The Week That Was: 2024 04-27 (April 27, 2024)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “The exception proves that the rule is wrong. That is the principle of science.” – Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist (1998, posthumously)
Number of the Week: $53 Billion
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scattering: The CO2 Coalition released a brief video in which William Happer discusses his role in exploring the use of lasers to intercept incoming ballistic missiles. The problem is that the atmosphere distorts light energy sufficiently so that laser energy is broken up into little beams none of which has sufficient power to burn an incoming missile. The lasers could work above the atmosphere, but that would be very expensive. In a classified meeting, Happer proposed using the layer of sodium about 100 km, 62 miles, above the surface to focus the lasers. There are a few stars that are bright enough so that the distortion can be measured. Using these measurements, it is possible to construct flexible mirrors so that the energy is re-focused.
The Department of Defense explored this possibility and it worked. The system became known as the Sodium Laser Guide Star. However, there are very few stars that are bright enough to provide the data needed to focus the mirrors. So, unless an incoming missile is coming from the direction of one of these stars, the system will not work. It is doubtful that an attacking enemy would be so accommodating is to attack from the direction of one of these stars. Thus, for national defense, the system is impractical.
However, the system works for aiming ground-based telescopes and all major observatories have flexible mirrors to properly aim the telescopes when scanning the night sky. This is an example of the extent to which the Department of Defense, particularly the Air Force, has gone to understand the scattering, or distorting, effects of atmospheric gases. One such effort resulted in the development of the high-resolution transmission molecular absorption database, HITRAN.
Greenhouse gases, primarily water vapor and secondarily carbon dioxide, scatter certain frequencies of long wave infrared radiation going out from the surface to space, the greenhouse effect. Using the HITRAN database, Happer and his colleague William van Wijngaarden, built the most accurate estimates existing of the role of greenhouse gases in energy transfer in Earth’s atmosphere. Under the heavy political influence of the climate change industry, their work remains unpublished. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy – Radiation Transfer and Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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The Trick: The movie “The Trick” is the: “True story of Philip Jones, the world-renowned Professor and Director of Climate Research [CRU] at the University of East Anglia [UK] who was the eye of an international media storm and the victim of cyberterrorism.” [Boldface added] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14876294/
According to the Crown Prosecuting Service:
“The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism, both in and outside of the UK, as the use or threat of one or more of the actions listed below, and where they are designed to influence the government, or an international governmental organization or to intimidate the public. The use or threat must also be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial, or ideological cause.
The specific actions included are:
- serious violence against a person;
- serious damage to property:
- endangering a person’s life (other than that of the person committing the action);
- creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public; and
- action designed to seriously interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.
The use or threat of action, as set out above, which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism regardless of whether or not the action is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organization or to intimidate the public or a section of the public.”
Describing a computer hacking event and release of the hacks as terrorism seems to be a bit of “movie-style overreach.” The movie was recently broadcast on Washington area PBS stations. Unfortunately, during the second round, the first part of the movie was interrupted by an unscheduled broadcast of another show. So, these comments are based on viewing the last part of the movie.
The Philip Jones character describes “The Trick” as not showing part of the tree ring data reported by Briffa et al., of the University of East Anglia because the data were superseded by superior temperature data from thermometers. What is missing in the film is the data not shown.
The missing data show a huge divergence between tree ring data and thermometer data: thermometer data goes up starkly while tree ring data stays the same or declines. This divergence shows that tree ring data do not duplicate instrument data and to combine the two as Jones did is misleading and other than utterly honest science. The exception is an example of actions contrary to principles of science as stated in the “Quote of the Week” above.
The other less than utterly honest acts by Jones and many other practitioners of climate science are major reasons why climate science has not advanced over the past twenty years, as pointed out by Richard Lindzen in his 2009 paper: “Climate Science: Is it Currently Designed to Answer Questions?” Most practitioners of climate science refuse to acknowledge past error and continue to issue misleading reports including omitting relevant data that is contrary to the claimed theory. See link under Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda and https://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2024/TWTW%204-20-2024.pdf for link to Lindzen’s paper.
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Climate: The Movie: In contrast to the special pleading that dominates “The Trick,” “Climate: The Movie” is largely a set of interviews of distinguished scientists describing the physical evidence that they assert contradicts the politicized claim that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide dominate Earth’s climate change.
The movie is so rich in commentary and physical evidence, that it is impossible to summarize here. The most glaring recent evidence omitted by climate science practitioners is atmospheric temperature trend measurements, the only comprehensive global temperature trend measurements compiled world-wide. Roy Spencer, the co-founder of the method of using satellite measurements of the changing brightness of Earth’s atmosphere and converting it to temperature estimates is interviewed. Willie Soon uses US surface data from rural areas to show that the warming in recent years is modest and in line with estimates from satellite measurements. which is the subject of an essay by John Robson. It is important to note that urbanization causes nighttime temperatures to rise, but not necessarily daytime temperatures. This is independently verified in an article by Nicola Scaffeta in Climate Dynamics. Thus, the talk of people dying from daytime heat exhaustion due to warming daytime temperatures from human influence is largely meaningless. Heat exhaustion has long been a problem, by going hatless in the noonday sun in tropical areas. There is nothing new here.
Perhaps the most striking comment is by John Clauser, the co-laurate of the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics (Quantum mechanics). He presents comprehensive proxy data of Earth’s temperatures over the past 500 million years or so, to assert “there is no connection whatsoever between CO2 and climate change.” Indeed, there is no long-term correlation. Thus, using a short-term correlation to forecast the future is meaningless. So is the amplification of the effect of CO2 and water vapor which is used by global climate modelers to project a dire future. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Proxy Problems: There are problems with all long-term temperature estimates. The measurements of satellite temperature trends, the only comprehensive global measurements we have, must be corrected for orbital drift (decay), instrument changes, and possible instrument failure resulting in strange readings. Such rigorous activities are conducted by the Earth Science Center, University of Alabama, Huntsville, and recorded monthly.
