Breaking down the last decade of climate change in 7 charts

This article on Grist (h/t to James Taylor, The Heartland Institute) tries to point out how “terrible” the last decade was due to “climate change”. They write:

As this hottest-on-record, godforsaken decade draws to a close, it’s clear that global warming is no longer a problem for future generations but one that’s already displacing communities, costing billions, and driving mass extinctions. And it’s worth asking: Where did the past 10 years get us?

The seven charts below begin to hint at an answer to that question. Some of the changes they document, like the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the number of billion dollar disasters that occur each year, illustrate how little we did to reduce emissions and how unprepared the world is to deal with the warming we’ve already locked in.

https://grist.org/climate/we-broke-down-the-last-decade-of-climate-change-in-7-charts/

We can also provide 7 charts that illustrate the last decade of climate change, and they tell a different story.


What they say: 1. Atmospheric carbon dioxide rose by about 25 parts per million.

There’s no disputing that ambient CO2 has gone up in the atmosphere, however, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. NASA, for example has this to say about the effects of that increased CO2 in study about CO2 and greening derived from satellite data.

From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25 2016

“We were able to tie the greening largely to the fertilizing effect of rising atmospheric CO2 concentration by tasking several computer models to mimic plant growth observed in the satellite data,” says co-author Prof. Ranga Myneni of the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University.

“The greening over the past 33 years reported in this study is equivalent to adding a green continent about two-times the size of mainland USA (18 million km2)…”

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-04/bu-cfg042216.php
This image shows the change in leaf area across the globe from 1982-2015. CREDIT Credits: Boston University/R. Myneni
This image shows the change in leaf area across the globe from 1982-2015. CREDIT Credits: Boston University/R. Myneni
Source: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3004.html

It seems the Earth’s biosphere is responding to increased CO2 in a positive way, that’s also undeniable.


What they say: 2. Climate change got expensive.

They cite this graph (produced by the Grist magazine):

And they say:

One of the best-established consequences of global warming is that it makes natural disasters, like fires and floods, more frequent and severe. In the 2010s, the costs of this consequence came into sharp focus as billion-dollar disasters struck the United States again and again. 

But, that’s not true when you look at normalized weather disaster costs:

tp-2018-3
Source: Pielke, R. (2018). Tracking progress on the economic costs of disasters under the indicators of the sustainable development goalsEnvironmental Hazards, 1-6.

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. makes note of this in Why Climate Advocates Need To Stop Hyping Extreme Weather

It appears that 2019, is on track to continue the record of good news. Robert Muir-Wood of RMS, a leading catastrophe modeling firm, wrote a month ago “Almost three months ago we passed a remarkable record in catastrophe loss. And yet no one seems to want to celebrate it. No banner headlines in the newspapers. . . The first half of 2019 generated the lowest catastrophe insurance loss for more than a decade.” Muir-Wood labelled 2019 “the year of the kitten.” With two months left, cross your fingers.


What they say: 3. More people accept the basic premises that it’s getting hot and that it’s our fault.

Well, you might think that if you believe the highly adjusted temperature data published by NASA GISS and [University of East Anglia’s Climate Research unit] on climate (ground zero for the embarrassing and revealing Climategate affair in 2009).

But when you look at unadjusted data, such as is produced by the state-of- the-art United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN) operated by NOAA, you get a wholly different idea about temperature over the last decade:

Graph annotated by A. Watts
Source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&parameter=anom-tavg&time_scale=12mo&begyear=2005&endyear=2019&month=12

That’s right, in the contiguous US, the temperature for 2019 was actually lower than for the start of the decade at 2010. The two peaks in 2012 and 2016 were from naturally caused El Nino events in the Pacific ocean. Granted, the USA isn’t the world, but the USA routinely gets blamed for all of the climate woes of the world, so the comparison seems a fair one. But really, where’s the climate crisis?


What they say: 4. But there’s a widening partisan divide when it comes to worrying about the environment.

Well that’s true, Conservatives generally think things through and look at fact based evidence compared to the liberal side, which seems to “feel” issues far more than they critically examine them.

But when people of all stripes worldwide are polled about it, such as the United Nations does, it comes in dead last as a concern:

Source: http://data.myworld2015.org/

It seems people worldwide would rather have education, food, honest government, better roads, and reliable energy than they would some climate action.


What they say: 5. Coal continued its death spiral.

Citing a Grist produced graph of data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) that they say depicts a “death spiral” for coal use, they say coal is on the way out.

A line chart showing cumulative retired coal capacity in the United States between 2010 and 2019
Clayton Aldern / Grist

While that data is true, what they aren’t showing you is the rest of the story from the EIA:

U.S. electricity generation by energy source
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short-Term Energy Outlook

What is really going on here is that natural gas is replacing coal because it is more efficient, less expensive to maintain, and has a smaller footprint. It’s really a market driven business decision rather than a nod to environmental concerns.


What they say: 6. Solar skyrocketed, but fossil fuels still dominate.

