The Week That Was: 2021-10-30 (October 30, 2021)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “With a true view all the data harmonize, but with a false one the facts soon clash.” Aristotle: Ethics, Book I, Section 8, 10 [H/t Paul MacRae]
Number of the Week: Thirty-one Years
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: This week the UN is holding the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). UNFCCC entered into force on March 21, 1994. The document has morphed into what is called the Paris Agreement. Unfortunately, the US Senate agreed to the UNFCCC with conditions. Though the conditions have not been met, the document is often treated as a treaty. Under the US Constitution a treaty, which must be approved by two-thirds of the Senators, is part of the US Federal law and is fully enforceable.
The Paris Agreement was signed by the Obama Administration as an executive agreement, not a treaty, and it has never been submitted to the Senate for ratification as required for a treaty to be enforceable. The Biden Administration treats the Paris Agreement as law, but it probably recognizes that it cannot hope to obtain ratification. Together with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the UNFCCC created the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to:
“…provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, its implications and potential future risks, as well as to put forward adaptation and mitigation options.”
The IPCC has failed to apply the scientific method including correcting grievous errors and omitting significant data that contradicts its conclusions. Consequently, it has failed to provide policymakers with scientific assessments. Instead, it provides policymakers with political assessments.
Rather than focus on the gathering of tens of thousands of political types, and others, gathering at the COP 26 being held in Glasgow, this TWTW will focus on some of the errors and omissions that occurred in the IPCC process, rendering its results scientifically meaningless. Without physical evidence supporting them, the IPCC adaptation and mitigation options have no scientifically convincing foundation.
Without physical evidence, IPCC relies on elaborate mathematical models that have never been validated, that is shown to fit the physical world they supposedly describe. Many of these deficiencies were brought out at the 14th Heartland International Conference on Climate Change, from October 15 to 18. Two of the important presentations are discussed below. Additional presentations will be discussed next week. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy, Defending the Orthodoxy, Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science, and https://www.ipcc.ch/#:~:text=The%20IPCC%20was%20created%20to,of%20knowledge%20on%20climate%20change.
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Converging Models: As discussed later, the models used by the IPCC are diverging from the physical world by increasing amounts. The IPCC ignores any need for convergence, yet their global climate models are built on weather models made more elaborate. This creates a significant problem in reliability. Numerical weather models must be updated constantly, several times a day. Yet weather models cannot be relied upon for prediction of weather events even two weeks out, usually a few days.
Weather is a non-linear system with many variations. Though others had noted problems with non-linear systems before, starting in the 1960s mathematician Edward Lorenz developed what became chaos theory, small changes to the beginning of a chaotic system, or model of one, can cause huge differences in results over time. Most weather forecasters are now familiar with the problem and are reluctant to make firm forecasts until they see the different models are converging on the same result. The “spaghetti charts” showing great variation in climate models over time are not convergence.
Last week’s TWTW had a link to a podcast by meteorologist Cliff Mass on a coastal cyclone coming to the US Pacific Northwest that may be the strongest to hit that area. Stronger cyclones occur further north, in the Gulf of Alaska. But in terms of barometric pressure at sea level, this one could be the strongest to hit southern British Columbia and Washington State. On October 22, Mass reported disagreements among the weather models prevented him from forecasting exactly where the storm would hit.
It was not until October 23, a few days before the storm hit, that the models converged to a consistent solution, giving Mass the confidence to make a forecast of where it would hit, Vancouver Island. Also, he brought out that the strength of the storm would dissipate quickly (collapse). It started to hit on October 24. This is an example of responsible weather forecasting, recognizing that each weather model has its own strengths and weaknesses, and the convergence of the models gives forecasts reliability.
Unfortunately, the IPCC does not recognize the need for climate models to converge to a consistent solution, that can be tested against physical evidence. Instead, it uses an average of all the models. An average of significant errors is still a significant error. See links under Model Issue, Changing Weather, and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3202497/.
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IPCC Model Deficiencies: At the Heartland Conference, in his Breakfast Keynote address, Patrick Michaels of the Competitive Enterprise Institute presented a masterly summary of some of the significant errors and omissions in the global climate models used by the IPCC. Later that morning during the science panel 2A, The IPCC and the Scientific Method, David Legates, who had received the Fredrick Seitz Award, amplified the significance of these errors and omissions and added additional ones.
