The Week That Was: 2021-07-24 (July 24, 2021)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words…Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” –George Orwell, 1984 [H/t Anna Krylov]
Number of the Week: – About 1,200 cubic meters per second in 1804
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Floods and Droughts: The Ahr River is a relatively short river roughly 89 kilometers (55 mi) arising in the steep terrain of Rhine Land, Germany, which borders Luxembourg and Belgium. It forms the steep Ahr Valley running east, noted for producing red wines from vineyards terraced in the hillside. Before emptying into the Rhine River, the Ahr broadens out providing flatter land for growing fruits and vegetables. Like all steep river valleys, such as those in West Virginia, the Ahr Valley is subject to flash floods. The last catastrophic one was in 1910.
Beginning July 13, major flooding occurred in Germany and Belgium and to a lesser degree in Holland. According to reports, including The Sunday Times, officials in “Germany knew the floods were coming, but the warnings didn’t work. Weather scientists say a ‘monumental failure of the system’ is directly to blame for the death and devastation triggered by a month’s worth of rain that fell in two days this week.”
According to a July 23, 2021, post on the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS)
What information did EFAS provide in relation to the recent flood events affecting the Rhine and Meuse river basins?
On 9 and 10 July, flood forecasts by the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS) of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service indicated a high probability of flooding for the Rhine River basin, affecting Switzerland and Germany.
The following day, subsequent forecasts also indicated a high risk of flooding for the Meuse River basin, affecting Belgium. The magnitude of the floods forecasted for the Rhine River basin increased significantly in this period.
The first EFAS notifications for the Rhine River basin were sent to the relevant national authorities starting on 10 July. The first EFAS notifications for the Meuse River basin were sent to the relevant national authorities starting on 12 July. With the continuously updated forecasts, more than 25 notifications were sent for specific regions of the Rhine and Meuse River basins in the following days until 14 July.
After the flood, the climate change chorus immediately sprang into action, blaming carbon dioxide-caused climate change, without evidence. German officials parroted the same excuse, also claiming that EFAS covers only large rivers. The response from EFAS was:
“Does EFAS forecast floods only for large rivers?
“EFAS aims at predicting floods for large rivers and their tributaries but provides as well flash flood predictions for smaller scale rivers. In the case of the Meuse and Rhine river flood events both, predictions for the large-scale river sections of the Rhine and Meuse as well as the flash flood predictions for many of the small-scale tributaries of these river basins indicated a high probability of flooding or flash flooding, respectively.”
Why did officials ignore warnings from the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS)? One can only speculate, but it may be the same problem as to why New Orleans officials did not order evacuation of the city before hurricane Katrina caused flooding of the city through Lake Pontchartrain. They were afraid of a false positive – evacuating the city and not having a flood. The officials then blamed climate change and the Bush Administration for their failure.
We are seeing similar issues with the drought in the US western states. Four years ago, many western states experienced heavy rains. For example, water flowed over the emergency spillway Oroville Dam in California, even after the main spill was repaired and operating. The water caused flooding of communities downstream. The flooding was blamed on human-caused climate change. Now the drought is blamed on human-caused climate change. For government officials, it is far easier to blame climate change than to accept responsibility for failure to act when appropriate or to acting inappropriately.
These false claims give rise to the false belief that cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will prevent extreme weather events. The deception is twofold. First, there is no causal link between CO2 and extreme weather events. The second deception is that reducing CO2 would result in cooling, with a subsequent reduction of extreme weather events. In fact, extreme weather events are a characteristic of cooler climate.
See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy, Science, Policy, and Evidence, Changing Weather. Health, Energy, and Climate, and https://www.efas.eu/en/news/faq-efas-and-recent-flood-events
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This situation is a good example of the golden rule of climate attribution: the more unusual and extreme the event, the greater the proportion of the event is due to natural variability rather than global warming.
That is, climate change is slow and moderate: compare 50 years of slight warming with the 6 months of natural change between July and January. Therefore, fast changes must be due to natural variability. In discussing FAR, he writes:
“Unfortunately, there are serious flaws in their approach: climate models fail to produce sufficient natural variability (they underplay the black swans) and their global climate models don’t have enough resolution to correctly simulate critical intense, local precipitation features (from mountain enhancement to thunderstorms). On top of that, they generally use unrealistic greenhouse gas emissions in their models (too much, often using the RCP8.5 extreme emissions scenario). And there is more, but you get the message. (I am weather/climate modeler, by the way, and know the model deficiencies intimately.)”
Currently, black swans apply to financial events. But they were important in the development of the scientific method. At one time philosophers in Europe asserted deductive logic could be used to uncover things about the natural world. The argument went along the lines: All swans are white; therefore, if it is a swan, it must be white.
In 1697, black swans were discovered in Australia. The discovery exposed the mistaken assumption, leading to the realization that the assumption must be thoroughly tested against all physical evidence and even if the assumption is not refuted deductions from it are only tentative.
As Mass states, the extreme emissions scenario of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are unrealistic. The Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 (RCP 8.5) results in a calculated CO2-caused warming of the earth’s surface of 8.5 watts per meter squared. According to calculations being used for the upcoming IPCC report, this would result in a surface warming of 2.5 to 4.9 degrees C (4.5 to 8.8 degrees F). There are thousands of “climate science” reports based on this unrealistic assumption.
Mass concludes his essay with a practical warning:
“Many of the climate attribution studies are resulting in headlines that are deceptive and result in people coming to incorrect conclusions about the relative roles of global warming and natural variability in current extreme weather. Scary headlines and apocalyptic attribution studies needlessly provoke fear. Furthermore, incorrect, and hyped information results in poor decision-making.
