The Week That Was: 2022-01-01 (January 1, 2022)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn’t get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.” ‒ Richard Feynman
Number of the Week: Thousands of papers
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: Due to unforeseen computer problems, this TWTW will not start a review of the important scientific papers and limitations discussed during 2021. That will begin next week. This TWTW will cover some of the interesting issues in climate science and energy policy raised over the past two weeks.
On his web site, Ross McKitrick has an explanation of his important paper for those without a background in probability theory and inferential statistics, taking data from samples to generalize about the population. The paper shows that the sudden growth in attribution of extreme weather events to climate change over the past twenty years is without a solid logical basis. The paper has been criticized as not important. But those who criticize it may not understand the importance between deduction and induction in logic.
Writing in The American Mind, J Scott Turner reviews how the US government became involved in funding major science, particularly at universities. This may explain, in part, why many universities have become closed-minded against those who think independently. Turner does not contest the views of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its followers.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, columnist Joseph Sternberg expresses his views on how the western politicians who made great promises at the 26th UN Conference of Parties (COP 26) will go forward now that China, India, and Russia said NO to the grand scheme. This is interesting because the voters in western democracies are slowly becoming aware of the costs of the great promises.
Several months ago, the Biden administration was making a great deal over the costs of climate change to financial institutions. It suddenly stopped. A November report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York may be the reason.
Roger Pielke Jr. brings attention to a retraction of a paper by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The paper was overseen through the peer review process by Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a White House official who is currently overseeing President Biden’s Scientific Integrity Task Force. The event calls into question her judgement in scientific integrity. Further, S. Stanley Young, who was on EPA’s Science Advisory Board, was purged by the Biden Administration. He has sued under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).
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Attribution of Events to Cause: Ross McKitrick became involved in the UN IPCC’s version of climate science when he and statistician Steven McIntyre began examining the Third Assessment Report which featured Mr. Mann’s infamous hockey-stick, which did away with the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Among other issues, they found that the statistical process used by Mr. Mann and the IPCC produces a hockey-stick shape from random noise. They recommended that the IPCC use qualified statisticians or econometricians to review such statistical work before it is published by the IPCC. The IPCC continues to ignore such practical advice.
As discussed in previous TWTWs such as on August 28, McKitrick reviewed a study by Allen and Tett (1999, referred to AT99) and found that the study fails to meet the conditions of the Gauss-Markov theorem for making reliable assessments of probability. McKitrick’s paper was published by the same journal that published AT99. As McKitrick states in his simplified explanation:
My article in Climate Dynamics shows that the AT99 method is theoretically flawed and gives unreliable results. A careful statement of the implications must note an elementary principle of logic. Remember that, according to logic, we can say “Suppose A implies B; then if A is true therefore B is true.” Example: all dogs have fur; a beagle is a dog; therefore, a beagle has fur. But we cannot say “Suppose A implies B; A is not true therefore B is not true.” Example: all dogs have fur; a cat is not a dog, therefore a cat does not have fur. But we can say “Suppose A implies B; A is not true therefore we do not know if B is true.” Example: all dogs have fur; a dolphin is not a dog, therefore we do not know if a dolphin has fur.
In this example “A” is the statistical argument in AT99 which they invoked to prove “B”—the claim that their model yields unbiased and valid results. I showed that “A”, their statistical argument, is not true. So, we have no basis to say that their model yields unbiased and valid results. In my article I go further and explain why there are reasons to believe the results will typically be invalid. I also list the conditions needed to prove their claims of validity. I don’t think it can be done, for reasons stated in the paper, but I leave open the possibility. Absent such proof, applications of their method over the past 20 years leave us uninformed about the influence of GHG’s on the climate. Here I will try to explain the main elements of the statistical argument.
A similar problem in logic was involved with the development of the scientific method. For about 1500 years European philosophers thought that deductive logic could infer things about the physical world without observation. The classic example is all swans are white. If it is a swan, it is white. Then in 1697 Dutch explorers discovered black swans in Australia turning the logic false. (Note that this is the basis of the “black swan strategy” in investments.)
In the section Replying to Responses, McKitrick addresses those who reject correction of their logic and the IPCC’s logic:
A number of commentators on my paper have tried to shrug my criticism off as unimportant or irrelevant. But AT99 has been used hundreds of times in the climate literature and studies applying it have been cited thousands of times. Also, the IPCC chose to focus on AT99 as soon as it appeared, promoting it in the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR Chapter 12, Box 12.1, Section 12.4.3 10 and Appendix 12.1), and it has been referenced in every IPCC Assessment Report since. TAR Appendix 12.1 was headlined “Optimal Detection is Regression” and [it] began
The detection technique that has been used in most “optimal detection” studies performed to date has several equivalent representations (Hegerl and North, 1997; Zwiers, 1999). It has recently been recognised that it can be cast as a multiple regression problem with respect to generalised least squares (Allen and Tett, 1999; see also Hasselmann, 1993, 1997)
Their reliance on AT99 continues today: see AR6 Section 3.2.1. The relevance of my critique is proven by the heavy reliance the climate profession has placed on AT99 over the years, including the nearly exclusive reliance on the RC test and the absence of any mention of the conditional independence assumption.
More specifically, in considering any response to my paper, it will be important to note whether it actually disagrees with my paper, or simply tries to change the subject. I anticipate that a lot of respondents will implicitly concede that my paper is correct, but argue it doesn’t matter because so much time has gone by. However, as a matter of the scientific record it is important to understand and acknowledge if AT99 made errors in their mathematical presentation and whether the subsequent literature corrected those errors or simply carried them forward. As far as I have seen, they were carried forward in the sense that people still to this day rely on the RC test [a statistical test applied to sets of data to evaluate how likely it is that any observed difference between the sets arose by chance] and they still use AT99-type regression models without testing for specification errors associated with specific GM conditions.
Also, and more generally, if major errors in AT99 went unnoticed for so long, it calls into question how much confidence we can have in the various other methodologies that have been developed in climate journals in subsequent years. Having worked on paleoclimate reconstruction methods, trend estimation and comparisons methods, and now on optimal fingerprinting, comparing climate journals to stats or econometrics journals I find that climate journals seem to rely on referees who don’t know how to ask the right questions when confronted with a novel statistical method. My discussion of the introduction of the RC test contrasts what AT99 did with what you’d expect to see in a statistics or econometrics journal. 11 Another line of response has been that AT99 has been superseded by regularization methods (associated with Ribes, Terray, Hannart and so forth) and they get the same results. I mention this approach in my paper in a couple of places. Regularization is an alternative to the Moore-Penrose algorithm to estimate the inverse of the non-invertible climate noise matrix. It yields a full-rank approximation so there is no longer a dependence on the rank truncation parameter K. But there remains the problem of showing that the resulting estimator is consistent (see condition [N3] in my paper). It’s a computational improvement, possibly, but not a theoretical one. The regularization literature has never discussed the conditional independence assumption nor has it revisited the claims around the Gauss-Markov theorem applying. [Boldface added]
There are some other recent attribution methods, including time series methods (such as cointegrating vector autoregressions or CVAR) that do not make any use of climate models. My critique does not specifically apply to these. There may be other issues with them, but I haven’t looked at them in detail. The ones I have seen have largely been confined to analysing the time series of global average surface temperatures and have considered only a very limited number of explanatory variables. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Broken Science? J. Scott Turner begins his essay on modern US science with:
“The founding manifesto of the modern scientific enterprise—Vannevar Bush’s 1945 classic Science: The Endless Frontier—laid down a promise: that federalizing the academic sciences would protect the universities as bastions of free inquiry and curiosity-driven research. Without such support, Bush argued, the academic sciences would be captured and enslaved by government and corporate political interests. That argument was persuasive to the political authorities of the time. Now, seven decades later, that promise stands broken. Science’s “endless frontier” has become Big Science, a self-aggrandizing cartel organized around the aggressive pursuit of federal money.
