The Week That Was: 2024 12-14 (December 14, 2024)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “What I learned: If you want to get a narrative established, the crucial thing is to pepper it with errors, questionable things. So that the critics will seize on those and not question the basic narrative.” – Richard Lindzen (2023)
Number of the Week: $3,558,000
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: Discussed in This Week is the view of Richard Lindzen that the IPCC and its collaborators publish reports with many errors so those attempting to correct the errors don’t pay attention to the major message which is erroneous: CO2 is the dominant cause of climate change. This can be considered as a new form of divide and conquer. Also discussed is the expansion of a paper by the CERES – Science team. Members of the CO2 Coalition assert that the rise in CO2 since the industrial revolution comes primarily from human activity. John Robson continues his exploration of the lack of discussion of global greening in the summaries of UN IPCC reports. Meteorologist Cliff Mass complains about the failure to control vegetation which is needed to keep utility lines from failing. The UN has a new cause in combating desertification.
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Divide and Conquer: The above quote of the week comes from a living scientist, Richard Lindzen, rather than one who has passed. Lindzen is an exceptional scientist and puzzle solver, and nature’s secrets are revealed to us in puzzles. Ron Clutz provided a good transcript of a key section of a lengthy video interview of Lindzen by Jordan Peterson posted by Peterson on January 5, 2023. The brief biographical sketch of Lindzen given on the interview states:
“Richard Lindzen is a dynamical meteorologist. He has contributed to the development of theories for the Hadley Circulation, hydrodynamic instability theory, internal gravity waves, atmospheric tides, and the quasi-biennial oscillation of the stratosphere. His current research is focused on climate sensitivity, the role of cirrus clouds in climate, and the determination of the tropics-to-pole temperature difference. He has attained multiple degrees from Harvard University and won multiple awards in his field of study such as the Jule Charney award for “highly significant research in the atmospheric sciences.” Between 1983 and 2013, he was the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT where he earned emeritus status in July of 2013.”
In response to a question asking how do the IPCC and its collaborators mislead the public, with the interesting graphics removed, the transcript of a part of the interview by Ron Clutz gives the response by Lindzen.
“You’re touching on something that took me a while to understand. You know Goebbels famously said: If you tell a big enough lie and repeat it often enough, it’ll become the truth. there’s been a lot of that in this. But there are aspects of establishing the narrative, that is, what makes something the truth that I hadn’t appreciated.
So, the narrative was that the climate is determined by a greenhouse effect and adding CO2 to it increases warming. And moreover, besides CO2 the natural greenhouse substances–water vapor, clouds, upper-level clouds–will amplify whatever man does.
Now that immediately goes against Le Chatelier’s principle which says: If you perturb a system and it is capable internally of counteracting that, it will. And our system is so capable.
So that was a little bit odd. You began wondering, where did these feedbacks come from? Immediately people including myself started looking into the feedbacks, and seeing whether there were any negative ones, and how did it all work?
But underlying it, and this is what I learned: if you want to get a narrative established, the crucial thing is to pepper it with errors, questionable things. So that the critics will seize on those and not question the basic narrative.
The basic narrative was that climate is controlled by the greenhouse effect. In point of fact the earth’s climate system has many regions, but two distinctly different regions. There are the tropics roughly minus 30 to plus 30 degrees latitude, and the extra Tropics outside of plus or minus 30 degrees.
They have very different dynamics, and this is the crucial thing for the Earth by the way. And this is a technicality and much harder to convey than saying that greenhouse gases are a blanket or that 97 percent of scientists agree.
This is actually a technical issue. The Earth rotates. Now people are aware that we have day and night, but there is something called the Coriolis effect. When you’re on a rotating system it gives rise to the appearance of forces that change the winds relative to the rotation. So, at the pole the rotation vector is perpendicular to the surface, while at the equator it’s parallel to the surface: it’s zero.
And this gives you phenomenally different Dynamics. So, where you don’t have a vertical component to the rotation, vector motions do what they do in the laboratory in small scales. If you have a temperature difference, it acts to wipe it out.