“Here in Washington State, several politicians fixate on climate change as the cause of current environmental events, while neglecting key actions needed to ensure we are adapted to the current climate (such as restoring our forests, dealing with problematic power infrastructure, improving water quality). And some media outlets (like a certain major newspaper in Seattle) are aiding such ineffective leaders by pushing an often uninformed and exaggerated climate-change narrative.
“There is little doubt that the Earth is warming and that human emissions are a contributing factor, but many of the extreme events being blamed on global warming are predominantly the result of natural or other causes (such as changes in land use). If the Earth continues to warm, by the end of the century the impacts of global warming on extremes will increase substantially, something I have shown in my own research.
“We need to worry about climate change and take steps in both mitigation (reduce greenhouse gas emissions) and adaptation. But hype and exaggeration of its impacts only undermine the potential for effective action.” [Boldface emphasized in original] See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy and https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/3/2019/11/SROCC_FD_TS_Final.pdf
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Pogo Stick Power: For the past several weeks, TWTW reported on the changes in wind power generation as reported by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), which includes the Columbia River Gorge “where the wind always blows.” The total nameplate generation is 27,879 MW of which 79.5% is hydro and 10.5% (2930 MW) is wind.
This week was another exciting time for those who balance the load having to increase and decrease hydro power with changes in wind power. Midday on the 18th wind power was near zero, went up to 1000 MW for a brief time on the morning of the 19th, then back down to less than 200 MW at midday then up to about 2200 MW at midnight. It has fluctuated between 1000 and 2300 MW from the early morning of July 20 to shortly after midnight on July 21. Since then, it hit zero twice and has not been above 1500 MW (about 50% of nameplate capacity). A rough estimate is that wind has been erratically generating about 20% of nameplate capacity from July 22 to midnight July 24.
In Master Resource, Robert Bradley has a post based on Tom Bethell’s essay “The Electric Windmill.” In a the “Appropriate Community Technology Fair,” sponsored by the Federal Government in 1979, Bethell took a close look at the demonstration of a wind turbine. It was using electricity from the grid to operate, not generating electricity to the grid. Such is the nature of the “alternative energy” zealots in government.
Such actions prompt TWTW to state: The critical issue about wind power is not so much the cost of electricity to the consumer when wind is generating electricity; more importantly, it is the cost of electricity to the consumer when wind is not generating electricity. Why should the taxpayer subsidize expensive machines that raise the cost of reliable electricity when they undermine the financial viability of reliable generation? See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy, Funding Issues, Subsidies and Mandates Forever, and Energy Issues – US.
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The Zombie Reef: The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) had planned to list Australia’s Great Barrier Reef as “in danger.” Then the “Annual Summary Report of Coral Reef Condition 2020/2021” by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) came out. It stated:
“Over the 35 years of monitoring by AIMS, the reefs of the GBR have shown an ability to recover after disturbances.
“In 2021, widespread recovery was underway, largely due to increases in fast growing Acropora corals.
“Survey reefs experienced low levels of acute stressors over the past 12 months with no prolonged high temperatures or major cyclones. Numbers of outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish on survey reefs have generally decreased; however, there remain ongoing outbreaks on some reefs in the Southern GBR.”
The reef has the highest coral cover in 36 years of surveys. UNESCO backed down from the “in danger” classification but kept the “critical” classification. It is important that much of the AIMS research is done in the field, in the water, and not a fly-by which many other “experts” use. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Life Flourishing in Acidic Oceans? About 400 million years ago, carbon dioxide levels were very high, perhaps 7 to 10 times greater than they are today. In attempting to establish a relationship between a carbon-silicon cycle and temperatures, a study traces a carbon-silicon cycle over three billion years. What is particularly interesting about the study is the sudden profusion of life both on land and in the water that occurred about 400 million years ago.
This research indicates that the claim that increasing CO2 will harm marine life is highly questionable. See links under Changing Seas
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Holocene Cooling: A study of the tree line across most of Russia shows a cooling starting about 9000 years ago. The abstract states:
“Over most of Russia, forest advanced to or near the current arctic coastline between 9000 and 7000 yr. B.P. and retreated to its present position by between 4000 and 3000 yr. B.P. Forest establishment and retreat was roughly synchronous across most of northern Russia.”
This finding supports the research of H.H. Lamb and recent assertions by the International Commission on Stratigraphy of cooling starting about 8200 years ago. The finding that forests were at or near the coastline of the Arctic Ocean 9000 years ago prompts the question: How did the polar bears survive? The Arctic sea ice must have been largely melted. Of course, those who do not believe the exaggerations used by the Biden administration to declare a “climate crisis” have no such question. See links under Changing Climate and https://stratigraphy.org/ICSchart/ChronostratChart2021-05.pdf
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14th ICCC: The 14th International Conference on Climate Change presented by The Heartland Institute will be October 15 to 17, 2021, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. See https://climateconference.heartland.org/
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39th Annual Meeting of DDP: The Doctors for Disaster Preparedness will hold their 39th annual meeting “Renew, or ‘Reset’?” in Tucson on July 30 to August 1, 2021 at the Doubletree at Reid Park. Three SEPP directors will be giving presentations: Willie Soon, Sunspots: Hindcasting and Forecasting the Solar Cycle; David Legates, Bloom energy: the Theranos of Thermodynamics; and Howard Hayden, The Magic Trick of Climate Science. Register at http://www.ddponline.org/
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SEPP’S APRIL FOOLS AWARD
THE JACKSON
SEPP is conducting its annual vote for the recipient of the coveted trophy, The Jackson, a lump of coal. Readers are asked to nominate and vote for who they think is most deserving, following these criteria:
The voting will close on July 30. Please send your nominee and a brief reason why the person is qualified for the honor to Ken@SEPP.org. The awardee will be announced at the DDP meeting on July 31 or August 1. For a list of past recipients and their accomplishments in earning this honor see http://www.sepp.org/april-fools-award.cfm
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NO TWTW NEXT WEEK – Attending DDP meeting.