“Science is grounded in Enlightenment virtues. Its core attributes are unfettered freedom of intellect; cultivation of curiosity; skepticism; dispassionate reason; and dedication to evidence. A robust modern science immensely enriches our society. In return, our society affords the sciences enormous privilege and prestige. This mutually beneficial bargain held for many generations. Scientists were free to roam the intellectual frontiers, the public mostly watched from a respectful distance, and both science and society flourished. That bargain is now unraveling, damaging both science and the society that supports it.
“Less and less do the sciences serve as bulwarks of reason against political and corporatist aims. To the contrary, the sciences are becoming stridently politicized, acting as a vanguard for an authoritarianism of “expertise”. Increasingly, science is being used as a cloak to shield political agendas from normal scrutiny and debate, thereby betraying the scientific ideal.
“These trends, and the reasons for them, are not hard to discern. Scientists’ careers are no longer charted by the esteem of peers, but increasingly by conformity to institutional and political interests. The natural immunity of tenure, which is intended to protect university scientists’ intellectual freedom, is being systematically gutted. Adhering to science’s core virtues, listed above, is becoming a career hazard. In the face of this, fellow scientists either remain silent, or become eager participants in a masquerade of “consensus.” Public trust in science, which turns on the common perception that scientists are avatars of dispassionate and independent inquiry, is becoming increasingly tattered. The COVID-19 spectacle is demonstrating just how fragile that public trust is.
“This trend is not new, but the intrusion of identity politics into the sciences has made it toxic. Distinguished scientific careers are snuffed out in an instant. The interests of favored identity groups become the primary criteria for advancement, trumping credentials, ability, and qualification. Fealty to dogma, not respect for reason, now determines whether careers will grow, be terminated prematurely, or be aborted before they begin. Conformity and risk-aversion, behaviors once alien to the scientific enterprise, are now pervasive, enforced in Star Chamber Human Resources inquisitions.”
After discussing several examples of those who wish to keep the federal money flowing, Turner concludes:
“The modern social bargain struck with science after the War was founded on the assumption that independent, skeptical, and dispassionate scholars would be an invaluable source of methodical good judgment and resistance to half-cocked political and corporate agendas. The Big Science cartel, propped up by enormous federal subsidies, has mostly subordinated those virtues. It is time to face a hard truth: the seventy-year experiment to federalize the sciences has been a failure. The task now is to prevent the Big Science cartel from further dehumanizing society and delegitimizing science. There is a second hard truth: the necessary reforms will not come from within. Rather, it will be the people and their representatives that will have to impose them. To restore science to its rightful and valuable place, break up the Big Science cartel.”
In his Farewell Address in 1961, President Eisenhower cautioned the nation about threats to public’s liberties and peace, including the military-industrial complex and:
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
“In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
“It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”
Are there statesmen in Washington willing to integrate patrician interests “within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society?” See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy and https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=90&page=transcript
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Just Fade Away? In his article, “Many Climate Ambitions Will End With 2021: In the U.K., Germany and France, leaders walk back as their plans’ exorbitant price tag becomes clear.” Joseph Sternberg begins:
It’s New Year’s resolution season, and don’t be surprised if politicians world-wide settle into the same informal pledge: Talk as little as possible about climate change in 2022. They’ve gotten a head start on that resolution, working hard at it even before Friday night’s socially distanced parties begin.
The biggest, most entertaining and also most telling climb-downs are happening in the U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson in October unveiled an ambitious policy program to get Britain to net-zero carbon-dioxide emissions by 2050. It was Mr. Johnson’s public-relations coup ahead of the COP26 global climate conference he hosted in Glasgow. It also was unusual in its honesty about what such environmental ambitions will cost individual households and businesses—a point politicians usually avoid for all the obvious reasons.
Sure enough, the backtracks and U-turns began before that document was written. The most controversial component of Mr. Johnson’s net-zero boondoggle concerns an attempt to steer households away from the gas boilers on which 86% of them rely for hot water and central heating.
Sternberg discusses that Johnson is in hot water over trying to have the government phase out natural gas heating units with “energy efficient” heat pumps. [Using gas boilers, hot water is circulated to distribute heat, but heat pumps require a forced air duct system that can be expensive to install in existing homes.] Sternberg discusses that French President Macron faces a re-election campaign where voters are uneasy about high fuel prices, even though electricity is primarily from nuclear plants. President Biden is having difficulties in his new green deal. Then, Sternberg writes:
But even in Germany there appears to be a limit. The deal cementing the coalition between the Greens, the larger Social Democrats and the smaller Free Democrats hedges its climate commitments. A coal phase-out will happen ideally by 2030—with the newly inserted word ‘ideally’ blunting Green ambitions by marking the whole project as tentative. Carbon neutrality will wait for 2045, if it ever comes, and more-aggressive limits on aviation and automotive emissions are missing.
The net-zero gimmick will be with us for a long while yet, alas. The green true believers (or are they bitter clingers?) are busy devising rear-guard actions by which to insulate environmentalism from real-world political pressures, not least by enlisting gullible or cynical titans of finance to do via pension-fund investment allocations what can’t be done honestly via legislation. The political class remains rhetorically wedded to its earlier foolhardy promises, and the media is too enamored of reality-detached activists such as Ms. Thunberg.
All the smarter then for politicians to resolve to discuss the matter as little as possible in the year ahead. As starving the atmosphere of carbon dioxide becomes a political liability, starving the issue of political oxygen will become the electoral tactic of choice. Is this the way bold green deals end, not with a bang but a whimper? See links under Questioning European Green, Energy Issues – Non-US and Article # 1.
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Mystery Solved? The great noise the Biden Administration was making about the staggering risks to financial institutions from climate change suddenly stopped. What happened? Was it the November report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York which asked the question: “How Bad Are Weather Disasters for Banks?” From the abstract:
“Not very. We find that weather disasters over the last quarter century had insignificant or small effects on U.S. banks’ performance. This stability seems endogenous rather than a mere reflection of federal aid. Disasters increase loan demand, which offsets losses and actually boosts profits at larger banks. Local banks tend to avoid mortgage lending where floods are more common than official flood maps would predict, suggesting that local knowledge may also mitigate disaster impacts.” [Boldface added]
So much for the Washington myth that the mythical climate crisis will financially crush banks and the Biden Bluster. It does not sell well in New York banks. See link under Funding Issues.
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Integrity? Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a marine ecologist recently at Oregon State University and head of NOAA during the Obama Administration, is in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President and with Alondra Nelson is an Ex Officio member of the Biden Administration’s Scientific Integrity Task Force “comprise of nearly 50 members representing agencies from across the Federal government.” As Alondra Nelson said of the task force:
“We need all of America to help protect scientific integrity and restore public trust,”
Roger Pielke Jr. discusses that the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) retracted a paper on advocating protected marine areas for which Lubchenco was the editor. Lubchenco became the editor of the retracted paper after she and one of its co-authors submitted another paper with the newly retracted paper as the key reference. Bandwagon Science or just Bait and Switch?