During the Ice Age [the temperature difference between the Equator and the poles was] about 60 degrees Centigrade, today it’s about 40. 50 million years ago, something called the Eocene the difference was about 20. So that’s all a function of what’s going on outside the tropics. Within the tropics the greenhouse effect is significant but what determines the temperature change between the tropics and the pole has very little to do with the greenhouse effect.
It is a dynamic phenomenon based on the fact that a temperature difference with latitude generates instabilities. These instabilities take the form of the cyclonic and anticyclonic patterns that you see on the weather map. From even a casual look at a weather map, you can see the tropics are very different.
The systems that bring us weather travel from west to east at latitudes outside the tropics. Within the tropics they travel from east to west. The prevailing winds are opposite in the two sections.
Sometimes people say that changes due to the greenhouse effect are amplified at the poles. That is not true: there’s no physical basis for that Statement. All they do is determine the starting point for where the temperature changes in mid-latitudes and that’s determined mainly by Hydrodynamics.
Okay that’s complicated to explain to someone and yet it’s the basis for those claims of seemingly large significance of these small numbers. You know they’re saying if Global mean temperature goes up one and a half degrees it’s the end. That’s based on it getting much bigger at high latitudes and determining that. But all one and a half degrees at the equator (or in the greenhouse part of the Earth) would do is change the temperature everywhere by one and a half degrees, which for most of us is less than the temperature change between breakfast and lunch.”
The transcript by Clutz does not continue onto what TWTW considers some other important points.
- An increase of 1.5°C (almost 3°F) depends on positive feedback impacts which are contrary to Le Chatelier’s principle.
- If water vapor has a positive feedback, it has to be that it is part of an infrared feedback, which no one has detected.
- The effect of increasing CO2 is less than the margin of error for the measurement of water vapor.
- There is little warming even if CO2 causes it.
- Tipping points may appear but only if the system has few degrees of freedom [few influences. The climate system has many influences, some of which are unknown or poorly known.]
Last week’s TWTW attempted to differentiate between the water cycle (for which the phases of water transport heat from the surface to the upper troposphere) and the greenhouse effect (for which water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas) because the two roles are significantly different. The water cycle has a net cooling effect, as William Kininmonth stated. However, water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas, which slows nighttime cooling, freezing, that would otherwise kill growing plants. Yet, as Lindzen states, no one has detected an increase in the infrared (greenhouse) influence of water vapor from an increase in surface temperatures. The claims by global climate modelers since the 1979 Charney Report that water vapor will amplify the warming caused by CO2 (or whatever cause) have not been substantiated with physical evidence.
See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy – Radiation Transfer for the role of water vapor in the greenhouse effect in today’s atmosphere and Challenging the Orthodoxy for the interview of Richard Lindzen.
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The Mysterious Sun: On November 2, TWTW discussed a report by Ronan Connolly and the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES) on the uncertain role of the Sun on Earth’s climate. There are some 27 feasible explanations for the Sun’s role, and the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its collaborators choose the most limited one – the Sun has little influence on Earth’s changing climate. The CERES-Science Team members; Willie Soon, Ronan Connolly, and Michael Connolly, produced a lengthy report published by The Heritage Foundation “The Unreliability of Current Global Temperature and Solar Activity Estimates and Its Implications for the Attribution of Global Warming” which amplifies the earlier report. The summary of the new report states:
“Despite the confidence with which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims to have ‘settled the science’ around the detection and attribution of climate change, this challenging scientific debate has not yet been satisfactorily resolved. The IPCC did not provide a strong enough argument for its choice of the available global temperature trends, and the same applies to its choice of the available Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) datasets. The IPCC was overly confident and premature in its detection and attribution statements. The scientific debate is still ongoing, and the scientific community is not yet in a position to establish whether the observed temperature changes since the 1800s are mostly natural, mostly human-caused, or a mixture of both.”
The Key Takeaways are:
- “The IPCC claims to have ‘settled the science’ around the detection and attribution of climate change, but this debate has yet to be satisfactorily resolved.
