The Week That Was: 2023-12-09 (December 9, 2023)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so” – Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain [H/t John Mikkelsen, Quadrant]
Number of the Week: 1 trillion kWh.
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: The issues discussed below include an interview of Richard Lindzen by Jan Jekielek of the Epoch Times. The latest report by the US EPA on its calculated social cost of greenhouse gases is discussed emphasizing what is omitted, especially the benefits of greenhouse gases. Francis Menton brings us some calculations that those who promote Net Zero emissions avoid, the necessary storage of electricity if fossil fuels are abandoned. Although links are provided, TWTW is avoiding discussing COP 28 until the hurley-burley is done (noisy disorder and confusion).
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Changing Meanings: Jan Jekielek of the Epoch Times begins his interview of atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen by asking is the science settled? Lindzen response and the beginning follow up discussion was: [From the transcript. Boldface added]
“Of course not. The minute you hear that the science is settled, you know something is wrong, because science is never settled. When you claim it’s settled, you want to shut off all disagreement, because you don’t have much to present.
Mr. Jekielek: You said that science is one of the few words that when you add the word, “the,” in front of it, it means the exact opposite.
Mr. Lindzen: Sure. Science is a mode of inquiry. “The science,” is science as authority. Political figures, people not in science, have often noticed that science has a certain authority with the public and they want to co-opt it, so they bring in the term, the science, which is how they view science. But that isn’t what science is. Science is always open to questioning. Science depends on questions and depends on being wrong. When you say science cannot be wrong, you’ve choked off science.
Mr. Jekielek: I want to explore this realm. Some of the people that are citing science really have no idea how science is supposed to work in the first place. I want to talk about the actual science around climate change and what the current state of that science is, as you understand it.
Mr. Lindzen: You’re asking for a lot. Climate is a complex subject. We treat it in the press as though it’s one number, and that’s what climate is. But before this issue, climate science was primarily to understand the Earth’s climate at present. The reason that is complicated is represented by something called the Köppen classification.”
[First published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1884, the Köppen classification has been changed several times. The latest changes are those by Rudolf Geiger 1954 and 1961, and Glen Trewartja in 1966 and 1980. The classification applies to plant life on land. The system has three levels of classification. The first level has five main climate groups: A (tropical), B (arid), C (temperate), D (continental), and E (polar). The second level divides the climate groups by seasonal precipitation and the third level divides these levels by levels of heat (hot, warm, cold) and summer or winter.] Lindzen states:
“We have dozens of climate regimes on the earth right now, not one, and they all behave somewhat differently. The notion that there is one number, a temperature of the earth that they all work in lockstep with, is absurd. But that number itself, people don’t understand what it is. I could ask you, “What is the temperature of the earth?” How do you answer that?
Mr. Jekielek: My answer is that people are taking temperatures in different places around the world and pulling an average out of that.
Mr. Lindzen: You average Mount Everest and the Dead Sea, and what do you get? No, they don’t do that. They realize that doesn’t work. The first thing is they take what’s called the temperature anomaly. At each station, they take a 30-year mean, roughly 1950 to 1980 let’s say, and they then look at the deviation from that mean and they average the deviations at each station. You’re getting the average temperature change and that’s what you see in this graph. [Not shown here]
You see this graph. It has been going up since 1800, and certainly by 1880, it’s going up by one and a fraction degree, which isn’t a heck of a lot. But there’s something wrong with that diagram. What’s wrong with that diagram is you don’t see the data points. You should always see the data points. If you plot that and show the data points, this little thing going up a degree or so is surrounded by dense clouds of data that are ranging from minus 10 to 10, 20 degrees.
The mean anomaly on that looks like a horizontal line. Your first estimate is that it’s constant. There’s a couple of things to be said about that. You take away the data points and then you expand the scale so that one degree or two degrees occupies your whole graph. Now, it looks big. People don’t look at the numbers, and they don’t know the data. The data itself says that at any given point, almost as many stations are cooling as they are warming.
That is saying that it’s not telling you about any place, which is consistent with the fact that we have many climates. You’re right. Then you smooth it out because you don’t want to show the wiggles each year. But if you don’t have the wiggles, you don’t know what’s called the variance, which is about 0.4 degrees, which means anytime the media bloviates about a 0.1-degree increase, they’re talking about an insignificant increase.
The whole issue at that level depends on a public that is utterly innumerate [numerically illiterate] and cannot read a graph. Unfortunately, when it comes to most politicians, I think that’s correct. I’ve occasionally watched a Senate hearing and somebody comes, Al Gore was often doing this when he was in the Senate and shows a graph. I thought, “Maybe he’s trying to point something out because the graph didn’t look right.”
No, he wasn’t doing that at all. He was showing his colleagues he had a graph as if to say, “Don’t screw around with me.” It wasn’t that this was information. Coupled with ad infinitum repetition, a la Goebbels, and coupled with the media repeating this, most people just can’t deal with it. They assume this can’t happen unless there’s really something there, but there isn’t.
Mr. Jekielek: There’s a general understanding that there has been a temperature increase and there’s a general understanding that humans have been involved to some extent. How much do we actually know around that?
Mr. Lindzen: It is true there is a greenhouse effect. It is due primarily to water vapor and clouds. CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide are minor, minor constituents. Roughly speaking, if all other things are kept constant and you double CO2, you would get a little under one degree of warming. Now, underlying that statement is some other material in a sense.
For instance, you said all things kept equal. There is something called Le Châtelier’s principle, which says long-lasting natural systems will resist change, which is to say, feedback would be negative. Now, in most models today, water vapor and clouds are positive feedback.
There’s the underlying assumption that nature will take whatever we do and make it worse. That is kind of an odd assumption, and there’s no basis for it, but it does give the models more than a little under a degree. It may even bring it to as high as three degrees.
The next point is that even three degrees isn’t that much. We’re dealing with changes for a doubling of CO2 on the order of between breakfast and lunch. The thought that people can’t handle that is a little bit strange. Where does it come from that this is an existential threat?