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Number of the Week: – About 1,200 cubic meters per second in 1804: Writing in No Tricks Zone, Fred Mueller discusses historic records along the Ahr River, where the recent floods in Germany were the worst. Using reconstructed flow rates of the river by local historians he estimates that:
“However, both [the recent flood and a 1910 flood] are far overshadowed by the disaster of 1804, whose water discharge, with a peak discharge of about 1,200 m3/s, was twice as massive as the 1910 event. Compared to the current flood, the factor is almost threefold.
From ice cores, the estimate CO2 level in 1800 is 283 ppmv (parts per million volume). In 2021, the maximum (May) estimate from Mauna Loa is 419. How does the 48% increase in CO2 work out in calculating the Fractional Attribution of Risk (FAR) for the 1804 event? See links under Changing Weather and https://www.sealevel.info/co2_and_ch4.html
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NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Science: Is the Sun Rising?
Long-period oscillations of the Sun discovered
By Staff Writers, Gottingen, Germany (SPX). Jul 21, 2021
Link to paper Solar inertial modes: Observations, identification, and diagnostic promise
By Laurent Gizon, et al. Astronomy & Astrophysics, Forthcoming
New sunspot catalogue to improve space weather predictions
Press Release: Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (SKOLTECH), July 19, 2021
Link to paper: Hemispheric sunspot numbers 1874-2020
By A. M. Veronig, et al. Astronomy and Astrophysics, accepted June 2, 2021 (Forthcoming)
Censorship
Big Bad Tech: When censorship goes corporate
Press Release, Global Warming Policy Forum, July 20, 2021
Link to report Big Bad Tech: When censorship goes corporate
By Donna Laframboise, GWPF, July 2021
“Large technology companies are now in the ascendant.”
[SEPP Comment: The financial rankings change depend on who does them, but the financial strength of these companies is supported in general. In the past, the heads of some of these companies would have been called “robber barons.”]
Challenging the Orthodoxy — NIPCC
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science
Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2013
Summary: https://www.heartland.org/_template-assets/documents/CCR/CCR-II/Summary-for-Policymakers.pdf
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts
Idso, Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2014
http://climatechangereconsidered.org/climate-change-reconsidered-ii-biological-impacts/
Summary: https://www.heartland.org/media-library/pdfs/CCR-IIb/Summary-for-Policymakers.pdf
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels
By Multiple Authors, Bezdek, Idso, Legates, and Singer eds., Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, April 2019
http://store.heartland.org/shop/ccr-ii-fossil-fuels/
Download with no charge:
Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming
The NIPCC Report on the Scientific Consensus
By Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), Nov 23, 2015
http://climatechangereconsidered.org/
Download with no charge:
Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate
S. Fred Singer, Editor, NIPCC, 2008
http://www.sepp.org/publications/nipcc_final.pdf
Global Sea-Level Rise: An Evaluation of the Data
By Craig D. Idso, David Legates, and S. Fred Singer, Heartland Policy Brief, May 20, 2019
Miscommunication in Recent Climate Attribution Studies
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, July 21, 2021
Statement of Roger Pielke Jr
To Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, US Senate, July 20, 2021 [H/t Climate Etc.]
Unsettling the apple cart II: Koonin on climate
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 21, 2021
Further review of Steve Koonin’s book by Ross McKitrick
Link to report: Reflecting Sunlight: Recommendations for Solar Geoengineering Research and Research Governance
By Staff, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, 2021
“The Electric Windmill” (Part II)
By Robert Bradley Jr, Master Resource, July 21, 2021
“Ed. note: This completes a two-part excerpt from Tom Bethell’s ‘inadvertent autobiography,’ The Electric Windmill (1988: pp. 105–06). Part I was yesterday.
Link to: Book Review: The Electric Windmill: An Inadvertent Autobiography by Tom Bethell
By David Stewart, Foundation for Economic Freedom, May 1, 1989
Germany’s “Katrina”: Officials Left Dams Full For Weeks Even With Heavy Rains In The Forecast
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, July 18, 2021
The Weather Follies: Is Climate Change To Blame For Germany’s Flooding?
By Ross Clark, Climate Change Dispatch, July 19, 2021 [H/t Paul Homewood]
“If you want to try to blame last week’s floods on climate change, it is first necessary to argue that the models have been wrong all along – and that actually Germany will suffer greater summer precipitation.
“But then that might undermine climate models in general.”
What a recovery! Hottest ever year causes… coral reefs to grow
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, July 20, 2021
What climate disaster? The Great Barrier Reef has more coral growing on it than ever recorded
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, July 23, 2021
Link to report: Long-Term Monitoring Program
Annual Summary Report of Coral Reef Condition 2020/2021
Reef in recovery window after decade of disturbances
By Staff, Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), 2021
Defending the Orthodoxy
Radical resetters show their math in new peer-reviewed study
By CFACT, Editorial, July 4, 2021 [H/t Paul Homewood]
Paper reproduced: Socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use: An international analysis of social provisioning
By Jefim Vogel, et al. Global Environmental Change, June 29, 2021
From its website: “Global Environmental Change is a peer-reviewed international journal publishing high quality, theoretically and empirically rigorous articles, which advance knowledge about the human and policy dimensions of global environmental change. The journal interprets global environmental change to mean the outcome of processes that are manifest in localities, but with consequences at multiple spatial, temporal and socio-political scales.”