Surface based instruments are subject to instrument changes, changes in location, and changes in surroundings, the most important being urbanization. Careful corrections are not rigorously performed, and all too often corrections are not recorded. Thus, the once gold standard of surface measurements, the US database has been corrupted by spurious changes.
Proxy data for instruments have problems. Hiding the problems of tree ring data was involved in The Trick discussed above. Researches of bristlecone pine data, and tree ring data from Yamal (Russia), the Urals, and Alaska all resorted to hiding divergence from instrument data. Thus, the extent of divergence is not really known.
The tops of drilled ice cores from the Artic or Antarctic are questionable. Thus, measurements for the 20th century are highly questionable. Further, Alkenones in marine deposits, created by algae (phytoplankton) and deposits of animals that eat them, are not precise and the tops of drill cores are unreliable. Thus, the data are meaningless for combining with 20th century instrument data. The tendency to combine instrument data with proxy data is a fool’s error.
Canadian John Robson and his team at Climate Discussion Nexus issued a video that explains the problems of combining proxy data with instrument data. Note: Robson holds a Ph.D. in American History from the University of Texas at Austin and is definitely not a “climate scientist.” See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Nutrition from Plants Using CO2: Fear fanatics have claimed that plants grown in enhanced CO2 concentrations have a lower nutritive value than plants grown “in nature.” Similar claims have been made about plants grown when using artificial fertilizers.
The CO2 Coalition has issued a comprehensive report demonstrating how frivolous this claim is. It may be technically true, but insignificant. The abstract begins with:
“In the present article, we strongly argue against the published notion that enhanced atmospheric concentrators of carbon dioxide (eCO2) threaten human nutrition. We review literature and provide arguments that arrive at quite a contrary view. In accordance with Liebig’s Law of the Minimum, more vigorous growth of vegetation in eCO2 will increase plants’ need for more of other nutrients. However, the resulting nutrient deficiencies caused by eCO2 are small, compared to the nutrient shortages that agriculture and livestock routinely face because of natural phenomena, such as severe soil fertility differences, nutrient dilution in plants due to rainfall or irrigation, and even aging of crops. These problems have been satisfactorily dealt with for generations through adequate use of mineral fertilizers, most importantly nitrogen; by proper species and culver selection; and with food supplements for livestock and humans. The same agricultural practices will ensure that the more abundant crops that result from eCO2 will also provide good nutrition.”
See links under Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide.
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Weather Forecasting: Google engineers and scientists have announced an Artificial Intelligence (AI) method of forecasting weather events more rapidly. The press release states [Boldface added]:
“We present SEEDS, new AI technology to accelerate and improve weather forecasts using diffusion models. SEEDS enables significant reduction in computational cost for generating ensemble forecasts and better characterization of rare or extreme weather events.”
Accurate weather forecasts can have a direct impact on people’s lives, from helping make routine decisions, like what to pack for a day’s activities, to informing urgent actions, for example, protecting people in the face of hazardous weather conditions. The importance of accurate and timely weather forecasts will only increase as the climate changes. Recognizing this, we at Google have been investing in weather and climate research to help ensure that the forecasting technology of tomorrow can meet the demand for reliable weather information. Some of our recent innovations include MetNet-3, Google’s high-resolution forecasts up to 24-hours into the future, and GraphCast, a weather model that can predict weather up to 10 days ahead.
Weather is inherently stochastic. To quantify the uncertainty, traditional methods rely on physics-based simulation to generate an ensemble of forecasts. However, it is computationally costly to generate a large ensemble so that rare and extreme weather events can be discerned and characterized accurately.
With that in mind, we are excited to announce our latest innovation designed to accelerate progress in weather forecasting, Scalable Ensemble Envelope Diffusion Sampler (SEEDS), recently published in Science Advances. SEEDS is a generative AI model that can efficiently generate ensembles of weather forecasts at scale at a small fraction of the cost of traditional physics-based forecasting models. This technology opens up novel opportunities for weather and climate science, and it represents one of the first applications to weather and climate forecasting of probabilistic diffusion models, a generative AI technology behind recent advances in media generation.”
Basically, the method uses normal probability distributions to “fill in” missing data and knowledge, thus, the authors are assuming that weather and extreme weather events follow normal probability distributions. Current weather models tend to fall apart after a few days and even if all the models converge are not reliable beyond 14 days. Predicting extreme weather events such as locations and intensities of tornadoes a day in advance would be a great improvement.
Unfortunately, the press release goes into predicting climate change. If the modelers adopt the practices of the climate change community, accurate forecasts are impossible, even ten years out. See links under Model Issues.
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Assault on Energy: Early on, the Biden Administration promised an all-of-government approach to the imaginary climate problem caused by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations. Washington’s assault on reliable, affordable energy has begun. The Wall Street Journal editorial titled “The Biden EPA’s Plan to Ration Electricity: New rules are designed to eliminate fossil-fuel power plants. Energy scarcity is sure to result” begins with:
“The Biden Administration’s regulations are coming so fast and furious that it’s hard even to keep track, but we’re trying. On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed its latest doozy—rules that will effectively force coal plants to shut down while banning new natural-gas plants.
‘With the announcement today, the power sector can make planning decisions with a full array of information,’ EPA’s press release declares. Translation: Get moving with the green-energy transition because we’re determined to eliminate fossil-fuel power.
Barack Obama’s regulation spurred a wave of coal plant closures. Now President Biden is trying to finish the job by tightening mercury, wastewater, and ash disposal standards. EPA is also replacing the Obama Clean Power Plan that the Supreme Court struck down with a rule requiring that coal plants and new gas-fired plants adopt costly and unproven carbon-capture technology by 2032.
Section 111 of the Clean Air Act says the EPA can regulate pollutants from stationary sources through the ‘best system of emission reduction’ that is ‘adequately demonstrated.’ Carbon capture is neither the best nor adequately demonstrated. As of last year, only one commercial-scale coal plant in the world used carbon capture, and no gas-fired plants did.