Interestingly, it comes from no place except the propaganda. Even the UN’s IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] scientific report doesn’t speak about an existential threat. They speak about a reduction of GDP [Gross Domestic Product] by 3 percent by 2100, assuming the GDP has increased several times by then. That doesn’t sound existential to most people. So, it’s a little bit weird.
The other thing they point to is: if we went to major changes in the past, the last glacial maximum when you had two kilometers of ice over Illinois; or 50 million years ago when you had a warm period with alligator-like critters in Svalbard (north of Norway), the mean temperature change was only five degrees.
They said, “Three degrees could be something serious.” The trouble is with the change in the warming of the last 150 years or so, there’s no resemblance to the changes during the major change. What happened during the major changes was that the temperature difference between the tropics and the pole, in the case of the last glacial maximum, increased by 20 degrees Celsius [C]. During the warm period, it decreased by 20 degrees [C]. Today, it’s about 40. It [the difference between the tropics and the poles] was 20 during the warm and was about 60 during the glacial period. Of course, that gave a large change in the [statistical] mean.
During those periods, the tropics remained almost constant. On the other hand, the greenhouse change and the observed change since 1800 or 1880, it doesn’t matter, almost all occurred in the tropics and there was no change in the tropics to pole, which is exactly different. Now, why is that important?
The tropics to pole temperature difference depends on the dynamics of the heat transport by motion. To some extent, the equator depends on the greenhouse effect. The change we are seeing could be due to CO2 about a degree, but it is not changing from the tropics to pole. Three degrees is not something amplified at the pole. It’s three degrees or one degree or a half degree every place.
The thought that this is existential and requires massive changes is unreasonable. It’s absurd. In a way, CO2 is the dream of a regulator. If you control CO2, you control breathing. If you control breathing, you control everything. This always is one temptation.
The other temptation is the energy sector. No matter how much you clean fossil fuels, they will always produce water vapor and CO2. You have the whole energy sector that is one of the few sectors that is in the many trillions of dollars. There is a huge opportunity there, even though it makes no sense.
They forget that CO2 is essential. We’re treating it as a poison. Most people believe the narrative, and they also believe CO2 is dangerous. For instance, the concentration of CO2 in your mouth is about 40,000 parts per million, as opposed to 400 outside. 5,000 is permitted on a space station.
It’s hardly a poison, but worse than that, it’s actually essential. If you could get rid of 60 percent of the CO2, we would all be dead. It is very strange to call it a pollutant. It’s essential for plant life, and it’s the basis for photosynthesis. Yet, because it is the inevitable product of fossil fuel burning and the energy sector, it is being attacked.
This long interview goes far beyond what is quoted above. It includes the great harm that the policies to control Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and greenhouse gases are doing to humanity. Lindzen speculates on some of the reasons why. Further, no matter what the EU and the US does, it will have little effect on CO2, because the economically growing countries in Asia (particularly China and India) will continue to build coal-fired power plants.
In discussing Africa and parts of Asia Mr Jekielek asks.: “Are they suffering from policies forced on them by these large institutions that prevent them from developing reliable energy sources?” Lindzen responds:
Sure, these are people who don’t have access to modern electricity. They are being told they should be frozen in that state. Over much of Africa, people are depending on burning dung for fuel, which is much more polluting. I was just shocked when the World Bank refused financing for a hospital in the Congo unless it used renewable energy. I was thinking, ‘Who of these idiots would want to be operated on in a hospital running on solar or wind?’”
In discussing the subject of science, Lindzen states:
“I have neighbors here in Newton [Mass]. They are educated people and they’re not stupid. They have lawn signs saying, ‘We believe in science.’ Science isn’t a belief structure. It isn’t a cult, and it isn’t a religion. But they have that sign and they’re totally unaware of how stupid that sign is.
I have one fairly eccentric view, which is that I object to science education in elementary school, because it is usually just facts about science. It starts kids off with the wrong idea of what science is. You have to be ready for science. The scientific revolution was a revolution. It is the notion that you confirm things with data and you check things. The whole notion that a theory could have 100 correct predictions, but if it has one incorrect one, there is something wrong with the theory, goes against a lot of human thinking. That theory required a certain discipline.”
The interview is a great antidote to the US National Climate Assessment (discussed in TWTW on November 18) which was responsible for presenting natural and human influences on climate, but the authors ignore Nature and their responsibilities. Much of Lindzen’s interview also applies to the EPA and its finding on the effects of greenhouse gases, discussed below. See links under Changing the Orthodoxy and http://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2023/TWTW%20Nov%2018.pdf
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Pick an Atmosphere: A new EPA report is titled: “EPA Report on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases: Estimates Incorporating Recent Scientific Advances.” The Executive Summary opens:
This report presents new estimates of the social cost of carbon (SC-CO2), social cost of methane (SC-CH4), and social cost of nitrous oxide (SC-N2O), collectively referred to as the ‘social cost of greenhouse gases’ (SC-GHG). These estimates reflect recent advances in the scientific literature on climate change and its economic impacts and incorporate recommendations made by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies 2017). The SC-GHG allows analysts to incorporate the net social benefits of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), or the net social costs of increasing GHG emissions, in benefit-cost analysis and, when appropriate, in decision-making and other contexts. The SCGHG is the monetary value of the net harm to society from emitting a metric ton of that GHG into the atmosphere in a given year. In principle, the SC-GHG is a comprehensive metric that includes the value of all future climate change impacts (both negative and positive), including changes in net agricultural productivity, human health effects, property damage from increased flood risk, changes in the frequency and severity of natural disasters, disruption of energy systems, risk of conflict, environmental migration, and the value of ecosystem services. The SC-GHG, therefore, also reflects the societal net benefit of reducing emissions of the GHG by a metric ton. The SC-GHG is the theoretically appropriate value to use when conducting benefit-cost analyses of policies that affect GHG emissions. In practice, data and modeling limitations restrain the ability of SC-GHG estimates to include all physical, ecological, and economic impacts of climate change, implicitly assigning a value of zero to the omitted climate damages. The estimates are, therefore, a partial accounting of climate change impacts and likely underestimate the marginal benefits of abatement.
