The Week That Was: 2024-03-16 (March 16, 2024)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “My interest in science was always essentially limited to the study of principles … That I have published so little is due to this same circumstance, as the great need to grasp principles has caused me to spend most of my time on fruitless pursuits.” ‒ Albert Einstein
Number of the Week:30%
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: This TWTW addresses the following issues. The US film premier of “Climate: The Movie (the Cold Truth).” The use of a probability tree for rational decision making on policy alternatives with suggested additions of the benefits of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide. Issues arising from trying to claim Earth is exposed to a constant sun. The failure of many scientists and commentators to understand that atmospheric carbon dioxide depletion has resulted in mass extinctions. The efforts of Ted Nordhaus and Roger Pielke Jr. to demonstrate that humans are not experiencing an increase in extreme weather events and have never been safer from such events.
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Film Premiere: The CO2 Coalition, CFACT, and The Heartland Institute are presenting the American premiere of “Climate: The Movie (the Cold Truth)” at 5:30 pm EDT on Tuesday, March 19 at the Angelika Film Center & Cafe at Mosaic in Fairfax, Virginia. The film is by British filmmaker Martin Durkin who created the film “The Great Global Warming Swindle.”
Prior to the showing at 6:30, opening remarks will be made including a few by the 2022 Nobel Co-Laureate in Physics John Clauser who has alarmed many in the climate establishment by rejecting the shoddy science (pseudoscience, fake science) used to claim a “climate crisis” or “climate emergency” is now called a “denier.” A denier of what, a phony consensus using shoddy survey techniques and statistics? See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Probability Tree: Engineering Management and Systems Engineer Michael Cochrane reminds TWTW of his essay posted in WUWT in 2016 on designing a probability tree for modeling climate change policy decisions. Cochrane proposes the following steps in building such a tree (citations not shown here):
“The following climate change policy model is designed to help us explore a range of scenarios associated with different answers to a sequence of questions fundamental to the issue of global warming and that must be addressed prior to proposing policy solutions. The questions are:
1. Is the earth actually warming? A summary of modern climate history suggests that from 1979 to the present there has been “a large disparity between surface thermometers, which show a fairly strong warming, and independent temperature readings of satellites and balloons, which show little warming trend” (Singer & Avery, 2007, p. xv).Rigorous data analysis (Heller, 2016) and application of statistical methods that control for heteroskedacity and autocorrelation (McKitrick & Vogelsang, 2014) suggest that apart from a step-wise change in global average temperature (GAT) around 1977 there has been no statistically significant warming trend since ~1958 or earlier.
2. If the earth is warming, is this actually a problem? There is some disagreement over this question, with global warming activists citing the potential for rising sea levels, more extreme weather events, famines, and other catastrophes. Other scientists, however, argue that rising atmospheric CO2 levels and warming attributable to it may actually have net beneficial effects such as longer growing seasons, expanded growing ranges, increased plant growth, increased food production, and reduced morbidity and mortality from cold snaps. (Davis, 2005) (Singer & Avery, 2007)
3. If the earth is warming, and this is a problem, to what extent is human activity causing the warming? This question gets at the heart of the issue. Many environmental activists think human activity (i.e., burning of fossil fuels and other activities that generate CO2 and other so-called “greenhouse gases”) is the primary cause of global warming, while others believe warming is largely or wholly a natural, cyclical phenomenon primarily caused by solar cycles, ocean current cycles, and the eccentricities of the earth’s axial tilt and orbit. (Singer & Avery, 2007)
4. If human activity is the primary cause of global warming, will reducing this activity also reduce global warming? The assumption undergirding environmental policies such as the (now obsolete) Kyoto Protocol, the “Clean Power Plan” in the U.S., and the global climate agreement negotiated in Paris in late 2015 is that if anthropogenic CO2 causes warming, then reducing the output of anthropogenic CO2 will retard the warming trend. Many scientists reject the deterministic view of the relationship of anthropogenic CO2 and climate change assumed by such policies, arguing that there is a high degree of uncertainty associated with understanding the effects of changes in atmospheric CO2. (Posmentier & Soon, 2005)
5. If human activity is not the primary cause of global warming, is it still possible to stop it? Posing this question acknowledges the existence and the problem of climate change, but forces consideration of alternative solutions.”
These steps imply rational decision making. But there is nothing rational about the decision making of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its parent organization the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to which the US and most countries are a party. As pointed out by Howard Hayden in the March issue of the Energy Advocate: The UNFCCC uses the following definitions:
For the purposes of this Convention:
1.‘Adverse effects of climate change’ means changes in the physical environment or biota resulting from climate change which have significant deleterious effects on the composition, resilience, or productivity of natural and managed ecosystems or on the operation of socio-economic systems or on human health and welfare.
2.‘Climate change’means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.
3.‘Climate system’ means the totality of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and geosphere and their interactions.
4.‘Emissions’ means the release of greenhouse gases and/or their precursors into the atmosphere over a specified area and period of time.
5.‘Greenhouse gases’ means those gaseous constituents of the atmosphere, both natural and anthropogenic, that absorb and re-emit infrared radiation.
6.‘Regional economic integration organization’ means an organization constituted by sovereign States of a given region which has competence in respect of matters governed by this Convention or its protocols and has been duly authorized, in accordance with its internal procedures, to sign, ratify, accept, approve or accede to the instruments concerned.
7.‘Reservoir’ means a component or components of the climate system where a greenhouse gas or a precursor of a greenhouse gas is stored.
8.‘Sink’ means any process, activity or mechanism which removes a greenhouse gas, an aerosol, or a precursor of a greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.
9.‘Source’ means any process or activity which releases a greenhouse gas, an aerosol, or a precursor of a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
Using these definitions virtually all climate change can be attributed to humans because they began using fossil fuels when the Chinese began to refine tar sands to use the resulting oil for lighting some 6000 years ago. Perhaps the UN bureaucrats think they are merciful when they restrict the dates to begin with the Age of Industrialization, which began about 1760 to 1840. In general, Earth has been cooling for the past 8000 years, interrupted by warming periods such as the one that began about 1880.
A simpler decision tree would evaluate the benefits of greenhouse gases whatever the causes, then evaluate possible harms. For example, one could ask what would Earth be like without greenhouse gases? Starting in 1859 John Tyndall used spectroscopy to explore the perplexing question: given its distance from the Sun why was Earth warm enough to support life? He discovered that certain gases allow visible sunlight to pass through the atmosphere but block the infrared radiation emitted by Earth to Space, warming the planet. He named these gases “greenhouse gases” for their importance in warming the planet and identified the most important one as water vapor.