EPA says Inflation Reduction Act tax credits and funding in the 2021 infrastructure bill will ‘incentivize and facilitate the deployment’ of carbon capture. But subsidies would have to be two to three times larger to make the technology cost-effective at a coal plant. Carbon capture reduces a plant’s efficiency, which also raises costs.
Because carbon capture uses 20% to 25% of the electricity generated by a power plant, less will be available to the grid. That means more generators will be needed to provide the same amount of power. But new gas-fired plants won’t be built because the technology will make them uneconomic. Talk about a catch-22.
Another problem: CO2 must be stored underground in certain geologic formations, largely in the upper Midwest and Gulf Coast. Permitting new wells for CO2 injections can take six years. Pipelines to transport CO2 can take even longer. Green groups oppose pipelines for CO2 as they do for oil and natural gas.
All of this regulatory uncertainty will discourage the development of new gas-fired plants even as coal plants that currently generate about 16% of the country’s power are forced to retire. Renewables can’t provide reliable power around the clock to fill the gap.
All of this will hit while demand for power is surging amid new manufacturing needs and an artificial intelligence boom. Texas’s grid operator this week raised its forecast for demand growth for 2030 by 40,000 megawatts compared to last year’s forecast. That’s about seven times the power that New York City uses at any given time.
Texas power demand will nearly double over the next six years owing to data centers, manufacturing plants, crypto mining and the electrification of oil and gas equipment. When temperatures in Texas recently climbed into the 80s, the grid operator told power plants not to shut down for maintenance. Americans around the country are increasingly being told to raise their thermostats during the summer and avoid running appliances to prevent blackouts.
By the way, EPA plans to unveil soon another rule to reduce CO2 emissions from existing gas-fired plants, so some of them may also have to shut down. Meantime, China has added about 200 gigawatts of coal power over the last five years—about as much as the entire U.S. coal fleet. The Biden fossil-fuel onslaught will have no effect on global temperatures.
But it will raise electricity prices no matter what EPA says. Electric rates are already soaring amid the government force-fed green transition, especially in states like California, New York and New Jersey that have done the most to punish fossil fuels.”
The editorial goes into requests by some Democrats to defer the assault until after the elections, but they were ignored. The editorial concludes that the actions may draw legal challenges. But to many in Washington, disruption is what is important, legality is secondary. See Article # 1 and EPA and other Regulators on the March.
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Lack of Critical Thinking: Throughout history, human progress has been marked by the use of more efficient, higher-density energy. Nothing demonstrates the failure to provide critical thinking in Washington more than the passage of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which attempts to reverse the trend of human progress. As interpreted by the administration, it provides hundreds of billions of dollars to unreliable sources of electricity generation. Yet, North America had become independent from foreign sources of coal, oil, and natural gas.
High-tech industries such as artificial intelligence (AI) and computer chip manufacturing are highly dependent on carefully controlled 100% reliable electricity. In computer chip manufacturing a slight hiccup in electricity can cause the loss of months of production and loss of product amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Electricity from wind and solar is incompatible with computer chip manufacturing.
Yet the same week that the EPA announced an all-of-government assault on reliable, affordable energy, particularly electricity, the Commerce Department announced a $6.1 billion grant to Micron Technology to build three chip manufacturing facilities. The Wall Street Journal article begins with:
“Micron Technology is receiving up to $6.1 billion from the federal government to build three chip-making facilities, the latest award from legislation meant to boost chip production in the U.S.
The government grant will fuel up to $125 billion in investment by Micron in New York and Idaho over the next 20 years, U.S. officials said Thursday. About $50 billion of that will come by 2030.
Micron plans to build a “megafab,” or a collection of massive chip-producing facilities, in Clay, N.Y. The government funding will go toward building the first two of four facilities that are expected to have chip-producing space equal to almost 40 football fields.
The company initially announced its plans for the New York facility in 2022. The company said at the time it expected the megafab to be the largest semiconductor fabrication facility in U.S. history.
Micron also plans to use the grant to construct another fab, or fabrication facility, in Boise, Idaho, where Micron is based. That plant, in the same place as the company’s existing research facility, will be a high-volume manufacturing fab.
Officials said the total investment by Micron was expected to create more than 70,000 jobs, including 20,000 direct manufacturing and construction jobs.
The preliminary funding deal between Micron and the Commerce Department is the fifth major tranche of funding to a chip-making giant in the last several weeks under the 2022 Chips Act.
The $53 billion Chips Act follows years of semiconductor manufacturing shifting overseas, which the Biden administration has framed as an economic and national security problem. The U.S. now produces just over 10% of semiconductors.
The administration recently announced $6.4 billion for Samsung, which is looking to expand its manufacturing operations in Texas. Intel was awarded $8.5 billion, the largest grant announced to date under the law, to increase production in four states.
All three plants built by Micron will make dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, which is commonly used in personal computers and servers. The chips have become a key component for companies looking to increase their capabilities with artificial intelligence.
More recently, a slump in demand for its chips, not a lack of manufacturing, has weighed on Micron’s results.”
The same Congress that passed legislation resulting in hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies to generators of unreliable electricity passed legislation resulting in tens of billions of dollars of subsidies to industries requiring 100% reliable electricity. Does this fit the definition of schizophrenia (suffering delusions and hallucinations; out of touch with reality)? See link under Questioning Green Elsewhere, and Article # 2.
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Number of the Week: $53 Billion To emphasize what was written above. in 2022, the same Congress that passed the Inflation Reduction Act subsidizing unreliable electricity generation, passed the $53 billion Chips and Science Act to subsidize industries requiring 100% reliable, controlled electricity. See Article # 2.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Censorship
“Australia is NOT a Free Country”: Elon Musk Threatened with Jail for Defying Censorship Demands
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Apr 26, 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/
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels
By Multiple Authors, Bezdek, Idso, Legates, and Singer eds., Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, April 2019
http://climatechangereconsidered.org/climate-change-reconsidered-ii-fossil-fuels/
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/why-scientists-disagree-about-global-warming/
Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate
S. Fred Singer, Editor, NIPCC, 2008
http://www.sepp.org/publications/nipcc_final.pdf
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
Challenging the Orthodoxy
Dr. William Happer Discusses Sodium Laser Guide Star
Video, Willim Happer, CO2 Coalition, Apr 24, 20224
Link to paper: The Adaptive Optics Revolution
By R. W. Duffner Smithsonian, 2009
Climate: The Movie
By Martin Durkin and Tom Nelson, YouTube Movie, 2024
“With Tree Rings On Their Fingers”
Let the proxy data speak,
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 19, 2024
Video: Link to paper on tree rings: A Statistical Analysis of Multiple Temperature Proxies: Are reconstructions of surface temperatures over the last 1000 years reliable?