On a similar topic regarding integrity, namely the EPA advisory board, the editors of the Wall Street Journal write:
One calling card of the Biden Presidency has been its rush to sweep away restrictions on executive power. A purge at the Environmental Protection Agency has now become a legal case worth watching.
The suit was brought in October by S. Stanley Young, a scientist appointed to the EPA’s Science Advisory Board in 2017 and reappointed in 2020 for another three-year term. In March new EPA Administrator Michael Regan —20 days on the job—abruptly sacked the entire board and the agency’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. He then restocked both with green cheerleaders. Any interested person or organization can make nominations for the board and committee, and Mr. Young, who worked as a statistician for the pharmaceutical industry, was renominated for both bodies after the purge. EPA passed him over.
The 40-to-50-member science board and the seven-member clean air committee offer advice that isn’t binding. But their recommendations guide agency decisions. Conservatives chafed at green dominance of the boards, and the Trump Administration opened more seats to industry scientists. Liberals raised a fuss, and Mr. Regan cast his political dismissals as a question of scientific integrity. That’s a convenient political cover, but no Administration before this one had fired boards en masse.
Mr. Young says in Young v. EPA that his dismissal is illegal under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). That 1972 law requires that advisory committees be “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented,” and EPA policy and history is to consider “a cross-section of stakeholders directly affected/interested” in and by EPA decisions.
The new Biden boards have no industry-affiliated member. The 47-member science board is made up of academics, tribal associates, and representatives from the likes of the Environmental Defense Fund. The clean air board consists of six university professors and a state official.
After a brief discussion of new board members and stating that the “EPA priority clearly wasn’t science’”, the article concludes:
FACA also requires that an agency ensure that advisory committee decisions aren’t “inappropriately influenced” by that agency—since they are meant to be checks on bureaucratic overreach. Yet the Young lawsuit notes that some 20 board and committee members have collectively received hundreds of millions of dollars in EPA grants, and the Biden EPA failed to implement rules to guard against EPA influence over the grantees.
The left was outraged by a Trump EPA rule that prohibited grant recipients from serving on boards. That prohibition lost in court, which underscores the legal problem with Mr. Regan’s blackball of industry reps.
The EPA purge belies Mr. Biden’s desire to restore faith in government. The White House has also broken norms to fire the National Labor Relations Board counsel, a Social Security Administration commissioner, and members of the Administrative Conference. The courts now have a chance to enforce the law and reinforce proper administrative behavior.
See links under Litigation Issues, Article # 2 and https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2021/06/25/the-biden-administrations-scientific-integrity-task-force-seeks-ideas-from-the-american-people/
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Number of the Week: Thousands of papers. As Ross McKitrick states above
“However, as a matter of the scientific record it is important to understand and acknowledge if AT99 made errors in their mathematical presentation and whether the subsequent literature corrected those errors or simply carried them forward. As far as I have seen, they were carried forward in the sense that people still to this day rely on the RC test and they still use AT99-type regression models without testing for specification errors associated with specific GM [Gauss-Markov] conditions.”
Apparently, the IPCC and its followers believe more in Hollywood movies than in rigorous science.
“‘This is the West sir: When the Legend becomes Fact, Print the Legend.’ – from the movie ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.’”
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Science: Is the Sun Rising?
New Study: Absorbed Solar Radiation Increased From 1998-2017…Explaining Ocean Warming
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Dec 23, 2021
Link to one paper: Earth’s Albedo 1998–2017 as Measured From Earthshine
By P. R. Goode, Geophysical Research Letters, Aug 29, 2021
Commentary: Is the Sun Rising?
Solar influences show up in sea level rise, El Nino events and oceanic climatic cycles
By David Whitehouse, Net Zero Watch, Dec 30, 2021
“The Sun’s energy effects our climate but its influence is often ignored as changes in its intensity are very small. Its effect might be subtle but over decadal periods it adds up to being significant as a series of recent papers show.”
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
An Introductory-Level Explanation of my Critique of AT99
By Ross McKitrick, His Blog, August 25, 2021
Modern Science’s Broken Bargain
By J Scott Turner, The American Mind, Dec 20, 2021 [H/t Ron Clutz]
“It’s up to us to ensure progress serves our ends.”
2 More Studies: The Climate’s CO2 Sensitivity Is Low…Models Erroneously Overestimate CO2 Warming
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Dec 20, 2021
Link to latest paper: Solar and Anthropogenic Influences on Climate: Regression Analysis and Tentative Predictions
By Frank Stefani, Climate, Nov 3, 2021
The introduction to the paper starts:
“As the heir of great pioneers, modern climate science has had major difficulties in narrowing down its most prominent parameter—equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS)—from the ample range 1.5–4.5 K (per 2× CO2) that was already given in the Charney report. This lack of specificity is sometimes discussed in terms of various interfering socio-scientific and political factors. Yet, in addition to those more ‘subjective’ reasons for climate predictions to be that vague, there are at least two ‘objective’ ones: the paucity of precise and reliable experimental measurements of the climate sensitivity, and the unsatisfying state of understanding the complementary solar influence on the climate.”
Unsung Zeroes: The Top 10 Under-Reported Climate Flops of 2021
By Steve Milloy, Junk Science, Dec 28, 2021 [H/t WUWT]
It’s expensive to change the global climate, just ask the EU
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Dec 28, 2021
“It takes a really Big Government to do Really Stupid Things.”
Defending the Orthodoxy
Four environmental fights to watch in 2022
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Dec 26, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Drilling for oil and gas on federal lands and waters; EPA determining which waters are regulated in the US; how much will power plant emissions be regulated; will countries increase their climate commitments? Don’t expect China and India to follow the lead of fools.]
Climate crisis puts oil in the crosshairs, but dependence persists
By Julien Mivielle, Paris (AFP), Dec 26, 2021
Climate change 2021: There’s no turning back now
By Marlowe Hood, Paris (AFP), Dec 27, 2021
“And forests, soil and oceans — which absorb more than half of humanity’s carbon pollution — show signs of saturation.”
“In Glasgow, former Bank of England governor Mark Carney boasted that nearly 500 banks, insurers and asset managers worth $130 trillion were ready to finance climate action.
“’If we only had to transform one sector, or move one country off fossil fuels, we would have done so long ago,’ commented Christiana Figueres, who headed the UN climate convention when the Paris deal was struck.”
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
Climate Change Is Threatening 40% Of All Global Oil And Gas Reserves
By Irina Slav, Oil Price.com, Dec 16, 2021
Link to report: 40% of oil and gas reserves threatened by climate change
By Will Nichols and Rory Clisby, Verisk Maplecroft, Dec 16, 2021
From the report:
“More than 600 billion barrels equivalent of the world’s commercially recoverable oil and gas reserves are facing high or extreme risks from more frequent storms and floods, rising sea levels, and temperature extremes. According to our Climate Change Exposure Indices, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Nigeria are among the oil and gas producing countries where the risk of climate related events disrupting the flow of oil to global markets is highest. Between them, these three countries account for nearly 19% of commercially recoverable oil and gas.
“Climate-related supply threats to the oil and gas industry have already begun to manifest. This year a freeze in Texas knocked US oil and gas output to a three-year low, while Hurricane Ida caused a record 55 spills in the Gulf of Mexico and created historic disruptions to the supply of both crude oil and refined products. Record heat in Russia accelerated the melting of permafrost, a trend that has damaged 40% of buildings and infrastructure in northern regions heavily reliant on oil and gas production.”
