{"id":417858,"date":"2025-12-19T19:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T18:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=417858"},"modified":"2025-12-23T14:08:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T13:08:27","slug":"scammers-are-gonna-scam-regardless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=417858","title":{"rendered":"Scammers Are Gonna Scam, Regardless"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guest Post by<\/em><\/strong> Willis Eschenbach<\/a> (@weschenbach on X, my own blog at\u00a0Skating Under The Ice<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Folks ask why I describe climate alarmism as a \u201cgrift\u201d, a lovely English word meaning a swindle. I describe it that way because it\u2019s making people rich while accomplishing nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s one example among hundreds. California\u2019s CO2 \u201cCap And Trade\u201d program, recently renamed the \u201cCap-And-Invest\u201d program, is now primarily a multi\u2011billion\u2011dollar revenue machine whose costs land squarely on consumers while delivering meaningless reductions in greenhouse gases. Politicians, not the planet, are the clear winners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start with the sticker price that no one voted on. The program is pulling in about $5 billion a year in auction revenue, with roughly $33 billion raised since inception. That money does not appear out of thin air; it is baked into the price of everything covered entities sell, with gasoline being the most obvious example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s estimated that about 30 cents per gallon in cap\u2011and\u2011trade costs is embedded in California gasoline pump prices, roughly consistent with the California Air Resources Board\u2019s own estimate of about 27 cents per gallon for the cap\u2011and\u2011trade component. California consumes on the order of 13\u201314 billion gallons of gasoline per year, so that 30\u2011cent skim works out to something like $4 billion per year transferred from motorists\u2019 pockets to Sacramento<\/strong> without a line item on the tax bill. That is before counting similar pass\u2011through costs in diesel, electricity, concrete, and industrial products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what does all that pain at the pump buy in terms of carbon dioxide? The governor\u2019s office and CARB boast that the ~ $33 billion in cap\u2011and\u2011trade proceeds have funded projects claimed to cut emissions equivalent to taking 1.3 million gasoline cars off the road. Using a standard figure of about 4.6 metric tons of CO\u2082 per year per typical passenger vehicle, that \u201ccars off the road\u201d metric translates to on the order of 6 million metric tons of CO\u2082 avoided per year if those reductions are durable and additional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, California\u2019s cap\u2011and\u2011trade program covers roughly three\u2011quarters of state greenhouse gas emissions, and total state emissions have fallen about 14 percent since the program began, largely due to other policies like the renewable portfolio standard and vehicle efficiency rules. A federal review estimates that projects funded by cap-and-trade auction proceeds account for roughly 110 million metric tonnes of CO\u2082\u2011equivalent reductions cumulatively.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WOW! Over a hundred million tonnes of CO2, that must be a lot, right? So, how much difference has that made in the real world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For that, we need a few facts. First, current CO2 levels are about 420 ppmv (parts per million by volume).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next, for each 17,355 million metric tonnes of CO2 emitted, the atmospheric CO2 goes up by 1 ppmv (part per million by volume)<\/a>. This means that for the $33 billion dollars taken out of my and other California taxpayers\u2019 wallets, the atmospheric CO2 level is lower by 110\/17,400 = 0.006 ppmv \u2026 six thousandths of one part per million of CO2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Be still, my beating heart \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And IF the IPCC is correct (which is a very big if), that would have reduced the current temperature by log2(420.006 \/ 420) * 3<\/a> = 0.00006\u00b0C \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seriously. Californians have spent $33 billion dollars to reduce the temperature by not a tenth of a degree, not by a hundredth or a thousandth of a degree, not even by a ten-thousandth of a degree, but by less than a ten-thousandth of a degree.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And before you claim that we are \u201cleading by example\u201d and that the world will follow, most countries are not that stupid. At that rate, to reduce the world\u2019s temperature by 1\u00b0C (again, IF the IPCC is correct) would cost $533 TRILLION dollars<\/strong>, a number so large it defies comprehension. It\u2019s more than a hundred years of all the annual US Federal Tax revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For. One. Degree. Of. Cooling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So clearly, this has NOTHING to do with the climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the spending priorities tell you what the real game is. The renamed \u201ccap\u2011and\u2011invest\u201d scheme locks in a billion dollars a year for the \u201crailroad to nowhere\u201d, Governor Newsom\u2019s doomed high\u2011speed rail project, regardless of how many years it stays an expensive hole in the Central Valley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the High\u2011Speed Rail Authority\u2019s own projections concede that, if the system were ever fully completed, it would shave automobile emissions by only about 1 percent, while construction itself adds emissions up front. In other words, no emissions gain at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This insane boondoggle was sold as a San Francisco to LA high-speed train costing $33 billion. Now it\u2019s been cut back to a Modesto to Bakersfield line for $40 billion or so. Despite billions spent already, there hasn\u2019t been a full mile of track laid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Aerial<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And if you don\u2019t know where Modesto is \u2026 neither do most Californians. However, like nearly all the cities in Democrat-destroyed California, Modesto and Bakersfield need lots of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadly \u2026 a high-speed rail link connecting the two is not one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Add to that, $1.25 billion shifted to wildfire suppression to ease pressure on a deficit\u2011ridden general fund, plus another $1 billion put into a legislative \u201cdiscretionary\u201d pot\u2014that is, money that our corrupt Democrat leadership can steer to whatever pet projects or political deals they fancy. Those three buckets alone consume most of the annual auction take while having no measurable effect on atmospheric CO2 levels<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office, not exactly a bomb\u2011throwing outfit, dryly notes that cap\u2011and\u2011trade (now cap\u2011and\u2011invest) revenues \u201ccan continue to be viewed as akin to tax revenues and be legally available to expend for any purpose.\u201d<\/em> Translate the bureaucratese and you get this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cap\u2011and\u2011trade has become a backdoor tax on energy, largely invisible to voters, that can be spent on any damn thing the governor and legislative leadership wish, no matter how useless or corrupt.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politically, that is a dream scam\u2014billions per year off\u2011budget in the colloquial sense, routed to high\u2011profile projects, deficit patches, and discretionary slush, all defended under the halo of \u201cclimate action.\u201d From the standpoint of the average Californian buying gasoline, electricity, or manufactured goods, it is a classic heads\u2011they\u2011win, tails\u2011you\u2011pay arrangement: higher prices now, no meaningful change in emissions, and a guaranteed windfall of flexible cash for the political class in Sacramento.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And tragically, the people getting hit the hardest by this backdoor tax on energy are the poor. It\u2019s a regressive tax that hits the poor the hardest of all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Cruelest Tax Of All<\/a><\/blockquote>