- The evidence indicates that the IPCC has been overconfident and premature in its detection and attribution statements.
- The scientific community cannot yet establish whether temperature changes since the 1800s are mostly natural, mostly human-caused, or a mixture of both.”
The report discusses “World’s Global Temperature” and How It Is Determined. It gives maps showing the weather stations used since 1850 in 50-year intervals. Since the beginning, the stations have mostly been in urban or partially urbanized areas, subject to the Urban Heat Island effect. This effect is discussed in some detail. Further, the report gives examples of how warming biases (which are unrelated to climate change) can enter into the data.
Also, the report discusses how NOAA’s manipulation of the data through “homogenization” has altered the data. The data can no longer be considered rigorous or accurate. After going through other issues, the report concludes:
“The purpose of this report is to highlight the wide range of scientifically valid but contradictory conclusions that can be drawn from the various methods, procedures, and datasets that are used to study long-term global temperature trends. Despite the confidence with which the IPCC claims to have ‘settled the science’ around the detection and attribution of climate change, this challenging scientific debate has not yet been satisfactorily resolved.
We think that the IPCC did not provide a strong enough argument for its choice of the available global temperature trends. We have concerns about the urbanization bias contaminating urban weather station data and the urban blending contaminating homogenized temperature datasets. The IPCC claims that urban warming is only a small part of the observed warming, but our studies suggest that urban warming is a substantial part of the warming in the current global temperature estimates. [In blunt language one could state: our studies demonstrate that urban warming is a substantial part of the warming in the current global temperature estimates.] We propose as a first step solution to develop a temperature record that considers only rural thermometer stations. Our published rural record suggests that the IPCC’s temperature estimates might have up to 40% extra warming due to urban bias and flawed homogenization.
We also have concerns about the IPCC’s handling of the ongoing scientific debate over the changes in solar activity (TSI) since 1850. The TSI estimate used by the computer model simulations that contributed to the IPCC analysis was guaranteed to show that global warming was ‘mostly human-caused.’ However, we have identified at least 27 different estimates of the changes in TSI since 1850. Several of these estimates suggest that global warming is ‘mostly natural,’ and several suggest that global warming is a mixture of natural and human-caused factors.
We therefore conclude that the IPCC was overconfident and premature in its detection and attribution statements. The scientific debate remains ongoing. In our opinion, the scientific community is not yet in a position to establish whether the observed temperature changes since the 1800s are ‘mostly natural,’ ‘mostly human-caused,’ or ‘a mixture of both.’
The scientific debate about how much global warming is manmade and how much is natural has not been resolved. We hope that in its Seventh Assessment Report, the IPCC will not continue with its scientifically weak approach.”
See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy and for the November 2 TWTW, https://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2024/TWTW%2011-2-2024.pdf
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CO2 Increase from Human Activity: In “The Human Contribution to Atmospheric CO2: How Human Emissions Are Restoring Vital Atmospheric CO2” Ferdinand Engelbeen, Renee Hannon, and David Burton of the CO2 Coalition present a lengthy report why the increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution is primarily the result of human activity, mainly CO2 emissions. The authors recognize that the warming of the oceans does increase CO2, as seen in ice cores which show, contrary to Al Gore, warming occurs first followed by an increase in atmospheric CO2.
The authors use a variety of techniques to estimate CO2 concentrations from today to the Holocene and earlier. The techniques include Antarctic ice cores dating back about 800,000 years, plant stomata dating back through the Holocene, historic chemical methods from the 1800s, and Mauna Loa measurements which began in 1958. The Mauna Loa Observatory measurements are supported by measurements from the South Pole with continuous measurements starting in 1961. The abstract of the report states:
“Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s, the average concentration of Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) has increased by about 140 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to the current amount of about 420 ppmv. This is much higher than concentrations of the past 800,000 years, which rarely exceeded 300 ppmv, according to ice core data. In this document, the CO2 Coalition presents multiple lines of scientific evidence demonstrating conclusively that the modern increase in CO2 is mainly due to anthropogenic emissions.”
