warming. Data modeling created by the Enviromental Protection Agency (EPA) shows that the Clean Power Plan would only have adverted 0.019° Celsius of warming by the year 2100, an amount so small it couldn’t be detected.

“President Obama signing the Paris Agreement on Earth Day would be a disingenuous act and would show the rest of the world that we value symbolism over substance,” Knappenberger continued.

Ironically, some of the biggest reductions of declining CO2 emissions have come from industries the president fought against.

“The President should embrace policies which result in plentiful, reliable, and inexpensive energy,” Knappenberger stated. “Fracking and nuclear technologies result in energy that fits that bill, but rather than picking winner and losers, the President should work to ensure that the playing filed is level for all technologies. This would involve removing subsidies and barriers to development.”

America’s fracking boom — not solar or wind power — is mostly responsible for falling CO2 emissions, according to a study published last November by the Manhattan Institute.

The study shows that solar power is responsible for a mere 1 percent of the decline in American CO2 emissions, while natural gas is responsible for nearly 20 percent. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have dropped by 1,022 million tons, making them significantly lower than their peak in 2007. For every ton of carbon dioxide cut by solar power, fracking has cut 13 tons.

America has reduced greenhouse gas emissions more than in any other country, a fact even The Sierra Club acknowledges, though they refuse to attribute the decline in emissions to natural gas, which they oppose politically.

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