Monckton rips UK’s ‘extraordinary failure to understand even the most elementary arithmetic’ as it is ‘flinging industry after industry into bankruptcy…enriching…China, India & Russia by its climate policies’

Special to Climate Depot

Mathematics test for Western politicians

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Rishi Sunak, prime minister of the United Kingdom, has said he wants schoolkids to study mathematics till they are 18 to equip them for working life. Yet Mr Sunak presides over one of the most mathematically incompetent administrations in the Western world. 

Through an extraordinary failure to understand even the most elementary arithmetic, the government over which Sunak presides is bankrupting Britain, flinging industry after industry into bankruptcy, driving our workers’ jobs overseas and enriching the Communist-led governments of China, India and Russia by its climate-change policies.

Voters in the nations of the once-free world, especially Britain, may like to send to their elected representatives the following mathematics test for Western politicians. Answers are at the foot of the test.

Global warming mathematics test for NATO politicians

1. NOAA’s annual greenhouse-gas index shows that in the past 30 years the influence of the world’s industries and enterprises on global temperature has increased by 1/30th of a unit per year in a straight line. a) What units are used? b) How many units in total has the world added in 30 years? c) If all nations, rather than just the West, moved in a straight line to net zero emissions over the next 30 years, how many further units that, on current trends, would be added to our influence on temperature would be abated?
2. The University of Alabama at Huntsville’s satellite lower-atmosphere temperature record of monthly changes in global mean temperature shows that in the past 30 years global temperature has increased by 0.4 degrees. a) On current trends, how much would the world warm in the next 30 years? b) If the whole world moved in a straight line to net zero emissions over the next 30 years, how much of that further warming would be prevented? c) If only the West, with 30% of global emissions, were to move to net zero emissions over the next 30 years, how much of that further warming would be prevented?
3. McKinsey Consulting have conservatively estimated that global net zero emissions by 2050 would cost $275 trillion in capital expenditure alone. a) Taking this figure with your answer to 1c, how much future global warming would each $1 billion of your taxpayers’ money you spend on net zero prevent? b) Given that capital expenditure is typically twice operating expenditure, what would be the total cost of global net zero emissions in the next 30 years? c) Using your answer to 3b, how much future global warming would each $1 billion of your taxpayers’ money you spend on net zero prevent?
4. The United Kingdom’s power grid operator has calculated that the capital cost of preparing the power grid for net zero emissions would be $3.6 trillion. a) Assuming that operating cost is twice the capital cost, and that emissions from the grid represent one-fifth of total national emissions, what would be the total cost of reaching net zero in the UK? b) The UK represents 1% of global emissions. Using your answer at 4a, what would be the global cost of reaching net zero? c) Based on your answer at 4b, how much global warming would each $1 billion of your taxpayers’ money you spend on net zero prevent?
5. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calculated in 1990 that after that year the world would warm at 0.3 degrees per decade and that final warming in response to doubled CO2 concentration would be 3 degrees. a) According to the University of Alabama at Huntsville, the real-world warming rate since 1990 has been 0.134 degrees per decade, so by how much would the world warm in response to doubled CO2 in the air? b) By what percentage did IPCC (1990) over-predict the global warming rate since 1990? c) IPCC’s current upper estimate of warming in response to doubled CO2 is 5 degrees. By what percentage is that upper estimate an overestimate compared with observed reality?

Answers

1a) Units of our influence on temperature are Watts per square meter of change in net inbound radiative flux density at the top of the atmosphere. 

1b) 1 unit of our influence on temperature was added over the past 30 years. 

1c) If the world went in a straight line from here to net zero emissions, reducing its 1990 emissions by one-thirtieth each year, half a unit would be abated by 2050.

2a) Since 0.4 degrees’ warming occurred in the past 30 years, a straight-line increase over the next 30 years would suggest another 0.4 degrees’ warming by 2050.

2b) Half of 0.4 degrees, i.e., 0.2 degrees, would be prevented if the whole world moved to net zero emissions by 2050.

2c) Western net zero would prevent just 30% of 0.2 degrees, or 0.06 degrees, or about one-seventeenth of a degree. That is all, even if the whole of the West were to attain net zero. Most other nations are not obliged to abate their emissions under the Paris treaty.

3a) Each $1 billion spent would prevent 0.2 degrees times $1 billion divided by $275 trillion, or well below one millionth of a degree of future warming: the worst value for money in the history of economics. 

3b) Total cost of global net zero, including operating expenditure at least twice capital expenditure, is at least thrice the $275 trillion capital expenditure: i.e. $825 trillion.

3c) Each $1 billion spent would prevent 0.2 degrees times $1 billion divided by $825 trillion, or well below one four-millionth of a degree of future warming. 

4a) Total cost of reaching net zero in the UK, based on the grid authority’s $3.6 trillion estimate of the capital cost of net-zeroing the grid, would be thrice $3.6 trillion times 5 to allow for net-zeroing the rest of the economy: total $54 trillion. 

4b) Since Britain represents just 1% of global emissions, the global cost of net zero would be $5.4 quadrillion.

4c) Each $1 billion spent would prevent 0.2 degrees times $1 billion divided by $5.4 quadrillion, or one twenty-seven-millionth of a degree of future warming. 

5a) In response to doubled CO2, after adjusting for IPCC’s over-prediction of the warming rate since 1990, the world would warm at about ten times the observed 0.134 degrees per decade rate: i.e. only 1.34 degrees, compared with IPCC’s predicted 3 degrees’ midrange estimate. 

5b) IPCC’s 0.3 degrees-per-decade predicted warming rate is more than double the observed warming rate since 1990. It is a 124% overstatement.

5c) IPCC’s 5 degrees’ upper-bound estimate of final warming in response to doubled CO2 exceeds the observationally-derived 1.34 degrees almost fourfold. It is a 273% overstatement.

Typical Western politician’s average expected mark: net zero.