Michaels points out that many in and out of government are insisting that we must “follow the science” and change energy policies to fit global climate models. The models are being used to change our way of life. Yet, the models have wrong input, the unrealistic extreme carbon dioxide emissions used by the UN IPCC; the models run far too hot, greatly overestimating the warming of the planet; and we are living on a modestly warming, greener planet, nothing to be feared.
There is even disagreement in the establishment about the use of IPCC models, for example Michaels cites Hausfather and Peters (Nature 2020) who wrote:
“Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome – more realistic baselines to make for better policy.”
Others have estimated that the vast bulk, over 10,000 papers, focus on this unrealistic worst-case. Michaels goes into some detail on how fictitious this scenario is. He discusses some of the issues glossed over by the use of models, such as stratospheric cooling and the growing disparity between global climate models and observations. He notes that the instruments on weather balloons are carefully calibrated daily before the balloons are launched. [As Anthony Watts has shown, surface temperature data comes from instruments, many of which sorely lack calibration and are in areas where the settings have greatly changed, resulting in very unreliable data.
Michaels brings up that the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics was shared by Suki Manabe of the Princeton Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory (GFDL):
“For the physical modeling of the earth’s climate, quantifying variability, and reliably predicting global warming”
Michaels then shows how deficient the GFDL modeling is, and the model results are among the most extreme in overestimating the warming rate at the so-called hotspot roughly 10 km above the tropics, when compared with atmospheric observations. He then covers other issues such as the models are becoming worse, claims of increasing hurricanes are contradicted by evidence, claims of increasing tornadoes are contradicted by evidence, but NOAA removed the web site explaining that. What NOAA cannot remove are death certificates which are way down from extreme storms. Contrary to years of false claims, crop production is increasing significantly while population growth is steady, or declining.
One should note that one of the worst performing global climate model, the one by the Princeton Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory (GFDL), is sponsored by NOAA. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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(Broken) Climate Models: David Legates is professor of climatology in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware and an adjunct professor in the university’s Department of Applied Economics & Statistics. He went into further detail on the likely problems of climate models.
Climate models should give rough ideas of what may be. Climate models run hot. The question is why? It may be the climate model operator rather than the model itself. What is the response of the modeled temperature over time? To a large part, modeled equations are regression equations, and the coefficients are guessed at – optimized for a purpose (model tuning). The operators keep climate sensitivity within in a preconceived accepted range. The modelers choose what they want! The entire approach is subjective, not objective. Tuning climate models to a desired result is not a legitimate objective under the scientific method.
Legates then discusses how CO2 is estimated to increase over time. Representative Concentration Pathways – how much temperatures will increase over time. These are now called the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP), but they have the same watts per square meter of forcing by 2100. Which ones make sense? Certainly not those in the US National Climate Assessment (USNCA) which are based on extreme scenarios. It should be made clear that such extreme estimates are far from “business as usual” but it is not. Legates estimates that 80 to 90% of papers we see are based on extreme scenarios, Thus, what is called science is unrealistic! The papers overstate the rise in CO2. Legates concludes that climate models overstate both climate sensitivity and the rate at which carbon dioxide is changing over time. This is operator error and deliberate. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Additions and Corrections: Last week’s TWTW discussed issues that Ross McKitrick raised on the use of attribution studies and that statistical theory on which they are based was misstated, and these studies do not meet the conditions of the Gauss Markov Theorem on Generalize Least Squares. In response, Richard Courtney of Cornwall, England, wrote:
“Decades ago, in year 2000, a group of scientists from around the world was assembled to give a briefing at the US Congress in Washington, DC. We met for discussions throughout a few days before the briefing when we all shared our understandings, and I then learned from Ross McKitrick the importance of ‘the 95% confidence interval’.
“Subsequently, I applied that knowledge to consideration of global temperature trends and determined that all the estimates of average global temperature (mean global temperature, MGT) were worthless. I wrote a discussion paper on that finding, I obtained several co-signatories, and I submitted it for publication. A campaign to block publication of the paper was mounted by the self-titled ‘Team’. And an email complaining at that campaign was one of the emails from me that were leaked as part of the collection of emails released as ‘Climategate’.
“My submission to the UK Parliament’s Select Committee investigation (i.e., whitewash) of ‘Climategate’ is recorded in Parliament’s Hansard at
“and includes this,
“4. I and others tried to publish a discussion paper (see Appendix B) that attempted to explain the problems with analyses of MGT. We compared the data and trends of the Jones et al., GISS and GHCN data sets. These teams each provide 95% confidence limits for their results. However, the results of the teams differ by more than double those limits in several years, and the data sets provided by the teams have different trends. Since all three data sets are compiled from the same available source data (i.e., the measurements mostly made at weather stations using thermometers), and purport to be the same metric (i.e., MGT anomaly), this is surprising. Clearly, the methods of compilation of MGT time series can generate spurious trends (where ‘spurious’ means different from reality), and such spurious trends must exist in all but at most one of the data sets.”