A second question for a decision tree on the benefits of greenhouse gases could be what would Life be without carbon dioxide. As discussed in the March 9 TWTW, carbon dioxide is critical for photosynthesis. Without carbon dioxide and photosynthesis, Life would probably be reduced to simple bacteria capable of chemosynthesis.
This beginning would be far better for a probability tree than beginning with the foolish definitions of the UN bureaucrats and their followers, including those in Washington and other western capital cities. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy – Radiation Transfer, Challenging the Orthodoxy, and https://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2024/TWTW%20Mar%209.pdf for Beyond Photosynthesis.
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A Constant Sun? For the claims of the UNFCCC and the IPCC to be considered as possibly correct requires a constant sun and a constant Earth’s albedo, the fraction of sunlight reflected by Earth including its atmosphere. Both assumptions are highly questionable. Yet, papers appear in peer reviewed journals asserting both. The CERES-Science team, which includes SEPP director Willie Soon, addressed one of the latest efforts to assert a constant sun published in Solar Physics, 2024. It involves measurement of Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) since 1700.
Without going into the details of the thorough rebuttal by the CERES-Science team, it is useful to repeat their findings. The conclusions are:
“In terms of how variable the Sun’s Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) is, we saw that there are currently at least three scientific paradigms:
Paradigm A – ‘The calm Sun’
Paradigm B – ‘The bright modern Sun’
Paradigm C – ‘The variable Sun’
In terms of the causes of climate change, Paradigm A implies that humans are far more powerful than the Sun. Paradigm B implies that humans are about as powerful as the Sun.
In contrast, Paradigm C implies a much greater role for the Sun. Therefore, we can understand why those in Paradigm A are very frustrated by Paradigm C. Those in Paradigm A are frustrated that Paradigm C seems to be assigning much of the observed climate change to forces beyond our control – and, thereby, taking that control away from humanity.
However, many of those in Paradigm C believe that by truly understanding the complex nature of solar variability, we may be better able to predict and prepare for future climate changes, as well as gain a better understanding of the past.
In other words, from Paradigm C’s perspective, fully understanding how the climate has changed in the past will provide humans with a much greater power for dealing with future climate change. That is, it could help bring us better control over our fates.
The original Hoyt & Schatten (1993) TSI reconstruction (‘HS93’) explicitly acknowledged that several reconstructions at the time were developed within Paradigm A, which they called ‘the constant quiet Sun model’. However, they argued that this model was failing to explain many of the historically observed aspects of solar variability as well as the ongoing satellite TSI missions.
In his latest paper, Chatzistergos has claimed to have first replicated (using digitized versions of the HS93 plots) and then ‘updated’ the reconstruction to 2009. His ‘update’ looks very different from the original. However, it looks quite similar to his MPS group’s rival ‘SATIRE-T’ reconstruction, which is very much a Paradigm A approach.
Obviously, those who follow Paradigm A are quite chuffed with Chatzistergos’s ‘HS93’ remake, e.g., Dr. Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has recently posted an article on the RealClimate blog promoting Chatzistergos (2024).
However, in this post, we showed that while his initial replication seems to have been reasonable, his ‘update’ was not a genuine update, but rather a ‘remake’ in terms of Paradigm A.
When we used Chatzistergos’s updates for the individual proxies but applied the original methodology and philosophy of Hoyt & Schatten (1993), we obtained a reconstruction that was quite similar to the original. Below we compare his remake on the left and our update on the right using the same proxy updates, but actually following the approach of HS93:”
The dramatically different graphs of the ‘remake’ and the corrected version are not shown here.
“For each of the ‘updated’ proxies that Chatzistergos used for his remake, we found they were not a great replication of the original series used by HS93. Qualitatively they showed similar trends, but in all cases, there were significant divergences from the original HS93 records. In several cases, there was considerable subjectivity in what datasets he used to ‘update’ these proxies and how to process them. Therefore, we are not necessarily endorsing his ‘updates’ to the individual time series. Nor are we endorsing the ‘corrected’ reconstruction we get when we apply the HS93 methodology correctly to his updates.
Nonetheless, we find the differences between his remake and our attempt to update HS93 explicitly relying on the datasets chosen and used by Chatzistergos to be quite substantial.
Therefore, we think that Chatzistergos’s enthusiasm in claiming to have objectively ‘updated’ HS93 seems to have been a bit premature.” See link under Science: Is the Sun Rising?
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Dead Clades Walking? A clade is a group of organisms with a common ancestor and all its descendants. Humans are in the primate clade, which includes lemurs, monkeys, and apes. Thus, the direct human ancestors may be extinct, but the human clade and the human species are not extinct.
In his low-key style, Jim Steele builds on a paper by the above name to address the failure of many scientists and commentators to understand species extinction. The PNAS editors of the paper stated its significance. The editors wrote:
“’Dead clade walking’ refers to fossil groups that suffer major drops in their biodiversity at mass extinction but do not completely disappear from the fossil record. Why these groups were able to survive but not re-diversify remains a relative mystery. Controls on the timing of their eventual extinction are additionally unclear. By gauging the frequency and cause of dead clades walking, we may be able to better understand how mass extinction events have shaped the evolution of animal lineages over Earth history.”
In addressing the foolishness of the carbon dioxide reduction schemes, Steele discusses great extinction events starting with the Carboniferous (coal forming) Rainforest Collapse around 305 million years ago when CO2 levels reached about 150 parts per million (ppm), plant starvation levels. These low CO2 levels also resulted in a great decrease of ocean algae known as the “Phytoplankton Blackout.” After going through other extinction events, Steele writes:
“However, biased by the rapid extinction event 66 million years ago when a meteor struck earth, many researchers looked for a similarly rapid extinction event, like a volcanic eruption. Despite the life-promoting benefits from high CO2 and increased biodiversity during the Devonian, researchers were biased by recent narratives suggesting rapidly rising CO2 is a deadly killer. So, several researchers blamed end Permian extinctions on a series of volcanic eruptions, the Siberian Traps, narrowly centered around 252 million years ago for the release of copious amounts of CO2. If history teaches us anything, because that release raised CO2 concentrations back to over 2000 ppm, it more likely enabled the new expansion of life on earth, like it did during the Devonian, now with the rapid spread of flowering plants, the Age of Dinosaurs, and the further evolution of birds and mammals.