Rather than getting into details of this report, the questionable contributions of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS), and the use of a discount rate (of future costs) of 2.5%, which is below the rate of inflation; TWTW will just focus on what is missing (omitted).
On July 19, William Happer and Richard Lindzen submitted their comments on the proposed rule:
“Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Environmental Protection Agency’s
(“EPA”) Proposed Rule.
We are career physicists who have specialized in radiation physics and dynamic heat transfer for decades, subjects directly relevant to the global warming debate. Each of us has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers on the science of climate or closely related subjects. Our curricula vitae are attached in the appendix.
At the outset, these comments are organized around two Supreme Court opinions.
First, “‘scientific knowledge’ … must be derived by the scientific method.” Daubert v. Merrell Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 593 (1993).
Second, an agency rule is “arbitrary and capricious if the agency … entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem” and “the relevant data.” Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association of the United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, 463 U.S. 29, 43 (1983) (“State Farm”). (It similarly is a major violation of the scientific method not to consider all relevant data, as elaborated below.)
We demonstrate below that (1) EPA failed to consider critically important aspects and data concerning CO2, fossil fuels and climate change, and (2) EPA relied on numerous studies that violate the scientific method. As a result, the Proposed Rule, which could eliminate fossil fuel electricity plants that provide 61% of electricity in the United States, will be disastrous for the country, for no scientifically justifiable reason.”
Of course, the EPA ignored these comments demonstrating that it cannot be bothered by the messy requirements of the scientific method, particularly when it is on a political mission that will destroy reliable electricity generation in the US.
What is omitted in the EPA findings of the latest science is an understanding of the effect of greenhouse gases that is revealed by ongoing research of the atmosphere over the past 50 years with the advent of systematic weather balloon launches and satellites. Instead, the EPA relies on assumptions made for two different artificial atmospheres, neither one of which approaches the actual atmosphere as it is understood today.
One assumed atmosphere is that warming effect of CO2 will be doubled by the warming effect by increased water vapor as discussed in the 1979 Charney Report and Tim Palmer, The Primacy of Doubt: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World. Palmer is a pioneer of the ensemble method of climate forecasting. This hypothetical atmosphere is not related to Earth’s atmosphere because high resolution spectroscopy and measuring instruments on weather balloons cannot find the increase in water vapor needed to double the warming from CO2. Principally, the tropics are not cooperating with the models. This is not to say that atmospheric water vapor is not increasing, because it is. The increase is not only from increases in surface temperature from increases in CO2. It is primarily coming from El Niño and increases in subsurface ocean volcanoes.
The EPA’s calculations on social cost of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are based on laboratory measurements in which there is no water vapor, the dominant greenhouse gas. John Tindall began his experiments using early spectroscopy in 1859. He recognized that water vapor is the strongest absorber of infrared radiation, the most important gas influencing Earth’s surface temperature, keeping land masses from deeply freezing at night and protecting life on land. By far, water vapor covers the broadest range of frequencies of infrared radiation of any greenhouse gas and saturates them. Thus, adding any greenhouse gas in these frequencies does little or nothing to influence temperatures. Methane and nitrous oxide absorb infrared radiation in frequencies largely covered by water vapor, thus are ineffective greenhouse gases. The EPA’s use of artificial atmospheres to make calculations does little more than create false alarm. It is strange that in assessing the greenhouse effect the Environmental Protection Agency considers that the gases the prevent Earth from being barren, cold, and dusty have a severe social cost. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy – Radiation Transfer, Challenging the Orthodoxy, and EPA and other Regulators on the March.
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Useful Calculations: One of the perplexing problems that government agencies avoid is how the calculate the electricity storage requirements if Washington succeeds in its policy of transferring all electricity generation to renewables (mainly wind and solar) to achieve net zero carbon dioxide emissions and ban the use of fossil fuels. Francis Menton summarizes the efforts of Balázs M. Fekete, et al. who published rough calculations in Frontiers in Environmental Science, then addressed the shallow criticisms of their calculations in Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. Part of the abstract of the published paper states:
“The main obstacle to wider adoption of renewable energy resources is their inherent intermittency. Solar and wind are, by far, the most abundant renewable energy sources that are expected to take the lion’s share in transitioning to a sustainable future. Intermittency arises at multiple levels. The most recognized are the short-term (minute-by-minute, hourly, or diurnal) variations that should be the easiest to address. Less frequently realized are the seasonal and inter-annual variabilities. Seasonality poses far greater challenges than minute-by-minute or hourly variations because they lead to the absence of energy resources for prolonged periods of time. Our interest is the feasibility of a future where all energy (100%) comes from renewable sources leaving no room for fossil fuels. [Emphasis in original]
In their report, Fekete et al. used “a modified surplus/deficit calculation [as] taught to water engineers to size reservoirs for meeting water demand when the water resources vary.” This is a practical approach to the complex problem of necessary storage for weather driven electricity generation. As Menton writes:
“The particular calculations in Fekete, et al., look at data from twelve states of the northeastern U.S. — New England, plus New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia. Rather than using production data from existing wind and solar facilities, the authors obtained daily wind speed and solar irradiation data for the region. For consumption data, the blog post states that the authors applied an assumption of ‘constant energy consumption,’ after determining that ‘seasonal variations of energy consumption are relatively small (deviate by only 10-15% of the annual average).’ (Perhaps this decision could be criticized, but I doubt that it makes any material difference to the conclusion.)
And the bottom line is:
The storage capacity needed to align power generation from solar or wind is around 25% of the annual energy consumption.