See links under Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
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The Green Blackout: In “The Green Blackout Part IV: The Details,” John Robson discusses that although main IPCC reports mention some global greening from increasing CO2, the Summaries for Policymakers do not mention it. He writes:
“We have shown [citations not given here] that if you only read the IPCC short Summaries, or even the long Summaries or the Technical Summaries, you won’t learn a thing about CO2-induced global greening. Even though it’s a pretty remarkable phenomenon, they don’t seem to want you to find out about it. Is it because they don’t know about it? Hardly, they discuss it openly in the body of the report…”
Apparently, the flourishing of life on Earth is not important to the UN IPCC and its collaborators. See link under Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide.
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Vegetation Management: Those who blame forest fires and grass fires on CO2 causing climate change are partially right, but wrong in emphasis. As stated above, increasing atmospheric CO2 is causing vegetation to flourish, which results in more vegetation to burn. Bowing to green pressure groups, many areas and states such as California have cut back on prudent vegetation management which is needed for power lines to operate under windy conditions. In “Poor Vegetation Management and Windstorm Power Outages: A Frustrated Meteorologist Complains” Cliff Mass, who is not a climate sceptic, writes a prudent complaint. He states:
“One of the great frustrations of being a meteorologist is to see a major event nearly perfectly forecast, yet with massive impacts on society.
It is frustrating to be concerned about global warming and seeing our region unable to keep the lights on for over a million people, some for 2-5 days. Without reliability, a transition away from fossil fuels cannot be made.
I have blogged several times about the major easterly wind event on November 19, which resulted in over a half-million homes losing power. This event was nearly perfectly forecast several days ahead, so there is not much more my discipline can do.”
The November 19 event was in the Pacific Northwest, but the complaint applies to many areas of the US. See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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More Bandwagons: In the above Lindzen interview, he states that no one has been able to detect an increase in the greenhouse effect from water vapor. Further, the Global Climate Models used by the UN IPCC and its collaborators assert that an increase in temperatures from CO2 (or whatever cause) will cause an increase in temperatures from water vapor. Given no increase in the greenhouse effect of water vapor, this can only come from an increase in the water cycle, the transfer of surface heat to latent heat with water becoming water vapor then rising to upper troposphere, then condensing and falling as rain. An increase in the water cycle would imply an increase in precipitation.
Now, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification has issued a press release titled: “Three-Quarters of Earth’s Land Became Permanently Drier in Last Three Decades: UN” with a report titled “The global threat of drying lands: Regional and global aridity trends and future projections.” Among other things the report states:
“The report points to human-caused climate change as the primary driver of this shift. Greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation, transport, industry, and land use changes warm the planet and other human activities warm the planet and affect rainfall, evaporation, and plant life, creating the conditions that increase aridity.”
The notion that an increase in the water cycle would reduce rainfall is self-contradictory. Apparently, UN reports are so long and obtuse that even UN agencies don’t read them. Of course, all this is contradicted by 40 years of Landsat satellite imagery showing Earth is greening – life is flourishing.
See links under Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
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NO TWTW NEXT WEEK (DECEMBER 21)
TWTW will return on the weekend of December 28 with a summary of significant scientific and energy matters covered for the year.
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Number of the Week: $3,558,000. Last week’s TWTW discussed the failure of wind, solar, and storage in Broken Hill, Australia, in October 2024. The power resources could not serve the small community, even though nameplate capacity stated the resources were more than adequate. On Saturday, Dec 7, Jo Nova reports:
“Last Wednesday, during the near-miss of a blackout in Sydney, the AEMO [Australian Energy Market Operator] spent $3,558,000 on ‘demand reduction’ which means they paid productive industries to stop working to save the grid from a blackout. Translated: poor electricity users in New South Wales paid $3.5 million to businesses to do nothing, because the grid didn’t have enough energy, and the people in charge really didn’t want any embarrassing blackouts so close to an election.”