[SEPP Comment: Another “rigorous article” written by those with “advanced knowledge” about global environmental change without the foggiest notion of how greenhouse gases influence global temperatures.]
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
GAR [Global Assessment Report] Special Report on Drought 2021
By Staff, UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2021 [H/t Climate Etc.]
file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/GAR%20Special%20Report%20on%20Drought%202021.pdf
Comment from Climate Etc: “According to UNDRR report out on drought today, human-caused climate change is expected to have a discernable effect on drought, but that effect is not generally expected to be detectable today.]
Questioning the Orthodoxy
Pielke Jr. On Recent Climate Attribution Claims
By Roger Pielke Jr. Via WUWT, July 23, 2021
1970s-’80s ‘Physics’ Said Doubling CO2 Produced Just 0.2°C – 0.8°C Warming. Then ‘Physics’ Changed.
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, July 22, 2021
Climate change: the West’s energy transition narrative ignores the reality in Asia
BP’s latest review of energy use has been presented as positive developments in carbon reduction. However, the facts remain that fossil fuels continue to provide most of the world’s energy needs and that developing Asia is driving demand
By Tilak K. Doshi, South China Morning Post, July 16, 2021
Problems in the Orthodoxy
US urges China to help with climate; As EU fears populist pushback
By AFP Staff Writers, London (AFP), July 20, 2021
“The EU’s environment supremo Frans Timmermans defended his proposals and asked member states to remain open-minded.”
[SEPP Comment: Remain open-minded to plans by the closed-minded?]
Seeking a Common Ground
The Peril of Politicizing Science
By Anna I. Krylov, Journal of Physical Chemistry, Letters, June 10, 2021 [H/t Climate Etc.]
‘Welt’ Commentary: Germany Flood Catastrophe Made Possible By “Inconceivable Ignorance”…”Unbelievable Scandal”
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, July 20, 2021
“For too many years a crusty old bureaucracy focused on climate protection while ignoring protection from the whims of the weather. Their strategy, as unbelievable as it may sound, was to try to produce good weather by cutting CO2 emissions. It’s that stupid.”
Chinese Virus Retrospective: The Shame Of Our Public Health “Experts”
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, July 22, 2021
“The people 44 and under constitute the substantial majority of the population, and for them Covid-19 has either been no worse than, or not nearly as bad as, a regular bad flu season. Why again were their lives turned inside out?”
[SEPP Comment: The COVID-19 experience illustrated the vanity of “experts” claiming to understand things they don’t.]
Ditching Plastic For Aluminum Is Worse For The Planet
By Will Coggin, Issues & Insights, July 21, 2021
Nevada Democrat introduces bill requiring feds to develop fire management plan
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, July 22, 2021
[SEPP Comment: “Let it burn” is not working?]
Models v. Observations
Outsize Influence of Central American Orography on Global Climate
By Jane W. Baldwin, AGU Advances, June 9, 2021
From the plain language summary: “Climate models break the earth up into grid boxes to simulate atmosphere and ocean circulations. Since mountain peaks are smaller than these grid boxes, mountains in climate models, including the Sierra Madre, are shorter than in reality. The low bias in these mountains makes the simulation of climate in the tropical East Pacific different than that observed on earth. We show that these differences can be resolved by making mountains in climate models as high as in reality.”
[SEPP Comment: Given the way the Central American Mountains disturb atmospheric circulations; one can only speculate how much the closing of the Central American Seaway about 3 million years ago changed the ocean circulations. But those making claims of CO2 causing warming earlier than 3 million years ago ignore such details.]
Model Issues
Climate regulation changed with the proliferation of marine animals and terrestrial plants
Geoscientific study traces carbon-silicon cycle over three billion years on the basis of lithium isotope levels
Press Release, Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz, July 15, 2021 [H/t WUWT]
Link to paper: A lithium-isotope perspective on the evolution of carbon and silicon cycles
By Boriana Kalderon-Asael, et al. Nature, July 14, 2021
From abstract: “Using a mass-balance modelling approach, we propose that the observed trend in lithium-isotope values reflects a transition from Precambrian carbon and silicon cycles to those characteristic of the modern. We speculate that this transition was linked to a gradual shift to a biologically controlled marine silicon cycle and the evolutionary radiation of land plants,”
Measurement Issues — Surface
Fact-free
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 21, 2021
“So here we point not just to Muir’s work but, again, to the American Climate Reference Network designed to avoid the UHI problem by depending on rural stations, which shows slight cooling in the continental United States since 2005 (about 0.4°C). And as Ronald Barmby observes in his Sunlight on Climate Change (p. 141) ‘It seems odd that the only part of the world that is not warming is where the most advanced temperature recordings are being taken, and in the rest of the world where there are poor data, it is warming.’”
The HadCRUT4 Global Temperature Dataset Now Unveils A Cooling Trend For The Last 7.5 Years
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, July 19, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Too short a time for any significant trend.]