[SEPP Comment: The “record 55 spills in the Gulf of Mexico” were recorded using a technology on Landsat 8, launched in 2013. Do the analysts know the number of oil spills in the 1970s and 80s? No!]
Guest post: How weather forecasts can spark a new kind of extreme-event attribution
Extreme weather events across the world this year have been hitting the headlines at an alarming rate.
By Three Ph.D.s and a candidate at University of Oxford, Carbon Brief, Dec 21, 2021
The 1970s Cooling Scare Was Real
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 24, 2021
Video
Unprecedented die-offs, melting ice: Climate change is wreaking havoc in the Arctic and beyond
By Susanne Rust, Phys.org, Dec 23, 2021 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
“’For me, it’s actually very emotional,’ said Thoman, the University of Alaska climate specialist, recalling his elementary school days, when he read Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” and other stories from the Arctic.
“’The environment that he described, the environment that I saw going through National Geographics in the 1970s? That environment doesn’t exist anymore.’”
[SEPP Comment: Which version of “To Build a Fire” does the climate specialist fondly recall: the first version (1902) where the protagonist suffers severe frostbite, or the second version (1908) where the man freezes to death? Which would he prefer to experience?]
Questioning the Orthodoxy
Fishy Science
Implications of the retraction of a recent paper for scientific integrity in the White House
By Roger Pielke Jr., The Honest Broker, Dec 22, 2021 [H/t Mark Albright]
Link to retracted paper: A global network of marine protected areas for food
By Reniel B. Cabral, et al., PNAS, Oct 26, 2020
Link to a fuller description of the problem: Retraction of flawed MPA study implicates larger problems in MPA science
By Max Mossler, Sustainable Fisheries, Dec 8, 2021
Manchin’s Not The Climate Problem
By Patrick Michaels, CEI, Via WUWT, Dec 28, 2021
The New Climate of Panic Among the Panic-Mongers
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, American Thinker, Dec 31, 2021
Finally, New York State Tells The World How To Achieve Net Zero Carbon Emissions
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Dec 29, 2021
“In 2019 the New York legislature enacted the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act), self-described on the State’s website as ‘the nation-leading [law] to empower every New Yorker to fight climate change at home, at work, and in their communities.’”
[SEPP Comment: Politicians know how to glorify themselves. What if a citizen does not to do what their leadership wants?]
Iodine in desert dust destroys ozone
Press Release, University of Colorado at Boulder, Via WUWT, Dec 26, 2021
Link to paper: Ozone depletion due to dust release of iodine in the free troposphere
By Theodore Koenig, et al. AAAS Science Advances, Dec 22, 2021
[SEPP Comment: More problems with the claim that HFC destroy Antarctic ozone.]
Nothing it can’t do
By John Robeson Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 22, 2021
[SEPP Comment; The power of climate change.]
The CO2 Shot and The Endangerment Finding
By Staff, Climate Craze, Dec 30, 2021 [H/t John Droz]
Video
After Paris!
In 2021, climate ambitions soared and crashed in the U.S. and around the world
By Dan Charles, NPR, Dec 22, 2021
Is COP26 on Life Support and Could the 2022 Elections Pull the Plug?
By Larry Goldstein & Michael Lynch, Real Clear Energy, Dec 23, 2021
Matt McGrath’s [BBC] Storm Clouds Gather
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 30, 2021
“What he has identified, without appreciating the consequences himself, is that it is one thing making grandiose pledges at climate summits. But it is a totally different thing to carry them out.”
Change in US Administrations
Column: Don’t lose your mind reading mainstream energy chronicles – try these for immediate relief
By Terry Etam, BOE Report, Dec 22, 2021 [H/t WUWT]
“Biden swore to beef up US production of ‘products critical to our national and economic security’ but then excluded oil from that category even though it is hard to imagine a product that would be more important to US national/economic security.”
Biden’s Tornado Climate Ambulance-Chasing
By Steve Milloy, Real Clear Energy, Dec 22, 2021
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
Stop Whining about Wine, 60 Minutes, Data Show Grape Production Doing Well
By H. Sterling Burnett, Climate Realism, Dec 28, 2021
[SEPP Comment: The issue is the sugar content of the ripe fruit not total production.]
Problems in the Orthodoxy
China’s Role in Climate Change
By Donn Dears, Power For USA, Dec 28, 2021
See link immediately below.
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 [H/t Power for USA]
1. Why would China intentionally pursue the presumed destruction of the Earth?
The answer to the first question is likely to be that China sees the threat of climate change as readily manageable regardless of what one believes about the underlying physics (remember that China’s leaders, as opposed to ours, tend to have technical backgrounds).
2. Moreover, why are the Anglosphere and the EU pursuing hugely disruptive, destructive, and expensive policies intended to reduce their already largely irrelevant emissions?
The second question is more worrisome because of the patent illogic of proposals claiming to address climate change. Confronted with natural disasters, it is obvious that richer societies are more resilient than poorer societies.
Thus, it would seem that confronted with what is claimed is an existential threat over which we, in fact, have almost no influence, it seems obvious that the correct policy would be to increase resilience against disasters. Instead, the West is proposing to do the very opposite
China and India drive coal to record highs
By Max Hall, PV Magazine, Dec 20, 2021
Link to report: Coal: Analysis and forecast to 2024
By Staff, International Energy Agency (IEA), 2021
http://www.cfact.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Coal2021.pdf
Russia Is Right, There Is No Connection Between Climate, National Security, and the United Nations’ Mission
By H. Sterling Burnett, Climate Realism, Dec 16, 2021
Seeking a Common Ground
The climate change conformists
It’s always easier to feel certain about that which is uncertain. Just ask Joe Biden
By Peter Wood, Spectator World, Dec 15, 2021
“’Climate change’ is just a mental tattoo — a phrase we invoke with an air of scientific sophistication to give some sense of knowledgeability about the unknowable.”
“My sincere belief in the importance of reducing carbon emissions by raising the price of gasoline and natural gas may have little effect on my well-financed lifestyle, while it severely curtails the options of those on a smaller household budget, but that takes nothing away from my earnest goodwill. I want the best for everyone in the long run. Calling my view a ‘luxury belief’ just because the policy impinges more on my dry-cleaner than it does on me is just an ad hominem argument. The real question is whether it is good policy, and I say it is.”
Year in review
By Judith Curry, Climate Etc., Dec 30, 2021
Science, Policy, and Evidence
As Bill de Blasio Prepares To Leave Office, Part II – Homelessness
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Dec 31, 2021
Measurement Issues — Atmosphere
Science, Earth’s Energy Budget
By Staff, NASA, CERES, Accessed Dec 31, 2021
Changing Weather
Ryan Maue on Temperature Anomalies
By Ryan Maue, Via WUWT, Dec 24, 2021
“You can’t point to 1% of the Earth and say “climate change” when there’s obviously balancing cold elsewhere.
“And, you can’t compare raw temperature anomalies on different parts of the globe at the same time!
“Why? The background variance or typical temperature change on a given day may be +/- 50°F in Alberta or Minnesota vs. only +/- 1°F in the tropics.
“You must normalize!”
Why Does Western Washington Have Some of the Worst Roadway Icing in the Country? And the Next Snowstorm in Sight
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Dec 27, 2021
“Another interesting aspect of this event has been the terrific steam fog produced over the Sound and other local water bodies. When very cold air passes over relatively warm water, you can get tendrils of steam fog.” [Boldface in original.]
