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UK Project Reveals Cost of Retrofitting Homes To Reduce CO2 Emissions Is Exorbitant & Not Viable

An analysis of a UK home retrofitting project provides a glimpse into the future massive costs of doing this for an entire country, while not achieving the  CO2 emission reduction goal desired per home.

The project architects had hoped for achieving an 80% CO2 decrease by replacing all existing appliances with newer more efficient ones; by increasing full wall insulation; by adding underfloor insulation; and etc.

Instead, a 60% CO2 reduction was achieved. The estimated cost of doing the same for every UK home would amount to a total of $5.6 trillion, which is about $193,000 per home (there are 29 million UK homes). The payback period from the energy savings for each home owner would be 150 years.

Assuming that same style of retrofit was done for the approximately 138 million U.S. homes, which tend to be larger than UK homes, the total retrofit cost would be some $26 trillion for just a 50-60% CO2 reduction.

And that's just for the U.S. residential units. Add on the retrofit cost of all commercial, industrial, and government structures and entire cost for the U.S. would be significantly higher. 

It's not just the UK retrofit project that throws real shade on the Green New Deal's insanely expensive concept of retrofitting homes for "maximum" CO2 reductions. A study out of Australia suggests that decreases in both CO2 and total home energy usage would not be significant in long run.

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Those Stubborn Facts: Research Indicates That CO2 Emissions Have Zero Impact On Temperatures In Central Asia

A new peer-reviewed study provides additional evidence that significant parts of the world have not experienced the hypothesized dangerous and rapid global warming impact of CO2 emissions.

Central Asia represents a large swath of the globe's land area where one would expect that the "powerful" temperature impact of humanity's CO2 would be rather robust.

Although the area exhibited warming in the 20th century, it is not much different than earlier warming from periods centuries ago (see graph at bottom).

And there has been a recent late 20th century cooling that is attributed to natural factors.

"[T]he recent cool-moist period from 1985 to 2000 has been related to the Arctic Oscillation...During this recent cool-moist period, ice mass accumulation of the glaciers in the Russian Altai Mountains was observed and Narozhniy and Zemtsov (2011) connected this phenomenon to annual precipitation increased by 8% – 10% especially in winter and spring (April-May) as a result of a strengthening of the zonal circulation over the Altai Mountains.”

Conclusion: Those stubborn facts again get in the way of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming doomsday claims. Central Asia's warming and cooing during both the past and modern era look to be more a function of natural volcano variations and ocean oscillations.

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Ocean Acidification Study: Unexpectedly, Atlantic Salmon Grow & Thrive With Increased Acidification

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Acidification of ocean waters from human CO2 emissions has raised concerns that aquatic life would be severely impacted. Yet, actual studies testing acidification levels on different species more often than not reveal that sea life is not impaired.

Adding to that empirical evidence is a new study on Atlantic salmon smolt.

"In a test of the above hypothesis, McCormick and Regish examined "the effect of future ocean        acidification on the salinity tolerance and early seawater growth of Atlantic salmon Salmo salar        smolts."..."Results of the analysis, in the words of the authors, revealed that "ocean acidification  will not negatively affect the survival and ion regulatory ability [and, hence, salinity tolerance] of S. salar smolts," Furthermore, McCormick and Regish add that "rather than have a detrimental effect, ocean acidification conditions may actually improve the growth of S. salar in the first 2 weeks after seawater exposure." With respect to this latter parameter, Figure 1 graphically portrays the mean specific growth rates of the fish inhabiting the two seawater pH regimes, revealing 40 percent higher specific growth rates of Atlantic salmon in the ocean acidification treatment compared to ambient seawater pH."

Possible conclusion: CO2 makes for very happy fish.