By Blakeley B. McShane, Abraham J. Wyner, Annals of Applied Statistics, March 2011
Link to paper on marine proxies: Alkenones as paleoceanographic proxies
By Julian P. Sachs, er al. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, Nov 21, 2000
Climate Movie fact check: Urban heat islands
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 24, 2024
Link to paper: The Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Land Surface Warming (1850–2018) in Terms of Human and Natural Factors: Challenges of Inadequate Data
By Willie Soon, et al., Climate, Aug 28, 2024
Climate Class Warfare
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Apr 25, 2024
“an amazing documentary dismantling the climate change theory”
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Apr 18, 2024
Unnecessary Net Zero, Part II: A Demonstration with Global Carbon Project Data
By Roy Spencer, His Blog, Apr 23, 2024
“All that is needed to stop the rise of atmospheric CO2 is for yearly anthropogenic emissions to be reduced to the point where they match the yearly removal rate by nature. The Global Carbon Project data suggests that reduction is about 33% below 2023 emissions. And that is based upon the conservative assumption that future CO2 removal will follow the nonlinear curve in the first plot, above [not shown here], rather than the linear relationship.”
[SEPP Comment: Nature has been removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for hundreds of millions of ears, something global climate modelers do not understand.]
Climate Change Is Normal and Natural, and Can’t Be Controlled
By Frits Byron Soepyan, WUWT, Apr 21, 2024
Babylon Bee CEO: ‘Scientific Progressivism Is a Religion’
By Catherine Salgado, PJ Media, Apr 20, 2024
“Modern science — in the name of progress — has gone from trying to understand reality to denying it altogether,” he [Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon] commented. “Scientific progressivism is a religion. Don’t be fooled by the fact that its priests wear lab coats.”
Defending the Orthodoxy
IPCC Still Deceiving with the Hockey Stick
By Ron Clutz, Apr 26, 2024
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
Every day is Earth Day: Indigenous Peoples and their knowledges for planetary health
By Nicole Redver, et al., The Lancet, Apr 19, 2024
The article begins: “Indigenous Dene Elder Francois Paulette from northern Canada talked about climate change at the 2015 Parliament of the World Religions and warned ‘Your way of life is killing my way of life.’ He ended his speech with the words: ‘Rise! It’s time to stand up for our future.’”
[SEPP Comment: What would a new glaciation do to their way of life?]
Questioning the Orthodoxy
How Many Billions of People Would Die Under Net Zero?
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Apr 19, 2024
Shedding Light on the Unseen Costs of “Renewable” Electricity
By David Flemming, Real Clear Energy, April 23, 2024
“…’there is no bad guy left, at least in Massachusetts, to point the finger at, turn the screws on, and break their will, so they stop emitting. That’s you, we have to break your will, right. I can’t even say that publicly.’ Massachusetts undersecretary of climate change David Ismay after he resigned.”
Will Climate Change Crush Air Quality by Boosting Temperature Inversions, or Not?
By Anthony J. Sadar, Science of Climate Change, Accepted Apr 4, 2024
Temperature inversions have been a key component of some of the worst air pollution generated disasters in history, including in Europe in the 1950s. And interest in the impact of climate change on pollution-inducing temperature inversions is gaining traction.
Why won’t Chris Packham have a real debate on climate?
By Toby Young, The Spectator, Apr 27, 2024
[SEPP Comment: The appeal to authority is treated as ultimate evidence?]
3 Physicists Use Experimental Evidence To Show CO2’s Capacity To Absorb Radiation Has Saturated
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Apr 23, 2024
Link to paper: Climatic consequences of the process of saturation of radiation absorption in gases
By Jan Kubicki, et al. Applications in Engineering Science, Mar 17, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Saturation has been shown in laboratory studies for decades and in the atmosphere by van Wijngaarden and Happer, above, who show that adding CO2 has a slight effect on temperatures in today’s atmosphere. The statement “Due to saturation, higher and higher concentrations do not lead to any further absorption of radiation” is not correct but not that far off.]
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
Nutritive Value of Plants Growing in Enhanced CO2 Concentrations (eCO2)
Press Release, CO2 Coalition, Apr 22, 2024
Link to full report: Nutritive Value of Plants Growing in Enhanced CO2 Concentrations (eCO2)
By Albrecht Glatzle, et al., CO2 Coalition, March 2024
#GettingWorse: Global food productivity edition
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 24, 2024
Problems in the Orthodoxy
Developing Nations Reject Western Carbon Colonialism
By Vijay Jayaraj, Real Clear Energy, April 24, 2024
Green on Green: Wilderness Protection Laws and Indigenous Rights are Derailing Renewable Energy Projects
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Apr 23, 2024
UK Climate Advisor Accuses Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of “Stepping Back from the Transition
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Apr 21, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Another example of the UN trying to make national policies.]
Models v. Observations
There’s Nothing “Scientific” About Climate Models
By Paul Sutton, The Daily Sceptic, Apr 23, 2024
Google builds an AI model that can predict future weather catastrophes.
By Drew Turney, Live Science, Apr 22, 2024 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to press release: Generative AI to quantify uncertainty in weather forecasting
By Lizao Li and Rob Carver, et al. Google Research, Mar 29, 2024
Link to paper: Generative emulation of weather forecast ensembles with diffusion models
By Lizao Li, et al., AAAS Science Advances, Mar 29, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Using probability distributions to “fill in” missing data and knowledge.]