“And this
“7. Thus, we determined that—whichever way MGT is considered—MGT is not an appropriate metric for use in attribution studies.
“8. However, the compilers of the MGT data sets frequently alter their published data of past MGT (sometimes they have altered the data in each of several successive months). This is despite the fact that there is no obvious and/or published reason for changing a datum of MGT for years that were decades ago: the temperature measurements were obtained in those years so the change can only be an effect of altering the method(s) of calculating MGT from the measurements. But the MGT data sets often change. The MGT data always changed between submission of the paper and completion of the peer review process. Thus, the frequent changes to MGT data sets prevented publication of the paper.
“9. Whatever you call this method of preventing publication of a paper, you cannot call it science.
But this method prevented publication of information that proved the estimates of MGT and AGW are wrong and the amount by which they are wrong cannot be known.
(a) I can prove that we submitted the paper for publication.
(b) I can prove that Nature rejected it for a silly reason:
“We publish original data and do not publish comparisons of data sets”
(c) I can prove that whenever we submitted the paper to a journal one or more of the Jones et al., GISS and GHCN data sets changed so either the paper was rejected because it assessed incorrect data, or we had to withdraw the paper to correct the data it assessed.
“But I cannot prove who or what caused this.”
“I hope this is interesting and I am copying it to GWPF as a courtesy because it mentions them.”
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Number of the Week: Thirty-one Years: In his talk at the Heartland Conference, Howard Hayden points out that the widely accepted Stefan-Boltzmann law for blackbody radiation has not been mentioned in IPCC reports before AR6 (2021) a period of thirty-one years. A blackbody is an idealized concept for an object that absorbs all electromagnetic radiation that contacts it. The law states that the “total radiant heat power emitted from a surface is proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature.” As will be discussed in the next TWTW, Hayden shows the IPCC gets it wrong (or ignores its consequences). For a paper discussing this submitted to the American Journal of Physics and immediately rejected without peer review, see link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Commentary: Is the Sun Rising?
Of moonshine and sunshine
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 27, 2021
Censorship
Fact checkers fail to refute polar bear number increases despite extensive ‘expert’ rhetoric
By Susan Crockford, Polar Bear Science, Oct 27, 2021
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
Challenging the Orthodoxy
Heartland’s 2021 Climate Conference, Oct 15-17
Video, Multiple Speakers, Accessed Oct 21, 2021
Patrick Michaels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7JGaasXBLw&list=PLgnnPnL9OL7GWMlMI3YRuLjC2FmS4eWJS&index=15
David Legates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs6lDsFipjM&list=PLgnnPnL9OL7GWMlMI3YRuLjC2FmS4eWJS&index=2
A Constraint Equation for Climate
By Howard Hayden, Prof. Emeritus of Physics, UConn, Director of SEPP, October 2021
http://www.sepp.org/science_papers/Climate Constraint Equation.pdf
China Warming
The CCP is by far the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet. Is that a problem?
By Richard Lindzen, Tablet Mag, Oct 19, 2021
Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases
By W. A. van Wijngaarden, W. Happer, Submitted
The Greenhouse Effect, A Summary of Wijngaarden and Happer
By Andy May, CO2 Science, Sep 24, 2021
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V24/sep/a2.php
Nobel Prize Awarded for the Worst Climate Model
By Patrick J. Michaels, Real Clear Policy, Oct 26, 2021
“And, after many modifications and renditions, it is also the most incorrect of all the world’s GCMs at altitude over the vast tropics of the planet.”
Suboptimal Fingerprinting?
By Ross McKitrick, GWPF, 2021
“The Climate Is Changing, And Human Activities Are The Cause”: How, Exactly, Do We Know That?