In other words, you need three months’ worth of storage to try to make this work. Previous studies that I highlighted in my energy storage Report — for example, those of Roger Andrews and Ken Gregory — had calculated storage needs in the range of one to two months. However, those studies only used one year’s worth of data for each calculation and allowed running the storage balance right down to zero. If you think that it’s too risky to run the storage right down to zero before the balance starts to refill, then three months of storage is a much more reasonable figure. Indeed, it’s still rather conservative.” [Emphasis in original]
Why doesn’t the US Department of Energy provide similar calculations so that the public will know what the storage requirements of net zero will be? Then along with the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) provide estimates of storage costs? Further, Menton writes that: [Emphasis in original]
“The Fekete blog post at Climate, Etc. contains two other subjects of interest. One relates to the peer review process. It appears that one of the peer reviewers made a run at getting the paper blocked, without stating the nature of any substantive criticisms:
One of the reviewers stated that ‘The manuscript contains fundamental errors that cannot be rectified through author revisions’ without venturing into any details.
Fekete calls this effort ‘unscientific, unjust, and unethical,’ which is again quite an understatement. Sadly, such conduct is the norm in what goes by the name ‘climate science’ today. Fortunately, in this case, another reviewer was supportive, as was the staff of the journal.
The second subject of further interest in the blog post is that another reviewer criticized the draft paper for alleged ‘lack of references to the ‘plethora of work’ related to integrating renewables to the current energy systems and transitioning to a sustainable energy future.’ The criticism caused the authors to ‘roll up their sleeves’ and go out and review some 360 papers recommended by the critic. Here is a list of what they found:
- The inter-annual and seasonal variations were rarely studied.
- The vast majority of the studies were limited to diurnal and minute-by-minute variations.
- The publications only investigated the use of few hourly storage capacities.
- The primary sustainability metric was reducing CO2 emissions.
- Most of the publications were limited to low renewable penetration.
- No publication attempted to address complete decarbonization.
- Even the most ambitious ‘deep decarbonization’ scenarios stopped at 25-50% renewable contributions that was considered ‘high renewable penetration’.
And in summary:
Most of the reviewed papers assumed that solar and wind will be always supplemented by some form of ‘firm generation capacity’, which is the obfuscated name of using fossil fuels complemented with ‘carbon capture and sequestration’.
In other words, the orthodox ‘peer reviewed’ scientific literature is almost completely lacking in consideration of the most important, fundamental problem of transitioning to an energy system based on electricity generated by the wind and sun. Well, now there is one competent paper in the mix. They will do their best to ignore it, at least until the whole wind/solar thing has conclusively shown that it can’t work.”
As the above comments by Lindzen and EPA proposed regulations demonstrate, peer review is often meaningless because it lacks the necessary physical evidence to be meaningful. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Number of the Week: 1 trillion kWh. Using the 25% storage requirement calculated by Fekete, et al. above, and the total electricity consumed by the US in 2022 by the EIA, Menton calculates that the storage requirement for net zero for the US would be 4 trillion kWh (kilowatt hours). The cost – pick a number but several times the entire Gross National Product of the US. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Climategate Continued
Briffa’s Reconstruction
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Dec 8, 2023
Censorship
Michael Shellenberger Uncovers Mass Censorship Of Populism
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 8, 2023
[SEPP Comment: A defense cyber security firm branched into censorship?]
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 – Radiation Transfer
The Role of Greenhouse Gases in Energy Transfer in the Earth’s Atmosphere
By W. A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer, Preprint, Mar 3, 2023
Richard Lindzen: Key Points Climate Alarmists Get Wrong
Video and Transcript, Epoch.TV, Nov 21, 2023 [accessed Dec 7, 2023]
Proposed Fossil Fuel Power Plant Rule: “New Source Performance Standards for
Greenhouse Gas Emissions From New, Modified, and Reconstructed Fossil Fuel-Fired
Electric Generating Units; Emission Guidelines for Greenhouse Gas Emissions From
Existing Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units; and Repeal of the Affordable Clean
Energy Rule” (the “Proposed Rule”)
By William Happer and Richard Lindzen, July 19, 2023
Another Critical Thinker Reaches The Obvious Conclusion: Intermittent Renewables Can’t Work On Their Own
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Dec 3, 2023
Link to paper; Storage requirements to mitigate intermittent renewable energy sources: analysis for the US Northeast
By Balázs M. Fekete, Frontiers in Environmental Science, Sep 18, 2023
Link to post in Climate Etc.: Net-Zero Targets: Sustainable Future or CO2 Obsession Driven Dead-end?
By Balázs M. Fekete, Climate Etc., Nov 14, 2023
Climate Alarmist Claim Fact Checks
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, ICECAP, Dee 7, 2023
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate/alarmist_claim_rebuttals_updated/
GHG Forcing: Diminishing Returns (bad mitigation math)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Dec 6, 2023
“The saturation effect, the nonlinear, logarithmic relationship between greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing and increases in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), is an important scientific point for the climate debate. Diminishing returns is not as well-known as it should be because of a media blackout on its negative implications for CO2 mitigation (reduction) efforts. “[Emphasis in original]
Dubai, We Have a Problem: No Global Temperature Baseline Before 1900
Ron Clutz, Science Matters, Dec 8, 2023
[SEPP Comment: To UN climate science, Earth did not exist before 1900?]
The Doomsday Cult Needs To Recalculate Its Many Failed Predictions
By I & I Editorial Board, Dec 8, 2023
“Five years ago, then-California Gov. Jerry Brown said, with great certainty, that ‘in less than five years, even the worst skeptics will be believers.’ While we’re not sure why some skeptics are in his mind worse than others, it’s clear that he was wrong.”
Climate Change Weekly #490: Fighting for Truth in Climate Science Is Important
By H. Sterling Burnett, Environment & Climate News, Dec 8, 2023
Defending the Orthodoxy
Your clean green future *needs* another 80 million km of high voltage lines
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Dec 7, 2023
Link to report: Lack of ambition and attention risks making electricity grids the weak link in clean energy transitions.
By Staff, IEA, Oct 17, 2023
“First-of-its-kind global study finds the world must add or replace 80 million km of grids by 2040, equal to all grids globally today, to meet national climate targets and support energy security.”
[SEPP Comment: Lack of ambition or lack of stupidity.]
