From the “sneaky bastards” department and the American Energy Alliance.
| AEA Urges Senate and House Leaders to Reject “Sense of Congress” Nonsense. WASHINGTON DC (December 14, 2020) – The American Energy Alliance (AEA), the country’s premier pro-consumer, pro-taxpayer, and free-market energy organization, sounded the alarm today on a proposed Sense of Congress resolution that if adopted, could cause a major disruption of America’s energy system. AEA has obtained a page from a discussion draft dated December 13 at 5:28 PM that appears to include a provision from the Green New Deal-like energy legislation, H.R. 4447, making it a “Sense of Congress” to call for 100% of power demand to come from “clean, renewable, or zero-emission” energy sources. Information around these terms, or how they would be implemented, appears to be left intentionally vague. Putting Congress on record supporting 100% renewables is a major statement of policy and it should not be tacked onto a massive spending bill with no discussion or debate warns AEA. To make matters worse, this provision appears to give the Secretary of Energy a blank check authorization from Congress to impose 100% renewables. Thomas Pyle, President of the American Energy Alliance, issued the following statement: “While most Americans are eagerly looking for news about access to a COVID-19 vaccine, or juggling their expenses and schedules this holiday season, some unnamed Members of Congress are making a last-minute attempt to to sneak bad energy policy into a take-it-or-leave it spending bill before checking out for the year. It’s shameful and should be rejected outright. “Members of the House of Representatives and the Senate are negotiating behind closed doors to jam a a stealth Green New Deal provision into a massive year-end bill to fund the entire federal government. Language uncovered in a “discussion draft” would give the Secretary of Energy the authority to effectively change the Department of Energy into the Department of Climate Policy. A major policy shift and resulting disruption of America’s energy system should never occur as the result of a backroom deal to secure a legacy legislative item for an outgoing chairperson. It should be fully transparent, debatable, and subject to amendment. It’s no wonder that Americans are losing faith in their government institutions.” For more information, see our latest blog: The Stealth Green New Deal |
Sneaky bastards indeed
They know that when they give the American people the option, they are rejected every time.
However, since they are completely convinced that they are morally superior beings, this gives them the right to lie, cheat, and steal in order to force their desires onto the American people.
No ! That is not what the wording says.
A distinction without a difference.
And their causes are so noble …
There are those who get elected to serve their constituents, protect our freedoms, and preserve American values and there are those who get elected so they can push their agenda on the rest of us without our consent.
The consensus contention is that initially CO2 increase warms the planet and then increased water vapor from the warmed water adds to the warming as a feedback.
The amount of WV increase as a result of temperature increase is readily calculated from the known vapor pressure vs temperature for water given that the percent increase in WV is the same as the percent increase in vapor pressure.
Water vapor has been measured worldwide by satellite by NASA/RSS since Jan 1988. They report the total precipitable water (TPW) anomalies at http://data.remss.com/vapor/monthly_1deg/tpw_v07r01_198801_202011.time_series.txt
(the last 6 digits are year and month of the available report)
Measured WV has increased faster than possible from warming. This demonstrates that the WV increase was not caused by the CO2 increase and that CO2 increase did not cause planet warming.
https://tinyurl.com/yxehr2pj
Dan, your TPW chart pretty well matches –
sea surface temperature SST, El Nino yrs, & CO2 rate of change plots.
Sea surface temperature anomaly timeline: 1982-2017 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMXqsJ-aojc
– https://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm
Rate of CO2 Change plot. https://xmetman.com/latest-global-co2-figures/
The problem is applying feedback which requires two preconditions that are not satisfied.
The first is strict linearity, which means that if I and O are the input and output, O/I = dO/dI and there’s no possible difference between an incremental and absolute analysis, relative to feedback analysis. The idea that since dO/dI is approximately linear around its mean somehow conforms to this constraint is completely wrong. Only when O/I = dO/dI = gain (sensitivity) is the first precondition satisfied.
The second precondition is for an implicit source of Joules powering the gain. The average not accounted for by the incremental analysis can not be the power supply, as all of these Joules are already being consumed maintaining the average temperature which is also not accounted for by the incremental analysis.