And again, if history teaches us anything, we must ensure that attempts to reduce CO2 concentrations do not result in devastating CO2 starvation ever again.” [Boldface added]
See links under Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide including new research on plant photosynthesis.
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Alternative Facts: Roger Pielke Jr brings up an excellent essay from Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute on “Why headlines blaming extreme weather on climate change don’t hold up, the peril of catastrophism, and the case that we’re actually safer than ever before.” Pielke writes:
“What determines whether hurricanes, floods, heat waves, and wildfires amount to natural disasters or minor nuisances, though, is mostly not the relative intensity or frequency of the natural hazard but rather how many people are in harm’s way and how well protected they are against the climate’s extremes.
Infrastructure, institutions, and technology mediate the relationship between extreme climate and weather phenomena, and the costs that human societies bear as a result of them. . .
The implications of this point will be counterintuitive for many. Yes, there are many types of disasters, like hurricanes and floods, which are causing greater economic costs in many places than they used to. But this is almost entirely because the places that are most exposed to weather disasters have far more people and far more wealth in harm’s way than they used to. Even if there were no global warming, in other words, these areas would be much more at risk simply because they have much more to lose.
However, what I find really interesting about Nordhaus’ essay is his discussion of how we got to a point where leading journalists and scientists are seeking to deny these rather obvious conditions and instead, to focus obsessively on human-caused climate change, and specifically on the fossil fuel industry as bearing responsibility for increasing disaster costs, contrary to an overwhelming scientific consensus.
Nordhaus explains that climate advocates have a long history of trying to tie disasters to climate change, dating back decades:
Those efforts intensified after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, with Al Gore using it as a centerpiece in An Inconvenient Truth.3 A few years later, in 2012, the Union of Concerned Scientists convened a gathering of environmental advocates, litigators, climate scientists, and opinion researchers in La Jolla, California. Their explicit purpose was to develop a public narrative connecting extreme weather events that were already happening, and the damage they were causing, with climate change and the fossil fuel industry.
The proceedings from that gathering, which were subsequently published in a report titled “Establishing Accountability for Climate Change Damages: Lessons from Tobacco Control,” are revealing.
The IPCC, over decades of reports, has not concluded with high confidence that a signal of human caused climate change can be detected for most types of extreme weather, and especially those that result in the greatest impacts. That remains the case today.
For those wanting to promote climate action using contemporary disasters as a reason to act, the IPCC’s consistent conclusions — no matter how deeply buried in its reports — present a problem.
In a 2018 survey of environmental journalists … Seventy-one percent reported that they never or rarely included opposing viewpoints in their coverage of climate change.
So alternative facts needed to be created. Nordhaus explains:
Myles Allen, the climate scientist who is credited with creating the field of “extreme event attribution,” is described in the report as lamenting that “the scientific community has frequently been guilty of talking about the climate of the twenty-second century rather than what’s happening now.” Yet, he and other scientists at the gathering also acknowledged how difficult it is to identify the contributions of climate change to current extreme weather events. “If you want to have statistically significant results about what has already happened,” another scientist, Claudia Tebaldi, noted, “we are far from being able to say anything definitive because the signal is so often overwhelmed by noise.
While much of the convening was ostensibly focused on litigation strategies, modeled on campaigns against the tobacco industry, the subtext of the entire conversation was how to raise the public salience of a risk that is diffuse, perceived to be far off in time and space, and associated with activities — the combustion of fossil fuels — that bring significant social benefits.
Nordhaus explains that a three-pronged strategy emerged from the 2012 meeting — lowering scientific standards (from those of the IPCC) to enable stronger claims, redefining the attribution of causality differently than the IPCC, and emphasizing the villainous nature of fossil fuel companies to give people an enemy:
During the meeting, Naomi Oreskes, the Harvard historian of science who popularized the connection between climate and tobacco, argued that scientists should use a different standard of proof for the relationship between climate change and extreme weather events. “When we take these things to the public,” she argued, “we take a standard of evidence applied internally to science and use it externally.” But, she continued, the 95-percent confidence standard that scientists use “is not the Eleventh Commandment. There is nothing in nature that taught us that 95 percent is needed. That is a social convention.”
Others suggested that reframing the attribution of extreme weather to climate change could allow for stronger claims: rather than looking at whether there was any long-term detectable trend in extreme weather, scientists might instead focus on the degree to which climate change increased the likelihood of a given extreme event. And others believed that focusing legal strategies on a villain — fossil fuel companies conspiring to mislead the public about the danger of their product — would result in greater public acceptance of the claims that climate change was the cause of extreme weather.
As it happened, environmental advocates would pursue all of these strategies.
Nordhaus further explains that broader changes in the media occurred at a perfect time to boost these strategies aimed at creating a new narrative:”
For further exposure of this sad effort to politicize and distort science showing a complete lack of scientific integrity see links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Number of the Week: 30%. The International Energy Agency (IEA) continues with its lack of realism and physical evidence. In a recent report it states:
“Methane is responsible for around 30% of the current rise in global temperature.”
The work of William van Wijngaarden and William Happer using the HITRAN database of the real atmosphere shows that the influence of methane on temperatures is tiny. It is doubtful the IEA intended to say that the current rise in global temperature is slightly more than tiny. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy – Radiation Transfer and Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
The challenges of trying to reconstruct changes in Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) since 1700: A response to Chatzistergos (2024)’s remake of Hoyt & Schatten (1993)
By CERES Team, CERES-Science, March 9, 2024
Censorship
Justin Trudeau’s Canada: Proposed Law May Allow Life Imprisonment for Online Speech ‘Crimes
By Amy Furr, Breitbart, May 14, 2024
Climate chief told staff to ‘kill’ negative net zero story
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 10, 2024
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
“Climate: The Movie” Film Premiere
Tuesday, March 19, 2024, 5:30 pm; Showtime 6:30 pm, Tickets Free
Angelika at Mosaic, 2911 District Ave, Fairfax, VA 22031
“the overwhelming scientific consensus”
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Mar 112, 2024
“He won a Nobel Prize. Then he started denying climate change. John Clauser shared the Nobel in physics last year. Now he’s a self-described ‘denier’ of the overwhelming scientific consensus on a warming planet.” – The Washington Post
Modeling Climate Change Policy Decisions Using a Probability Tree
By Michael Cochrane, WUWT, Sep 21, 2016
Dr. Patrick Moore – Carbon NetZero: A Ridiculous Solution to an Imaginary Problem
Video, 57 minutes, Friend of Science, Feb 28, 2024, Accessed Mar 14, 2024
Climate Models Exaggerate Effects of Global Warming
By Roy Spencer and Kevin Dayaratna, The Daily Signal, Feb 9, 2024
Alternative Facts
A new essay from Ted Nordhaus explains how extreme events came to represent climate change contrary to an overwhelming scientific consensus
By Roger Pielke Jr., The Honest Broker, Mar 8, 2024
Link to: Did Exxon Make It Rain Today?
