Labor’s $59 billion renewables spend saves 0.000027% CO2

By Jerry Wraith, UK Science Correspondent July 31, 2026

NOTE ON THE ANNUAL GLOBAL AND AUSTRALIA’S CO₂ EMISSIONS AND THEIR EFFECT ON GLOBAL TEMPERATURE

1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

R. Lindzen, W. Happer and W. A. van Wijngaarden have stated that¹:

Using feedback-free estimates of the warming by increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and observed rates of increase, we estimate that if the United States (U.S.) eliminated net CO2 emissions by the year 2050, this would avert a warming of 0.0084 C (0.015 F), which is below our ability to accurately measure. If the entire world forced net zero CO2 emissions by the year 2050, a warming of only 0.070 C (0.13 F) would be averted. If one assumes that the warming is a factor of 4 larger because of positive feedback, as asserted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the warming averted by a net zero U.S. policy would still be very small, 0.034 C (0.061 F). For worldwide net zero emissions by 2050 and the 4-times larger IPCC climate sensitivity, the averted warming would be 0.28 C (0.50 F).

So, if the entire world forced net zero CO2 emissions by the year 2050, a warming of only 0.070 C (0.13 F), without feedback would be averted. Australia’s share of the world’s aversion of warming by net zero emissions without feedback would therefore be 0.0007 ⁰C or 0.000027 ⁰C/annum

With the 4 times IPCC climate sensitivity the total global aversion of warming would be 0.28 ⁰C, Australia’s share of which would be 0.0023 ⁰C or 0.000088 ⁰C per annum.

Is averting 0.000027 ºC global warming / annum by Australia’s CO₂ sufficient justification for Australian taxpayers to pay over $11 billion in 2023 on subsidising Australian renewable energy?

To date the Labor Government has committed more than $59 billion towards renewable electricity supplies which includes massive subsidies paid to Chinese and other foreign construction companies.

2 DISCUSSION

According to Our World in Data (https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions), in 2024, the worldwide CO₂ emission was 38.6 billion tons, for the USA it was 4.9 billion tons, for the UK it was 312.9 million tons and for Australia it was 387 million tons.

For Australia the proportion would be 387 x 10⁶÷ 38.6 x 10⁹= 0.01 x 0.070 ⁰C = 0.0007 ⁰C or 0.000027 ⁰C / annum, i.e. for the 26 years from 2024 to 2050

With the 4 times sensitivity Australia’s share would be 0.0007 x 4 = 0.0028 or 0.00011 ⁰C /annum.

The Australian subsidy for renewable energy is taken from The Australian Institute, by R Campbell · 2023 · Cited by 14 — In 2022–23, Australian Federal and state governments provided a total of $11.1 billion worth of spending and tax breaks to assist fossil fuel industries.

Therefore, is averting 0.000027 ºC global warming / annum by Australia’s CO₂ sufficient justification for Australian taxpayers to pay over $11 billion in 2023 on subsidising Australian renewable energy?

N.B. Compare Professor Happer’s figure of 0.07 ⁰C by 2050, which (from 2024) extrapolates to 0.205 ⁰C by the end of the century with the predictions by 383 out of 843 lead authors of the IPCC’s reports for their estimate of the how much human global warming there would be at the end of the century, i.e. 75 years away.² The so-called IPCC’s expert’s answers ranged from 1.5 ºC to 5 ºC. Hardly a “consensus” even within the IPCC and all wildly incorrect.

3 FURTHER COMMENTS

It should be noted that the climate activists do not commit themselves to providing any technical figures to justify their claims of doom and destruction. Typically, in the UK Ed Milliband refused to quote figures for the effect of net zero policies on the global temperature in parliament, even when asked for this numerous times by Lee Anderson, Reform MP. Clearly, giving a figure invites questions on how it was arrived at!

So, the climate activists resort to so called natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes, sea level rises, heat waves and wild fires as confirmation of an impending climate crisis. The MSM and government agencies such as the UK’s Met Office, the universities, BBC, Sky news, The Guardian and other newspapers all allegedly promote any or all natural events as confirming the scam that is the climate crisis. These claims can all be refuted by the facts but are routinely ignored by them and corrections are rarely, if ever published by them.

The graph compares the total CO₂ production of the UK compared just to China’s output. (Note that the total world emissions will raise the total to over 38 billion tons.) The Australian CO_2ffigure will be just above the UK’s.

References

2 Ben Pile reported in The Daily Sceptic, 13th May 2024, that the Guardian recently published its survey of ‘climate experts’ estimates of the temperature increase by the end of the century.