The bottom line is that WV feedback not only isn’t happening, nothing called ‘feedback’ has any relevance whatsoever to how the planet responds to increased CO2 concentrations.
c02isnotevil,
Well…sort of….more clouds are a result of more water vapor leaving the surface…more water vapor leaves the surface as a result of more sunlight shining on the surface…..so more clouds result in less water vapor leaving the surface….cloud albedo is as high as 0.9 while ocean surface albedo is as low as 0.06….heat balance is achieved at about 2/3 planetary cloud cover. CO2 since the start of the industrial age only affects slightly the altitude at which clouds form since the upper troposphere is slightly cooler due to the increased CO2 being more effective at emitting heat to outer space, while at mid troposphere being more effective at emitting heat back to the ground. The net result is that weather is the result of sun and clouds, and the weather doesn’t much care what the CO2 level is in the air.
Anyway, your point is that WV feedback is not happening, and I say that cloud feedback is what controls the planet temperature. We seem to be far apart….yet reach the same CO2 dismissive conclusion….
The relationship between water vapor and clouds is far more complicated. When you examine the amount of clouds, as a function of temperature per slice of latitude from pole to pole, the average amount of clouds decreases in the mid latitudes as slices get warmer towards the equator.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/sens/st_ca.png
The blue dots are 3 decade averages for the slices in the N hemisphere and the green dots are averages for the S hemisphere. The tiny dots are monthly slice averages across 3 decades of data. The Y axis is the average amount of clouds per slice and the X axis is the average temperature of that slice.
Meanwhile, the relationship between atmospheric water content (Y axis) and the temperature per slice is monotonic.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/sens/st_wc.png
The result is this relationship between atmospheric water and the amount of clouds.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/sens/wc_ca.png
The inflection point at 0C occurs when the surface is no longer covered by ice and snow which is when clouds start to have a higher reflectivity than the surface. Unless there’s some overriding constraint, why is the relationship between atmospheric water and the amount of clouds so non linear and why is it a function of the relative reflectivity of clouds and the surface?
The amount of clouds is a free variable in the planets energy balance, that is, balance can be achieved for any average amount of clouds, so something else must be driving how much of the surface must to be covered by clouds, since the average cloud coverage falls into relatively narrow ranges and despite significantly different topological differences between hemispheres, the same shape relationships emerges.
One attribute that remains relatively constant, and is a strong function of the amount of clouds, is the relationship between the BB emissions corresponding to the average temperature of a slice and the emissions at TOA above that slice. For each average W/m^2 emitted at TOA, the surface below must emit an average of about 1.62 W/m^2.
To see why converging to this ratio is the likely driving force determining how much clouds must arise in an atmosphere self organized by clouds, read this:
http://www.palisad.com/co2/goldenwarming.pdf
C02I-N-E, sort of ref by ref…
It is not clear on your 1st graph what temperature you refer to, global, local, hemispheric, nor if the cloud cover area is from satellite or weather station local estimates.
Yes it is much more complex, there are issues with optical depth of clouds, and aerosols, and water vapor at upper atmosphere elevations. Even how much cloud cover depends can vary a few% from one reference to another for the same day!
What is the source of your temp versus water column graph ? Looks like the makings of a good correlation.
But Cloud cover based on Fibonacci numbers and Golden ratio doesn’t seem like a productive hypothesis.
Instead of being “free variable” cloud cover is pretty well a fixed number. That means a fairly strong feedback somewhere in the system.
DMacKenzie,
The reported temperatures are the average surface temperature for each 2.5 degree slice of latitude calculated from 4 hour temperature samples reported for pixels of between 15 and 30 km on a side. The small dots are 1 month averages and the larger dots are 3 decade averages and each aggregates many thousands of individual measurements. The reported temperatures came from the ISCCP data which is a composite of satellite measurements.
You may think that the golden ratio hypothesis seem too good to be true, but the fact is that this ratio emerges independently for both hemispheres, despite significant topographical differences, and that it’s incredibly constant over time with no detectable trends whatsoever.
I noticed this over a decade ago and also wrote it off as a coincidence, thinking it too good to be true. After much further research attempting to explain the cloud behavior, it become unavoidably clear that the adaptive behavior of clouds can not be explained in any other way, other than the result of a constraint on this ratio, especially since this ratio is a strong function of cloud coverage. In fact, the power emitted at TOA used to calculate this ratio is not reported in the satellite data and was derived as a function of cloud coverage, the BB surface emissions and BB clouds emissions at their reported temperatures, the cloud emissivity all applied to radiant transfer models of the atmosphere based on the reported avrage water vapor and other GHG concentrations.
The math is pretty clear that the golden ratio is the most likely value to arise from chaotic self organization and discovering this math was the clincher for me. While any constant ratio is possible, the golden ratio is far more likely given the self consistent nature of its value.