Why headlines blaming extreme weather on climate change don’t hold up, the peril of catastrophism, and the case that we’re actually safer than ever before
By Ted Nordhaus, The New Atlantis, Winter 2024
State Of The Great Barrier Reef 2024
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 14, 2024
Link to report: State of the Great Barrier Reef: 2024
By Peter Ridd, Australian Environment Foundation, March 2024
Beef Plan Movement Speaks to Atmospheric Physicist Dr. Richard Lindzen
Video, 40 minutes, Accessed Mar 14, 2024
3 More New Studies Indicate There Has Been No Climate-Induced Precipitation Trend Since The 1800s
By Kenneth Richard, NO Tricks Zone, Mar 11, 2024
Link to paper with data from China: Tree-Ring Stable Oxygen Isotope Ratio (δ18O) Records Precipitation Changes over the past Century in the Central Part of Eastern China
By Changfeng Sun, et al., Forests, Jan 8, 2024
Climate Change Skeptics’ Arguments Are Inconvenient Facts, Won’t Ever Be Refuted!
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Mar 12, 2024
Comment by Tim Crome: “The positive feedback loops assumed in the models, to amplify the slight warming that they assume is caused by CO2, cannot exist in nature. If they did, any previous warming would have spiraled out of control many billions of years ago!”
Yet another fake IPCC hockey stick
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Mar 13, 2024
Tidbits
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Mar 13, 2024
Link to article: Scientists won’t classify anthropocene as ‘epoch’ yet — but say human impact undeniable
By Juliea Conley, Common Dreams,
Defending the Orthodoxy
New climate pledges will determine safety of world’s people: UN
By Kelly MacNamara, Paris (AFP), Mar 14, 2024
“Countries have a year to produce ambitious new emissions-cutting pledges to ensure the ‘safety and prosperity’ of people around the world, the UN’s climate chief said Thursday, calling the plans the most important so far this century.”
[SEPP Comment: Destroying reliable and affordable electricity will result in safety and prosperity?]
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change: The Lancet Commission report
Prof Boyd A Swinburn, MD, et al., The Lancet, Feb 23, 2019
Claim: Social Science can Solve the Climate Crisis
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Mar 11, 2024
“Cowperthwaite was once asked what poor countries should do to replicate the success of Asian tigers like Hong Kong, which thrived under his administration. Cowperthwaite’s response was ‘They should abolish the office of national statistics.’.”
[SEPP Comment: Discussing an absurd paper on human relationships with Earth.]
The last of us, climate edition
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Mar 13, 2024
Link to: Opinion: I’m a climate scientist. If you knew what I know, you’d be terrified too
By Bill McGuire, CNN, Mar 7, 2024
Questioning the Orthodoxy
Polar Bears and Coral Reefs Are Doing Just Fine
By Linnea Lueken, American Thinker, Mary 6, 2024
IEA’s “Light at the End of the Tunnel” Would Be Brighter With U.S. Oil and Gas
By Anne Bradbury, Real Clear Energy, March 12, 2024
Link to report: CO2 Emissions in 2023: A new record high, but is there light at the end of the tunnel?
By Staff, International Energy Agency, 2024
“The European Commission also participates in the work of the IEA”
From the article: “In his Wall Street Journal column, McNally correctly observed the IEA, until recently, had a ‘gold standard’ reputation for timely and impartial analysis devoid of political bias. ‘The world has enough climate NGOs,’ McNally notes, what we need as wars rage in two energy-producing regions ‘is an impartial and respected energy security agency.’”
Singapore: A Tale of Two IEAs
By Tilak K. Doshi Peter A. Coclanis, WUWT, Mar 15, 2024
Link to one study: Realities of Socialism: Singapore
By Staff, The Fraser Institute, Institute of Economic Affairs, Institute of Public Affairs, and The Fund for American Studies, 2024
Link to announcement: EA partners with Singapore for its first office outside of its Paris headquarters, to deepen engagement in Southeast Asia
Press release, International Energy Agency, Feb 13, 2024
“We can already see where the ‘decarbonization’ path recommended by IEA Paris will lead. In a report published last week, Gordon Hughes – a former adviser to the World Bank and professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh – puts it unambiguously: the plan is simply ‘posturing about targets that are patently not achievable and might be economically ruinous.’ As one commentator observed, ‘[t]he idea that hydrocarbons – a natural resource whose use from medicines to reliable energy is ubiquitous in modern industrial society – can be removed within less than 30 years is ridiculous.’” [Boldface added]
New calls for inquiry into Climate Change Committee
Press Release, Net Zero Watch, Mar 11, 20224
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
How CO2 starvation Caused the Greatest Extinction Event
By Jim Steele, WUWT, Mar 10, 2024
Link to paper: Dead clades walking are a pervasive macroevolutionary pattern
By B. Davis Barnes, Judith A. Sclafani, and Andrew Zaffos, PNAS, Apr 7, 2021
Unraveling the Complexity of Plant Photosynthesis at the Atomic Level
By Sophie Jenkins, London, UK (SPX), Mar 11, 2024
Link to paper: Structure of the plant plastid-encoded RNA polymerase
By Ángel Vergara-Cruces, et al., Cell, Feb 29, 2024
“Photosynthesis occurs in chloroplasts, cell compartments with their own DNA, tracing back to their origins as independent photosynthetic bacteria. The study delves into the production of photosynthetic proteins, essential for converting carbon dioxide and water into sugars and oxygen.” [Boldface added]
Problems in the Orthodoxy
India Power Sector In 2023
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 14, 2024
“New coal generating capacity added 2120 MW last year, and now stands at 208 GW. In the last three years 9630 MW has been added.”
Climate Bureaucrats Give China a Free Pass
By Oliver McPherson-Smith, Real Clear Energy, March 11, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Climate Bureaucrats realize that they can berate Americans but do nothing about China?]