Climate Insanity: “… No individual in Florida should own their own home …”
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 14, 2021
Link to study: Florida Keys Coastal Storm Risk: Management Feasibility Study
By Rachel Haug, et al. Senior Planner and Study Lead, Norfolk District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE), 2021
[SEPP Comment: Contrary to what the article discussed in WUWT implies, the COE study does not give estimates of sea level rise. It discusses important protection against coastal storms.]
Increasingly Powerful Tornadoes???
By Robert Vislocky, WUWT, Dec 29, 2021
Tornado roundup
By John Robeson Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 22, 2021
“So maybe there is a connection between warming and tornadoes: more warming might mean fewer of them. If that hypothesis is verified, scientists may eventually tell us. But we have no faith that alarmist politicians will be interested in listening to the science.”
Snowfall EVERY DAY Atop Kilimanjaro – Where Is Al Gore?
By James Taylor, Climate Realism, Dec 13, 2021
The new historical flood of 2021 in the Amazon River compared to major floods of the 21st century: Atmospheric features in the context of the intensification of floods
By Jhan-Carlo Espinozaa, et al. Science Direct, Via WUWT, Dec 30, 2021
“As documented in the previous major floods of the 21st century (2009 and 2012), the 2021 flood also occurs under La Niña conditions in the central equatorial Pacific; however, in 2012 flood conditions are observed early over northwestern Amazon tributaries, since October 2011. In addition, warm conditions are observed over the tropical Atlantic during December 2020–March 2021. In accordance with this feature, increased atmospheric water vapor is imported by easterly winds from this oceanic region into the northern Amazon Basin.”
[SEPP Comment: Long post.]
1920 or 2020? Cape Otway Edition
By John Robeson Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 22, 2021
Changing Climate
Study: The Urban Heat Island Penalty Grows, Especially at Night
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Dec 19, 2021
Link to paper: Urbanization amplifies nighttime heat stress on warmer days over the US
By Chandan Sarangi, et al. Geophysical Research Letters, Dec 9, 2021
Link to a previous paper:
Urbanization Magnified Nighttime Heat Waves in China
By Zitong Shi,, et al. , Geophysical Research Letters, Aug 2, 2021
Changing Seas
Peter Ridd: Too much coral is not enough – but it’s not good either
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 21, 2021
Bad news for the Obamas
By John Robeson Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 22, 2021
“And for Bill Gates, Al Gore and all the other wealthy alarmists who own oceanfront mansions. NBC news has announced: ‘Antarctic ice shelf could crack, raise seas by feet within decade, scientists warn’. And when scientists warn it’s even more ominous than when they just say.”
No ‘Day After Tomorrow’… German Oceanographer Sees No Reliable Trend Suggesting Slowdown In Atlantic Gulf Stream
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Dec 28, 2021
Changing Cryosphere – Land / Sea Ice
Arctic Ocean started getting warmer decades earlier than we thought, study finds
Press Release, by University of Cambridge, Via Not Tricks Zone, Dec 29, 2021
More Evidence: [Some] Glaciers Existing Today Were Absent [or Smaller] For Nearly All Of The Last 10,000 Years
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Dec 27, 2021
Link to one paper: The Holocene dynamics of Ryder Glacier and ice tongue in north Greenland
By Matt O’Regan, et al. The Cryosphere, Aug 24, 2021
From abstract: “Presently, Ryder Glacier is grounded more than 40 km seaward of its inferred position during the Middle Holocene, highlighting the potential for substantial retreat in response to ongoing climate change.”
Agriculture Issues & Fear of Famine
Coming Jan 2022: USDA’s Useless, Expensive ‘Bioengineered’ Food Label
By Cameron English, ACSH, Dec 20, 2021
Un-Science or Non-Science?
Claim: Melting of the Antarctic ice sheet could cause multi-meter rise in sea levels by the end of the millennium
Press Release by Hokkaido University, Via WUWT, Dec 23, 2021
Link to paper: Mass loss of the Antarctic ice sheet until the year 3000 under a sustained late-21st-century climate
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 December 2021
By Christopher Chamber, et al., Journal of Glaciology, Sep 14, 2020
[SEPP Comment: What is the late 21st century climate, how is it determined?]
Lowering Standards
We’ll see your glacier and raise you an ocean
By John Robeson Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 22, 2021
“Yes, folks. In the New York Times. Not the National Enquirer. All the hype that’s fit to print. And we are all going to die. In fact we probably already did.”
Wildlife Suffering From Climate Change–National Trust
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 29, 2021
Pick Up A Penguin!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 27, 2021
“Apparently the Royal Navy has nothing better to do!”
Yet Another Garbage Study On BPA: This Time In JAMA.
By Josh Bloom, ACSH, Dec 20, 2021
“JAMA Network Open is a monthly open access medical journal published by the American Medical Association covering all aspects of the biomedical sciences. It was established in 2018 and the founding editor-in-chief is Fred Rivara.” — Wikipedia
BBC Climate Check For 1961 (The One They Won’t Broadcast!)
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 26, 2021
Matt McGrath [BBC] Trumpets The Latest Hurricane Junk Science
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 31, 2021
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
4 Awful Science Journalism Trends That Should Die In 2022
By Cameron English, ACSH, Dec 15, 2021
Time Magazine: Did We Just Blow Our Last Chance to Tackle Climate Change?
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 31, 2021
Arctic olive groves in flames
By John Robeson Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 22, 2021
Discover Magazine Declares Victory Over Climate Deniers
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 22, 2021
Three Years Till The Guardian’s Global Climate Catastrophe
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 28, 2021
Communicating Better to the Public – Exaggerate, or be Vague?
10 weather disasters caused $170B in damage this year: report
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Dec 27, 2021
Link to report: New report: Extreme weather driven by climate change cost the world billions in 2021
By Staff, Christian Aid, Dec 27, 2021
From the press release of the report: “A new Savanta ComRes poll commissioned by Christian Aid has found that despite the pandemic dominating the headlines, the UK public think the climate crisis should be the Government’s top priority heading into 2022, above healthcare, the economy, crime, social care and housing.”
[SEPP Comment: Trolling for dollars. The Christine Aid report stated that Hurricane Ida was the most expensive event. Hurricane Ida was mild compared with the damage in 2005 by Katerina and Rita.]
Autumn colours to be cut short as climate change ‘altering landscapes forever’, warns National Trust
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 28, 2021
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
Europe ‘can eradicate energy poverty’ by quitting fossil fuels: EU official
By Frédéric Simon, EURACTIV.com, Dec 23, 2021
[SEPP Comment: By making everyone energy poor?]
BBC’s Fake Climate Check
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 24, 2021
Nuclear exit to unleash wind power in Northern Germany
By Charlotte Nijhuis and Nikolaus J. Kurmayer, ERACTIV, Dec 10, 2021
“The shutdown of the last nuclear power plant in Schleswig-Holstein will unclog the electricity grid and unleash wind power in the northern German state, according to its environment minister Jan Philipp Albrecht, reports Clean Energy Wire.
“’Nuclear power is clogging our grids, especially in the direction of the south,’ Albrecht told press agency dpa.
“Due to grid bottlenecks, offshore wind turbines indeed have to be switched off in some cases.
“’The importance of nuclear power as a whole is therefore overestimated,’ Albrecht added.
“After the shutdown of the nuclear plant at the end of this year, the north of Germany could cover 160% of its electricity needs with renewable energy and there will be more wind power exports to the south, Albrecht said.