Measurement Issues — Atmosphere
Global satellite data shows clouds will amplify global heating
By Staff Writers, London, UK (SPX), Jul 20, 2021
Link to paper: Observational evidence that cloud feedback amplifies global warming
By Paulo Ceppi and Peer Nowack, PNAS, July 27, 2021
From the abstract: “Using data from Earth observations and climate model simulations, we here develop a statistical learning analysis of how clouds respond to changes in the environment.”
[SEPP Comment: Model simulations are meaningless science if the models have not been validated using atmospheric data. If warming amplification exists, why hasn’t the planet cooked before?]
Changing Weather
Current European flood-rich period exceptional compared with past 500 years
By Günter Blöschl, et al. Nature, July 22, 2021 [H/t Climate Etc.]
From the abstract: “We identified nine flood-rich periods and associated regions. Among the periods richest in floods are 1560–1580 (western and central Europe), 1760–1800 (most of Europe), 1840–1870 (western and southern Europe) and 1990–2016 (western and central Europe). In most parts of Europe, previous flood-rich periods occurred during cooler-than-usual phases, but the current flood-rich period has been much warmer. Flood seasonality is also more pronounced in the recent period.”
[SEPP Comment: Apparently the “exceptional” is that now floods are occurring during warmer seasons than previously.]
Long-term variability and trends in meteorological droughts in Western Europe (1851–2018)
By Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano, et al. International Journal of Climatology, June 22, 2020 [H/t Climate Etc.]
“Results reveal a general absence of statistically significant long-term trends in the study domain, with the exception of significant trends at some stations, generally covering short periods.”
Alarmists Scaremongering, Ignore Germany’s Long History Of Massive Flooding
CO2 scaremongering and the truth about German floods
By Fred F. Mueller, No Tricks Zone, July 23, 2021
A world protected by windmills? In 1717 Christmas Floods in Germany killed 14,000
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, July 19, 2021
Chinese army warns dam battered by storms could collapse
By AFP Staff Writers, Beijing (AFP), July 20, 2021
The Untouchables
By Tony Heller, His Blog, July 21, 2021
Link to: Review and Update of the 1995 Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy
By Staff, Departments of Interior, Agriculture, Energy, Defense, Commerce, EPA, FEMA, National Association of State Foresters, January 2001
“Twenty-four states have been over 115F, and all occurred with CO2 below 350 PPM.”
[SEPP Comment: List of states, with highest temperatures and when the Wildland Fire Management Policy went to “let it burn.”]
What Controls the Movement of Wildfire Smoke? And a Perfect Forecast for the Next Week.
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, July 23, 2021
Podcast
Fires on the West Coast Produce Smoke and Bad Air on the East Coast
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, July 20, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Will East Coast power plants be fined for violating Clean Air regulations?]
Signs of a resurgence in La Nina and the potential implications on global temperatures and the upcoming winter season
By Meteorologist Paul Dorian, Peraton, Via WUWT, July 20, 2021
Northern Russia Summers 2.5 to 7.0C Warmer 7000 Years Ago
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 21, 2021
Link to paper: Holocene Treeline History and Climate Change Across Northern Eurasia
By Glen M. MacDonald, et al. Quaternary Research, May 3, 2000
Evidence of RWP In Florida
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 22, 2021
Link to paper: Seasonal climate change across the Roman Warm Period/Vandal Minimum transition using isotope sclerochronology inarchaeological shells and otoliths, southwest Florida, USA
By Ting Wang, Donna Surge, & Karen Jo WalkerQuaternary International, November 19, 2012
They are all going to die, although…
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 21, 2021
Changing Climate – Cultures & Civilizations
Long-term decrease in Asian monsoon rainfall and abrupt climate change events over the past 6,700 years
By Bao Yang, et al. PNAS, July 27, 2021
[SEPP Comment: When the Asian summer monsoon does not water the Mongolian grasslands, nomads make thing difficult for those living in northern China.]
Climate regulation changed with the proliferation of marine animals and terrestrial plants
Geoscientific study traces carbon-silicon cycle over three billion years on the basis of lithium isotope levels
Press Release, Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz, July 15, 2021 [H/t WUWT]
Link to paper: A lithium-isotope perspective on the evolution of carbon and silicon cycles
By Boriana Kalderon-Asael, et al. Nature, July 14, 2021
Here comes the moon
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 21, 2021
Islands of Truth Emerging from the Murky Depths of “Sea Level Science”
By Jim Steele, WUWT, July 19, 2021
Changing Cryosphere – Land / Sea Ice
Record Heat In Antarctica, Claims The Absurd Jonathan Amos
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 20, 2021
“I personally cannot get worked up about a rise of 0.4C in 41 years! And I certainly would not call 18.4C ‘heat’.”
[SEPP Comment: Homewood shows the history of “warming” at the Antarctic weather station with “record heat.”]
Western Hudson Bay polar bears: still some out on the sea ice, some causing trouble
By Susan Crockford, Polar Bear Science, July 22, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Without the lockdown, prime tourist season for Churchill on the bay.]
Changing Earth
Hiawatha Crater: Bracketing the Age
By David Middleton, WUWT, July 23, 2021
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Here came the flood
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 21, 2021
From Reuters: “‘The devastation of the floods, attributed by meteorologists to a climate-change driven shift in the jet stream that has brought inland water that once stayed at sea, could shake up an election that has until now seen little discussion of climate.’”
[SEPP Comment: Just like the drought in the Western US, the predictions come after the event, cherry-picking at it best!]