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Oct 28, 2021
Link to paper attorney Menton states is easiest to understand:
How the IPCC Sees What Isn’t There
By William M Briggs, GWPF, 2021
The madness of clouds (I)
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 27, 2021
In A Few Days Clouds Affect Earth’s Radiation Budget By More Than CO2 Does In 270 Years
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Oct 25, 2021
The Worm in the Rose
Net Zero agenda hands geopolitical control to China
New paper warns of national security threat of unilateral decarbonisation
Press Release, Net Zero Watch, Oct 23, 2021
Link to paper: The Worm in the Rose
By Gwythian Prins, emeritus research profession, London School of Economics, 2021
A Flood Of Superficial Climate Reports
By Richard A. Epstein, Hoover Institution, Oct 25, 2021
Defending the Orthodoxy
IPCC AR6 Extreme Event Attribution: Unspun Edition
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 27, 2021
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
The climate project that changed how we understand extreme weather
By Kelly MacNamara, Paris (AFP) Oct 22, 2021
Record-breaking California bomb cyclone linked to climate change
By David Knowles, Yahoo News, Oct 25, 2021
Questioning the Orthodoxy
Greenpeace co-founder joins climate change skeptics
By Kevin Mooney, Washington Examiner, Oct 26, 2021
New data refute Boris Johnson’s wind cost claims
Press Release, Net Zero Watch, Oct 28, 2021
New data on offshore wind costs
By Andrew Montford, Net Zero Watch, Oct 28, 2021
“As always when using levelised costs, it should be noted that this refers only to costs at generator level. The cost of dealing with the intermittency of wind power is not included.”
After Paris!
Chinese President: COP26 a “wake-up call … to mankind”
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 25, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Words are not deeds!]
3 issues to watch at climate summit
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Oct 27, 2021
COP 26 Sessions
By Staff, UNFCCC, Accessed Oct 27, 2021
Xi and Putin Leave COP26 Climate Alarmists in the Lurch
By Vijay Jayaraj, Real Clear Energy, Oct 27, 2021
More Embarrassment: COP26 Luxury EVs to be Recharged Using Diesel Generators
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 24, 2021
STOP26
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 27, 2021
Subscribe Against Net Zero with Aynsley Kellow
By Jennifer Marohasy, Her Blog, Oct 26, 2021
Change in US Administrations
Biden’s Climate Agenda Dies In The Senate
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 26, 2021
Why Everyone Is Wrong About Biden’s $600 Billion Climate Bill
By Leonard Hyman & William Tilles, Oil Price.com, Oct 25, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Totally misses the main point: what is the cost of electricity when renewables don’t work?]
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
Higher CO2 levels responsible for ‘greening’ Earth
By Staff, ICECAP, Sep 26, 2021
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/icing-the-hype/higher_co2_levels_responsible_for_greening_earth/
Problems in the Orthodoxy
Public Want A Referendum On Net Zero
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 27, 2021
Who loves coal? One week to Glasgow and China is suddenly digging up record amounts of coal
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 23, 2021
Seeking a Common Ground
Speech by Václav Klaus on the occasion of the national holiday on 28 October
Translation by Vystavil Luboš Motl, The Reference Frame, Oct
Best of WUWT
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Oct 24, 2021
Correlation Is Not Causation
By Susan Goldhaber MPH, ACSH, Oct 20, 2021
Judith Curry: COP26 “Code Red” Misleading (New Jersey data point)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Oct 25, 2021
Model Issues
The Storm’s Future is Now Known
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Oct 23, 2021
“The models have converged to a consistent solution, the storm is beginning to “bomb”, and I can now provide a forecast with some confidence.”
Measurement Issues — Surface
UN: Greenhouse gas levels hit a new record, cuts fall short
The U.N. weather agency says greenhouse gas concentrations hit a new record high last year and increased at a faster rate than the annual average for the last decade
By Jamey Keaten and Frank Jordans, AP, Oct 25, 2021
Climate Alarmist Deception Distorting Long Established U.S. Heat Wave Data
By Larry Hamlin, WUWT, Oct 25, 2021
No September Warming In Greenland, Iceland In Over Two Decades…Arctic Sea Ice Stable Over Past Decade
By Kirye,and Pierre, No Tricks Zone, Oct 27, 2021
1920 or 2020? Albany Australia Edition
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 27, 2021
Changing Weather
The Climate Crisis in The 1640s
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 26, 2021
A River Runs Through Us
Today was a very wet day over Washington State and southern British Columbia.
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Oct 28, 2021
A Record Storm and the Power Outages Begin
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Oct 24, 2021
Almost 500K without power in Massachusetts as nor’easter batters East Coast
By Lexi Lonas, The Hill, Oct 27, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Did wind turbines work during the storm?]