Sir James “Make It Up As You Go Along” Bevan
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 27, 2021
“How on earth the head of the Environment Agency can keep getting away with making up facts to suit himself is a mystery.”
Rewriting The Atmosphere
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Dec 28, 2021
Hands off the thermostat
By John Robeson Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 22, 2021
Link to article: Beyond Climate Change: What Happens Once We Control the Global Thermostat?
By Kevin Webb, Columbia Climate School, State of the Planet, Dec 14, 2021
“Kevin Webb is an alum of Columbia University’s Sustainability Science program.”
“’The technologies we are developing today to slow and even reverse climate change mean something monumental for the history of people and the planet: for the first time, we will be purposely in charge of the planet’s thermostat.’”
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
Professor: UK Companies Hiding CO2 Emissions with “Carbon Colonialism”
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 22, 2021
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda on Children
Greta Thunberg says it’s ‘strange’ Biden is considered a leader on climate change
By Brad Dress, The Hill, Dec 28, 2021
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Children for Propaganda
Little Children Suing 33 Governments
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 31, 2021
“Using children for political purposes is child abuse. So why is the BBC giving credibility to this latest venture?”
Scientists Recruiting Kids for Climate Propaganda
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 27, 2021
Expanding the Orthodoxy
President Biden’s DOE Announces an “Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations”
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 27, 2021
EU Facing New Energy Crisis Next Year
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 21, 2021
The EU must give green light to nuclear and gas or face disaster
By Staff, Net Zero Watch, Dec 22, 2021
EU Energy Policy Is A Trainwreck
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 31, 2021
Germany Burning More Coal, Renewable Energy Share Falling
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 23, 2021
BBC: Young Renters Suffering Unaffordable Energy Bills
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 18, 2021
How Bad Are Weather Disasters for Banks?
By Kristian S. Blickle, Sarah N. Hamerling, and Donald P. Morgan, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, November 2021 [H/t Junk Science]
Infrastructure Act Power Technology Demonstrations DOE’s Newly Dedicated Office Will Manage
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, Dec 23, 2021
“The new office will leverage $21.5 billion of the combined $62 billion allocated to the DOE by the $1 trillion Infrastructure Act, which President Biden signed into law on Nov. 15. As established by the law, the new office will “conduct administrative and project management responsibilities” for a lengthy list of demonstrations that will further the administration’s climate goals.”
The Political Games Continue
Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act Games – 2021 GHG Emission Report
By Roger Caiazza, Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York, Dec 31, 2021 [H/t WUWT]
Litigation Issues
Judge Hears Opening Arguments on Biden Administration’s Alleged Purge of Industry From EPA Panels
Lawyer Also Alleges Racial and Sexual Discrimination by EPA
By Nathan Worcester, The Epoch Times, Dec 24, 2021
Vineyard Wind Harpooned By New Federal Lawsuit
By Robert Bryce, Real Clear Energy, Dec 27, 2021
Link to: Levelized Costs of New Generation Resources in the Annual Energy, Outlook 2021
By Staff, EIA, February 2021
Conservation group moves to sue Biden administration alleging failure to protect polar bears
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, Dec 23, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Increasing polar bear population from regulating hunting is irrelevant to green groups that are seeking to destroy the US oil industry.]
Cap-and-Trade and Carbon Taxes
EU expects 17 bn euros from carbon tax, other revenues
By AFP Staff Writers, Brussels (AFP) Dec 22, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Does government greed drive fear of climate change?]
Three in five Brits reject higher taxes to reach Net Zero
By Savanta Comres, Net Zero Watch, Dec 23, 2021
Subsidies and Mandates Forever
Wind vs Wind: There Can Be No Honest Winner
By Peter Smith, Quadrant, Dec 20, 2021
EPA and other Regulators on the March
‘Truly Historic’: Biden EPA Introduces New Regulations To Force Electric Vehicle Transition
By Thomas Catenacci, Daily Caller, Dec 20, 2021 [H/t WUWT]
Link to regulations: Final Rule, EPA, December 2021
““This day is truly historic,’ EPA Administrator Michael Regan said during an event on Monday.
“’At EPA, our priority is to protect public health, especially in overburdened communities, while responding to the President’s ambitious climate agenda,’ Regan said in a statement prior to the event. ‘Today we take a giant step forward in delivering on those goals, while paving the way toward an all-electric, zero-emissions transportation future.’
“‘The standards are the ‘most ambitious’ rules of their kind ever put into place, the EPA said. “They are projected to cut car emissions by 3 billion tons over the next three decades, the equivalent of half the carbon dioxide emitted in the U.S. per year.’”
EPA to require more facilities to report releases of carcinogenic gas
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Dec 28, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Ethylene oxide is used to produce solvents, antifreeze, textiles, detergents, adhesives, polyurethane foam, and pharmaceuticals. It is regulated by OSHA. Ethylene glycol is used to manufacture polyester fibers and in antifreeze.]
Declare an energy emergency or risk economic disaster, Boris Johnson warned
By Staff, Net Zero Watch, Dec 29, 2021
“…compel wind and solar generators to pay for their own balancing costs…”
High Energy Costs the Christmas Gift of ‘Green’ Politicians
By Vijay Jayaraj, Real Clear Energy, Dec 29, 2021
“These episodes of energy shortages in Asia could serve as a sobering warning to other countries. The future of energy security will be dependent on the policies adopted, and it doesn’t look very good at this point.”
Decarbonization cannot manufacture the products demanded by civilization
By Ronald Stein, CFACT, Dec 18, 2021
Ben Marlow Finally Wakes Up To The Net Zero Disaster [UK]
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 23, 2021
“Who needs ‘energy independence’, when you can have free, green energy!”
Boris slammed as energy crisis sees UK return to ‘dirty’ coal-burning to keep lights on
By Antony Ashkenaz, Express, UK, Dec 28, 2021
“FOR THE first time in eight years, Britain’s electricity generation has become ‘dirtier’ as a result of an energy crisis that has forced the country to burn more fuel during an energy crisis.”
Energy policy has failed – says TIM NEWARK
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 31, 2021
“As Tim Newark rightly points out, this energy crisis has been a long time coming, and we are now reaping the whirlwind from policy decisions made years ago.
“This makes it even harder to correct course.”
Energy Issues – Australia
Aussie Energy Minister: China Escaping Responsibility for Climate Change
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 23, 2021
“There is a very obvious explanation for why Australia is being bullied on climate change – the bullies smell blood. Our Prime Minister declared a Net Zero target just before COP26, signalling a desperate need to please. Now the global community is leaning on Australia, to see what else they can squeeze out of our leaders.”
Energy Issues — US
Is Fracking Really Putting America’s Water Supply At Risk?
By Robert Rapier, Oil Price.com, Dec 14, 2021
New England is an Energy Crisis Waiting to Happen
By Doomberg, His Blog, Dec 30, 2021
“The great irony of the situation is New England sits only a few hundred miles from the most prolific natural gas producing region on Earth – the Appalachian Basin. According to the US EIA, if the region were a standalone country it would have been the third largest natural gas producer in the world in the first half of 2021, behind only Russia and the rest of the US.”
[SEPP Comment: Overview of why it is not safe to retire in New England.]
The Tipping Point – New England Power Sector Plans Shift From Gas To Renewables And Storage
By Housley Carr, RBN Energy, Dec 22, 2021
Native Americans Rejecting Biden’s Green Energy Revolution Infrastructure
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 29, 2021
Return of King Coal?