Once again they cite a graph they produced from EIA data, and once again, it doesn’t tell the whole story.

A line chart showing the percent change in U.S. primary energy produced by source between 2010 and 2019
Clayton Aldern / Grist

Gosh, it looks like the entire USA is being powered by solar energy! Hurray for environmentalism! Inconveniently, the reality is far different:

U.S. primary energy production by source
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review

While renewables, including solar, have made gains, they still lag behind fossil fuels such as natural gas, crude oil, and coal in energy production in the USA. Without baseload (grid) generation by coal and natural gas, solar wouldn’t even work, since almost all solar installations are grid-tied – meaning that if the grid doesn’t have electricity, solar power can’t feed to it.


What they say: 7. While coal flatlined, the price of renewables dropped precipitously.

I wonder what the price of renewables would be if they weren’t propped up by your tax dollars? According to EIA data, fossil fuels are still far less expensive:

File:Cost of Energy-Related Tax Preferences, by Type of Fuel or Technology, 1985 to 2016.png
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/reports/52521-energytestimony.pdf

And there there’s this analysis.

The EIA estimates the two largest federal tax credit programs benefiting wind and solar paid out a combined $2.8 billion in 2016. These funds came through a tax credit worth 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour of power produced, as well as a deduction equal to 30 percent of a facility’s installation costs.

These two tax credits are set to expire at the end of 2021, though a permanent 10 percent investment tax credit for solar and geothermal installations would remain.

https://www.insidesources.com/us-still-subsidizing-renewable-energy-to-the-tune-of-nearly-7-billion/

That doesn’t include state tax credits, which are also substantial.


While some people at Grist believe there is more to worry about from climate change issues this past decade, the undeniable fact is We’ve Just Had The Best Decade In Human History.

Source: Matt Ridley, writing in the Spectator UK

How inconvenient for the eco-worriers at Grist.


Anthony Watts is former television meteorologist and Senior Fellow for Environment and Climate for The Heartland InstituteHe operates the most viewed website on climate in the world, WattsUpWithThat.com

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Greg
February 8, 2020 4:22 am

England’s Hadley Centre on climate (ground zero for the embarrassing and revealing Climategate affair in 2009

Firstly, a UK facility not “England’s”.
More importantly that Hadley Centre is not related to the University of East Anglia’s “Climatic Research Unit”, which was at the heart of ClimateGate.

It really pulls the rug on such propaganda efforts if you can’t get your facts straight and liable the wrong people. Now our host is fellow at Heartland , it is a shame they don’t make use of his experience and knowledge. I’m sure Anthony would not let such a blunder pass.

Juan Slayton
Reply to  Greg
February 8, 2020 8:00 am

…Hadley Centre is not related to the University of East Anglia’s “Climate Research Unit”….

from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HadCRUT :
The Climatic Research Unit had as an early priority the objective of filling gaps in available information “to establish the past record of climate over as much of the world as possible, as far back in time as was feasible, and in enough detail to recognise and establish the basic processes, interactions, and evolutions in the Earth’s fluid envelopes and those involving the Earth’s crust and its vegetation cover”….From 1989 this work proceeded in conjunction with the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, and their work demonstrated global warming of almost 0.8 °C over the last 157 years.[8]

(my bold). But it is indeed true that significant inaccuracies can make you liable to libel the wrong people.

Robert B
Reply to  Greg
February 8, 2020 4:55 pm

Firstly, a UK facility not “England’s”.
More importantly that Hadley Centre is not related to the University of East Anglia’s “Climatic Research Unit”, which was at the heart of ClimateGate.

The global temperature anomaly HadCRUT is a collaboration.

One of the climategate emails “Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous” was from Peter Thorne of the Hadley Centre to Phil Jones. Included because it was critical of what was going on rather than damning of Thorne but still, Hadley Centre was a part of the farce.

February 8, 2020 4:30 am

Anthony,

Very good post. This should be disseminated throughout every school in the nation from kindergarten through graduate school!

Reply to  Tim Gorman
February 8, 2020 12:53 pm

Students also need to know:
Green plants are happier and healthier with more CO2 plant food in the atmosphere, backed up by thousands of scientific studies.

And our planet is roughly two degrees C. warmer than in the 1690s, when it was too cold for people living at that time … and they would have been thrilled with a +2 degree C. warming overnight in the 1690s, if that was possible.

The harm already done, and the harm expected, from global warming is nothing more than a leftist fantasy — no harm has been done.

Our planet supports the most life when it is warm, and has lots of CO2 in the atmosphere — only a fool, or a leftist (I repeat myself) would ignore climate history, and want a colder planet, with less CO2 in the air for plants.

The current climate is the best our planet has had for at least 800 to 1,000 years, since before the Little Ice Age centuries began.

There’s no climate crisis now, and no crisis coming — the climate has been getting better, for about 325 years so far.