A constant value of this ratio will minimize the change in entropy as the system changes state which is a common goal of self organization. A constant average value will also make the planet appear to have a constant average emissivity relative to the average surface temperature which conforms to the well known physics of radiating bodies, while the IPCC’s feedback model does not.
I’ll go out on a limb and predict that when we find an exoplanet with a semi-transparent self organized atmosphere like ours and can measure it with sufficient accuracy, the same ratio will emerge. No such planet exists in nearby space. Mars doesn’t have enough clouds and Venus has too many, although this ratio will likely emerge for Venus when planet emissions are compared to the emissions of the surface in DIRECT equilibrium with the Sun which is high up in its clouds and not the solid surface below.
Even locally, the ratio that emerges is within a couple of percent of the golden ratio across more than 3/4 of the planet, even in monthly averages. Where it deviates by a few percent more owing to insufficient clouds variability, pixels in nearby slices of latitude compensate, as would be expected if this was the primary constraint.
DMacKenzie,
One more point on feedback. Converging to this constant ratio can be modeled as a passive feedback control system with the goal of a constant effective emissivity. The feedback analysis used to model this is not the same feedback analysis applied to the climate which was active linear amplifier analysis. The Earth’s climate system is not even close to an active linear amplifier and the linear feedback amplifier analysis applied by Hansen, Schlesinger and Roe has no relevance whatsoever.
The water cycles of our planet dominate over climate change, not the much smaller and slower carbon dioxide cycle. The alarmists have invented a fiction that the water cycles are a feedback of those smaller carbon dioxide cycles. The premise of this argument would be that without any carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the Earth’s atmosphere would have exactly zero water vapor. This is scientific malpractice on the most gross, dare I say, criminal scale.
How about “0% from clean, renewable, or zero emission energy sources”? That would be more realistic.
Greenies have an ineradicable habit of making the perfect the enemy of the good. Nobody who’s ever mined the raw materials for windmills would call mining a “clean” activity. Nobody with the most primitive understanding of chemistry thinks elements like lithium, silicon, iron or carbon are “renewable.” Plentiful perhaps; manageable most likely; some can be recycled adequately. But can you “renew” the earth’s inventory of elements? No, m’boys. That’s alchemy, discredited as magical thinking by the time of the European Renaissance.
Nothing is “zero emission,” either — not people, not mules, ants, or hamsters trained to make electricity by hooking their exercise wheels to micro-generators. Certainly not solar panels that require complex manufacturing processes, and wear out into bulky, unrecyclable junk.
Greenies are in love with feel-good buzzwords, catch phrases, and virtue signals. The nitty-gritty of engineering, and accepting trade-offs are not in their lexicon.
Every scrap of iron that wasn’t recycled is sitting in a land fill somewhere waiting for the economic circumstances to justify it being dug up and recycled.
With fusion torch technology, all the world’s a mine.
“ this provision appears to give the Secretary of Energy a blank check authorization from Congress to impose 100% renewables.”
Well anyone who knows the issues understands 100% renewables for the US, at our current commercial-industrial economic level, is NOT achievable at any cost. The only way it is achievable is to shed our industries (and thus economic future) to China and the rest of the 3rd World, places where CO2 emissions are not accountable.
But when did reality stop Democrats. The US Democratic Party is the anti-science party.
The Red and the Green, China’s useful idiots
No more to say
The report itself
Krishna Gans
Good report, and it includes good Chinese art too (I’m not sure why), but at about 15 pages long, you should have provided a brief summary.
Here is a line from the report that I thinks sums it up:
“Environmentalists’ claims that China is committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2060, ten years after it has become the world’s dominant economy, is pure fantasy.”
I would add my own opinion that the ‘green’ China is interested in … is mainly green money, from selling solar panels and wind turbines to the West. Which will improve China’s manufacturing cost advantage as they try to AVOID the use of expensive solar and wind energy … while their Western competitors increase solar and wind energy use for their electricity.
RG,
As one who has studied classical Chinese painting, I fear that you do not realize that the illustrations you praise are mere cartoons of the highly-evolved art that has characteristics of composition and artistic skill that are not present in these examples.
As one who has visited China a number of times (at my own expense) I must say that I was unable to draw sweeping conclusions about Chinese business methods and aspirations in the way you seem to. It is a big, multi-faceted, complex country.
In short, how are you qualified to opine here? Geoff S
And the “greens” are slavering at the digital green credit trough that Leyen, Carney and Lagarde want to flood the world with. You can get credit of any color as long as it is green.