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
Increase in ocean-onto-land droughts and their drivers under anthropogenic climate change
By Yansong Guan, et al., Nature, Climate and Atmospheric Science, Nov 22, 2023
From the paper: Recent studies have shown that the anthropogenic signal is clearly detected in changes in drought characteristics, such as frequency, duration, and intensity. Anthropogenic emissions have also resulted in droughts with faster onset and more widespread areas
[SEPP Comment: Citations include: “Anthropogenic shift towards higher risk of flash drought over China.” Dry spells are now “flash droughts.”]
Questioning the Orthodoxy
Hot Times for Hype and Hysterics
By John Mikkelsen, Quadrant, Dec 9, 2023
Another Day, Another Scientific Paper Insists ‘Global Warming Is Not Caused By Increased CO2’
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Dec 7, 2023
Link to paper: Global temperatures, CO2 concentrations and oceans
By Allan T. Emrén, International Journal of Global Warming, June 30, 2023
Energy and Environmental Review: December 4, 2023
By John Droz, Jr., Master Resource, Dec 4, 2023
After Paris!
Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels
Exclusive: UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber says phase-out of coal, oil and gas would take world ‘back into caves’
By Damian Carrington and Ben Stockton, The Guardian, Dec 3, 2023
“Al Jaber also said a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development ‘unless you want to take the world back into caves’.”
Net Zero Will Take Us “Back Into Caves”, Says COP28 President
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 3, 2023
“Can we have every COP in UAE, please?”
Economic progress and fossil fuels: The elephant in the room at U.N. climate conference
By Vijay Jayaraj, Washington Times, Nov 28, 2023
Draft climate summit document floats fossil fuel phaseout but light on timeline details
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, Dec 8, 2023
“The draft comes amid a COP summit that has faced considerable controversy due to its location in Dubai, a major oil producer, as well as comments by the United Arab Emirates’s Sultan al-Jaber casting doubt on the validity of climate science.”
COP 28 is a really big fossil fuel trade show
By David Wojick, CFACT, Dec 7, 2023
John Kerry Spins UN Climate Summit President’s Comments That ‘No Science’ Backs Fossil Fuel Elimination Push
By Nick Pope, Daily Caller, Dec 4, 2023
John Kerry says no coal plants should be ‘permitted anywhere in the world’
By Lauren Irwin, The Hill, Dec 3, 2023
At COP28, John Kerry unveils nuclear fusion strategy as a source of clean energy
By Jennifer McDermott, AP, Dec 5, 2023
81,000 Off To Dubai To Enjoy The Sunshine & Fine Dining!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 4, 2023
“There seem to be two immutable facts about COPs:
• Each meeting sees higher emissions than the one before
• The number of attendees carries on rising each year.”
COP28 Showcases Globalist Agenda 2030
By Ron Clutz, Science Matters, Dec 7, 2023
Climate clowns galore, but what do they squark about?
By Bill Johnston, WUWT, Oct 6, 2023
“Bill Johnston is a former senior research scientist with the NSW [New South Wales] Department of Natural Resources (abolished in April 2007); which in previous iterations included the Soil Conservation Service of NSW; the NSW Water Conservation and Irrigation Commission; NSW Department of Planning and Department of Lands.” https://www.bomwatch.com.au/
COP28: China and India Reject Climate Loss and Damage Demands
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 4, 2023
[SEPP Comment: The largest and third largest emitters of CO2 didn’t cause past climate change, therefore should not be held responsible for future climate change?]
UN COP 28: Have we dodged the loss and damage threat again?
By David Wojick, CFACT, Dec 4, 2023
[SEPP Comment: Don’t draw conclusions about any UN groups until the last report is out.]
Problems in the Orthodoxy
Global CO2 Emissions Likely To Rise Through 2050–US EIA
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 3, 2023
Link to report: Global CO2 emissions rise through 2050 in most IEO2023 cases
By Kevin Nakolan and Michelle Bowman, EIA, Nov 30, 2023
Many Countries Don’t Accurately Report Emissions
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 3, 2023
“I am amazed anybody seriously thought that countries like China would ever bother to report their emissions accurately.”
Seeking a Common Ground
NETZERO is impeding progress on UN Sustainable Development Goals
By Judith Curry, Climate Etc., Dec 5, 2023
“’Working in global energy and development, I often hear people say, ‘Because of climate, we just can’t afford for everyone to live our lifestyles.’ That viewpoint is worse than patronizing. It’s a form of racism, and it’s creating a two-tier global energy system, with energy abundance for the rich and tiny solar lamps for Africans.’ – Kenyan activist and materials scientist Rose Mutiso.”
Models v. Observations
Scientists combine climate models for more accurate projections
By Reece Brown, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Phys.org, Nov 16, 2023 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to paper: Bayesian weighting of climate models based on climate sensitivity
By Elias C. Massoud, et al., Nature, Communications Earth & Environment, Oct 20, 2023
From the abstract: Taking advantage of multiple lines of evidence used to construct the best estimate of the earth’s climate sensitivity, the Bayesian Model Averaging framework produces an unbiased posterior probability distribution of model weights. The updated multi-model ensemble projects end-of-century global mean surface temperature increases of 2°C for a low emissions scenario (SSP1-2.6) and 5°C for a high emissions scenario (SSP5-8.5). These estimates are lower than those produced using a simple multi-model mean for the CMIP6 ensemble…. Our results showcase Bayesian Model Averaging as a path forward to project future climate change that is commensurate with the available scientific evidence.”
[SEPP Comment: Ignoring the real atmosphere with questionable statistics. Science is about cause and effect, and these statistics are not causative.]
Measurement Issues — Surface
Erasing Thermometer Data
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Dec 7, 2023
“’Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data.’” – The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the university of East Anglia (UEA)
[SEPP Comment: They didn’t bother to store the data on tape drives?]
Measurement Issues — Atmosphere
Global Temperature Report, November 2023
Earth System Science Center, UAH, Dec 2, 2023
Map: https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/2023/November2023/202311_Map.png
Graph: https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/2023/November2023/202311_Bar.png
Text: https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/2023/November2023/GTR_202311NOV_v1.pdf
“A note about the global temperature trend. For several years now, the trend has been extremely close to +0.135 °C/decade. This past July, the threshold of 0.135 was crossed at +0.1352 °C/decade. The global trend is now +0.14 °C/decade by rounding up.”