A real climate crisis would be when the current Holocene inter-glacial ends, and the planet gets colder, for perhaps 100,000 years.

Of course that’s real climate science, which is far beyond the understanding of leftists.

They can only handle one climate variable: Carbon dioxide

And one temperature direction: Warmer

And one climate prediction: A coming climate crisis.

A prediction they have been repeating since the late 1950s, like trained parrots.

(I hope I have not insulted parrots)

Greg
February 8, 2020 4:41 am

OK, but apart from more wealth, less poverty, less child mortality, longer lives, less weather mortality, less deaths from pollution and more homosexuality …. what have fossil fuels REALLY done for us?

Rod Evans
Reply to  Greg
February 8, 2020 5:30 am

Mobility…

n.n
Reply to  Greg
February 8, 2020 7:12 am

Yes, transgender (i.e. homo, bi, neo) is trendy. So are female rent-a-wombs and male sperm depositors. As well as dodo dynasties. The chambers are still Planned with unworthy human lives. Some sequestered, others cannibalized for clinical profit. There has been great progress in the last cent century.

Johann Wundersamer
Reply to  n.n
February 21, 2020 5:29 am

“n.n February 8, 2020 at 7:12 am

Yes, transgender (i.e. homo, bi, neo) is trendy. So are female rent-a-wombs and male sperm depositors. As well as dodo dynasties.

The chambers are still Planned with unworthy human lives.

Some sequestered, others cannibalized for clinical profit. There has been great progress in the last cent century.”
____________________________________

Companies want your” unworthy human livesc. In fact, companies want 100% trained workers.

The best 50% are accepted in the company.

The remaining 50% trained then are defamed as deplorables. That’s live.

____________________________________

The percentages of / living / accepted / deplorable / unworthy / human lives will not change so soon. Kismet.

Reply to  Greg
February 8, 2020 7:49 am

I get the tongue-in-cheek tone of your question, but nonetheless one honest reply is: since widespread use in farming, manufacturing and transportation industries, probably eliminated 90% or more of all manual labor in all non-third world countries.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Gordon Dressler
February 8, 2020 11:32 am

It was a Monty Python reference.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Gordon Dressler
February 8, 2020 12:07 pm

And along with 90% of all manual labour, goes slavery, which was just about the only way to be wealthy in bygone years.

Reply to  Greg
February 8, 2020 5:29 pm

Oh Greg, really? Homosexuality?

Eny fule kno that green is just gay

Simon Morgan
Reply to  Greg
February 16, 2020 3:01 am

A tongue on cheek her, methinks?

commieBob
February 8, 2020 4:45 am

Peak stuff.

Malthus, and later the Club of Rome, postulated that we would run out of certain necessary materials and society would collapse. Buckminster Fuller countered that, because of improving technology, we are able to do more and more with less and less.

Between 1977 and 2001, the amount of material required to meet all needs of Americans fell from 1.18 trillion pounds to 1.08 trillion pounds, even though the country’s population increased by 55 million people. Al Gore similarly noted in 1999 that since 1949, while the economy tripled, the weight of goods produced did not change. link

(I just love that quote by Al Gore and I use it a lot.)

The greenies seem to think things would be better if we lived like wild chimpanzees. Actually, by most measures, the environment is better off when it is husbanded by prosperous people who can afford not to desecrate it.

Peak stuff is happening. It matters. It’s a good thing. The necessary condition is that technology keeps improving and that requires a robust economy fueled by cheap energy.

commieBob
Reply to  commieBob
February 8, 2020 5:22 am

Under Peak Stuff in the graph above, it mentions More From Less by Andrew McAfee. It looks like a good read.

McAfee mentions the four horsemen of the optimist: technology, capitalism, a concerned public, and responsive government. It’s a great bon mot. I hope it catches on.

mike macray
Reply to  commieBob
February 8, 2020 8:40 am

Right on CommieboB!

I would suggest however that two of your optimist cavalry, concerned public and responsive govt., are still in the stable shouting at each other: “open the door! give me a saddle,” etc. while Fear and Greed the twin horsemen of the pessimists are rampant in the countryside.
Cheers
Mike

February 8, 2020 4:56 am

This should be compulsory reading for all educators.

Not sure how you can get it to them, though, never mind how to get them to pass it on. Most of them would be fired if they put this to their classes.

Joe Ebeni
February 8, 2020 5:01 am

In “6” in the chart “U.S. Primary Energy Production by Source (1950-2018)”
Renewables are ~11% to ~12%?. Does this include Hydro since there is no separate line? If so what is percentage of renewables net of hydro?
THANKS for all your work.

Col Mosby
Reply to  Joe Ebeni
February 8, 2020 5:42 am

Hydro runs at roughly 10 to 11%

lb
Reply to  Col Mosby
February 8, 2020 8:58 am

I always wonder how much of ‘hydro’ actually is recycled coal, gas, nuclear, whatever. I mean, pumped up when demand is low.

