There have been 197 documented Global Warming myths put forward since Global Warming was measured in the 1970s. Nearly all have fallen away, overtaken by facts known even to many
- Creationists (God would never allow it)
- Deplorables (Whatever it is, it’s an anti-White conspiracy)
- Readers of the Wall Street Journal, which talks about real money on its news pages, even though it raves about fantasy money on its opinion page.
Well, not fallen right away, but certainly reduced to collective minority opinion, as happened at the tipping points on Denialism on lead, DDT, acid rain, ozone, tobacco, and other corporate malfeasance, sacrificing any amount of human, animal, and plant life and well-being to Mammon.
There have been no new Global warming myths created since COP21 in 2015, though not for lack of trying. Certainly there are plenty of temporary Trump myths, like the US being hurt by agreeing with literally every other country on the planet.
The last few climate myths, before every country in the world signed on to saving money, lives, the planet, and their sacred honor, were
- 100% renewable energy is impossible.
- China and India will never agree.
- The rest of the poor countries can’t afford it.
- It will destroy the economy because it costs too much.
- Soshulism!
Let’s give them a spin.
Don’t Try This at Home
Inside Climate News: Debunking Climate Change Myths: A Holiday Conversation Guide
We asked our readers to share the top climate denial claims and global warming questions they hear from family. Here’s what science shows — and how to explain it.
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'Brrrr, it's cold out. Is there really global warming?'—The Inhofe lie. No, (-60) + 2 = -58. Still plenty cold enough to kill you. More importantly, (-1) + 2 = 1, and the permafrost melts.
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'What about the Sun? Isn't climate change caused by solar activity that changes its brightness?—No. The changes aren’t that big, and are often in the wrong direction. The warming sun will kill everything and boil off the oceans in some hundreds of millions of years.
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'How can you be so sure about warming when the climate computer models are uncertain?'—Really? How can you be so sure about whatever it is that you are claiming, then?
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'Carbon dioxide is plant food, right? So the more of it the better.'—Sugar is human food, right? Made in part from carbon dioxide, in fact. So the more of it the better. Do I have that right?
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'About those wildfires, isn't it all just poor forest management?'—No brooms, you mean?
- 'The Arctic may be losing ice, but Antarctic ice is expanding, right? How could that be if the planet is warming?'—This is your climate model? Validated by science and peer-reviewed? Much of Antarctica has been too cold to have clouds and snow for ages. Most of Antarctica is one of the driest deserts on Earth. Snow can blow in erratically from the coasts. The winds can change. Glaciers can grow and shrink.
Old news. While these, and also the answers given in the article, are correct, there is no point in confronting Denialists with them. Experiment has shown that doing so only hardens their opinions. You have to start with something else that they care about enough to prefer facts. Do any of your older relatives like going down to Miami Beach? Do they support the military? Do they support missionary work in Africa? If you can get them talking about something important to them that is threatened, they will sometimes make the case for sanity to themselves.
I don’t care to try to explain science to science deniers. To their children, certainly. Millions of them get it every year.
However, I am delighted to see such an article in a popular magazine. And the gradual creep of the actual Green New Deal rather than its Republican parody into the MSM. Even Fox has to talk about it, if only to denounce it with many of these same myths.
Quora: What do I say to people who deny global warming?
You can tell them that it no longer matters what they believe, because renewable energy is cheaper than coal and oil, and we are closing in on natural gas.
That was years ago. Renewables and storage are now far less expensive than peaker natural-gas plants for load balancing. Their costs match the most efficient combined-cycle gas plants. So the peaker plants will soon start to go the way of coal. Then renewables will get ahead of even the most efficient gas. There will be no more conversions of coal-fired plants to natural gas after that. They will just be shut down and scrapped, at an accelerating pace, with more money lost the longer their owners try to wait it out.
Myth: 100% renewable energy is impossible
Low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water, and solar for all purposes
Power engineers can tell you in fine detail, minute by minute, just how much storage is needed to replace peaker plants for load balancing and to match supply and demand throughout the day via timeshifting. We use baseload hydro and nuclear and in some places geothermal, plus intermittent wind and solar, plus several kinds of storage. The math is well-known, and the principles are taught in college courses. It depends on the size of the interconnect area, so there is pressure to connect the partial grids in the US and make other needed improvements.
I can’t do justice to the vast amount of available data. Check out the REN21
RENEWABLES 2018 GLOBAL STATUS REPORT.
The Executive Summary says
57 countries have 100% renewable electricity targets
Yes, there is a list in the body of the report, and many detailed plans have been published. But we won’t dive into all of that today. There will be other Fridays. Meanwhile, The Solutions Project has published its analyses of the needs of every US state and nearly all countries at 100% renewables. They recently added analyses for major cities in the US, plus Mexico City.
Lives lost to air pollution that we could save each year: 704
The transition pays for itself in as little as 1.5 years from air pollution and climate cost savings alone
Myth: China and India will never agree
China has taken over solar cell and wind turbine manufacturing. Also:
PV Magazine: India will tender 500 GW renewable capacity by 2028
Electricity demand in India would reach 840 GW by 2030 if the country’s gross domestic product grows at a rate of 6.5 per cent, as predicted.