UAH November 2023: Ocean Stays Warm, Land Cools
By Ron Clutz, Science Matters, Dec 4, 2023
[SEPP Comment: Includes graph on the sharp increase of stratospheric water vapor (20 to 80 km altitude) from the Hunga-Tonga eruption.]
Changing Weather
Extreme Earth And Space Weather Of 1859
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Dec 8, 2023
Embarrassed Experts Flip-Flop, Now Warn: “Will Snow More Heavily In Coming Years”!
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Dec 8, 2023
“’Rather, they say, the snow is a sign of climate change: snow is becoming rarer, but when it does snow, it is heavy. One reason: due to global warming, it rains more, especially in the fall and winter. The completely rainy November confirmed this.’”
Munich Record December Snow Depth Shows That Weather Surprises Us Again And Again
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Dec 5, 2023
The Darkness
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Dec 7, 2023
“Below is a plot of incoming solar radiation from the WSU AgWeather network site in Seattle (near the UW) over the past year.
The last two days have been abysmal, with 0.57 and 0.87 MJ (megajoules) per square meter. During the midsummer we often get above 30.
To put it another way, during mid-summer we can get around 50 times more warming rays from the sun than during the past few days. “
Subtropical Warmth, Heavy Rain, and Filling Reservoirs
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Dec 5, 2023
“You did not have to travel to Hawaii this morning to experience subtropical warmth or tropical-intensity showers. It was here in the Pacific Northwest.”
Changing Climate
New Study: The ‘Global Tropics As A Whole’ Were As Warm Or Warmer Than Today 10,000 Years Ago
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Dec 4, 2023
Link to paper: Reversed Holocene temperature–moisture relationship in the Horn of Africa
By A. J. Baxter, et al., Nature, Aug 9, 2023
From Abstract: “Here we use organic geochemical climate-proxy data from the sediment record of Lake Chala (Kenya and Tanzania) to probe the stability of the link between hydroclimate and temperature over approximately the past 75,000 years, hence encompassing a sufficiently wide range of temperatures to test the ‘dry gets drier, wet gets wetter’ paradigm6 of anthropogenic climate change in the time domain. We show that the positive relationship between effective moisture and temperature in easternmost Africa during the cooler last glacial period shifted to negative around the onset of the Holocene 11,700 years ago, when the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration exceeded 250 parts per million and mean annual temperature approached modern-day values. Thus, at that time, the budget between monsoonal precipitation and continental evaporation crossed a tipping point such that the positive influence of temperature on evaporation became greater than its positive influence on precipitation.” [Boldface added]
[SEPP Comment: It returned after crossing a tipping point?]
Changing Seas
Café Latte Coral & The Bump Heads
By Jennifer Marohasy, Her Blog, Dec 8, 2023
[SEPP Comment: Parrot fish eat corals claimed to be endangered? Make them stop?]
Changing Earth
Not Caused by Climate Change: The Sinking of Joshimath
By Kip Hansen, WUWT, Dec 4, 2023
Lowering Standards
Why Tropical Storms Appear To Be More Frequent
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 5, 2023
“Dr Neil Frank, who was Director of the US National Hurricane Center [NHC] from 1974 to 1987 goes further, maintaining that many of the storms now named would not have been in his day.
He made two particular complaints about current methods in 2021:
1) Many named storms are actually winter storms, not tropical storms. He states that the first six tropical storms in 2020 would not have been counted in his time.
2) Nowadays the NHC rushes to name a storm, simply based on wind speeds. His team would have waited until the central pressure dropped to confirm that it really was a tropical storm, and not just a thunderstorm. This often explains why named storms are often so short lasting now.”
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Jim Dale Schooled Again!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 5, 2023
“The media’s favorite climate alarmist, meteorologist Jim Dale, gets another lesson from climate scientist Paul Burgess, who is now getting more comfortable in his TV role:”
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
Brewing truth: Climate doomsayers’ cooked up coffee crisis
By Vijay Jayaraj, American Thinker, Dec 7, 2023
“Brazil and Vietnam are the top two coffee bean producers. Both countries have seen remarkable increases in their yield, with Vietnam’s production climbing from 0.54 tons per acre in 2002 to 1.11 tons per acre in 2021. Meanwhile, Brazil’s yield has also shown significant growth, rising from 0.49 tons per acre in 2002 to 0.87 tons per acre in 2020.”
An Imaginary Warming Trend
By Tona Heller, Dec 7, 2023
Video: https://realclimatescience.com/2023/12/an-imaginary-warming-trend/#gsc.tab=0
CNN Mathematics
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Dec 8, 2023
Communicating Better to the Public – Do a Poll?
The latest survey on the “dual carbon” goal: more than seventy percent of experts believe that China can achieve the goal of carbon peaking.
Compared with last year’s survey results, this year’s experts are more positive about China’s timing of carbon peaking.
By Yu Juan YJ, Jiemian News (translated from Chinese), Nov 20, 2023
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
No, CNN, Climate Change is Not Costing the U.S. Billions
By Linnea Lueken, Climate Realism, Dec 1, 2023
[SEPP Comment: Weather was stable before governments discovered climate change?]
Revealed: How rising temperatures will affect our airports, rail network and power stations (Or not!)
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 8, 2023
“Risk assessors looked at around 22,000 buildings and other infrastructure assets for Sky News using a “digital twin” of the UK to model how they fared at two different climates in the year 2100.”
From Homewood: “Climate X, who produced this bunkum for Sky [News], earn their money from advising businesses on climate risks.
In my opinion, any companies which pay this tin pot company a penny are throwing shareholders’ money down the drain. They’d be better off asking Mystic Meg!”
Why Won’t those Troglodytes Trust Us and How, How, How! Can We Finally Get Through to THEM?!!! Number Eleventy Zillion
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Dec 5, 2023
Link to paper, Psychological inoculation strategies to fight climate disinformation across 12 countries.