Coal power at all-time high, threatens net-zero goals: IEA
China, India hold key to less CO2 emissions, but world hungers for cheap energy
By Rurika Imahashi, Nikkei Asia, Dec 27, 2021
Oil Spills, Gas Leaks & Consequences
Energy company will pay $43 million for US’ longest-running oil spill
By Caroline Vakil, The Hill, Dec 22, 2021
Nuclear Energy and Fears
Germany To Shut Down All Remaining Nuclear Plants, Forcing Reliance On Fossil Fuels
By Thomas Catenacci, Daily Caller, Dec 30, 2021 [H/t WUWT]
Belgium will close all nuclear reactors by 2025
By AFP Staff Writers, Brussels (AFP) Dec 23, 2021
Germany Is Closing Half of Its Reactors at Worst Possible Time
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 23, 2021
Shift to nuclear brightens Asian energy future
By Vijay Jayaraj, American Thinker, Dec 28, 2021
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
Human cost of China’s green energy rush ahead of Winter Olympics
By Poornima Weerasekara, Baoding, China (AFP) Dec 22, 2021
Power When You Need It? Not With Wind
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 20, 2021
“If this is the standard of research into the reliability of wind power, then heaven help us all:”
Save the Whales… Or Save the Planet?
By David Middleton, WUWT, Dec 27, 2021
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Other
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Storage
Netherlands Will Install Country’s Largest Energy Storage System
By Darrell Proctor, Energy Mag, Dec 20, 2021
[SEPP Comment: No mention of cost of the 25-MW/48-MWh battery.]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
How to Brick an Entire Economy
By Staff Writer, Doomberg, Dec 8, 2021
“For want of a nail the kingdom was lost” – Proverb
“By 2010, a new technology designed to substantially reduce NOx emissions – diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) – was ready for commercial deployment, and the EPA quickly mandated its use, as did many governments worldwide.”
Lithium Turmoil: Chilean President Gabriel Boric Squeezing Miners
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 28, 2021
Carbon Schemes
If I could plant like that…
By John Robeson Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 22, 2021
“The Canadian government is going to save us all with trees. And by ‘all’ we include the government itself, which needs to meet some very ambitious climate targets without annoying citizens by making gas expensive, tearing the country apart by crushing the hydrocarbon energy industry based in a region it is already about as popular as leprosy (and yes, climate change apparently makes leprosy worse in several ways, as you guessed).”
No returning to climate of the past even with CO2 reduction
Press Release by Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH), Dec 21, 2021 [H/t WUWT}
Safer carbon capture and storage
University of Oxford Press Release, Dec 29, 2021 [H/t WUWT]
Link to paper: Rapid microbial methanogenesis during CO2 storage in hydrocarbon reservoirs
By R. L. Tyne, Nature, Dec 22, 2021
[SEPP Comment: If former oil or gas fields are nearby!]
California Dreaming
California Ditzkrieg
By Doomberg, Dec 15, 2021
Health, Energy, and Climate
Questioning the Science
By John Stossel, The Daily Signal, Dec 27, 2021
Oh Mann!
Michael Mann slams Morano as ‘One of the worst fossil fuel industry funded professional climate change deniers’ – Calls ‘just so dangerous’
From Climate Depot, Via WUWT, Dec 24, 2021
Other Scientific News
LANDSAT 8
By Staff, NASA Landsat Science, Accessed Dec 29, 2021
“The OLI collects data for two new bands, a coastal/aerosol band (band 1) and a cirrus band (band 9), as well as the heritage Landsat multispectral bands. Additionally, the bandwidth has been refined for six of the heritage bands. The Thermal Instrument (TIRS) carries two additional thermal infrared bands. Note: atmospheric transmission values for this graphic were calculated using MODTRAN for a summertime mid-latitude hazy atmosphere (circa 5 km visibility).Graphic created by L.Rocchio & J.Barsi.”
NASA enters the Solar atmosphere for the first time
by Mara Johnson-Groh for GSFC News
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Dec 15, 2021
What We Learned from the Space Station this Past Year
Press Release by Melissa Gaskill, NASA, Dec 22, 2021 [H/t WUWT]
Climate and soil determine the distribution of plant traits
Press Release, University of Zurich, Dec 23, 2021 [H/t WUWT]
Link to paper: Climatic and soil factors explain the two-dimensional spectrum of global plant trait variation
By Julia S. Joswig, et al. Nature Ecology & Evolution, Dec 23, 2021
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
More Moths Munching Away In Palaces [UK]
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 31, 2021
“I really do have difficulty in understanding how ostensibly intelligent people believe that “climate change” is changing our weather so drastically in literally just the space of a few years. “There seems to be some sort of mass hypnosis.”
Tesla: Nothing Says Customer Satisfaction Like 30Kg of Dynamite
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 26, 2021
Can You Solve Climate Change Better Than World Leaders?
What even happened at the UN climate summit—and could you do a better job? These online and in-person simulators let you take a swing at saving the world.
By Heather Higinbotham Davies, WIRED, Dec 25, 2021
[SEPP Comment: Correctly identifying the problem is a great improvement!]
BBC: Worst Climate Story On Record
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Dec 31, 2021
Video
BBC : Hurricanes To Expand To New York, Beijing, Boston And Tokyo
Transcript
NASA: Arctic Ice-Free By 2012
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Dec 28, 2021
ARTICLES
1. Many Climate Ambitions Will End With 2021
In the U.K., Germany and France, leaders walk back as their plans’ exorbitant price tag becomes clear.
By Joseph C. Sternberg, WSJ, Dec. 30, 2021
TWTW Summary: Covered in the This Week section above.
*******************
2. Breaking Norms at the Biden EPA
The purge of advisory boards is now going to federal court.
By The Editorial Board, WSJ, Dec. 28, 2021
TWTW Summary: Covered in the This Week section above.
“Stratospheric Intrusions commonly follow strong cold fronts and can extend across multiple states.” Temperature in C.
These will be shocking temperatures in the eastern US.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/webAnims/tpw_nrl_colors/namer/mimictpw_namer_latest.gif
Graphic shows polar vortex blocking in the north of Pacific at tropopause level.
Frost in Texas and Louisiana.
If science can’t be questioned it’s not science anymore, it’s propaganda. Aaron Rodgers
From “An Introductory-Level Explanation of my Critique of AT99, Ross McKitrick, August 25, 2021”
And that would be politics, not science
Does the phrase ‘AT99- not even wrong’ apply here?
La Niña strengthens.
Comparison of UV solar activity in the three most recent solar cycles (SC) 22-24. The thick curves show the Mg II index timeseries twice smoothed with a 55-day boxcar. Dates of minima of solar cycles (YYYYMMDD) were determined from the smoothed Mg II index.
“we can say “Suppose A implies B; then if A is true therefore B is true.” Example: all dogs have fur; a beagle is a dog; therefore, a beagle has fur”
This can still be faulty logic. In the example, it is an assumption that all dogs have fur as you can not possibly know all dogs and a beagle may be the exception you do not know of.
Both A and B may be true but it is possible for both to be false or for either to be true while the other is false. of course you already know from experience that beagles have fur but not that all beagles or all dogs have fur.
Current climate science is based on these types of assumptions.
“The earth is warming” Assumed from a tiny number of problematic measurements.
” caused by an increase in CO2″ Assumed because atmospheric levels of CO2 appear to be rising.