To achieve its goal of generating 40 per cent of electricity from non-fossil fuels by 2030, India would have to install 500 GW of renewable energy generation capacity by 2028, according to Anand Kumar, Secretary of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, who was speaking at the India-Norway Business Summit 2019 which opened yesterday in New Delhi.
Of those 500 GW, 350 GW would be solar, 140 GW wind, and the remaining generation capacity would come from small hydro and biomass power.
India already has 75 GW of installed renewable energy capacity with another 46 GW under implementation. The 75 GW in place makes up around 22 per cent of the nation’s installed power generation capacity.
So realistically (not like the entrenched bureaucracy of India) we want to see a whole terawatt in India by 2030, including solar microgrids in even the poorest and most remote villages. Somebody needs to figure out microfinance for whole villages. But that is another Diary entirely.
Myth: The rest of the poor countries can’t afford it
Not all of the rest of the world is poor. The oil-rich and sun-drenched countries of the Middle East have huge solar projects under development, although they have made immense management stumbles getting started.
Saudi Arabia’s 1.5 GW tender attracted more than 250 companies
The Kingdom of Morocco’s solar plan, which is one of the world’s largest solar energy projects and estimated to cost about $9 billion, was introduced in November 2009 with the aim of establishing 2,000 MW of solar power by 2020.
And so on. But, turning to actually poor countries:
Solar Power in Africa
In 2015, Sub-Saharan Africa was the leading region for purchases of off-grid solar products.[26]
Hey, did you hear that Ikea is now selling solar power kits in its stores in Europe? I wonder who will be the first to do that in Africa.
I can’t do justice to the vast amount of available data. Check out the REN21
Many of the middle income countries are moving quickly to renewables. The poorest countries need renewables the most.
- It saves money.
- Rooftop solar can get electricity to the poorest and remote villages, no matter how far off the grid.
But the poorest countries have also been the most corrupt and unstable. So they need finance that comes with protection from such problems. And contrary to the mythology, many are getting it. This is the myth that needs knocking down the most.
Green Energy Investing in Developing Countries. GEEREF invests in specialist renewable energy and energy efficiency private equity funds.
Nov 29, 2018 - The GCF is one of the great new hopes for the world's poorest countries to be able to access money for clean energy.
Sep 24, 2018 - China is driving more than 70% of renewable energy investments among developing countries, according to the Frankfurt School. Most of Chinese investments are focused on solar and wind energy industries. China invested $86.5bn (£66bn) and $36.1bn (£27.5bn) in in solar and wind, respectively.
Then it’s Brazil, India, Costa Rica, and Nigeria.
Apr 5, 2018 - In 2017, global investment in renewable energy grew 2% from last year to $280 billion. Poor countries are now investing far more into renewables than rich ones.
While renewable energy investments have seen steady growth over the last decade, a more rapid scaling-up is necessary in developing countries.
Accessible finance for renewable energy projects in developing countries. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development
(ADFD) have collaborated on a joint Project Facility to support replicable, scalable and potentially transformative renewable energy projects in developing countries. ADFD committed USD 350 million in concessional loans, over seven annual funding cycles, to renewable energy projects recommended by IRENA.
by A Donastorg - 2017
Financing Renewable Energy Projects in. Developing Countries: A Critical Review. To cite this article: A Donastorg et al 2017 IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci.
Aug 27, 2018 - In 2016, renewable energy investments in poorer countries eclipsed investments in wealthier countries for the first time ever.
Funding from multilateral development banks and bilateral DFIs is usually crucial, as the credit ratings for clean energy projects in poor countries often are below investment grade, deterring international investors.
ZERO is a Norwegian environmental organization dedicated to use Norway as a tool to create the biggest possible impact in stopping climate change. We believe that investing in renewable energy in developing countries is one major way Norway can make a global difference.
I will have much more to say about installations around the world in future Renewable Friday Diaries.
Myth: It will destroy the economy
It will certainly destroy the market capitalization of any company relying mainly on fossil fuel resources. Installing and running renewables is now cheaper than the coal to feed existing coal-fired power plants. They are money losers, and will only get more so. Coal companies have been going bankrupt in quantity, whether in drop-dead liquidations or Chapter 11 reorganizations, including stiffing their pensioners. Shorting coal has become a big business.
This is a matter of tens of trillions of dollars in current assets that are about to become nearly worthless. In financial jargon, that is called getting stranded. At the same time, we are going to create tens of trillions of dollars in new annual economic activity worldwide, and lift billions of people out of dire poverty, ignorance, and political powerlessness.
Myth: Soshulism!
The Koch brothers were brought up in Bircherism by their father, one of the main initial funders of the John Birch Society.
Grokking Republicans: The Jack Acid Society
The Jack Acid Society Black Book, by Pogo, as told to Walt Kelly, was a wonderful parody of The JBS Blue Book.
Socialism for the rich is fine with them. Subsidies. Price supports. No-bid contracts. Tax favors. Union-busting. Deregulation. Monopolies. Stock market and housing bubbles where they can profit from human misery.
Everything for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
But any movement among the public to do anything for the General Welfare is Collectivism to the Kochs. That’s their Dog Whistle code word for Stalinism. You know, like Medicare for All in Canada. The reason why Canadian culture consists entirely of hate and rage and terrorism.
Oh, wait. That was Quebec, up until every Canadian schoolchild was required to study French.
And now Trump.
Don’t get me started.