Measurement Issues — Surface
Climate Change Weekly #503: Official Temperature Data Isn’t ‘Data’ At All
By H Sterling Burnett, Environment & Climate News, Apr 18, 2024
The influence of five decades of rapid urbanization on Chinese temperatures
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 24, 2024
From the CO2Science archive
Measurement Issues — Atmosphere
Temporal & Spatial Thermal Response to Heat Input, Transfer & Retention in the Climate System
By Richard Willoughby, WUWT, Apr 25, 224
It went to outer space
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 24, 2024
Changing Weather
Drought in Southern Africa — Officially NOT Climate Change
By Kip Hansen, WUWT, Apr 21, 2024
Drought-Buster Wet, Cool Weather Ahead
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Apr 24, 2024
“As many suspected, with the rapid collapse of El Nino and the progression into spring, the weather patterns have shifted, opening the door to far wetter weather over the Northwest.” [Boldface added]
Catastrophic Hurricanes [and cyclones (typhoons)] In The 1970s
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 21, 2024
1979 brought Typhoon Tip, which was the most intense tropical cyclone ever observed, with a central pressure of 870mb. Tip was also the largest.
Changing Seas
Wrecked. Day 3. Part 3. Great Keppel Island, April 2024
By Jennifer Marohasy, Her Blog, Apr 22, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Stress caused by a sudden increase in temperatures is not a permanent condition. Corals adapt.]
Changing Cryosphere – Land / Sea Ice
Yes, that Arctic ice
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 24, 2024
“The behavior of Arctic ice is not evidence that something unprecedented and man-made is happening. And honesty compels even a fair-minded alarmist to admit it. It also compels such a person to admit that if they’re convinced, we’re approaching an ecological catastrophe and then some of the apparently central evidence of it turns out not to point that way, they should be relieved and happy.
Instead, they get mad. Why?”
Agriculture Issues & Fear of Famine
Big Ag, not Only Big Oil, on the ‘Climate Change’ Menu
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Apr 25, 2024
Lowering Standards
Congress Republicans Demand Answers From The IEA
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 25, 2024
“The GOP members of the Senate and House Committees on Energy have written to Fatih Birol, asking for explanations as to why the IEA has strayed from its core purpose of promoting energy security, instead focusing on the Net Zero agenda:”
Jim Dale Gets It Wrong Again
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 26, 2024
“’Meteorologist Jim Dale claims Brits are in for a sweltering spring, seeing heat to rival that of 2022’s in April, while the Met Office has already projected overall temperatures this year to smash records again. Speaking to GB News, he said temperatures could climb unseasonably high this month as a result of climate change.’”
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Claim: Global Warming is Spreading Malaria and Dengue to Europe
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Apr 26, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Starting in British Guyana about 1950, malaria was effectively controlled by indoor spraying of DDT every six month. In 1972, the EPA banned DDT based on false claims and deaths from malaria rose significantly.]
Mental gridlock
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 24, 2024
“It’s an all-hands-on-deck climate crisis, a real one this time, caused by climate policy not climate change. Naturally, being alarmist, the [Washington] Post confuses an abstraction with reality and vice versa, whining that ‘It also threatens to stifle the transition to cleaner energy’ whereas the whole problem is that there is no ‘transition to cleaner energy’ and the pretense that there is threatens to stifle our once-reliable electricity supply. Remind us what the Post slogan was about something dying in darkness?”
AEP Needs To Read The CCC’s Reports
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 20, 2024
Homewood: “As you will know, I have spent considerable time looking into the various reports and projections from the Committee on Climate Change, and I cannot recall them even barely mentioning primary energy. Instead, all of their reports and plans are concerned with electricity requirements.”
Tidbits
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 24, 2024
Communicating Better to the Public – Exaggerate, or be Vague?
131 million Americans live in areas with unhealthy air pollution: Research
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, Apr 24, 2024
Link to “study”: State of the Air
By Staff, American Lung Association, 2024
[SEPP Comment: For ozone, The four worst cities are in California, then comes Phoenix, Denver, and back to California. For year-round particle pollution, California cities take the top 7 places. Florida has none!]
DAVID BLACKMON: Having Biden Declare A Climate Emergency Is A Crazy Idea
By David Blackmon, Daily Caller, Apr 21, 2024
The only “emergency,” of course, is the president’s flagging approval ratings among impressionable young voters that threaten to derail his re-election chances.
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
L A Times Editorial Claim that “The planet is experiencing a horrifying streak of record-breaking heat” is Unsupported by NOAA’s Climate Data
By Larry Hamlin, WUWT, Apr 25, 2024
The good camel story that climate fearmongers don’t tell
By Vijay Jayaraj, Business and Politics, Apr 23, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Exposing that camel husbandry is not threatened by ‘climate change’ but disease and inbreeding are actual challenges.]
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
The Trick (film)
By Pip Broughton and Owen Sheers, Movie made for UK TV, 2021
Battery storage costs could fall up to 40 percent by 2030: IEA
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, Apr 25, 2024
[SEPP Comment: IEA projections are being shown as misleading.]
National Grid Resorts To Propaganda–David Turver
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 21, 2024
Climate Queries: The Search for Gullibility
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Apr 23, 2024
The Be-All / End-All “Chicken Little” Advertorial: When It’s All You Got, You. Still. Have. Nothing.
By Russell Cook, Gelbspan Files, Via WUWT, Apr 25, 2024
“No joke, the collective enviro-activist lobby is completely enslaved to that “Chicken Little” ‘disinformation ad’ accusation as they try to dupe the public into believing an advertorial having that headline is smoking gun evidence of sinister fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns.”
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda on Children
Earth Day Education Head: Climate Education for Kids Builds Green “Muscle Memory”
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Apr 22, 2024
Expanding the Orthodoxy
Anthropocene: The Cockroach of the Geologic Time Scale?
By David Middleton, WUWT, Apr 25, 2024
Earth Day 2024: How Plastic Can the Enviros Get?