BBC & The Sunderbans
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 23, 2021
“The report highlights islands which are gradually disappearing under the sea. But this shows a total ignorance of how deltas form and evolve. Low lying islands and mud flats are forever shifting as they erode and grow back, caught between the forces of tides, storms, sedimentation and flooding. There is no reason why any island there should be permanent.
Henan Floods
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 21, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Ignoring the past!]
Guardian’s Latest Amazon Scare Story
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 21, 2021
Communicating Better to the Public – Exaggerate, or be Vague?
In Pennsylvania, Scientific and Economic Realities Unsettle Climate Change Morality Plays
By Kevin Mooney, Real Clear Energy, July 21, 2021
Press Release: Gov. Wolf 2021 Climate Impacts Report Projects Pennsylvania Will Be 5.9° F Warmer by Midcentury, Targets Areas to Reduce Risk
By Staff, Pennsylvania Climate Impacts Assessment 2021, May 05, 2021
Report by ICF, May 2021
[SEPP Comment: No exaggeration is too great if the purpose is “to save the planet.”]
Of words and deeds
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 21, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Waiting to see industrial wind without concrete and steel footings!]
Unsustainable Arctic shipping risks accelerating damage to the Arctic environment
By Staff Writers, London, UK (SPX), Jul 20, 2021
Link to paper: A techno-economic environmental cost model for Arctic shipping
By Lambert, Joseph, et al. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, September 2021
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
The current drought is worldwide. Here’s how different places are fighting it
By Celina Tebor, Phys.Org, July 19, 2021 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to: SPEI Global Drought Monitor, June 2021, Accessed July 20, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Except where it is raining, such as Canada, Europe, South and East Asia, etc.]
Climate ‘mysteries’ still puzzle scientists, despite progress
By Amélie Bottollier-Depois, Paris (AFP) July 23, 2021
“In almost real time, researchers can pinpoint the role of climate change in a given disaster, something they were unable to do at all until very recently.
“Now, so-called ‘attribution’ science means we can say how probable an extreme weather event would have been had the climate not been changing at all.
[SEPP Comment: Going deeper into fantasyland. Able to attribute after the fact, but unable to predict, even using probabilities.]
Communicating Better to the Public – Do a Poll?
Communicating About Climate Change: What’s Politics Got To Do With It?
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, July 21, 2021
Expanding the Orthodoxy
Yellen to lead investigation into climate change risk to financial system
By Caroline Vakil, The Hill, July 11, 2021
“The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), which is chaired by Treasury secretary and comprised of U.S. regulators from the Federal Reserve System, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and others, will do an analysis as part of an executive order that the president signed regarding the financial risks related to climate, ‘outlining a whole-of-government process to assess climate risk to the U.S. financial system and federal government,’ Yellen said.”
[SEPP Comment: What is the financial risk of destructive government policy? Who pays for its failure?]
The Fallacy of Climate Financial Risk
By John Cochran, Project Syndicate, July 21, 2021 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Democrats Lay Out Vision for Civilian Climate Corps
ByRachel Frazin, The Hill, July 20, 2021
Link to letter: Dear Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer
By various Senators and Representatives, July 20, 2021
“The Civilian Climate Corps will invest in natural climate solutions…”
[SEPP Comment: What if nature is the problem?]
Questioning European Green
Four Flaws With the EU’s New Climate Plans
By Pieter Cleppe, Real Clear Energy, July 19, 2021
CCC Says We Must Spend £9000 To Stop Homes “Overheating” In Thirty Years Time!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 22, 2021
How to Leverage Regional Wind and Solar Power for the Entire U.S.
By Robert Hebner, Real Clear Energy, July 20, 2021
“Finally, agencies must significantly fund research to drive down the cost of each option and ramp up clean energy technologies to scale.”
“At least 50% of the funding should go to universities as, by conducting the research, they are also educating the next generation of U.S. leaders.”
[SEPP Comment: How the” Director of the Center for Electromechanics at the University of Texas at Austin” hopes to cash in from the false fear of carbon dioxide.]
Other People’s Money — Gambling on Net Zero
By Andrew Stuttaford, National Review, Capital Matters, July 13, 2021
“Translation: Neither corporations nor those that, directly or indirectly, invest in them will be allowed to weigh climate risk for themselves. Nor will the decision of how much, if anything, they should spend on dealing with it be left to them alone.
“But they will be made to pick up the tab. Other people’s money, you see.”
Cap-and-Trade and Carbon Taxes
Why the EU’s Carbon Border Tax will Fail to Stop Carbon Leakage
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, July 20, 2021
Subsidies and Mandates Forever
Offshore Wind Subsidies Topped £4 Billion Last Year
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 22, 2021
EPA and other Regulators on the March
Granholm announces new building energy codes
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, July 21, 2021
Link to report: Energy Savings Analysis: 2021 IECC for Residential Buildings
By V. Robert Salcido, et al, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, July 2021
[SEPP Comment: Has estimates of Social Cost of CO2 with 4 arbitrary values. Then, weighs costs based on CO2 “savings – benefits.” No estimates of actual monetary costs of implementation!]
Energy Issues – Non-US
Why We Can’t Afford To Turn Our Backs On Fossil Fuels
By Irina Slav, Oil Price.com, Jul 19, 2021
National Grid to lose Great Britain electricity role to independent operator
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 20, 2021
“Government will therefore throw out the knowledge and skills built up over many years by electrical engineers who know what they are doing. In their place, we will probably end up with the sort of eco loons who infest the Committee on Climate Change.
“Heaven help us all!”