“Human caused” Assumed because human activity produces CO2.
“The climate has changed” Assumes that the climate is static and that change is not the norm.
“The changes will be harmful” Assumed by forecasts that pretend to know the future in spite of mostly failed predictions. Assumes that there will be no countering benefits.
“Extreme weather incidents prove dangerous climate change” This assumes some connection can be proven when there is usually no direct evidence.
I could go on but evidence of assumption lies in the abundance of words such as “may” or “could” found in climate studies.
There was a great deal of controversy over the Salk vaccine, which was proven to be quite effective in the 1954 trials — trials by the way that were so enormous and extensive that they could not possibly be repeated today. Once Salk had been vidicated he mentioned a three step process by which naysayers eventually come to terms with having been proved wrong. I will paraphrase. First, they say “your work is wrong”; then once you are shown to be correct, they respond with, “Well, yes, it is correct, but it isn’t very important”; and when it is shown to be important they say, “Yes, but we knew this all along.”
Hopefully, with regard to AGW we are approaching the final step of this process. With regard to coming to terms with COVID-19 and its endless succession of variants we are stuck presently at step one.
Paul Homewood had a lot of fun with this theme over the past few weeks, and the articles he produced were indeed fun to read and informative. It brought to mind something I read decades ago…
“Many people, relying on their memories alone, insist that our climates are very different from what they used to be. Their fathers made similar statements about the climates of still earlier times, as did also their fathers’ fathers, as their several writings show, and so on through the ages; and the bulk of this testimony is to the effect that our climates are getting worse–evidence, perhaps, that flesh has always been heir to ills.”
W. J. Humphreys, Physics of the Air, 1940.
I read Christopher Monckton’s piece in the repeated effort to understand his argument, and have got this far. We start with the point of view he is refuting, summarized as follows:
1850 temp 287K
Direct solar warming temp 255K
Variance 32K
Variance analyzed further:
direct warming by natural GHGs 8K
feedback from the 8K 24K
total warming from the 8K 32K
TOTAL 32K
What happens if we add more GHGs with a direct warming effect of 1K?
The first 8K of GHG warming produced a total rise of 32K, 8K direct and 24K in feedback response to the 8K. The initial 8K of warming has resulted in a total warming of 32K.
Therefore, the argument is, add 1K of warming and this will produce a further 3K for a total warming of 4K. Put it another way: if you start with a warming from GHGs of 8K, the total warming you get from them is not 8K but 32K. If you start with a GHG warming of 1K, the total warming you get will be 4K.
His counter argument to this is as follows.
The 32K variance has been incorrectly analyzed. It does not consist of a 24K feedback to the 8K. The correct analysis goes like this:
1850 Temp 287K
Direct solar warming temp 255K
Variance 32K
Variance analyzed further
direct warming by natural GHGs 8K
feedback from the 8K 0.72
Total warming by the 8K 8.72 (1.09 x 8)
feedback due to Solar Warming 23.28
TOTAL 32
In this account if you raise GHGs by an amount which will give a direct warming of 1K, you will get only a further 1.09 of warming.
I suppose this applies if you could apply another warming – for instance, by increasing solar warming. You should still end up with 1.09 x the warming effect with no feedback.
If I have this right, then the feedback on the 255K from the sun would take the temp up to 277.95. This seems to leave us with a variance of 9.05 from the temperature in 1850. I am at a loss to explain this. Probably have failed to understand something.
I am getting a bit clearer, but I am not seeing that the whole argument is either correctly based or even logically coherent. I have done my best with it. Maybe others can help?
I would be really grateful if someone who understands this better could explain either whether the above is correct, or where I have gone wrong. The link to Monckton’s paper is in the original posting. I cannot see that Monckton’s argument holds up or is logically coherent or evidenced. But I will be happy to have it explained why this is mistaken.
Today I went shopping at a hippy, organic food store. It’s a new structure to supplement their old building some miles away. It’s incredibly politically correct. Over the parking lot they installed solar panels. To hold up the panels I saw steel beams like you might use in a skyscraper. Perhaps a reason is that if a car or truck banged into one- if the beams were only what were needed- the entire structure might come down- but being so big, the vehicle will instead be destroyed with little or no damage to panels. I suspect the store didn’t pay for this solar installation- it must have been subsidies and tax breaks for some local “green industry”.
In the store, the bathrooms have signs on them saying “all gender bathrooms”. Uh, gee, how many are there? It used to be in PC places, you’d see stick figures of a man and a woman suggesting it can be used by either. But apparently there are so many genders there isn’t room enough for all the gender stick figures. This is in Easthampton, MA- just a few miles from Northampton where Smith College is located, famous as the lesbian capital of the American northeast. Now, I’m not homo phobic, but I think I’d prefer separate bathrooms. Oh, I forgot to mention, the young man at the register had very long, painted fingernails. Yikes! OK, OK- I guess maybe ’cause I’m an old fart so I find some of this offensive.
Well, your account of the restrooms touches on a real problem with the current concept of gender.
According to the mainline story, you can be born with a gender which is different from your biological sex. Gender is the brain, sex is the body. So you can be a woman trapped in a man’s body.
This being a bad thing, and with changing of gender through counselling or whatever being ruled out as ‘conversion therapy’, this leaves you with changing the sex of the body.
However, on this account we have two sexes, male and female, and two genders, also male and female. The account may be wrong, I think probably is, because there is no evidence of gender as defined in humans. But it is at least logically consistent.
There is another account of gender, which may be less coherent, and is incompatible with the above. According to it, there are many genders. I have read numbers of up to the hundreds.
On this account it is completely unclear how gender can be different from the sex of an individual, or how surgery and hormones can bring a sex into alignment with one of these many genders. There is also no explanation in the multi gender account of which are compatible with which sex, or why.
It doesn’t help with this logical difficulty if you claim that sex is a continuum, a spectrum, and that there are more than two sexes in humans. There are not, of course, more than two sexes in humans. But that is the least of the problems with this argument. The fundamental problem is that if you’re going to continue advocating sex change based on bringing gender into alignment with sex, in an account in which there are at least tens of genders, you have to show that what the surgery and hormone treatments are doing will admit of tens of different sexes, or different points on the alleged continuum.
But as we know, this is not what happens. Practitioners faced with a demand to transition do not have tens of different possible destinations that can be reached by their surgical and hormonal proceedings. What they claim to be doing is making men into women or women into men. They don’t claim, as the above theory would require them to, to be turning sex 21 into sex 11, because the brain of the patient is gender 11 but he/she/they were unfortunately born with gender 21.
The logical difficulties of this kind, which are everywhere to be seen in the trans debate as soon as you look closely, show that the only way to make sense of it is by looking to see where the program ends up, what its advocates demand in policies. You have to decouple that from the supposed rationale, and ask what its doing in practice as if that was the real end and justification.
When you do that, as feminists are increasingly doing, and as they are increasingly saying more and more clearly in print and in lobbying, you find a very disturbing picture emerging.
The current place where all this is coming to a head is, of all places, Scotland, which under the leadership Ms Sturgeon is headed straight for self recognition of gender. This is the two valued gender of the opening para of this post.
The SNP is proposing to introduce legislation to the effect that anyone is a woman who says they are, and will be legally entitled to treatment as one in all respects. The implications of this are dawning in Scotland, and the ensuing controversy is going to merit very serious attention. Its an odd thing for it to happen in Scotland of all places, but this is where one version of the theory is going to be tested to destruction by the engine of public opinion.