MarkW
Reply to  lb
February 8, 2020 7:18 pm

None. Pumped storage is a storage mechanism, it isn’t a source of energy.

maarten
February 8, 2020 5:02 am

One would never guess this listening to the Marxstream Media…

February 8, 2020 5:15 am

Rule of thumb:
If you heard it from a greenie source (environmentalist) organization, it is most likely fake news and quite likely an outright lie.

Chaswarnertoo
Reply to  JimK
February 8, 2020 6:06 am

Watermelons, truly evil people.

ColMosby
February 8, 2020 5:50 am

It’s almost astounding that these renewable folks never mention the obvious energy freight train coming down the tracks : molten salt modular nuclear reactors. But India and China and Russia are well aware of this game changing technology which will arrive in the next 10 years and replace all forms of electricity generation. And will be cheaper and safer to boot. And since it can be fueled by Thorium (as well as spent nuclear), the technoogy will never run out of fuel. Renewable advocates are incredibly ignorant of future technologies.
Wind is a 16th century technology.

Chesterton
Reply to  ColMosby
February 11, 2020 8:05 am

Excellent and knowledgeable observation amidst all that puerile bickering about what is ‘good’ and what is not. Yes, Thorium generators have been around for some time, yes, they ARE the solution, imho. They have been suppressed, because those who really own and run this stupid human circus on the planet, are still profiting and living off the current medieval technologies. So as long as these parasites and their offspring are around, the future shall follow the past. Sadly.

Russell Shute
Reply to  Chesterton
February 11, 2020 12:00 pm

Energy is no solution, it’s the myopic grasping at a straw for someone needing a rope. Oil has value because it is easily contained & a barrel of oil does 4 years of man-hours work. Humans have never controlled their population so over-use of resources is inevitable. Aside that, it is a fossil-fueled civilization which gives you the materials, the infrastructure to produce the thorium non-solution in the first place. You might as well be trying trade your cow for some magic beans.

Bob Rogers
February 8, 2020 6:02 am

I wonder what that 30% tax credit translates into in terms of cents per kWh.

Latitude
February 8, 2020 6:18 am

substitute every USA graph….for the same graph about China….India…etc

..and then try to convince Americans we should give a flying

A C Osborn
Reply to  Latitude
February 8, 2020 7:03 am

Yes, especially world use of Coal, it certainly doesn’t follow the US trend.

n.n
February 8, 2020 7:08 am

godforsaken

And the Green blight shall cover the land. Thou shalt not deny Profitsy. The mortal gods are indeed displeased.

Ralph Knapp
February 8, 2020 7:17 am

So far, the “warming” has brought us -20C plus temps, “keeper” snow, etc. here in Barrie, Ontario. This a normal winter here. I would really hate it if global “cooling” descended upon us.

February 8, 2020 7:37 am

“But when you look at unadjusted data, such as is produced by the state-of- the-art United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN) operated by NOAA, you get a wholly different idea about temperature over the last decade”

It is data from a different place. The difference is not due to adjustment. If you look at the same period, same place with adjusted data from USHCN or ClimDiv, you get the same result as USCRN.

Juan Slayton
Reply to  Nick Stokes
February 8, 2020 8:59 am

Well, I’m open to reason, Mr. Stokes. Can you give a couple of specific examples?

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Nick Stokes
February 8, 2020 11:42 am

What about compared to GISS?

fred250
Reply to  Nick Stokes
February 8, 2020 12:03 pm

Yes, once USCRN came out, they had to use it as a guide.

USCRN has controlled the “adjustments” of ClimDiv to levels of reality.

No warming in USA except for a slight bulge through the last El Nino.

Lance Wallace
Reply to  Nick Stokes
February 8, 2020 12:51 pm

Nick–

UAH shows a trend of 0.0267 C/year for the 2005-2019 period in the contiguous US (US 48). Does RSS produce an estimate for the US 48? If so, a nice test would be to compare the slopes from the USCRN to those from RSS and UAH.

Reply to  Lance Wallace
February 8, 2020 1:34 pm

“UAH shows a trend of 0.0267 C/year”
That’s a very high trend (2.67°C/Cen), a complete contrast to the surface figures shown. But then again, it is a different place again, and satellite measures are also unreliable. RSS numbers are here.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Nick Stokes
February 8, 2020 2:39 pm

“That’s a very high trend (2.67°C/Cen)”

There’s no reason to think such a trend will last that long.

Loydo
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
February 8, 2020 4:51 pm

There is every reason to think that trend will continue for decades.

MarkW
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
February 8, 2020 7:19 pm

Why? Even in the last century, no “trend” has lasted longer than about 2 decades.

LdB
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
February 9, 2020 3:14 am

Wow a whole 2 deg in 100 years that isn’t remotely scary enough to redistribute the worlds wealth. Half the readers and voters won’t even see 1degree you really have to work to get it up.

For Nick if it makes no difference why adjust it at all, other than apparently it makes it “Nick Stokes Right(tm)” as defined by Nick.

