by Patrick J. Michaels & Benjamin Zycher | May 12, 2021 12:00 AM Print this article Washington Examiner, Josh Siegel and Abby Smith reported: “This morning, the EPA unveiled a proposal to begin limiting potent greenhouse gas coolants known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. It’s a significant step to curb climate change, as phasing down HFCs could help avoid roughly 0.5 degrees Celsius of warming.” The claim that a phaseout of HFCs would reduce future warming by 0.5 C is the conventional wisdom, and like many such assertions accepted among Beltway types, it is based upon dubious foundations and assumptions. For perspective, note that the entire Paris Agreement, if implemented immediately and enforced strictly, would reduce global temperatures by 0.17 C by 2100, as predicted by the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate model under assumptions that exaggerate the effects of reduced greenhouse gas emissions. The temperature effect of a 50% emissions cut by China would be 0.184 C, but that is a distant fantasy given the number of coal plants that it is building.