Deadly 1930 Heatwave In Europe
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Oct 28, 2021
October Russian Arctic Flash Freezing
By Ron Clutz, Science Matters, Oct 25, 2021
Changing Seas
New Data Suggest Greenland’s Relative Sea Levels Were 6 Meters Higher 1,500-2,000 Years Ago
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Oct 28, 2021
Link to paper: Optical dating of cobble surfaces determines the chronology of Holocene beach ridges in Greenland
By Souza, et al. Boreas, Jan 2021
[SEPP Comment: How geological stable is the island where the measurements were taken?]
New York Sea Level Rise Projections
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Oct 28, 2021
Changing Cryosphere – Land / Sea Ice
Pt 2: How Sea Ice Controls Arctic Heat Ventilation and Arctic Air Temperatures
By Jim Steele, A Walk On the Natural Side, Oct 20, 2021
Antarctica’s Record Lows Get the Cold, Cold Shoulder
By Michael Kile, Quadrant, Oct 24, 2021
Unable to See the Polar Bears for the Snow
By Jennifer Marohasy, Her Blog, Oct 28, 2021
Caught on film: polar bear stalks, kills [in the water] and eats a Svalbard reindeer but climate change is hardly to blame
By Susan Crockford, Polar Bear Science, Oct 26, 2021
“It does indicate that conservation practices initiated in the 20th century that were meant to bolster reindeer and caribou numbers (similarly true for beluga, walrus, and geese) have resulted in more chances for polar bears to be successful in the 21st century despite reduced summer sea ice. Oddly, this seems to have caught some biologists by surprise.”
[SEPP Comment: So much for bears stranded on ice not being able to swim.]
Agriculture Issues & Fear of Famine
Crop Failures & The “Climate Disaster”
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 26, 2021
Climate Change Contributes to Another Year of Record Crop Production in India
By Vijay Jayaraj, WUWT, Oct 28, 2021
Record Grain Harvest In India
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 26, 2021
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Climate hammers
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 27, 2021
Have You Seen The Guardian’s Climate Disaster? It Appears To Have Gone Missing!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 28, 2021
“The more the push back against Net Zero grows, the more desperate the propaganda becomes:”
Communicating Better to the Public – Exaggerate, or be Vague?
Stern is wrong again
By Tim Worstall, Net Zero Watch, Oct 27, 2021
Looking for patterns
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 27, 2021
Increasing large wildfires over the western United States linked to diminishing sea ice in the Arctic
By Yufei Zou, et al. Nature Communications, Oct 26, 2021 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
[SEPP Comment: What caused the wildfires in the early 1900s?]
‘Never seen anything like it’: astronaut on 2021 climate disasters
By Juliette COLLEN
Paris (AFP) Oct 28, 2021
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
Top UN Climate Official: World Conflict and Refugee Chaos if you Disobey
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 26, 2021
“According to the UN’s top climate official Patricia Espinosa, if nations fail to follow the UN’s direction on climate change, they will face food shortages, conflict and a flood of climate refugees.”
BBC’s Fake Climate Audit Screengrab
By Stephen McIntyre, Climate Audit, Oct 25, 2021
“There are many other tricks and deceptions by BCC and Sheers in The Trick. Indeed, the entire premise of the narrative turns out to be a “trick”, as I will discuss in a forthcoming post. A program that, as Jon Stewart might say, the purpose of which was to trick you … into not knowing about the trick to hide the decline.”
World faces growing threat of ‘unbearable’ heatwaves
By Robin Simmonds with Sebastien Vuagnat in Death Valley, with AFP bureaus
London (AFP) Oct 28, 2021
If I could walk that way…
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 27, 2021
SourceWatch on IER: Error Laden, Dated
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Oct 26, 2021
Communicating Better to the Public – Do a Poll?
Cooked Up Consensus: Lynas et al “Should Rather Be Classified As Propaganda, Bad Science”…”Truly Brazen”
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Oct 26, 2021
“Only consensus: man has some impact.”
Majority Of Brits Unwilling To Give Up Planes, Cars And New Clothes For Climate
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 27, 2021
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
UN features dinosaur in climate message: ‘Save your species’
By Lexi Lonas, The Hill, Oct 28, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Abandon fossil fuels and embrace poverty!]
Expanding the Orthodoxy
Progressive Craziness Of The Day: SEC Obsesses Over “Climate” Risk Disclosures
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Oct 25, 2021
Permafrost: a ticking carbon time bomb
By Johannes Ledel
Abisko, Sweden (AFP) Oct 25, 2021
Questioning European Green
Vaunted Energiewende is Failing
By Donn Dears, Power For USA, Oct 29, 2021
“Why do we have net-zero carbon polices when its obvious they will fail?”