I placed some quotes from the report on my climate science blog, that summarize the report, along with a link to the report:
https://elonionbloggle.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-red-and-green-chinas-useful-idiots.html
Where’s the lawsuit requiring such nonsense to be supported with actual science if it’s to become legislation?
The size of the effect from CO2 claimed by the IPCC is so wrong and for so many reasons, it’s an embarrassment to all legitimate science. I can guarantee with absolutely certainty that nobody on the planet can justify the IPCC’s climate sensitivity using the laws of physics or any science that conforms to the scientific method. The reason I can be so certain about this is that those laws of physics and the scientific method unambiguously precludes the entire range of climate sensitivity claimed by the IPCC.
Pretty much every socialist program can be shown to be a failure. If you were to start requiring logic and facts prior to passing laws, you would put congress out of business.
Like those officials who were forced to admit there was no science behind banning outdoor dining, an admission that there’s no science behind the claims of the IPCC will undermine confidence in the anti-science consensus driving all this nonsense.
I just heard a health secretary (CA or NY, not sure) admit that the outdoor dining ban had nothing to do with science, but was just a way to “coerce people to stay home”
Reading reponses to that announcement: They’re admiiting what they’re doing now, and they are being praised for it!
“losing faith”?… Nah, “lost faith”!
Do not worry! We are sure to have fusion power by then.
Leftist political hacks don’t have a clue on how devastating it would be to the US economy if $10’s of trillions are wasted on unreliable and intermittent wind/solar projects, which will more than triple our energy costs from around $0.10/kWh to $0.35/kWh, while China moves from coal power at $0.08/kWh to reliable thorium MSR power which is projected to cost around $0.04/kWh.
The irony is that if the US moved from coal/natural gas to a grid of 100% thorium MSR energy, it would “only” cost around $4 trillion to accomplish this, while idiotic Leftists want to waste $100+ trillion on the GND..
Leftists are certifiably insane.
SAMURAI, where do you get your cost figure from? There are no existing thorium MSR reactors in commercial use to base such an estimate on (you are touting vaporware). In short that number is a meaningless one pulled from someone’s nether regions. You need to get one into commercial operation before you can have hope to have a clue as to how much it will actually cost. (and considering it’s been decades without getting a single one commercially operational, I suspect your number is hugely underestimated. There’s a lot of issues the need to be worked out, before MSR is ready for prime time).
John-san:
The cost per kWr will likely be lower than $0.04/kWh given the additional revenue stream of expensive commercial radioactive isotopes generated and easily extracted from the thorium nuclear decay chain.
MSRs are much cheaper to build, run and decomissiin because they require no water to generate energy (they use gas turbine engines) so there is no need for huge and very expensive water cooling towers.
Moreover, MSRs operate at 1 atmosphere of pressure (compared to 100 atmospheres for LWRs) so no massive containment domes are required either.
Also, there is just one passive failsafe system required, so as long as gravity works, MSRs are extremely safe to run…
LWRs require many expensive redundant failsafe systems to prevent meltdowns, which can still be insufficient as witnessed at the Fukushima meltdown, which I personally experienced (my family and I carried around iodine pills for a few weeks in case radiation levels got to hot in my area)…
Thorium is also extremely inexpensive with many decades of pure thorium already in storage ready to be burned… Thorium is as plentiful as lead and there are 10’s of thousands of years of the stuff found all around the globe—we’ll never runout of the stuff.
MSR’s are also extremely efficient and capable of converting 99% of thorium to energy as opposed to LWRs U235 Fuel pellets which need to be recycled once just 2~5% of the U235 has been burned due to xenon gas degradation.
Anyway, China is scheduled to have a commercial Thorium MSR design developed in about 8 years. We’ll find out then what the actual running costs are as opposed to the $0.04/kWh best estimate factoring in the above..
Cheers.
The cost per kWr will likely be lower than $0.04/kWh blah blah blah
SAMURAI, I ask again since you danced and danced but failed to answer: where do you get your cost figure from? likely lower? Based off of what actual real world data? You have none. Your numbers more than likely (an absolutely certainty, I’d say) are pulled out of someone’s backside because you have no real world commercial operation to judge those numbers off of, all you have are wishes and hopes for the vaporware you are shilling for.
Anyway, China is scheduled to have a commercial Thorium MSR design developed in about 8 years.
Then get back to us in about 8 years and we’ll see if you wishes and hopes materialize into something real that can be objectively evaluated re: costs and we’ll be able to see how they compare to your vaporware imaginary costs.