By Benjamin Zycher, Real Clear Energy, April 22, 2024
What to know about the pivotal UN plastics negotiations
By Saul Elbein, The Hill, Apr 23, 2024
Questioning European Green
Switching to green power could add £29 billion a year to household bills
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 22, 2024
Homewood correcting errors: “2) £29 billion works out at over £1000 a year per household, not the £700 claimed.
4) Onshore wind is not as cheap as claimed, because of its greater intermittency.
6) Talk of social tariffs and transferring costs to general taxation is no more use than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
7) The figure of £29 billion of course only relates to the power supply.
On top of that can be added all of the other costs of Net Zero, including:
EVs
Heat Pumps
Hydrogen
Costs for industry of decarbonisation
Insulation
It is not difficult to see a figure of at least £50 billion when everything is taken into account.”
Questioning Green Elsewhere
False Energy Transition: The View from Australia (Nick Cater, Menzies Research Centre)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Apr 24, 2024
“’Previous energy transitions adopted energy sources of greater density and efficiency than those they replaced. Those advantages became a natural incentive for their adoption. In the current ‘transition’, the process is reversed unless we are prepared to countenance the mass use of nuclear technology.’”
Can We Escape an Imperialist Path to the Green Energy Transition?
By Portia Roberts, Real Clear Energy, April 22, 2024
IEA: “’The world’s clean energy goals cannot be achieved without Africa’s resources.’ Those with a sense of history might find these observations chillingly familiar.”
Tracking The Demise Of The U.S. Green Energy Transition
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Apr 21, 2024
“We’re coming up on three and a half years into the Biden presidency — a presidency which from the outset promised an ‘all of government’ regulatory onslaught to force a transition away from fossil fuels and to ‘green’ energy. And the regulatory onslaught has indeed come forth. But how about the actual transition in energy use? Not so much.”
Another day on the road to Green Energy Ruin, and the posterchild of Green Manufacturing collapses
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Apr 20, 2024
“In 2021 Australia was the world’s largest exporter of LNG but in a quest for climate purity we’ve banned so many exploration sites, and pursued so many stupid energy options we are about to start importing gas.”
Alinta chief admits the transition has “soaring costs”, and has stalled because of the rooftop solar glut
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Apr 25, 2024
“A couple of weeks ago in Australia the chief of Alinta Energy admitted in a big speech that the industry needs to be honest with the public about the costs of the transition. This marks a big shift from the “cheaper and cleaner” misinformation which the renewables industry was practically built on. Jeff Dimery had a stark warning — his company bought a large old coal plant in Victoria for a billion dollars in 2018, and it powers one fifth of Victoria. But to replace that today with renewables would cost $10 billion.”
[SEPP Comment: And renewables cannot deliver when needed.]
Non-Green Jobs
The West’s electric car giants now risk destroying themselves
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 23, 2024
“’It is a classic case of supply greatly exceeding demand, in this instance brought about by politicians and regulators determined to impose arbitrary deadlines on carmakers regardless of whether they are realistic and without any consideration for the wider fallout.’”
Funding Issues
The “Amazing Tale” of How Three Billionaires Plunged the World into Climate Catastrophism
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Apr 16, 2024
“In 2012, three wealthy men, Bloomberg, hedge fund manager Tom Steyer and former CEO of Goldman Sachs Hank Paulson chipped in $500,000 each to fund a project ‘making the climate threat feel real, immediate and potentially devastating to the business world’. An early funded report was part-titled ‘Risky Business’ and it focused on RCP8.5 ‘as the pathway closest to a business-as-usual trajectory’. The pathway was said to be ‘closest to a future without concerted action to reduce future warming’.”
[SEPP Comment: They had great help from other than honest government institutions and scientists such as the UN IPCC, UN WMO, and US EPA, US NASA-GISS, and sections of US NOAA.]
Litigation Issues
Legal Absurdities in Climate Policy: A Critical Review of Tilak Doshi’s Analysis
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Apr 25, 2024
Subsidies and Mandates Forever
Climate Advocates Must Use the Market
Constraints on flexible solutions like carbon credits limit investment.
By Fred Krupp, WUWT, April 21, 2024
Link to: Science Based Targets, Statement
SBTi, Apr 9, 2024
[SEPP Comment: How can you have science-based targets if your science is misleading?]
Federal U.S. Power Sector Initiatives Went Full Throttle in April: Here’s the List
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, Apr 25, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Are subsidies “market based”?
EPA and other Regulators on the March
The FTC Takes Its Turn To Feel The Regulator’s Exhilaration
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Apr 25, 2024
“I find it hard to believe that the Supreme Court will allow this kind of naked power grab by a regulatory agency, purportedly under a 110-year-old statute that doesn’t mention anything about the entire area of law suddenly being pre-empted. But while we wait a few years for the case to reach that forum, there are tens of thousands of businesses that have negotiated and paid for non-competes that are suddenly illegal, at least for now; and the FTC will have the sadistic fun of watching those businesses squirm. It can be so much fun to be a regulator. When the Rule gets overturned a few years from now, no FTC commissioner or other employee involved in this gambit will face any consequences.”
Energy Issues – Non-US
The most expensive electricity on Earth is in countries with “cheapest sources of electricity”
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Apr 23, 2024
Link to: Study on energy prices and costs: Evaluating impacts on households and industry : 2023 edition
By Smith, M., Jagtenberg, H., Lam, L. et al., European Commission, Directorate-General for Energy, 2024
Nova: “If President Xi had wanted to run a campaign to sabotage our grids, he couldn’t have done it better.”
[SEPP Comment: According to the report: Japan, UK, and EU 27 lead the way in high Household electricity prices. They abandoned coal for renewables. Russia cutting off natural gas gives the EU 27 an excuse. With plentiful natural gas and coal, the US has no excuse for increasing electricity prices except incompetent politicians.]
The World Needs Energy Stability More Than Ever
America can deliver it, but do we have the political will?