And speaking of China
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Mar 13, 2024
No big North Sea fossil fuel country has plan to stop drilling in time for 1.5C goal
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 14, 2024
Seeking a Common Ground
Climate Policy Rethink
Three new papers tell us that we need to immediately reconsider climate targets, equity, and scenarios
By Roger Pielke Jr. The Honest Broker, Mar 11, 2024
Link to essay by Smil: Halfway Between Kyoto and 2050: Zero Carbon Is a Highly Unlikely Outcome
By Vaclav Smil, Accessed Mar 14, 2024
The Origin of Last Summer’s Maui Wildfire
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Mar 12, 2024
“In short, climate change or drought had little to do with this event.”
“But the weather forecasts were stunningly good. We have come a long, long way.”
[SEPP Comment: Government failed to correct known, existing problems. The findings are similar to those presented by Jim Steele.]
EPA Should Continue Working With Industry on GHG Regulations
By Chris Spear, Jed R. Mandel, and Laura Perrotta, Real Clear Energy, Mar 11, 2024
“It is imperative that EPA and its partners get the forthcoming Phase 3 GHG right. By adhering to achievable targets and realistic timelines that are technology neutral and ensure infrastructure investment can keep pace with emission standards, EPA has an historic opportunity to achieve more sustainable progress on the road to zero emissions. The responsible approach is the realistic approach.”
[SEPP Comment: Working with EPA has become a one-way street – you give, they take.]
Model Issues
Climate Model Bias 5: Storminess
By Andy May, WUWT, Mar 9, 2024
Climate Model Bias 6: WGII
By Andy May, WUWT, Mar 12, 2024
Climate Model Bias 7: WGIII
By Andy May, WUWT, Mar 13, 2024
Measurement Issues — Surface
TOO HOT TO HANDLE: NIWA’s misleading temperature records
By Ian Wishart, WUWT, Mar 12, 2024
“NIWA is the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Science, a Crown Research Institute established in 1992. It operates as a stand-alone company with its own Board of Directors and Executive.”
Changing Weather
Huge Increase in Snowpack Since January 1
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Mar 14, 2024
Blaming The Weather
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Mar 14, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Pick a cause: Unusual weather is caused by artillery bombardments in France during WW I, then the sunspot cycles, then atom-bomb testing, and now CO2?]
“Earth Is Cooling, Return of Ice Age Is Feared”
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Mar 14, 2024
[SEPP Comment: 1973 article]
Changing Climate
The Holocene Climatic Optimum: Paradise Lost?
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Mar 13, 2024
From the CO2Science Archive: “The model calculations of the authors based on the carbon isotope data further revealed that the drawdown of atmospheric CO2 from 10,500 to 8,200 yrs. BP was consistent with terrestrial vegetative regrowth and soil build-up on areas previously covered by ice sheets, ‘as well as a climatic development towards the mid-Holocene optimum.’”
Changing Seas
Mars attracts: How the Red Planet influences Earth’s climate and seas
News
By Robert Lea, Space.com, Mar 13, 2024 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to paper: Global-scale magnetosphere convection driven by dayside magnetic reconnection
By Lei Dai, et al., Nature Communications, Jan 20, 2024
From article: “We were surprised to find these 2.4-million-year cycles in our deep-sea sedimentary data.”
“’Our deep-sea data spanning 65 million years suggest that warmer oceans have more vigorous deep circulation,’ Dutkiewicz concluded. ‘This will potentially keep the ocean from becoming stagnant even if AMOC slows or stops altogether.’”
[SEPP Comment: Given the change in landforms over the past 65 million years, was there an Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) 65 million years ago? Was there an Atlantic Ocean? Subsequent cycles are possible, particularly after the closing of the Caribbean Seaway about 3.5 million years ago.]
Natural Influences Driving Sea Level Rise Overlooked in Media’s Climate Coverage
By Kevin Mooney, ICECAP, Mar 15, 2024
Changing Cryosphere – Land / Sea Ice
The Arctic gets it again
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Mar 13, 2024
Hudson Bay polar bears now considered most likely to survive future sea ice loss
By Susan Crockford, Polar Bear Science, Mar 9, 2024
Changing Earth
New Study: Satellite Evidence Shows Absorbed Shortwave Radiation Has Been Increasing Since 2000
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Mar 14, 2024
Link to paper: Global and regional entropy production by radiation estimated from satellite observations
By Seiji Kato; Fred G. Rose, AIP Conference Proceedings, Jan 18, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Unable to view full paper. Has Earth’s albedo declined, resulting in a warming of oceans?]
Agriculture Issues & Fear of Famine
Why Not to Worry about Farming’s Contribution to Global Warming
By E. Calvin Beisner, Cornwall Alliance, Mar 4, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Excellent summary.]
Lowering Standards
Rewriting The AMO
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Mar 14, 2024
“’The AMO is currently not updated due to the source dataset (Kaplan SST) not being updated. We apologize for the inconvenience. NOAA/NCEI has a time-series of the AMO based on the NOAA ERSSTV5.’”
“opportunity lie within diverse partnerships”
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Mar 14, 2024
Contrary to NOAA: “There has been no trend in maximum, mean or minimum sea ice extent over the past seventeen years, and extent this year has been above the 21st century average almost every day.”
[SEPP Comment: Is NOAA looking for “partners” to have someone to blame when it becomes clear NOAA cannot responsibly keep temperature and ice records that have been entrusted to it?]
Curtin University: Climate Activism can Help Mitigate Anxiety
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Mar 9, 2024
BBC Countryfile’s Adverts For National Grid
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 14, 2024
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Arctic rivers face big changes with a warming climate, permafrost thaw and an accelerating water cycle– LATEST CONVERSATION JUNK SCIENCE
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 9, 2024
Climate Change Is Warping The Seasons!”
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 9, 2024
New York Post Misses the Boat on Sea Level Rise
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, Mar 14, 2024
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
Methane and climate change
By Staff, IEA, Accessed Mar 12, 2024
Washington Post – Squaw Valley Running out Of Snow
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Mar 15, 2024
Text: https://realclimatescience.com/2024/03/washington-post-squaw-valley-running-out-of-snow/#gsc.tab=0
Video: https://realclimatescience.com/2024/03/washington-post-squaw-valley-running-out-of-snow/#gsc.tab=0
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
Buy wind turbines or the whole world’s coral reefs will die!
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Mar 14, 2024
#GettingWorse: Global Disaster Losses edition
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Mar 13, 2024
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda on Children
Teaching The Science: Virginia Style
By Kip Hansen, WUWT, Mar 13, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Teaching the deliberate misinformation from NOAA that oceans, which are becoming less alkaline, more neutral, are becoming acidic.]