CCC’s Net Zero Plans Rely On Dramatic Rise In Windy Days
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 24, 2021
“The Committee on Climate Change have been caught cheating:”
German Energy Prices “Going Through The Roof”, Supply Tightens As Leaders Botch Energy Policy
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Oct 23, 2021
German Energy Experts Warn Of Deindustrialization: “Saving World’s Climate From German Soil Is Illusory”
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Oct 22, 2021
Questioning Green Elsewhere
The Green Raw Deal
By Sean Spicer, Real Clear Energy, Oct 22, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Review of a chapter in Sean Spicer’s new book, Radical Nation: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s Dangerous Plan for America.]
Funding Issues
Climate Financing Plan Won’t Help Climate, but Will Push Country to Totalitarianism: Experts
By Petr Svab, The Epoch Times, Oct 26, 2021 [H/t Zero Hedge]
We’ll spend $120 b because a foreign unaccountable committee says so, but we won’t spend 0.1% of that checking their science
By Jo Nova, He Blog, Oct 27, 2021
The Political Games Continue
Chilling Free Speech and Silencing Dissent: Upcoming Congressional Hearing Demonstrates the Wrong Path on Climate Change
By Anthony Caso, Real Clear Energy, Oct 27, 2021
Democrats hope to hold Big Oil ‘accountable’
By Rachel Frazin and Zack Budryk, The Hill, Oct 27, 2021
Maloney to subpoena top oil companies over climate ‘disinformation campaign’
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, Oct 28, 2021
[SEPP comment: According to House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), the oil companies must make up evidence that they contradicted the UN’s disinformation campaign?]
EPA and other Regulators on the March
6 in 10 blame oil companies for climate change: poll
By Monique Beals, The Hill, Oct 26, 2021
Link to: Causes of Climate Change
By Staff: EPA, Accessed Oct 28, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Complete with the fake 2000 year-hockey-stick.]
Energy Issues – Non-US
Sixth Carbon Budget Does Not Add Up!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 27, 2021
Link to report: The Sixth Carbon Budget: The UK’s path to Net Zero
By Staff, Committee on Climate Change, Dec 9, 2020
file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/The-Sixth-Carbon-Budget-The-UKs-path-to-Net-Zero.pdf
“We are sleep walking into a disaster, led by the CCC who seem oblivious of the fact.”
Michael Shellenberger: ‘The main cause of energy shortages is the under-investment in oil & gas exploration driven by climate activism’
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 28, 2021
Energy Issues – Australia
Australia is the Greatest Global Carbon Patsy– Is Scott Morrison the worst negotiator on Earth?
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 24, 2021
[SEPP Comment: With its heavy investment in “free wind” electricity prices in South Australia approach those in Denmark and Germany.]
Australian Comedy Hour: Net Zero Pledge Will Not Impose New Taxes or Kill Jobs
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 25, 2021
Energy Issues — US
It’s Time to Rethink Policy Choices Driving Higher Winter Energy Bills
By Todd Snitchler, Real Clear Energy, Oct 25, 2021
Meeting state offshore wind, renewable goals requires up to $3.2B in transmission, PJM says
By Ethan Howland, Utility Dive, Oct 21, 2021
Link to report: Offshore Wind Transmission Study: Phase 1 Results
By Staff, PJM Interconnection, Oct 19, 2021
From the article: “The transmission projects and renewable generation would lower customer costs by reducing the use of more expensive fossil-fueled power plants and removing transmission bottlenecks on the grid while allowing for more exports to the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, PJM said in the report released Tuesday.”
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
Harvard Business Review: Solar, Wind, Battery Trash Wave Ahead (negative externalities from government subsidies)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Oct 27, 2021
Link to: The Dark Side of Solar Power
By Atalay Atasu, Serasu Duran, and Luk N. Van Wassenhove, Harvard Business Review, June 18, 2021https://hbr.org/2021/06/the-dark-side-of-solar-power
[SEPP Comment: The Harvard Business Review authors apologize for explaining this inconvenience?]
Wind Power Health Effects (latest from Scientific Reports)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Oct 28, 2021
India Group Starts on $10 Billion Plan for Solar Power
By Darrell Proctor, Power Mag, Oct 10, 2021
Study: Volcanic Ash A Major Problem For PV Panels, (Never Mind Dust, Snow, Clouds, Darkness, Weeds)
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Oct 24, 2021
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Other
Pioneering 10-MW Baseload Hydrogen Power Plant Breaks Ground in French Guiana
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, Oct 7, 2021
“The plant will comprise a solar PV park, a 16-MW electrolysis platform, a long-term hydrogen storage unit, two 1.5-MW fuel cell systems, as well as a short-term lithium-ion battery storage unit. When commissioned as planned in mid-2023, the plant will deliver a “fixed and guaranteed” power capacity of 10 MW between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. and 3 MW between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., it said.”
