Is climate mitigation justified?

How warm can it get?

How warm it gets depends upon climate sensitivity of CO₂ to warming. Values for CO₂ climate sensitivity vary from about 0.2 °C to 10.0 °C. That's the difference between warming we can hardly measure, and catastrophic warming due to us passing a tipping point or two. I discount tipping points as modeling gone bad. At this time I'm inclined to go with the lower range values of 0.6 °C to 0.85 °C by Spencer, Braswell, Lindzen, Choi, & Ball. A climate sensitivity less than about 1.2 °C is nothing to fear. It should all be beneficial.

2021 update: I'm now convinced that the greenhouse gas effect is fake science. Climate sensitivity is basically zero, or close to it.

How much will it cost?

Estimates of the social cost of carbon vary from $11/tCO₂ to $56/tCO₂. (£9/tCO₂ to £45/tCO₂). UK government have stopped using the SCC because we're already taxing carbon well above the SCC rate. UK carbon tax is £18/tCO₂. For UK motor vehicle fuel the tax rate is closer to £400/tCO₂. This is due to a variety of taxes imposed on motor vehicle fuel. Fuel duty, Vehicle excise duty, carbon tax, road tax, VAT. With VAT, they even tax the tax.

Is the Social Cost of Carbon real?

The benefits of CO₂ fertilization, longer growing season, greater arable land area, blooming growth in previously arid areas, reduced mortality and reduced heating costs greatly exceed harmful effects of hypothesized warming. [Does this explain why climate crisis models are always upping the ante?] The results indicate that governments should subsidize fossil fuels by about 17 US$/tonne of CO₂, rather than impose carbon taxes ... The transient climate response (TCR) to greenhouse gas emissions, the warming when CO₂ doubles in about 125 years, is estimated at 0.85 °C by using an energy balance approach, new aerosol estimates and accounting for the natural warming since the Little Ice Age and the urban development effects on temperature.

--'Friends of Science'

The taxes and higher energy prices are real but there may be no actual social cost to more carbon dioxide, CO₂. In fact, we could be taxing something which is beneficial to us. It could be a doubly regressive tax. Giving us higher energy prices than we want, as well as taxing life on earth, because more CO₂ allows more life to thrive on earth. Wanting less CO₂ is a kind of pathology against life itself. One might say climate alarmists suffer from vitapathology. More CO₂ in the atmosphere is beneficial to plants. It allows plants to grow larger, faster, to begin growth earlier in the season. Finally it allows more plant growth in arid regions. We could see some areas of the Sahara bloom more due to more CO₂. This is because plants will use less water to grow, as the stomata need not open for as long to get the CO₂ the plant needs. Therefore less water will be lost in plant respiration in the daytime. This will all lead to higher agricultural yields which should translate to lower food prices. More plants mean more animals on the planet and less pressure placed on wild animals and their habitats. So less extinction. CO₂ is a boon to life on earth. So the social cost of carbon is the ultimate expression of green nihilism, sociopathy, and vitapathology. Paradoxically done in the name of saving humanity.

“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.”
— T.S. Eliot

Which is most dangerous, heat or cold?

A Lancet study found most people who die owing to temperature do so under moderately cold conditions.

What will climate mitigation cost us?

The UK cost of carbon climate change will be £300 billion up to 2030. Nearly all these climate change measures are felt in the electricity sector. In 2014, UK electricity demand was 34.42GW on average. 301.7TWh over the year, coming from a total electricity generation of 335.0TWh. An average 38.24 GW supply. Over the next 15 years, £300 bn extra cost is £20 bn per year. It's almost all felt as increased electricity prices. £20 bn per 335 TWh. About £60/MWh. I estimate that at over 10 times the social cost of carbon. This cost per MWh to electricity is actually higher than current wholesale electricity prices.

I conclude the social cost of carbon, SCC, has no justification. First of all more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be beneficial for humanity and all life on earth with up to 2ºC warming on top of pre-industrial levels. There is no guarantee that less carbon dioxide will cut global temperatures by any significant amount. For all we know, the temperature rise in the 20th century. (from 1909 to 1940, and from 1975 to 1998) may have been predominantly due to natural causes not to greenhouse gas emissions. Actual measured sea level rises are running at about 52 mm per century, well below the metres that climate alarmists tell us they model. CO₂ will certainly not drown us. These moderate sea level rise levels are in keeping with long term trends seen since the end of the Ice Age.

References

1. No Discernible Human Influence On Global Ocean Temperatures, Climate
2. Social Cost Of Carbon
3. Report Reveals £300 Billion Cost Of Britain’S Climate Change Act
4. 3 New Papers: Global Seas Now Rising About 2 Inches Per Century ... Claims Of 1 Meter Rise By 2100 ‘Sheer Nonsense’
5. vitapathology: my term for hatred of life itself.
6. Obsolete Climate Science on CO₂, by Richard A. Epstein
7. Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multicountry observational study, by Dr Antonio Gasparrini, PhD, et al
8. Changes in growing season duration and productivity of northern vegetation inferred from long-term remote sensing data, by Park, Ganguly, et al
9. A 33-Year History of the Productivity of Arctic and Boreal Vegetation, Review of: Park, Ganguly, et al
10. Updated climate sensitivity estimates, Review by Nic Lewis
11. Alberta’s Climate Plan: A Burden with No Benefit, by Ken Gregory