Communicating Better to the Public – Protest
“Prove It” CO2 Tariffs: The Wolf Is At the Door
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Mar 13, 2024
“Scientist Rebellion” Protestors Cause Traffic Chaos in Melbourne Australia
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Mar 12, 2024
“Scientist Rebellion” Protestors Cause Traffic Chaos in Melbourne Australia
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Mar 12, 2024
Expanding the Orthodoxy
Factories receive billions in tax subsidies despite breaking pollution laws: Report
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, Mar 14, 2024
Link to report: Feeding the Plastics Industrial Complex: Taking Public Subsidies, Breaking Pollution Limits
By Alexandra Shaykevich, et al., The Environmental Integrity Project, Mar 14, 2024
[SEPP Comment: According to the report, two facilities received $5.2 billion of the total of $9 billion in state and local tax breaks in exchange for significant expansion or improvements to facilities. Peanuts compared with the hundreds of billions given to unreliable and expensive wind and solar.]
Questioning European Green
The inevitable crash of Net Zero
Virtually every net-zero-by-2050 initiative is doomed.
By Bryan Leyland, Net Zero Watch, Mar 13, 2024
Bryan Leyland is a power systems engineer with 60 years’ experience in all aspects of power generation and supply all over the world.
The German energy transition threatens to be an unaffordable, unrealizable disaster, according to the government’s own independent auditors
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 11, 2024
Germany Begins Felling 120,000 Trees From ‘Fairy Tale’ Forest to Make Way for Wind Turbines
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Mar 8, 2024
German Federal Audit Office Warns Germany’s Green Energy Transition Is Way Off Track
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Mar 8, 2024
Questioning Green Elsewhere
Burned Alive
Since last July, at least 172 people have been immolated due to extreme energy poverty.
By Robert Bryce, His Blog, Mar 12, 2024
Are ‘Green’ Agendas Carrying Governors to Political Cliffs?
By Gordon Tomb, Cornwall Alliance, Feb 29, 2024
Aussie Green Party Leader Used Private Jets, Expensed $1 Million to Taxpayers
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Mar 12, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Is he too important to practice what he preaches?]
The Political Games Continue
Elites’ Empty Climate Policies
By Ron Clutz, Science Matters, Mar 14, 2024
Link to: President Biden’s Climate Aspirations
By Randall G. Holcombe, Independent Institute, Mar 5, 2024
“As the political season ramps up this year, notice that the ‘policies’ that politicians will propose are not really policies at all; they are aspirations.
Litigation Issues
City of Chicago v. BP PLC
By Russell Cook, The Gelbspan Files, Mar 9, 2024
Court halts SEC climate disclosure rule
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Mar 15, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Could it be that the courts are beginning to question government “experts” in fields for which they are not expert?]
Company behind controversial Pebble Mine project sues over EPA rejection
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, Mar 15, 2024
ONE MILLION DOLLARS, (or maybe not) Steyn Files Appeal
By Charles Rotter, From SteynOnline, Via WUWT, Mar 11,2024
Subsidies and Mandates Forever
Renewable Subsidies To Rise By £1.6 Billion This Year
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 8, 2024
Govt Gives Into Heat Pump Lobby [UK]
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 8, 2024
More cash for wind farms near towns as net zero shift stretches grid
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 10, 2024
The answer? “Yesterday for instance, solar generation only ran at 7% of capacity. Today it only reached a pitiful 1.96 GW for a few minutes.”
Biden administration announces $120 million for tribal climate resilience
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, Mar 14, 2024
“The funds include $71 million in Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funds, $26 million in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds and $23 million from annual appropriations for fiscal 2023.”
Energy Issues – Non-US
Energy and the poverty of nations
By John Constable, Net Zero Watch, Mar 12, 2024
Video & Text
The ‘elephant in the room’ that risks exposing Britain’s net zero agenda
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 14, 2024
“Far from “taking account” of consumption emissions, they expose the whole hypocrisy and futility of the UK’s Net Zero agenda. Until the rest of the world phases out fossil fuels, nothing we can do will make the blindest bit of difference.”
Net zero costs to hit poorest households hardest, warns Ofgem
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 12, 2024
“Anybody with half a braincell could have forecast all of this years ago. A much bigger proportion of poorer households’ incomes goes on basics, such as energy, than richer ones, who also benefit from generous subsidies for solar panels and Teslas.
Quite why OFGEM have left it so long to realise this is a mystery.”
[SEPP Comment: Ofgem is the energy regulator for Great Britian.]
Net Zero Watch welcomes Government recognition of need for gas
Press Release, Net Zero Watch, Mar 12, 2024
“Net Zero dies, not with a bang, but a whimper. Subsidizing new gas power stations to prop up unreliable and uncontrollable wind and solar means that the failing Net Zero target can limp along for another five or ten years at huge consumer cost and vast economic damage. Looking on the bright side, these power stations will eventually be used as part of the desperate return to fossil fuels that is inevitable as reality bites home and wind and solar are abandoned. But with a little courage all of this absurd cost could have been avoided. What a mess.” – John Constable
Net Zero is dead. Only the fanatics haven’t realised it
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 13, 2024
New gas power plants needed to bolster energy supply, PM says [UK]
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 12, 2024
UK Leaders Say New Gas-Fired Plants Needed for Energy Security
By Darrell Proctor, Power Mag, Mar 12, 2024
“The Labour party, meanwhile, recently hired Mark Carney, a former Governor of the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, and the creator of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, to help find private investment to support a transition away from fossil fuels.”
[SEPP Comment: To what, Net Zero Electricity?]
Energy Issues – Australia
76 years ago Australians could build assets that would last generations
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Mar 15, 2024
Energy Policy and How to Fix it
By Alan Moran, Quadrant, Mar 15, 2024
“So, the $9 billion a year in subsidies, going almost entirely to wind and solar, that the Albanese government [the current government lead by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of the Australian Labor Party] inherited has now grown to at least $15.6 billion. To provide the batteries or pumped storage to firm-up intermittent wind/solar sources of energy would cost far more even than this. The renewables-sympathetic Global Roam consultancy, using highly optimistic assumptions, estimates battery back-up equivalent to 70,000 Hornsdale Tesla batteries. That would put the cost at $6.3 trillion – or three-times GDP. On top of all this are other measures like support for EVs and consequent tax increases on petrol and diesel vehicles and bans on the exploration for and use of gas.”