Energy Issues – Australia
Aussie Coal Miner Accused of Violating Climate Change Disclosure Rules
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, July 21, 2021
“New Hope Mining have done what we have all been waiting for – they have quietly challenged the entire renewables industry, by explicitly pointing out the falsehood of claims that renewables are a viable replacement for fossil fuel in an official company document.”
Rick Perry Was Right…
By David Middleton, WUWT, July 21, 2021
“Rick Perry went on to become the best Secretary of Energy in the department’s 43 year history. For the first time since its establishment, the DOE focused on enabling the private sector to deliver reliable and affordable energy and established American Energy Dominance.”
Ohio Eviscerates Preferred Siting, Accelerated Permission for Wind/Solar Developers (communities win!)
By Sherri Lange, Master Resource, July 22, 2021
“Requires developers to submit decommissioning plans when applying to OPSB.” [Ohio Power Siting Board.]
Bonneville Power Administration
By Staff, BPA.Gov/transmission, Accessed July 17
BPA Balancing Authority Total Wind Generation, Near-Real-Time
BPA Balancing Authority Load and Total Wind, Hydro, Fossil/Biomass, and Nuclear Generation, Near-Real-Time
Oil and Natural Gas – the Future or the Past?
US Crude Oil Exports: Record High in 2020, Despite Lockdown
By David Middleton, WUWT, July 22, 2021
State Report: PA Extracted More Natural Gas Than Ever During Pandemic
By Madison Goldberg, WSKG NPR, July 8, 2021
Link to: 2020 Oil and Gas Annual Report
By Staff, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, 2021
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
Expanding the Supply Chain for Rare Earth Materials
By Lewis Black, Real Clear Energy, July 22, 2021
“While people around the world rely on these minerals in their everyday lives, China produces 80% of the U.S. rare earths, and has been doing so for quite some time.”
[SEPP Comment: The Chinese are economically benefiting from the fear in the US that carbon dioxide is causing dangerous global warming for which there is limited physical evidence.]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Other
Hot Rocks Resurrected
By Donn Dears, Power For USA, July 20, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Perhaps New Zealand offers the best solution. Build your most populous city, Auckland, on a volcanic field and wait for the heat to come up.]
Making clean hydrogen is hard, but researchers just solved a major hurdle
Press Release, University of Texas at Austin, July 19, 2021 [H/t WUWT]
Link to paper: Scalable, highly stable Si-based metal-insulator-semiconductor photoanodes for water oxidation fabricated using thin-film reactions and electrodeposition
By Soonil Lee, Li Ji, Alex C. De Palma & Edward T. Yu, Nature Communications, June 25, 2021
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Storage
The economic and reliability impacts of grid-scale storage in a high penetration renewable energy system
By Samuel C. Johnson, Advances in Applied Energy, Aug 25, 2021 [H/t Climate Etc.]
“Compressed air energy storage systems generate the highest system value.”
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
Take the electric motorway, then continue on the road to ruin
By Henry Getley, The Conservative Woman, July 18, 2021 [H/t Paul Homewood]
Mercedes-Benz going all-electric by 2025
By Celine Castronuovo, The Hill, July 22, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Why should luxury carmakers get subsidies to change their products?]
Carbon Schemes
Chevron concedes CCS failures at Gorgon, seeks deal with WA [Western Australian] regulators
By Michael Mazengarb, Renew Economy, July 19, 2021
“Chevron is understood to have spent more than $3 billion building the carbon capture facility, but it took several years after the start of gas production for the Gorgon CCS project even to begin operation due to delays and technical difficulties.”
Carbon Capture: The Key Answer on Climate Change
By Dan Ervin, Real Clear Energy, July 18, 2021
“There is simply no credible way to address the climate challenge without becoming more practical about the way we generate electricity and the need for carbon capture. This shouldn’t be a secondary piece of the solution to reduce global emissions but rather right at the heart of the effort.”
A Tale of Two CCS Worlds
By David Middleton, WUWT, July 20, 2021
See link immediately above.
Smokestack Fighting: Carbon Capture Promises to Slash Emissions, and Greens Hate It
By Vince Bielski Real Clear Investigations July 21, 2021
California Dreaming
Treadmill Decarbonization Doesn’t Help
By Adam Stein, The Breakthrough Institute, July 9, 2021 [H/t Climate Etc.]
“Some proponents of renewables claim that closing nuclear power plants will get them out of the way of cheaper renewables, saving money for the ratepayers. That claim has not been realized. Just for the closure of Diablo Canyon, ratepayers will have to shoulder $437 million in the form of higher electricity prices to support the local economy, community support programs, and more than 1,300 lost jobs.”
Bjorn Lomborg: Climate change and deaths from extreme heat and cold
For now, global warming reduces more deaths than it causes, saving possibly 100,000 lives each year
By Bjorn Lomborg, Financial Post, July 20, 2021
2020 Drug Deaths Spiked 30%. And Pain Pills Had NOTHING To Do With It
New data have been published on drug overdose deaths in 2020. Although you won’t find it anywhere obvious, prescription opioid analgesics remain only a minor (and stable) contributor to the record 93,000 people who died from drug overdoses last year.
By Josh Bloom, ACSH, July 19, 2021
Other News that May Be of Interest
Bill Gates’s stranglehold on the MSM: Part 2 – Britain
By Karen Harradine, The Conservative Woman, July 16, 2021 [H/t Paul Homewood]
Journalism’s Gates keepers
By Tim Schwab, Columbia Journalism Review, Aug 21, 2020
“I recently examined nearly twenty thousand charitable grants the Gates Foundation had made through the end of June and found more than $250 million going toward journalism.”