Russell Shute
Reply to  LdB
February 13, 2020 6:41 am

The people who don’t get alarmed because such small changes in global temperature are not scary, live in this fantasy world where ice does not change to water above 32 degrees F. They expose their stupidity by assuming everyone must know, as they do, ice gradually melts between 32 degrees F & 45 degrees F. I suppose the dew point is not really a point for them as well. Perhaps an avalanche or a boat capsizing happens in slow motion in their reality. One can only imagine such madness.

Reply to  Jeff Alberts
February 9, 2020 11:09 am

“There’s no reason to think such a trend will last that long”

The point is that the surface measures (including USCRN, described here as state-of-the-art) show little trend over that period.

It doesn’t surprise me, of course. I don’t have much faith anyway in UAH, but it emphasises that it is measuring a different place – a distinction too often ignored here.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
February 12, 2020 7:30 am

“The point is that the surface measures (including USCRN, described here as state-of-the-art) show little trend over that period.”

Again that’s because you’ve averaged everything together. That’s a no-no when dealing with intensive properties.

Lance Wallace
Reply to  Nick Stokes
February 8, 2020 11:36 pm

Thanks NIck for the RSS data

Results of the same regression on the monthly data: (2005 Jan thru 2019 December):
RSS: 0.0244 degrees C/year
UAH: 0.0261

The satellite slopes agree within 1% or so. (Too bad–I was hoping for a large difference showing one agreed better with ground truth, the CRN network being the only ground data I believe.)

What is the actual slope of the USCRN data?

Reply to  Nick Stokes
February 9, 2020 5:16 am

I make the CRN trend since 2005 at 2.8°C / century, very similar to UAH.

If you limit this to the last decade, as the article does, then the trend increases to 3.1°C / century.

Of course none of this is statistically significant, but you certainly don’t “get a wholly different idea about temperature over the last decade”.

MarkW
February 8, 2020 7:57 am

Given how variable climate “disasters” are, 10 years is way too short to declare a trend.
Even without all the other problems inherent in that chart.

February 8, 2020 7:58 am

2010’s best decade metrics are impressive.

But how much better would they have been if the effort and money used to prevent catastrophic climate change had been redirected toward more productive efforts?

Bill Rocks
Reply to  RelPerm
February 8, 2020 11:19 am

To: Relative Permeability,

Thank you for the enlightened question.

MarkW
February 8, 2020 8:00 am

“Coal continued its death spiral.”
One thing about shallow thinkers, they assume that any trend that they approve of, will continue forever.

MarkW
February 8, 2020 8:04 am

“While renewables, including solar, have made gains, they still lag behind fossil fuels such as natural gas, crude oil, and coal in energy production”

In addition to the subsidies, you also have to include the cost of mandates.
Utilities are required by law to buy all the wind and solar that is produced. Period. This means that fossil fuel plants have to be ramped up and down making them less efficient and more costly.

n.n
February 8, 2020 8:31 am

“While renewables, including solar, have made gains, they still lag behind fossil fuels such as natural gas, crude oil, and coal in energy production”

Renewable drivers, yes. As for photovoltaics etc., they are limited by the Green blight factor. As well as that photovoltaic panels and wind turbine gauntlets cannot be reasonably, cleanly, safely isolated from the environment.

Rick C PE
February 8, 2020 8:56 am

…it’s clear that global warming is no longer a problem for future generations but one that’s already displacing communities, costing billions, and driving mass extinctions.

.
The Grist article promises evidence in support of this claim then provides nothing. No evidence of communities being displaced, increase costs or mass extinctions. Just the fact that CO2 has increased a bit and global temperature is a few tenths of a degree warmer than it used to be. Neither of these changes is has been shown to cause real problems. The rest of the Grist points are related to popular opinion and decline in the use of coal for electricity generation. But the warmists want coal use to stop, so listing it as evidence for the above statement is ridiculous.

The fact that the Grist article uses misleading graphics and false claims is just typical of warmist propaganda.

Richard M
February 8, 2020 11:06 am

“The two peaks in 2012 and 2016 were from naturally caused El Nino events in the Pacific ocean.”

No El Nino in 2012. That warm year was due to a very early spring across much of the US northern tier. This melted snow early which enhanced the warming. Having warmer temperatures at that time of year was extremely nice. Wish it happened every year.

Chris Hanley
February 8, 2020 1:34 pm

‘… the 2010s as a turning point in our civilization’s approach to climate change. The growth of renewable energy and rapid retirement of coal-burning power plants this decade illustrate that crucial changes to the world order are currently well underway …’ (grist).

As they say: ‘don’t tell me, show me’:
comment image

February 8, 2020 2:43 pm

The graphs in item 6 show solar increase as 1000% whereas ‘Renewables’ grew from approx 8 to 12 quads.

Increasing solar by 10 times only resulted in improving renewable output by 1/2.

If ‘renewables’ is not just solar, the use of solar is even worse for the increased installations.