By Joshua Trott, Real Clear Energy, April 22, 2024
The Myth of “Net Zero”: Unmasking the Hollow Promises and Imposed Sacrifices on UK Citizens
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Apr 24, 2024
How Canada’s energy experiment backfired – and why smart meter Britain is next
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 25, 2024
Government doesn’t know cost of Net Zero
Press Release, Net Zero Watch, Apr 22, 2024
“Official estimates of the cost of Net Zero were recently left in disarray after it was revealed that none of the bodies charged with modelling the 2050 energy system had done so correctly. This followed earlier revelations that the CCC’s cost estimate was based on fictional assumptions.”
Energy Issues – Australia
Down, down, down we go
By Peter Smith, Quadrant, Apr 27, 2024
“Over $40 billion spent, says Mr Bowen, and it will end up much, much more. And how much value will that $40 billion-plus produce? For sure, less than what is outlaid. A lot less. In other words, it will be value dilutive not accretive. The very key to communist Eastern Europe’s decline and misery, as it will be to ours. Efficient power out, inefficient power in.”
Energy Issues — US
Comments on the New York Part 490 Projected Sea-Level Rise Amendments
By Roger Caiazza, WUWT, Apr 25, 2024
“Conclusion
I have submitted comments for countless proceedings over the last 40 years. Sadly, over the years all decisions by New York State agencies are more and more politically driven to the point now that all rulemaking policy decisions are ultimately decided by the Administration regardless of the science. In this instance the science has been perverted to follow the Administration’s narrative. I am not optimistic that there will be any substantive changes to the Proposed Amendments. The only solace is that comments in the record will show that the State was warned that their policies were ill-advised when the proposed sea-level recommendations fall far below the observed rise.” [Boldface added]
This Earth Day, Let’s Secure America’s Mineral Future
By Drew Horn, Real Clear Energy, April 22, 2024
Washington’s Control of Energy
Biden EPA Finalizes “Suite of Rules” to Force Power Plant Retirements…Just Beating Pressure Groups’ Deadline
By Staff, Government Accountability & Oversight, April 25, 2024
Link to letters: “…from 16 national health, medical and nursing organizations urging EPA to swiftly finalize strong clean air protections.” Signed by Lead by Liz Scott, National, Advocacy, Healthy Air, American Lung Association
EPA rule against power plants – bad for energy reliability and prices, bad for rule of law
By Daren Bakst and Marlo Lewis, Jr., CEI, Apr 25, 2024
Link to: 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 – to be published in the Federal Register
By Staff, EPA, Apr 24, 2024
EPA Unleashes Four-Pronged Assault on Fossil Fuel Power Pollution
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, Apr 25, 2024
Will EPA’s Power Plants Rule Help or Hinder the Energy Transition?
By Ethan Shenkman, Real Clear Energy, April 25, 2024
Biden administration sets national goal to cut freight emissions to zero
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Apr 24, 2024
Biden administration plans to tee up offshore wind across the nation’s coastlines
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Apr 24, 2024
“The Biden administration plan stands in contrast with its efforts on offshore oil and gas over the next few years. It plans to offer just up to three oil and gas lease sales through 2029 — issuing the smallest five-year leasing plan of any president in recent history.”
Is Biden About To Declare Himself Climate Dictator?
By I & I Editorial Board April 23, 2024
Standards set to eliminate emissions from new federal buildings by 2030
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, Apr 24, 2024
[SEPP Comment: On cold and hot days declare a climate emergency to keep Federal employees home to avoid heating and cooling the buildings?]
Nuclear Energy and Fears
Goofy Greens and Regulators Threaten Nuclear Revival
By Duggan Flanakin, WUWT, Apr 26, 2024
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
Environmentalists’ silence on humanity and environmental atrocities
By Ronald Stein P.E., America Out Loud, Mon Apr 22
Wind Power Scarcity Data Analysis
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 24, 2024
“Periods when wind meets less than 20% of demand are labelled as Wind Scarcity, and would roughly equate to wind power running at about 25% of capacity. This is not low by any means – as we have seen before, wind power often drops to less than 5%. The calculation for 2023 of 3219 hours represents 36% of the year, so these periods can be regarded as perfectly normal weather.”
[SEPP Comment: According to the National Grid website: “Wind power contributed 29.4% of the UK’s total electricity generation.” [2023]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Other
Cost Of Hydrogen Cars Is Still Sky High
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 20, 2024
“’The cost of hydrogen mobility is ‘sky-high’ and ‘far from being affordable’, the CEO of the world’s third-largest automaker Stellantis told an online event yesterday — a little over two months since his company introduced eight new fuel-cell vans to the market.’”
Fortescue: Biden Forcing Green Hydrogen Producers to Use Renewables Drives Up Prices
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Apr 24, 2024
From link article describing a $550 million project in Arizona: “Fortescue says the proposed design of the Biden administration’s green incentives scheme could triple the cost of low-carbon hydrogen projects and stifle growth in the sector, warning that developers will reduce the size of their plans in response.”
[SEPP Comment Fortescue is a global metal mining and green energy company headquartered in Australia. The draft regulations are 45 V, Section 45V Credit for Production of Clean Hydrogen; Section 48(a)(15) Election To Treat Clean Hydrogen Production Facilities as Energy Property by the IRS, Dec 26, 2023 Section 45V Credit for Production of Clean Hydrogen; Section 48(a)(15) Election To Treat Clean Hydrogen Production Facilities as Energy Property.]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Storage
Battery storage costs could fall up to 40 percent by 2030: IEA
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, Apr 25, 2024
[SEPP Comment: IEA projections are being shown as misleading.]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
Law to limit petrol car sales is ‘terrible for the UK’, warns Vauxhall maker
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 26, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Authoritarian government in action.]
The War On Cars
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 22, 2024
Carbon Schemes
Another Climate Folly: Carbon Capture and Storage
By Pete Colan, American Thinker, Apr 26, 2024
[SEPP Comment: The government can solve the issues of cost and likely failure?]
It went into the ground
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 24, 2024
Given that reducing the use of life-sustaining energy turns out not to be a very practical or popular plan, there’s a lot of hype about “carbon removal”, the bit where we suck a trace gas out of the air and stuff it into the dirt and it doesn’t come back.