Woke Language Is Changing the Meaning of Words
By John Stossel, The Daily Signal, July 21, 2021
For the First Time Ever, Scientists Witness Chimps Killing Gorillas
The surprising observation could yield new insights into early human evolution.
By George Dvorsky, Gizmodo, July 21, 2021 [H/t Climate Depot]
Link to paper: Lethal coalitionary attacks of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) on gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) in the wild
By Lara M. Southern, Tobias Deschner & Simone Pika, Nature Scientific Reports, July 19, 2021
From the abstract: “In both events, the chimpanzees significantly outnumbered the gorillas and victims were infant gorillas.”
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
Men worse for climate change than women (so if enough transition, will that stop the floods?)
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, July 23, 2021
Link to paper: Shifting expenditure on food, holidays, and furnishings could lower greenhouse gas emissions by almost 40%
By Annika Carlsson Kanyama, et al. Journal of Industrial Ecology, July 19, 2021
“Men cause all the bad things (except for this study which mostly written by women):”
Concha rips ‘woke’ leftists over MLB name-change: ‘New York Jets are toast’ because of global warming
The Jets — named for their former stadium’s proximity to La Guardia — could be next.
By Charles Creitz, Fox News, July
Facebook Flags the Name of a Gardening Tool When Used in a Gardening Group
By Bryan Preston, PJ Media, JUL 22, 2021
Faster Than Predicted
John Kerry says global warming is happening faster than predicted.
By Tony Heller, His Blog, July 21, 2021
“He also says the Arctic will be ice-free [in the summer] by 2014. [In 2009]
It’s The Pigs Fault!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 20, 2021
“I’ve got an idea. Why don’t they just wipe out every animal on earth?”
Uniting Church: “The climate emergency has come about because of our sinfulness”
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, July 21, 2021
We just panel the Sahara and…
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 21, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Think of all those green jobs cleaning the panels after a sandstorm!]
ARTICLES
NO ARTICLES THIS WEEK: Recommend “The Peril of Politicizing Science” under Seeking a Common Ground
So 4, no 5, US/Canadian heatwaves, including the E coast, setting records, some of the records a step change above previous records…
Heatwaves in E Europe and Russia, with tornado in Czech Republic, heatwave (record) in Lapland, heatwaves and record fires in Siberia.
Off the scale extreme rainfall summer event in Germany/Belgium/Netherlands, with additional severe summer rain events across Europe..
Huge step change severe rainfall event in China, Indian Monsoon flooding at record level…
That’s the news… a great number of climate change related extreme weather events, as predicted by climate science.
Not one of the cited events is climate related, only weather, not more, not less.
And you know it.
You guys come across as such dopes when you incessantly weaponize anomalous hot weather events, but completely ignore anomalous cold weather events.
Omigosh look! Proof of cooling global climate!
“SNOWSTORM IN AFRICA!” — SOUTH AFRICA SMASHES *AN ADDITIONAL* 19 ALL-TIME LOW TEMPERATURE RECORDS OVER THE PAST 24 HOURS
https://electroverse.net/snowstorm-in-africa-south-africa-smashes-19-all-time-low-temperature-records/
Ha, no it’s not. It’s proof that anyone claiming anomalously hot weather events are proof of warming global climate are idiots..
Well we already know that griff’s an idiot and with his illness, we’re the only people who talk to him but, go on, I’ll play along:
What happened with your favourite topic gwiffypoo? Arctic sea ice extent 0.8 of a wadham above last year, and whooo hooo, Antarctica above the 1979 number for July 25th. You must be swilling so much champagne knowing that we’re not all gonna die of polar ice whatsit.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
Minimum yearly sea ice extent has fallen about 45% in about 40 years. It seems reasonable to make a linear projection to near-zero Arctic sea ice by around 2060.
Griffy-poo: I can only shake my head in despair whenever you alarmists fail to put today’s weather events in historical perspective, especially in terms of the Medieval and Roman Warm Periods and the Little Ice Age. It’s as though you are trying to avoid the Black Plague.
Studies I have seen show that this Holocene period we are in peaked some 6,000 years ago and has been going downhill ever since. And have you looked at all the storms that Britain and Europe experienced during the Little Ice Age? There were some really nasty ones.
I could provides links, but I seriously doubt you will bother looking at them. As I have said in the past, all that matters to you Griff are meteorological events that provide confirmation bias for your preconceived belief systems. The cult must survive.
Record cold in the southern hemisphere at the same time…D’oh! Weather, not climate.
Correction: “A great number of
climate change relatedextreme weather events,as predictedpropagandized by so-called ‘climate science.'”“a great number of climate change related extreme weather events, as predicted by climate science.”
Predicting everything gwiffy, reminds me of my grandad, back in England, his bad habit exacerbated by the fact that there was betting shop on the street where he lived. He would bet on four horses in a six-horse race and proudly tell us all how much he won, even buy the first round with his winnings. He deserved his pension, however he chose to spend it. A very excellent man. Played football/soccer for the British Army too, but damn, I didn’t inherit those genes and had to settle for a life in science.
Climate crackpots bet on all six, as the stakes are other people’s money anyway.
All the “griffy-poo”, “gwiffy”, etc stuff – ruffian children who name call that way stereotypically grow up to be drag queens.
I think that it has already been established, thanks to Sir David Attenborough, that Polar Bears are expert at chasing basking Walrus to their deaths off sea cliffs.
Not to mention that Polar Bears have adapted to survive extremely cold climate; they do not require it for survival.