Turn Out the Lights, Australia. Dark Days Ahead
By Peter Smith, Quadrant, Mar 10, 2024
Energy Issues — US
Failed State? America’s Leaders Have Taken Us To A Place Where We Could Literally Run Out of Electricity
By Hailey Gomez, Daily Caller, Mar 7, 2024
America’s Energy Scam: A Deliberate Exploitation Of Humanity That Only Increases Emissions – OpEd
By Ronald Stein, Eurasia Review, Mar 12, 2024
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
Ocean City ‘cannot be bought,’ mayor told US Wind in community benefit package rejection
Mayor Rick Meehan of Ocean City, Maryland, said US Wind had offered community benefit packages in exchange for local officials refraining from negative comments about the project.
By Diana DiGangi, Utility Dive, Feb 27, 2024 [H/t Master Resource]
Vattenfall Ditches Offshore Wind to Hydrogen Project
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 14, 2024
Renewable lobby double speak!
“And this farce has only cost taxpayers £9.3m!”
CFACT calls for banning offshore wind monopiles in favor of suction buckets to save whales
By David Wojick, CFACT, Mar 11, 2024
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Other
Marine Power? More Magical Thinking
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Mar 14, 2024
Time to Bring Geothermal Energy in From the Cold
By David M. Hart, Real Clear Energy, Mar 11, 2024
“Geothermal energy has a hard time getting a break. The Earth’s massive, inexhaustible heat is undeniably alluring to anyone who cares about clean, secure, reliable energy. But when push comes to shove, none of them want it badly enough to push through the barriers that limit the use of this resource today.”
[SEPP Comment: Another public policy professor failing to ask critical questions such as: What is the cost of extracting the heat from deep within earth and how quickly is the resource depleted at the location of extraction?]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Storage
Britishvolt buyer Recharge hit with winding up petition
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 14, 2024
“The company that promised to buy collapsed UK gigafactory Britishvolt has been hit with a winding up petition as creditors chase it for unpaid wages and other monies owed.”
‘A very Finnish thing’: Big sand battery to store wind and solar energy using crushed soapstone
By Lottie Limb, Euronews, Mar 10, 2024
[SEPP Comment: A heat stove made of soapstone, Tulikivi, is more efficient than a fireplace, but it does not store electricity.]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
Feds Throw EV Mandate Into Reverse
By Lauren Fix, Newsmax, Mar 8, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Not in reverse but making it more expensive for consumers to buy the car they want. The article links to the latest edition of Hot Talk, Cold Science, by S. Fred Singer, David Legates, and Anthony Lupo.]
Patients Will Die, Thanks To The NHS Net Zero Drive
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 15, 2024
“Will somebody please stop this nonsense now, before people die!”
“’ The NHS is to introduce electric ambulances, raising concerns that its drive for net zero is being put above patient safety.’”
Sobering Up? EU May Scrap Its Plans To Ban Internal Combustion Engines By 2035
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Mar 10, 2024
“After vote in Brussels last Monday evening, a majority of the European Parliament favored a Commission proposal that would no longer automatically classify electric cars as climate-neutral vehicles.”
Some Chinese electric cars are ‘almost uninsurable’ in Britain
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 9, 2024
Gatwick Airport Tesla Fire Cover Up
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 14, 2024
Carbon Schemes
Direct air capture costs projected higher than previous estimates
By Robert Schreiber, Zurich, Switzerland (SPX), Mar 11, 2024
Link to paper: Considering technology characteristics to project future costs of direct air capture
By Katrin Sievert, et al., Joule, Mar 1, 2024
[SEPP Comment: A surprise?]
California Dreaming
California’s Dubious Megaprojects
By Eward Ring, What’s Current?, Accessed Mar 13, 2024
California’s Water & Energy Future
California not on track to meet 2030 emissions goals: Report
By Sharon Udasin, The Hill, Mar 15, 2024
Link to report: 2023 California Green Innovation Index
By Staff, Next 10, Mar 14, 2024
Exploding Energy Prices in California
By Steve Goreham, Master Resource, Mar 12, 2024
Other News that May Be of Interest
CBI: Former scientist manipulated data in over 600 cases
By Morgan Whitley, Fox 21, Mar 8, 2024
“The Colorado Bureau of Investigation has completed its internal affairs investigation into a former DNA scientist and found that the scientist had manipulated data in the DNA testing process.”
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
Climate Change causes attack of flesh eating bacteria!
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Mar 12, 2024
“Science journalists are the foot soldiers of voodoo.”
Google AI Admits On Climate Change: “I Apologize I Downplayed Significance Of Limited Data”!
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Mar 15, 2024
It’s all so simple
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Mar 13, 2024
[SEPP Comment: To John Kerry, radiation transfer in the atmosphere is simple physics.]
John Kerry is very very disappointed in you
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Mar 13, 2024
“Having been Massachusetts lieutenant-governor, Senator, presidential candidate, Secretary of State and special envoy, he sighs ‘Our politics are embarrassing’.”
Yes, We Have No Bananas! We Have No Bananas Today!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 12, 2024
“Since the absurd McGrath has invoked the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, maybe he should actually have quoted their own data, which shows banana production at an all time high in 2022. Output has actually doubled in the last twenty years, DESPITE global warming.”
The women losing their hair because of the climate crisis
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 9, 2024
ARTICLES
1. ‘Follow the Science’ Leads to Ruin
Climate policy needs to take into account the costs of draconian measures, which are enormous.
By Bjorn Lomborg, WSJ, Mar 13, 2024
TWTW Summary: The president of the Copenhagen Consensus, a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, writes:
“More than one million people die in traffic accidents globally each year. Overnight, governments could solve this entirely man-made problem by reducing speed limits everywhere to 3 miles an hour, but we’d laugh any politician who suggested it out of office. It would be absurd to focus solely on lives saved if the cost would be economic and societal destruction. Yet politicians widely employ the same one-sided reasoning in the name of fighting climate change. It’s simply a matter, they say, of ‘following the science.’
That assertion lets politicians obscure—and avoid responsibility for—lopsided climate-policy trade-offs. Lawmakers contend that because climate change is real and man-made, it is only scientifically logical that the world end fossil-fuel use. Any downsides are a mathematical inevitability rather than something politicians chose to inflict on constituents.
The Biden administration has set the goal of achieving a net-zero emissions economy by no later than 2050. President Biden has pushed costly yet ineffective programs such as the Inflation Reduction Act to reduce U.S. emissions. If you ask the president’s outgoing climate envoy, John Kerry, there is no alternative. He claimed only a couple of weeks ago that ‘nothing that we are doing, nothing that President Biden has sought to do, has any political motivation or ideological rationale. It’s entirely a reaction to science, to the mathematics and physics that explain what is happening.’
