Attendees at the United Nation's 25th annual climate conference (COP 25) in Madrid earlier this month concluded with little more than net-zero benefit alarmism and virtue-signaling based upon two very shaky scientific and technological foundations.
The first creates a bogus climate crisis premised upon consistently failed theoretical models of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The second projects a misbegotten fantasy that achieving net-zero carbon emissions by the year 2050 is both urgent and possible.
Although even the IPCC admits in small print that future climate states can’t be accurately predicted, its politically edited summary reports nevertheless serve as the entire rationale for establishing the Paris Climate Agreement.
Despite its own confidence disclaimer, the U.N. claims that in order to avoid any chance of a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, annual emission cuts of 7.6% must begin next year (2020) "If computerized climate simulations are correct."
So far, that all-important and overheated "if" hasn’t comported with direct observations.
And as American Nobel Prize winning physicist and climate alarm skeptic Richard Feynman aptly observed, "It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it is wrong."
No energy-savvy person can possibly believe that such implausibly radical CO2 emissions cuts will take place.
Speaking two years before the Paris climate conference, Yvo de Boer, a former executive secretary on the U.N. climate convention admitted, "The only way that a 2015 agreement can achieve a 2-degree goal [Celsius] is to shut down the whole economy."
Wisely, the Trump administration has made it official in November that the U.S. won’t join any such economic suicide pact.
Any notions that covering vast areas of global land surfaces with enough wind turbines and solar panels to Cuisinart or incinerate every bird on the planet will supply U.S. (much less global) energy needs or stop billions of years of natural climate change are delusional.
For scale perspective, consider that hydrocarbons (oil, natural gas and coal) provide about 84% of global energy, while wind and solar combined account for only a piddling 2%.
Also, keep in mind that total world energy use rose 50% over the past two decades, an amount equal to adding two entire United States’ worth of new and growing demand.
Mark Mills at the Manhattan Institute estimates that in order to completely replace today’s hydrocarbons, global renewable energy production would have to increase by at least 90-fold. For context: it took a half-century for global oil and gas production to expand by 10-fold.
In America alone, a transition to 100% non-hydrocarbon-generated electricity by 2050 would also require a U.S. grid construction program 14-fold bigger than the grid build-out rate that has taken place over the past half-century.
Then, to finish the transformation, this Promethean effort would need to be more than doubled to tackle non-electric sectors where 70% of U.S. hydrocarbons are consumed. Included is a requirement to fuel the fossil-dependent transportation infrastructure that isn’t technologically possible to electrify, such as heavy-duty trucks, marine vehicles, and aircraft.
Speaking of aircraft, if sea levels were to rise as precipitously as many U.N. climate alarmists have predicted, lots of aviation fuel will need to be shipped to the Maldives Islands by carbon-free sail boat tankers.
This would be necessary to accommodate evacuation flights for the region’s 200,000 inhabitants before rising sea levels submerge the two-mile-long sea level runway at its brand new $400 million international airport.
Perhaps remarkably, in 2009, Republic of Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed was among the first leader to request financial reparations through the U.N. for anticipated future flooding due to human-caused climate change.
Although parties at the 2015 Paris meeting later agreed that loss and damage compensation would not provide the basis for any mandated liability, the Madrid COP25 reopened such considerations to future review.
An letter presented by Chile’s environmental minister Carolina Schmidt called for "the creation of a comprehensive financing facility, including debt relief, for developing countries experiencing such [climate change] disasters."
Supported by more than 150 signatories, the proposal argued that the fund should be financed at the rate of about $50 billion annually by 2022, and $300 billion per year by 2030. The money would be donated by wealthy countries in combination with global taxes on financial transactions, international air travel, and fossil fuels.
On a cheerier Yuletide note, those Maldives airport investments may not be underwater any time soon after all. Research conducted by University of Auckland, New Zealand scientists between 1971 and 2014 indicated that the Maldives and other coral island land areas in the region are actually getting larger — not shrinking.
Meanwhile, we can also rejoice knowing that global sea levels have been rising at a relatively constant rate of seven inches per century without acceleration ever since that last Little ice age ended - and before the Industrial Revolution which introduced CO2-belching smokestacks and SUVs began.
Less fortunately, we can’t seem to say the same for rising tides of climate hysteria.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is the author of several books, including “The Weaponization of AI and the Internet: How Global Networks of Infotech Overlords are Expanding Their Control Over Our Lives” (2019), "Reinventing Ourselves: How Technology is Rapidly and Radically Transforming Humanity" (2019), "Thinking Whole: Rejecting Half-Witted Left & Right Brain Limitations" (2018), "Reflections on Oceans and Puddles: One Hundred Reasons to be Enthusiastic, Grateful and Hopeful” (2017), "Cosmic Musings: Contemplating Life Beyond Self" (2016), "Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom" (2015) and “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax” (2011). He is currently working on a new book with Buzz Aldrin, "Beyond Footprints and Flagpoles." To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.