By Tobia Spampatti, et al., Nature Human Behaviour, Nov 30, 2023
[SEPP Comment: Only they have true climate information?]
Privileged King Lectures Us On Climate
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 4, 2023
Video: [SEPP Comment: Statements include How dangerous are we willing to make the world/ Alarming tipping points are being reached! We belong to the Earth. We are running out of time – time after time.]
Revenge Of The Feudalists
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 5, 2023
“‘The Earth does not belong to us’, said King Charles at COP28 in Dubai last week. I don’t know about that, Your Majesty: a lot of it certainly belongs to your family.”
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Children for Propaganda
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is”
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 3, 2023
[SEPP Comment; Photos of snow in UK on December 2.]
Communicating Better to the Public – Protest
French Farmers Dump Manure on Government Buildings to Protest Climate Hysteria
By Paul Joseph Watson, Modernity, Dec 8, 2023 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
“They’re not messing around.”
Just Stop The Pylons
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 8, 2023
Pylons are electricity transmission and distribution towers.
Expanding the Orthodoxy
Exclusive: Young adults show heavy interest in Biden’s “Climate Corps”
By Ben Geman, Axios, Dec 1, 2023
“They’ll receive a compensation package ‘equivalent to $15/hour and includes lodging, transportation, clothing, a living allowance, health benefits, and more.’”
Wildlife Trust and COP28
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 4, 2023
Questioning European Green
Rishi’s Empty Rhetoric
By Andrew Montford, Net Zero Watch, Dec 4, 2023
“Nelson is quite correct that the whole drive for Net Zero drive a fantasy. It is the triumph of political posturing and bureaucratic trickery over rational decisionmaking.”
Vast Village [Heat] Pump Will Cost £40,000 Per Household
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 8, 2023
“The truth is getting to net zero is going to cost money’, says the berk [fool] behind the project.
He was not kidding!”
Cost of new greener Elgin procurator fiscal office rises to £3.5m
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 5, 2023
“The decarbonisation project budget was put at £2.2m earlier this year, but that has now risen 59% to £3.5m.”
Scottish Govt Accused Of Bullying Homeowners Over Heat Pumps
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 5, 2023
Green Jobs
The Crippling Economic Costs of Green Energy Subsidies
By Jonathan Lesser, Real Clear Energy, Dec 5, 2023
“One gauge of the adverse economic impacts of green subsidies is the cost to taxpayers to create the promised thousands of green energy jobs, especially for offshore wind. Using offshore wind developers’ claimed employment impacts, the average subsidy for each green job created will be over $2 million per year.’ [Emphasis in original]
Non-Green Jobs
The fall of Academia: half of US companies are reducing requirements for Bachelor’s degrees.
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Dec 5, 2023
EPA and other Regulators on the March
EPA lays groundwork for stronger climate rules
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Dec 5, 2023
Link to new EPA calculations: EPA Report on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases: Estimates Incorporating Recent Scientific Advances
By National Center for Environmental Economics Office of Policy, EPA, November 2023
Energy Issues – Non-US
Canadian Climate Policy: Reasonableness Needed
By Rob Ivany, Master Resource, Dec 7, 2023
“Climate policy or otherwise, we’ve stopped talking to each other and started shouting, applying labels, and name-calling. We’ve allowed activism, extremism, and political expediency to take point on the most serious issues of our time.”
Energy Issues — US
Ellenbogen: New York State’s Energy Transition
By Roger Caiazza, WUWT, Dec 2, 2023
“Richard Ellenbogen recently gave an important presentation on New York State’s Energy Transition that details his concerns with the net -zero mandate of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). I think it is important that his message gets out to all New Yorkers.”
Biden’s climate agenda creates energy poverty in tribal nations
By Sen. Steve Daines and Kathleen Sgamma, Washington Examiner, Dec 8, 2023
To Meet Soaring Demand for Rare Minerals, America Needs to School More Mining Engineers
By Jim Constantopoulos, Real Clear Energy, Dec 6, 2023
Washington’s Control of Energy
Effort to safeguard public lands sparks battle in Wyoming
By Sharon Udasin, The Hill, Dec 6, 2023
[SEPP Comment: Claims millions of acres remain for oil and gas development, but it locks up the most probable lands for successful development.]
Oil and Natural Gas – the Future or the Past?
Record U.S. oil production is pushing prices down
By Matt Phillips, Axios, Dec 5, 2023
Nuclear Energy and Fears
NuScale: Small Reactors, Big Legal Problems
By Kennedy Maize, Master Resource, Dec 5, 2023
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
The Case Against Offshore Wind
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 8, 2023
“I have therefore prepared a Factsheet, which I show below.”
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Other
Turning Food into Jet Fuel
By Kip Hansen, WUWT, Dec 6, 2023
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
Forced EV Transition customers won’t buy EV’s say 3,882 car dealers to Joe Biden
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Dec 4, 2023
Predictably, the Rush to Electric Cars Is Imploding
By Levi Russell, Real Clear Energy, Dec 5, 2023
“A recently published article in the peer-reviewed academic journal Transportation Research tells us that cars, even the supposedly anointed battery electric variety, are far too convenient and that the state must be empowered to “restrict car use.” The authors tell us that converting car lanes to bus lanes have reduced car use in Oslo. No surprise there. The fact that academia is floating this sort of policy should concern anyone who has any inkling of mistrust of the federal government. Truly our freedom of movement is in peril.”
Rishi Sunak suffers large rebellion against the Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate
Press Release, Net Zero Watch, Dec 5, 2023
Health, Energy, and Climate
Climate Change Is Not Threatening Human Health
By Linnea Lueken, American Thinker, Dec 2, 2023
Other News that May Be of Interest
Saving Santa Catalina
By Kip Hansen, WUWT, Dec 7, 2023
[SEPP Comment: Although deer eat grass, they have difficulty digesting it and it provides few nutrients, thus deer prefer other, more nutritious foods.]