[SEPP Comment: At a project cost of $200 million.]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
Several German cities halt use of e-buses following series of unresolved cases of fire
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 24, 2021
California Dreaming
Is California Experiencing More “Weather Whiplash”?
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Oct 26, 2021
“During the dry years, the people forgot about the rich years, and when the wet years returned, they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way. — John Steinbeck, East of Eden”
Other News that May Be of Interest
United Nations to Texas: Curb reliance on oil and gas to remain prosperous in era of climate change
Texas leads the US in energy production and carbon dioxide emissions. At an upcoming climate change summit, nations will be asked to rapidly cut their emissions.
By David Schechter, KVUE ABC, Oct 23, 2021
Texas to United Nations: Pound Sand
A rather direct Tweet from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Via WUWT, by Charles Rotter, Oct 25, 2021
See link immediately above.
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
Andreas Malm On the Environmental Movement and “Intelligent Sabotage”
Podcast with Dorothy Wickenden, The New Yorker, Sep 27, 2021
Actress Joanna Lumley Calls For Rationing and Social Climate Credits
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 27, 2021
Oregon State: The Ancient Greeks Caused Climate Change by Killing Belief in Dryads
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 24, 2021
From: Michael Paul Nelson, Professor of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, Oregon State University and Kathleen Dean Moore, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Oregon State University
ARTICLES
1. Solar and Wind Force Poverty on Africa
Letting us use reliable energy doesn’t mean a climate disaster.
By Yoweri K. Museveni, WSJ, Oct. 24, 2021
The president of Uganda writes [with slight edits]:
“Africa can’t sacrifice its future prosperity for Western climate goals. The continent should balance its energy mix, not rush straight toward renewables—even though that will likely frustrate some of those gathering at next week’s global climate conference in Glasgow.
“My continent’s energy choices will dictate much of the climate’s future. Conservative estimates project that Africa’s population of 1.3 billion will double by 2050. Africans’ energy consumption will likely surpass that of the European Union around the same time.
“Knowing this, many developed nations are pushing an accelerated transition to renewables on Africa. The Western aid-industrial complex, composed of nongovernmental organizations and state development agencies, has poured money into wind and solar projects across the continent. This earns them praise in the U.S. and Europe but leaves many Africans with unreliable and expensive electricity that depends on diesel generators or batteries on overcast or still days. Generators and the mining of lithium for batteries are both highly polluting.
“This stands to forestall Africa’s attempts to rise out of poverty, which require reliable energy. African manufacturing will struggle to attract investment and therefore to create jobs without consistent energy sources. Agriculture will suffer if the continent can’t use natural gas to create synthetic fertilizer or to power efficient freight transportation.
“A better solution is for Africa to move slowly toward a variety of reliable green energy sources. Wildlife-friendly mini hydro technologies should be a part of the continent’s energy mix. They allow for 24-hour-a-day energy production and can be installed along minor rivers without the need for backup energy. Coal-fired power stations can be converted to burning biomass, and carbon capture can help in the meantime. Nuclear power is also already being put to good use in South Africa, while Algeria, Ghana and Nigeria operate research reactors with the intent of building full-scale nuclear facilities.
“All this will take time, meaning Africa will have to use fossil fuels as it makes the transition. Natural gas is a greener option that will help the continent reduce emissions even as it grows, as developed nations have done themselves.
“Saying any of this meets with backlash from developed nations. Instead of reliable renewables or greener fossil fuels, aid money and development investments go to pushing solar and wind, with all their accompanying drawbacks. And many Western nations have put a blanket ban on public funding for a range of fossil-fuel projects abroad, making it difficult for Africa to make the transition to cleaner non-renewables.
“In the coming decades my continent will have a strong influence on global warming. But it doesn’t now. Were sub-Saharan Africa (minus South Africa) to triple its electricity consumption overnight, powering the new usage entirely by gas, it would add only 0.6% to global carbon emissions.
“Africans have a right to use reliable, cheap energy, and doing so doesn’t prevent the development of the continent’s renewables. Forcing Africa down one route will hinder our fight against poverty.”
****************
2. Climate Activists Blow Smoke on Wildfire Fears
The amount of land burned has declined steadily since 1900, even with rising temperatures.
