Net Zero Policies Will Have a Trivial Effect on Temperature, But Disastrous Effects on People Worldwide
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Richard Lindzen
Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Emeritus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
William Happer
Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Princeton University
Net Zero Policies Will Have a Trivial Effect on Temperature,
But Disastrous Effects on People Worldwide
July 19, 2024
The United States and countries worldwide are vigorously pursuing regulations and subsidies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to Net Zero by 2050 on the assumption, best stated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that the “evidence is clear that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main driver of climate change” and is “responsible for more than 50% of the change.”
We are career physicists with a special expertise in radiation physics, which describes how CO2 affects heat flow in Earth’s atmosphere. The physics of carbon dioxide is that CO2’s ability to warm the planet is determined by its ability to absorb heat, which decreases rapidly as CO2’s concentration in the atmosphere increases. This scientific fact about CO2 changes everything about the common view of CO2 and climate change.
Carbon Dioxide is Now a Weak Greenhouse Gas. At today’s CO2 concentration in the atmosphere of approximately 420 parts per million, additional amounts of CO2 have little ability to absorb heat and therefore is now a weak greenhouse gas. At higher concentrations in the future, the ability of future increases to warm the planet will be even smaller. This also means that the common assumption that carbon dioxide is “the main driver of climate change” is scientifically false.
In short, more carbon dioxide cannot cause catastrophic global warming or more extreme weather. Neither can greenhouse gases of methane or nitrous oxide, the levels of which are so small that they are irrelevant to climate.
https://co2coalition.org/publications/net-zero-policies-will-have-a-trivial-effect-on-temperature-but-disastrous-effects-on-people-worldwide/