‘A fool and his money are soon parted’ seems apt.

February 8, 2020 3:03 pm

“hottest-on-record, most godforsaken decade”
Sheesh!
Selective statistics.
It is time again to refer to the wisdom of the financial markets:
The old definition of a promotion:
“At the beginning, the promoter has the vision and the public has the money.
At the end of the promotion, the promoter has the money and the public has the vision.”

Cam
February 8, 2020 3:40 pm

Everyone needs to stop with the US data thing. I know for 300 million of the world’s citizens, the US is still considered the center of the world, but there is 98% of the rest of the global surface and atmosphere still to consider – I can’t use ANY of these data for any my discussions with hysterics if they are only US data. This is a global issue that needs global data. I’m not a cherry picker, so this doesn’t help in the slightest.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Cam
February 8, 2020 4:58 pm

“Everyone needs to stop with the US data thing. I know for 300 million of the world’s citizens, the US is still considered the center of the world, but there is 98% of the rest of the global surface and atmosphere still to consider”

The U.S. data looks just like data from other regional surface temperature charts, so it’s not just a U.S.-centric thing.

If every regional chart has the same temperature profile, then that profile is the temperature profile of the Earth not just the United States.

Here’s some examples in the form of Tmax charts, note how all of them show that it was just as warm in the recent past as it is today, which tells us CO2 is not a major player in the Earth’s climate:

Tmax charts

US chart:

comment image

China chart:

comment image

India chart:

comment image

Norway chart:

comment image

Australia chart:

comment image

John Boland
February 8, 2020 5:16 pm

Its about time someone listed some of the pros vs cons to warming…I swear I must have missed that debate.

Roger Knights
February 8, 2020 6:29 pm

Anthony: Good for you for using the phrase, “What they say.” This is a good format to prepare the way for a series of short zingers in which the second phrase is, “And this is what they leave out.” (WHATTLO)

Russell Shute
February 8, 2020 9:49 pm

Of course the retards who author articles like this ignore nature has tipping points, the latent heat of arctic sea ice, sea level rise, global dimming & who is going to maintain the 450 atomic water boilers the naked ape species are operating when conditions reach the point no one can insure properties. The author engages in sophistry, when 80 percent of the insects are gone & the shells of plankton are thinning.

Russell Shute
Reply to  Anthony Watts
February 9, 2020 9:52 am

You have an attitude which discounts facts, replaces facts with opinions are all equally valid. You, David Icke, Tony Heller, parrot climate change denier rhetoric, mostly flag waving nonsense, because no one can dispute the Keeling measurements & the physical properties of CO2, & the ice core data. People like you are the reason way there is a market for peer-review literature. People like you abuse freedom of speech, using it as a license for unregulated yammering of nonsense. You group of deniers include a guy anyone can search about, a guy with a rap-sheet of goofiness, Lord Monckton. Presenting facts is not effective here with you. You are concerned with nerves, with impressions, not facts.

Bill Powers
Reply to  Russell Shute
February 9, 2020 12:57 pm

“People like you abuse freedom of speech, using it as a license for unregulated yammering of nonsense.”

Seriously? Do you crazed collectivists have a capacity to even understand the dichotomy of your own ramblings? Freedom isn’t something to be used as ‘license.” By its very nature it means to be absent a need for license or regulation. you are spinning is suck a tight circle you are collapsing in on yourself Russ.

You and your Socialist, “Give over all power to the central authority, in order to save the planet” Brigade. expose the very evil intent of your movement unconsciously when you suggest that people speaking freely are using freedom as a license to break the rules you wish to impose upon the masses e.g. “you can’t say that! Who do you think you are!! There will be consequences to your using freedom to speak out against us!!! There is nothing more frightening than you Borg Drones.

Russell Shute
Reply to  Bill Powers
February 9, 2020 9:33 pm

You have no idea what I think because you are operating a delusional & sick mind. There has never been any choice for the collective, if any recognizable organization existed. There is absolutely nothing humans can do which will alter the extinction, now well under way. It’s a matter of scale. The ocean has absorbed most of the heat & CO2. You ignore the fact the ocean has a cycle time of a decade and then some. You ignore the fact politics has never been enabled to deal with problems of population. There is nothing I would do to stop fossil fuel consumption at this point. The aerosol masking effect is too great now to risk. All I intend to do is wait and see.

President Jimmy Carter was aware of the impending doom, it prompted a review of the science, perhaps the inconvenient truth was too horrific to be believed, perhaps the policy was already in place & he would like to have had another.

The Charney Report 1979
– page viii
“The conclusions of this brief but
intense investigation may be comforting
to scientists but disturbing to
policymakers. If carbon dioxide
continues to increase, the study group
finds no reason to doubt that climate
changes will result and no reason to
believe that these changes will be
negligible. The conclusions of prior
studies have been generally reaffirmed.
However, the study group points out that the ocean,
the great and ponderous flywheel of the global climate system,
may be expected to slow the course of
observable climate change. A wait-and-
see policy may mean waiting until it is
too late.”