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
The Deadly Geo-engineering Idea which Refuses to Die
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 7, 2023
Link to paper: Estimating global agricultural effects of geoengineering using volcanic eruptions.
By Jonathan Proctor, et al, Nature, Aug 8, 2018
Unreal!
Most Deserving Of A Lump Of Coal
By I & I Editorial Board, Dec 5, 2023
“Climate czar John Kerry, who must have nightmares of everyone’s carbon footprint but his own, dreams of outlawing coal-fired power plants across the world. Doing so is “how you can do something for health,” he said from the United Nations 28th global warming cocktail party in oil-rich Abu Dhabi. Avoiding blackouts and holding down electricity prices are also good for health, but health is not what the warming activists are interested in.”
David Viner’s Blunder Saved For Posterity
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 4, 2023
“Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.” – March 2000
German Solar Bike Path Produced Green Power – For $1100 A Kilowatt-Hour!
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Dec 3, 2023
“Retired economics professor Stefan Homburg commented on the boondoggle at X: ‘At first I thought the video was funny. But the current government is currently experimenting with our entire economy. They call it ‘transformation.’. In truth, a dangerous illusion.’”
UN Climate Summit Includes Session On ‘Responsible Yachting’
By Nick Pope, Daily Caller, Dec 5, 2023
[SEPP Comment: No fuel, just sail? Is Responsible Flying next?]
ARTICLES
1. The Truth About Net Zero, at Last
Climate enthusiasm hits the political wall as voters face the costs.
By The Editorial Board, WSJ, Dec. 8, 2023
TWTW Summary: The editorial begins:
“The great and good of politics and business have converged on Dubai this week for the global climate conference known as COP28, and by now they must wish they hadn’t. The event has done the one thing such confabs are supposed never to do, which is expose the truth about climate change and the race to net-zero carbon emissions.
The truth-teller in chief is the event’s host, Sultan Al Jaber. He’s become a figure of hate on the eco-left since letting slip that he’s a net-zero skeptic. ‘There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5 [degrees Celsius],’ he said of the climate industry’s global temperature target during a virtual event last month. He warned that attempting to wean the world off fossil fuels would ‘take the world back into caves.’
The net-zero apostles say the political leader and head of the state oil company in a major petroleum-producing country never should have been invited to host COP28. But then someone has to drill the oil that powers the private jets that ferry the bigwigs to these confabs.
The bigger embarrassment for the climate left is that voters agree with Mr. Jaber. If you haven’t paid much attention to COP28 this week, perhaps you’ve read about the collapse of the net-zero agenda around the world.
In no particular order:
• The European Union’s Green Deal is on the rocks, barely four years after it was unveiled to great fanfare. Key elements of the program, especially concerning land conservation, have withered on contact with the European Parliament, and enthusiasm for the rest is waning. Brussels frets it can’t keep pace with the subsidies in America’s Inflation Reduction Act—because Europe doesn’t have the money.
• In the United Kingdom in September, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ditched an electric-vehicle mandate that had been due to kick in by 2030. This still didn’t spare him a revolt by his own Conservative Party members of Parliament this week as more than two dozen voted against a backdoor attempt to impose on auto makers a quota for sales of new EVs. The quota passed but Mr. Sunak is on notice.
Mr. Sunak’s administration also promises to issue new licenses for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea—a policy the opposition Labour Party seems unlikely to reverse if Labour wins an election expected next year. Labour has scaled back its own green spending pledges because the party suspects voters would be wary of such a large fiscal commitment.
• The goal is to avoid the embarrassment that befell the center-left in elections in the Netherlands last month. That vote was a rebuff of Frans Timmermans, the politician previously in charge of the EU’s Green Deal. Voters instead turned to a politician on the right, Geert Wilders, who has little time for net zero. The election may have been motivated more by immigration concerns, but voters previously had elevated a new anti-environmental-regulation farmers’ party to be the largest faction in the Parliament’s upper house as a protest against emissions restrictions in agriculture.
• Germany is slipping into political disarray after a court ruling in mid-November disallowed the budget gimmick Berlin planned to use to finance its net-zero pledges. By forcing tens of billions of euros of green spending back onto to the government’s balance sheet from the slush funds where politicians hoped to hide the expense, the ruling has confronted voters with the true costs of net zero. The choice now will be between social welfare and climate, and the fiscal and political math imperils Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition.
***
The common denominator is reality. European countries, like the U.S., are discovering that no matter how hard they push on the net-zero string, costs never come down, green jobs never materialize to replace industrial employment, and the subsidy bill never declines.”
The editorial concludes that developing countries do not have the luxury of playing carbon games.
Nobel Laureate Al Gore
a Tony Heller video
Al Gore is no Al Jabar….Al Jabar just provided a good time for everyone at COP28 and Al Gore is just a bore and no fun at all.
“””The notion that there is one number, a temperature of the earth that they all work in lockstep with, is absurd. “”””
Funnily enough, on the previous post the Final Nail was waxing lyrical about just that
I can think of an AI cartoon- showing the Earth with a big mouth- and a thermometer in it. Or, in its butt. 🙂
Will renewables stop the climate crisis? | DW Documentary
The big lie. They brag that green energy is cheaper! This documentary is almost an hour long and can’t think of a single reason to be skeptical. Maybe because the people shown- who are from the wind and solar industries aren’t interested in skepticism?
I haven’t finished my coffee yet, but … is it 1 million kwh or 4?
Future investigators will have a cry over all the failed web links that the digital revolution generates.
About 15 years ago, I had a reference to an article that sounded interesting. The magazine was the sort that gets bound in annual segments at major libraries, so I went to a large university and located the stack and the bound material. I was foiled by a razor blade. There were copiers on every floor of the building, but that wasn’t the route the other person chose. The few pages of interest were gone. I wonder where they are 15 years later.
The quote of the week, mentioned in the article.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”
I’ve seen this quote from Mark Twain frequently mentioned on the internet. However, the quote is seriously flawed. It’s simply not true that “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble”.
What we don’t know frequently gets us into trouble. A more rational and logical phrasing would be:
“It ain’t only what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s also what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”