This way of thinking conflates climate science and climate policy. Man-made climate change exists, but what societies do in response is still a matter of choice. When politicians tell us we must ‘follow the science’ toward extreme climate policies, they are really trying to shut down the discussion of enormous, unsustainable costs. We shouldn’t let them.
Climate change is a real problem but isn’t the imminent existential crisis of which the media and activist politicians breathlessly warn. They run headlines and give speeches about extreme weather events, though the United Nations’ panel of climate scientists hasn’t been able to document evidence of most of them worsening. The data show that climate-related deaths from droughts, storms, floods and fires have declined by more than 97% over the last century, from nearly 500,000 annually to fewer than 15,000 in the 2020s. That’s a real human cost but far from cataclysmic. More people die in traffic accidents in an average week.
Yet pervasive environmental fear-mongering has encouraged anxious protesters across the world’s wealthiest nations to proclaim that we ‘just stop oil,’ along with coal and gas. That’s as ludicrous as trying to end traffic deaths by setting speed limits to near zero worldwide. Their demands would prevent some deaths but also destroy life as we know it. [Boldface added]
Over the past two centuries, global life quality has dramatically improved, to a large extent because of an incredible increase in energy, mostly from the harnessing of fossil fuels. That has made agriculture, industry and transportation vastly more productive. Average life spans have more than doubled, hunger has dramatically declined, and real income has increased tenfold. We risk all that progress if we just stop using fossil fuels.
The world still gets four-fifths of its energy from fossil fuels, because renewable sources rarely provide good alternatives. Half the world’s population entirely depends on food grown with synthetic fertilizer produced almost entirely by natural gas. If we rapidly ceased using fossil fuels, four billion people would suddenly be without food. Add the billions of people dependent on fossil-fuel heating in the winter, along with our dependence on fossil fuels for steel, cement, plastics and transportation, and it is no wonder that one recent estimate by economist Neil Record showed an abrupt end to fossil fuel use would cause six billion deaths in less than a year.
Few politicians advocate solutions this extreme, but many use activist paranoia about global extinction to justify proposals with only marginally more sensible timelines. Rather than knocking speed limits down to zero in one blow, they plan to force them to a crawl across several decades. It’s still a destructive idea. Politicians suppress discussion by grandstanding about the existential threat climate change poses. Weigh the actual costs of the proposals, and it becomes obvious that they’re preposterous.”
Lomborg discusses a peer reviewed study on the negative consequences of Net Zero which is not identified then concludes with:
Our goal in forming climate policy should be the same we bring to traffic laws and any other political question: achieve more benefits than costs to society. A richer world is much more resilient against weather extremes. In the short term, therefore, policymakers should focus on lifting the billions of people still in poverty out of it, both because it will make them more resilient against extreme weather and because it will do so much good in a myriad of other ways. For the longer term, governments and companies should invest in green-energy research and development to drive down the costs and increase the reliability of fossil-fuel alternatives.
Careful science can inform us about the problem of climate change, but it can’t tell us how to solve it. Sensible public debate requires all the facts, including about the costs of our choices. Some of the most popular climate policies will have costs far greater than climate change itself. When politicians try to shut down discussion with claims that they’re ‘following the science,’ don’t let them.
**********************
Number of the Week: 30%.
No mention if this is the “human caused GW”? Anyway, it could be a typo. Maybe they mean 3%, or 0.3%, of 0.03%.
I’m 97% sure that, as printed, it is wrong.
Take our next election – whenever it is called in the next year or so….
We have a bewildering bevy of choice to choose from:
Blue Labour – ‘Net Zero’ (BBC Verified)
Red Labour – ‘Net Zero’ (BBC Verified)
Lib Dem Labour – ‘Net Zero’ (BBC Verified)
SNP (hate Labour) – ‘Net Zero’ (BBC Verified)
Others – ‘Net Zero’ (BBC Verified)
In terms of the causes of climate change we have very little effect and an eye-watering, humongous price to pay for it, nonetheless.
“”[Heat Pump] Installations must speed up 11-fold
…the National Audit Office (NAO) has found that heat pump installations would need to accelerate 11-fold if the government is to reach its target for 600,000 heat pumps installed in homes every year by 2028.””
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/18/uk-heat-pump-rollout-criticised-as-too-slow-by-public-spending-watchdog
If you want someone to blame, I would suggest you blame Hermann Goering. Goering did more than any Englishman to modernise the [postwar] building infrastructure of England (mostly). But even the Reichsmarschall couldn’t flatten all of our Elizabethan, Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian etc housing stock. It is old (and extremely serviceable, even now) and would – for net zero – in all honesty be far cheaper to knock down and start again. But we can’t. We have really dire homelessness problem as things stand.
I have an Edwardian house (1906). You would have to literally strip it down to its brick shell and start again – and don’t tell me that is affordable by me or any other body; it isn’t.
Before too long even the NAO is going to hit the brick wall of reality. The sooner the better.
I don’t think the NAO has got its figures right. Only just over 30,000 heat pumps were installed in 2023 – you need 20 times that number to reach 600,000 a year.
Tropical cyclone Megan has made landfall in northern Australia.
Just a note to say that I’m thankful for TWTW and SEPP.
Back when atrazine in drinking water in central Ohio was the hot topic, much useful and accurate information was provided. (I worked at one of the drinking water plants there then.)
It was via SEPP that I first noticed Anthony’s “Surface Station Project” and later found WUWT.
(Not sure if Anthony is thankful I found WUWT.) 😎
I usually enjoy your comments. Not all, but we aren’t a monolithic group here.
I’ve made a few comments over the years I wish I could take back!
But, thanks.
I think most of my comments have been attempts at humor. (Successful or not is up to the reader.)
Others have been about something I knew something about. (Corrections welcome, if still scrutinized.)
Some are just personal opinion.
PS I knew a “Jim Masterson” years ago. I wonder ….?
(But this public place isn’t the place to find out!)
Freeze warning: Southeast to shiver in coldest weather since JanuaryIn the days leading up to the first day of spring, temperatures will feel more like the middle of winter for residents of the Southeast and Florida won’t escape the chill either.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/winter-weather/southeast-florida-shiver-coldest-since-january/1632269?fbclid=IwAR0FAszX8IlhgjwUhauBIjFRt50Hg7ai5HeeNLUmm8wwY3b8JUG7n_n4wWY
Story tip
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/texas-pulls-8-5-billion-blackrock-stunning-blow-esg-movement
THe state of Texas is pulling its money out of Black rock over ESG.