The Charney Report 1979
Page 6
“Considering the uncertainties, it would
appear that a doubling of atmospheric
carbon dioxide will occur by 2030 if the
use of fossil fuels continues to grow at
a ratio of about 4 percent per year, as
was the case until a few years ago.

Page 8
Ignoring feedbacks ….”For such
a case, doubled CO2 produces a
The Charney Report 1979
Page 1
(We) ….”have assumed a rate of CO2
increase that would lead to a doubling of
airborne concentrations by some time in
the first half of the twenty-first
century.”

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Russell Shute
February 9, 2020 1:54 pm

“People like you abuse freedom of speech, using it as a license for unregulated yammering of nonsense.”

The same could be said about you. That’s what you are doing here. No facts, just yammering. Anthony, magnanimously, allows you to yammer.

You can have your say here, but you should use facts rather than just yammering your displeasure at the state of things. No facts invites ridicule. Whining invites ridicule.

Russell Shute
Reply to  Tom Abbott
February 9, 2020 9:58 pm

You always lie to yourself and others. You care nothing for facts or how they are gathered. You are unfit to talk with authority. Your group of sophists include, so called, Lord Monckton. This man has a rap-sheet of goofiness which is worth reviewing for a few laughs. You have no respect for peer-review literature so you replace it with conspiracy theories such as the academics are motivated to increase the threat, ignoring the fact we all depend on fossil fuel for our lives. Some of us making a very good living, far better than those academics, by far. You say you want facts, then read Guy McPherson’s 32,000 word essay. It is full of links to peer-review papers, not the rhetoric you spew.

(SNIPPED the Video)

(You need to back off and get on topic, your attacks are getting personal) SUNMOD

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Russell Shute
February 9, 2020 1:43 pm

“Of course the retards who author articles like this ignore nature has tipping points”

Could you point some of those weather tipping points out? That is what you are talking about isn’t it, the Earth’s weather?

I’m curious as to what I have been missing with Nature’s tipping points. You suggest these are easily visible and the only way to deny them is by ignoring their existence Please give examples.

Russell Shute
Reply to  Tom Abbott
February 11, 2020 4:52 am

You can’t recognize the melting point of ice, or the habitable temperature range of humans, or the point where the reservoir no longer delivers potable water, or the point where snow become an avalanche, or the point where the dam breaks, or the point where the aircraft can’t develope take-off lift or the point where sea level rise means properties can’t be insured, or when wild fires are so numerous the military is called in to help?

February 9, 2020 1:43 am

Are you out of your mind? Or do you suffer brain damage? I am looking out of window and there is 16 °C in February! It never been so warm and there are storms out of nothing and almost like orkans – you would never think of umbrella in February, there should be snow every winter and there is nothing.

Dude, get out of this virtual reality and get to real world please!

Steve45
February 9, 2020 2:58 am
Tom Abbott
Reply to  Steve45
February 9, 2020 2:16 pm

Oil companies get taxbreaks. That means they do not have to pay as much to the government in taxes.

Windmills and Industrial Solar are paid cash out of the U.S. Treasury in the form of subsidies.

There is a difference between not paying as much into the U.S. Treasury and getting paid out of the U.S. Treasury. Oil companies don’t get cash out of the U.S. Treasury, whereas Windmills and Solar do get cash.

Oil companies would still be in business if their taxbreaks were taken away. Windmills and Solar would not be economically viable without government, taxpayer payments.

Reply to  Tom Abbott
February 10, 2020 3:50 pm

“”There is a difference between not paying as much into the U.S. Treasury and getting paid out of the U.S. Treasury. Oil companies don’t get cash out of the U.S. Treasury, whereas Windmills and Solar do get cash.”

Trans: My kind of corporate welfare, orders of magnitude higher than yours, good. Your kind, bad.

Get rid of both. Make the hydrocarbon supply chain pay ALL of it’s currently rolling external costs (including AGW costs, as a carbon tax rebated monthly, totally, equally to all of us), and make then catch up on 13-14 figures USD of a century’s worth of shucked asset retirement obligations, world wide, in 15 years. THEN, stop the relatively tiny green start up helps.

With the new ranking of ACTUAL energy costs, we would be as Milton Friedman said “Free to Choose”….

Anthony Banton
February 9, 2020 9:06 am

“It seems people worldwide would rather have education, food, honest government, better roads, and reliable energy than they would some climate action.”

However, this survey taken last month in the US shows otherwise ….

“Nearly six in ten (58%) Americans are now either “Alarmed” or “Concerned” about global warming. From 2014 to 2019, the proportion of “Alarmed” nearly tripled.”

“Over the past five years, the U.S. population as a whole has shifted dramatically towards membership in the Alarmed segment. In 2014, the Alarmed and Dismissive were similar in size. As of November 2019, however, the Alarmed now outnumber the Dismissive by more than 3 to 1 (31% vs. 10%), representing a major shift in these two “issue publics” most engaged with the issue of climate change.”