“clean, renewable, OR zero-emission” energy sources? Then nuclear is in.
So many Greenie Libtarded catchphrases, so little time. Take the word “clean”. Please. What they mean is non-CO2 emitting, implying that CO2, or what they like to call “carbon” is somehow “dirty”. What is dirty are the miriad of language tricks and lies they spew in the name of “saving the planet”.
The Greenies don’t like carbon. Somehow, it poisons the atmosphere, even though plant life depends on it for existence. Okay, then they should be required to wear rebreather equipment so that their personal load of CO2 does not pollute MY atmosphere or the rest of the planet.
That is a much more productive and less costly way to reduce carbon emissions, especially since their carbon emissions load is far greater than yours or mine.
If the bastards had somethig useful to offer they would not have to sneak around legislation hoping no one sees it before its passed. Actions like this sould be a crime against the people but it won’t be.
Email Mitch McConnell and ask him to make sure that no such provision is in any of these massive year end “we’ve got to pass it to find out what’s in it” bills to fund the government or provide Covid-19 relief.
From the article: “Putting Congress on record supporting 100% renewables is a major statement of policy and it should not be tacked onto a massive spending bill with no discussion or debate warns AEA. To make matters worse, this provision appears to give the Secretary of Energy a blank check authorization from Congress to impose 100% renewables.”
This does not take into account the pushback the radical Leftist alarmists are going to get from the Red States.
Oklahoma, my home state, stopped subsidizing new windmill farms last year because they said to continue to do so would bankrupt the State. What do you think Oklahoma is going to do when the Federal Government demands Oklahoma go 100 percent unreliables?
My personal opinion is Oklahomans will balk at being dictated to in this way. We might just tell the Federal Government to Go to Hell. I, personally, will definitely tell them to Go to Hell.
“it should not be tacked onto a massive spending bill with no discussion or debate”
Isn’t that just business as usual for congress?
Yes, it is definitely business as usual to pack necessary spending bills with porkbarrel spending.
That’s why the United States needs to give the president the Line Item Veto. That way, an honest president, can veto the porkbarrel spending and sign into law the necessary spending.
Some people claim it is not constitutional to give the president the Line Item Veto, because they say this intrudes on Congressional powers, but I would argue that it does not intrude on Congressional powers, it only makes Congress take an extra step if they want their spending priorities to prevail.
If a president with the Line Item Veto were to veto a particular part of a spending bill, the Congress can always come back and override his veto, if they have the votes, so Congress’ power is not diminished by giving the president the Line Item Veto, they would have the same power after giving the president the Line Item Veto as they had before doing so: The power to override a veto, with sufficient votes. That is not taken away from Congress.
If we are ever to get a handle on our debt, the president has to have a Line Item Veto. The Congress does not have the discipline to stop reckless, counterproductive spending.
I’ve always said, President should just DO it. Do the line-item veto, and let Congress figure out how to respond.
It would also be great to have a President who would simply stand up and just veto anything that’s not a clean bill, but it hasn’t happened in my life so far, and I’m not counting on it.
At one point, President Bill Clinton used the Line Item Veto, but he was taken to court and it was declared unconstitutional.
Of course, I disagree with that decision, and as we see, U.S. Supreme Court rulings do not always follow the U.S. Constituion, so it’s not written in Stone.. Another U.S. Supreme Court might decide differently. It’s a pretty easy argument to make that the Line Item Veto does not violate the Separation of Powers. Congress can still override anything the president vetoes, if they have the votes. Nothing would have changed. No violation of the Separation of Powers would have occurred.
I don’t recall that happening. But I was younger then and not paying as much attention.
At one point, President Bill Clinton used the Line Item Veto, but he was taken to court and it was declared unconstitutional.
Some background for TonyG, Clinton didn’t just randomly use the line item veto, there was actually a federal law passed in 1996 (Republicans promised to pass it in their contract with America which help the Republicans get control of both houses of congress in the 1994 election), the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, which granted presidents the power of the line item veto.
several entities didn’t like Clinton’s line item vetoes and sued. It quickly made it’s way to the supreme court (Several times, actually, as several suits were dismissed for lack of standing) . In a 6-3 rules, the court ruled it unconstitutional. Breyer, O’Connor and Scalia dissented while Stevens, Rehnquist, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas and Ginsburg were the majority.
Of the Nine only 2 remain on the court today, one from each side of the decision (Thomas and Breyer).
Thanks for that history lesson, John.