California Dreaming
California grid will require major upgrade to meet EV demands: Study
By Sharon Udasin, The Hill, Apr 23, 2024
Link to paper: Impact of electric vehicle charging demand on power distribution grid congestion
By Yanning Li and Alan Jenn, PNAS, Apr 22, 2024
“’Moving forward, it is crucial to enact regulatory measures to accommodate and mitigate this expected infrastructure strain in the distribution network,’ the authors concluded.”
Turn Out The Lights, The Party Is Over
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Apr 26, 2024
“Scientific American and Gavin Newsom say wind, water and solar are ready to power California, This judgment is based on a few hours in the middle of the afternoon on a cool day – during a spring with lots of snow melt coming down from the mountains.
On a hot September/October night there will be no solar, little wind, little hydroelectric and much higher demand. How will people recharge their government mandated electric vehicles?”
The Potential of Waste-to-Energy in California
By Edward Ring, What’s Current, Accessed apr 25, 2024
Environmental Industry
Climate worries are non-credible, luxury beliefs that harm civilization itself
By Joakim Book, CFACT, Apr 21, 2024
Other Scientific News
ACSH Explains: The Blood Brain Barrier [BBB] And ‘Leaky’ Brain
By Chuck Dinerstein, MD, ACSH, Apr 16, 2024
Link to paper: Blood–brain barrier disruption and sustained systemic inflammation in individuals with long COVID-associated cognitive impairment
Chris Greene, et al. Nature Neuroscience, Feb 22, 2024
“The concept of a “leaky” brain presents a fascinating puzzle. As investigations continue to unravel the mysteries of the BBB and its role in conditions like Long COVID and neurodegenerative diseases, tantalizing correlations may spark curiosity, but it’s essential to distinguish between evidence-based insights and speculative claims.”
“The whisper of a correlation between BBB dysregulation and some neurodegenerative diseases has opened a doorway for the snake-oil salesmen, who mine the population distraught and hopeless in the face of their neurodegenerative diseases, offering them supplements that have little or no effect on the BBB, which in turn, may or may not be an underlying cause of their disease.” [Boldface added]
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
New Academic Hyperbolic Buzzphrase: Environmental Conciliation
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Apr 26, 2024
Link to paper: Decolonizing environmentalism: Addressing ecological and Indigenous colonization through arts-based communication
By Geo Takach and Kyera Cook, Sage Journals, Jan 10, 2024
The paper begins with “Positioning the researchers:”
“As authors, we recognize the significance of sharing our life and work connections to this research in Coast Salish Territory. One of the authors, Kyera, a non-Indigenous academic, began her relationship with the Indigenous community when her mother pursued a First Nations program, connecting their family to Coast Salish events in the unceded territories of the Snuneymuxw, Snaw-Naw-As, Quw’utsun and Tla’amin (Nanaimo area). During her master’s thesis, Kyera collaborated with tribal park guardians in Tla-o-qui-aht territory (Nuu-chah-nulth Nation), deepening her understanding of the impact of colonization on Indigenous communities and the environment.”
UCLA study: Gay couples at greater risk from climate change
By College Fix Staff, Apr 21, 2024 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to: Climate Change Risk for LGBT People in the United States
By Lindsay Mahowald and Ari Shaw, UCLA School of Law, Williams Institute, April 2024
From the study: “Washington, D.C., a county equivalent, has the highest proportion of same-sex couples of any county in the United States. It scores high for a variety of climate risks, including heat waves (97th percentile), flooding (95th percentile), and dangerously strong winds (98th percentile).”
Leaking Gutters? Blame Climate Change
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 21, 2024
ARTICLES
1. The Biden EPA’s Plan to Ration Electricity
New rules are designed to eliminate fossil-fuel power plants. Energy scarcity is sure to result.
By The Editorial Board, WSJ, Apr 26, 2024
TWTW Summary: Key part covered in the This Week section above.
2. Micron Gets $6.1 Billion to Build Three New Facilities
Government grant is latest award from the $53 billion Chips Act to spur domestic production
By Ben Glickman, WSJ, April 25, 2024
TWTW Summary: Key part covered in the This Week section above.
Number of the Week: $53 Billion
Desired number in the future: $313,237,500,000 (£250,000,000,000)
“The world’s 3,000 billionaires should pay a minimum 2% tax on their fast-growing wealth to raise £250bn a year for the global fight against poverty, inequality and global heating, ministers from four leading economies have suggested.”
Doesn’t that imply some kind of global taxation?
“The French economist Gabriel Zucman is now fleshing out the technical details of a plan that will again be discussed by the G20 in June. France has indicated support for a wealth tax and Brazil has been encouraged that the US, while not backing a global wealth tax, did not oppose it.”
But not all states charge high taxes, right?
““Of course, the argument that billionaires can easily shift their fortunes to low-tax jurisdictions and thus avoid the levy is a strong one. And this is why such a tax reform belongs on the agenda of the G20. International cooperation and global agreements are key to making such tax effective. What the international community managed to do with the global minimum tax on multinational companies, it can do with billionaires,” the ministers say.
Zucman said there was overwhelming public support for this proposal, with opinion polls showing up to 80% of voters in favour. Even so, the economist said he was prepared for stiff resistance.
“I don’t want to be naive.”
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2024/apr/25/billionaires-should-pay-minimum-two-per-cent-wealth-tax-say-g20-ministers
He doesn’t want to be naive, and yet he’s leaning heavily on a heavily skewed poll – aren’t they all to some degree, anyway?
I’m no fan of the Davos set billionaires, but then I’m diametrically opposed to globalisation and its voracious appetite for power and domination. There’s little difference between the BBC, ABC, CBC, NPR etc; except for the letters – and their target audience.
I’d give SpaceX a tax break. It’s doing something useful – and somewhat optimistic for humanity.
Dubai could use some of it for their new mega-hub airport .
A glimpse inside Dubai’s futuristic new airport, set to be the biggest on Earth (telegraph.co.uk)
Obviously they don’t see a big downturn in people flying ! 🙂
Maybe a Story Tip in there somewhere.?