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Anthony Banton
February 9, 2020 2:39 pm

“Nearly six in ten (58%) Americans are now either “Alarmed” or “Concerned” about global warming.”

The problem I see with polls like this is how do the respondents actually define “alarmed” and “concerned”?

Are they alarmed and concerned enough to turn society upside down to fix the CO2 “problem”?

Or are they just alarmed and concerned because of all the scaremongering they have heard and don’t understand the problem enough themselves and just want some answers, not a societal upheaval?

Polls are not something that can be depended on to form public policy. The polls are easily manipulated in numerous ways, and just citing a poll doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good poll, or that it means what the pollsters claim it means.

Most polls I know about overweigh Democrats by various margins. So more Democrats vote in a particular poll than Republcans which naturally skews the results. I don’t know about the details of this poll but I suspect it is pretty similar to all the others.

You can get useful data out of a poll but they have to be long-term polls asking the same question, worded exactly the same, and then over time, you can see changes in the poll that tell you something, even if the poll is skewed towards the Democrats.

I will just say take every poll with a large grain of salt.

roger mason
February 9, 2020 10:27 am

hi anthony
great article. thank you. but there are no “fossil fuels”, never were, and never will be. the correct
term is HYDROCARBONS. hydrocarbon fuels did not come from rotting plants and animals.
THAT’S PREPOSTEROUS!!!
the unimaginable oceans of hydrocarbon fuels- coal, gas, oil- beneath our soils were formed
when the earth was formed. please stop saying “fossil fuels” i remember being taught that nonsense
in the sixth grade, and could see thru it.

February 10, 2020 8:50 pm

Thanks to a much warmer winter in Moscow, St Petersburg & the Baltic states+Finland, there is practically no snow at all this winter.
My (communal) heating bills are at least 30% lower this winter than any time I can remember in the last decade..and there are far less accidents & road deaths from slippery roads.

In fact it’s still possible to drive on summer tyres in most parts of the Baltic states, Finland and Sweden. (forbidden Nov-March).

Poland has no snow cover, & Germany/France has not had the kind of deadly cold snap that kills homeless people living in the streets.
Oh I am moaning, and I can hear everyone else complaining, the climate crisis is here, it’s the apocalypse!

RealMan885
February 12, 2020 12:28 am

Look at USA temperature trend for past 100 years. You include only 9 years, specifically selected to reinforce a point. That’s like taking measurement during day, and then during night, and saying that “trend is downward”

William Hayden Smith
February 14, 2020 7:46 pm

For 40 years, from Kellogg (1977) to Schmidt (2017), it has been asserted that climate change is due to human activities entirely.
To quote Schmidt:
“All of the mean global climate change in the last century is because of our activities. All of it. Not 10 percent, not 15 percent, not 20 percent—all of it.”
This assertion means that climate did NOT change prior to about 1920; climate was only “fluctuated”.
Some fluctuations!
The graphs in Kellogg’s articles and Schmidt’s presentation explicitly showed this.
I witnessed Schmidt’s presentation. It is dutifully recorded in the article online (below).
Following 1920, then, total human control of climate justifies the term: “Anthropocene”.
And, yes, such a term and such statements are pure rubbish.
The audience, quite naturally, was awed by the august academics on the dais: experts in anthropogenic climate change, since as asserted, there is no other kind.
Schneider, in his “Mediarology” essay of 2011, explains to the uninitiated that science cannot be the basis of indoctrinating the public about climate since science is too uncertain, and absolute certainty MUST be conveyed always. According to Schneider, such perfidy is essential to convince and convict humanity, so science be damned.

Kellogg, W.W., World Meteorological Organization, Technical Note 156, 1977.”Effects of Human Activities on Global Climate”
Schmidt, Gavin, https://www.studlife.com/news/2017/09/21/wash-u-hosts-climate-change-panel-continues-push-toward-increased-sustainability-on-campus/
Schneider, S. 2011, https://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Mediarology/Mediarology.html

Johann Wundersamer
February 21, 2020 5:35 am

– proof-read proof-read version –

“n.n February 8, 2020 at 7:12 am

Yes, transgender (i.e. homo, bi, neo) is trendy. So are female rent-a-wombs and male sperm depositors. As well as dodo dynasties.

The chambers are still Planned with unworthy human lives.

Some sequestered, others cannibalized for clinical profit. There has been great progress in the last century.”
____________________________________

Companies want your “unworthy human lives”. In fact, companies want 100% trained workers.

The best 50% are accepted in the company.

The remaining 50% trained then are defamed as deplorables. That’s live.

____________________________________

The percentages of / living / accepted / deplorable / unworthy / human lives will not change so soon. Kismet.

Johann Wundersamer
February 21, 2020 6:10 am

Thx for an informative “Breaking down the last decade of climate change in 7 charts”.

– regards !