By Bjorn Lomborg, WSJ, Oct. 27, 2021
TWTW Summary: The president of the Copenhagen Consensus and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution writes:
“Add wildfires to the long list of natural disasters that are overhyped in climate coverage. It scares adults and kids alike, as when Rep. Katie Porter’s (D., Calif.) 9-year-old daughter worries: ‘The Earth is on fire and we’re all going to die soon.’ This simply isn’t true.
“In the early 1900s, about 4.2% of land world-wide burned every year, as you can see on the nearby graph. A century later, that had dropped almost to 3%. That decline has continued through the satellite era, and 2021 is likely to end with only 2.5% of the globe having caught fire, based on data through Aug. 31.
“This data is entirely noncontroversial. Even a report from the World Wildlife Fund—chillingly subtitled ‘a crisis raging out of control?’—concedes midway through that ‘the area of land burned globally has actually been steadily declining since it started to be recorded in 1900.’
“Human ingenuity gets the credit: People have moved from hearths to power stations, converted untamed land into protected farms, and created enough excess wealth that societies can increasingly afford to defend our surroundings with fire suppression and forest management.
“Climate studies that predict significantly more fires typically ignore this history. They model only temperature changes, excluding what people might do in response. As this year’s United Nations climate report argued, fire weather—conditions conducive to wildfires—is going to become more common as temperatures continue to increase. But this doesn’t mean people will sit idly by and let it happen.
“When models factor in human adaptation, it turns out that these increases in fire damage disappear. An April study predicts that population growth and economic development will overwhelm the potential of global warming to encourage fires. Climate policies could achieve a greater reduction in burned land, but at the cost of many trillions of dollars.
“Much of the media coverage of wildfires is similarly ignorant of data. The Los Angeles Times’s entire front page screamed about ‘California’s Climate Apocalypse’ last fall as wildfires burned through the state. But those fires look unremarkable in historical context. Before 1800 wildfires on average burned between 4.5% and 12% of California each year, far more than the 4.2% of the state consumed by the ‘climate apocalypse’ in 2020.
“While the share of the U.S. burned by wildfires has risen since the 1980s, influenced in part by climate change, that’s not the whole story. Fires in the U.S. today burn less than a fifth of the area that was scorched each year in the 1930s, and an expert panel found that the recent uptick is mostly the result of poor forest management.”
After examples of sensational press in Australia, Lomborg continues:
It is true that more people will probably be threatened by fires in the future, but this is because part of the world’s growing population will settle where wildfires are more common. The number of homes in high-fire-risk zones in the Western U.S. has increased 13-fold over the past 80 years and is set to increase further by 2050. A 2016 Nature study concludes this is true globally. ‘Contrary to common perception,’ the researchers write, ‘human exposure to wildfires increases in the future mainly owing to projected population growth in areas with frequent wildfires, rather than by a general increase in burned area.’
Helping future wildfire victims has little to do with strict and expensive climate policies, and everything to do with simpler, cheaper measures like better forest management and building codes. There’s no good reason to terrify children with stories of apocalyptic firestorms.
SC25 is slowly progressing up the scale, but at this rate it appears that this minimum is slightly weaker than the one hundred years ago, considerably weaker than the Dalton minimum, and it is unlikely to make strong impact on the global temperatures.
Correction: This is current graph
Waiting for Roy Spencer’s latest update fingers xed
+0.37
Sunspots are very faint during this solar cycle.
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Dipall.gif
Lack of synchronization of the activity of the solar hemispheres.
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/north.gif
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/south.gif
Asymmetry between two hemisphere in both polar fields and the sunspot count is widely known. Due to the availability of historic SSN data it is well documented, it changes about every 5 or so cycles having just under 110 year periodicity, coinciding with periodicity of the Grand minima.
This year, winter in the US begins on the first of November.
Temperatures are dropping in the northeastern Pacific.
All indications are that the NAO this winter may be negative, which will provide snowfall in Western Europe.
A front from the north will cause a “lake effect” and snowfall in the Great Lakes region.
Such large anomalies over the continents increasingly convince me that during periods of low solar activity, as humidity in the upper troposphere decreases, anomalies near the surface will increase, and this will be true in both summer and winter.
Already a large high is visible over central Canada and the US.
The NAO is falling again, and the forecast doesn’t show much change. This means precipitation and gradual cooling in Western and Central Europe. Demand for gas and coal will increase further. High gas and coal prices will continue.
Great cloud shot! What are the five people doing in the pic (leading pic) at the top of the posting?