Once again, consumers have to pay for nothing due to poor policy decisions made by politicians without critical thinking skills.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
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
Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases
By W.A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer, Preprint, December 22, 2020
Challenging the Orthodoxy
Global Warming Big Lie–Skip the Distractions
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Dec 13, 2024
Link to full interview: Climate “Science” | Dr. Richard Lindzen | EP 320
By Jordan B. Peterson, Podcast, Jan 5, 2023
The Unreliability of Current Global Temperature and Solar Activity Estimates and Its Implications for the Attribution of Global Warming
By Willie Soon, Ronan Connolly and Michael Connolly. The Heritage Foundation, Dec 11, 2024 [H/t Bud Bromley]
Fake Climate Doom…Recent Research Shows “Vast Majority” Of Pacific Atoll Islands Have Grown In Size
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Dec 11, 2024
Video from European Institute For Climate And Energy (EIKE) in English
Human Health and Welfare Effects from Increased Greenhouse Gases and Warming
By John Dunn and David Legates, The Heritage Foundation, Nov 12, 2024 [H/t ICECAP]
Stern’s Climate Lesson for the Trump Administration
A Review of Landing the Paris Climate Agreement: How It Happened, Why It Matters, and What Comes Next, by Todd Stern
By Rupert Darwall, Real Clear Energy, Dec 11, 2024
Countries that might be having second thoughts about the immense damage that net zero climate policies are doing to their economies should be encouraged to follow the United States out of the Paris agreement. They are less likely to do so if the U.S. can rejoin at the stroke of a president’s pen. One way of achieving a definitive exit would be to do what President Obama did not: send the agreement to the Senate. In dangerous times, peace through strength demands economic strength—and that means rejecting net zero and the Paris agreement in toto.
[SEPP Comment: A long essay explaining that US diplomats and their political supporters in Washington ignore US interests in pursuit of fantasy – that stabilizing human CO2 emissions will result in a stable climate.]
Comment on Cobb, 2024
By Andy May, WUWT, Dec 11, 2024
Link to Cobb paper: The politics of climate denialism and the secondary denialism of economics
By Clifford William Cobb, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Dec 4, 2024
The abstract begins: Primary climate-change denialism rejects the idea that global warming is driven by human activity. This belief system now appeals to about one-third of Americans. Having been influenced by a 1990s Exxon campaign to sow doubt that fossil fuels are responsible for global warming,
[SEPP Comment: Cobb demonstrates his ignorance of climate history. Climate has been warming and cooling long before humans existed. Geological evidence shows that we are in Icehouse Earth, far colder than previous periods such as Warmhouse Earth and Hothouse Earth, up to 67 million years ago.]
Poor Vegetation Management and Windstorm Power Outages: A Frustrated Meteorologist Complains
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Dec 8, 2024
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
Almost all of Earth became permanently drier since 1990: Report
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, Dec 9, 2024
Link to press release: Three-Quarters of Earth’s Land Became Permanently Drier in Last Three Decades: UN
By Staff, UN Convention to Combat Desertification, Dec 9, 2024
Parts of the Western United States and Brazil: Significant drying trends, with water scarcity and wildfires becoming perennial hazards.
Mediterranean and Southern Europe: Once considered agricultural breadbaskets, these areas face a stark future as semi-arid conditions expand.
Central Africa and parts of Asia: Biologically megadiverse areas are experiencing ecosystem degradation and desertification, endangering countless species.
Link to report: The global threat of drying lands: Regional and global aridity trends and future projections
By Staff, UN Convention to Combat Desertification, 2024
Earth’s lands are drying out. Nations are trying to address it in talks this week
By Sibi Arasu, AP, Dec 9, 2024 [H/t Berni Kepshire]
Questioning the Orthodoxy
New Study: Achieving A ‘Net Zero’ Emissions Policy Would Have A ‘Negligible’ 0.28°C Climate Effect
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Dec 13, 2024
Link to paper: The Scientific Case Against Net Zero: Falsifying the Greenhouse Gas Hypothesis
By Michael Simpson, Journal of Sustainable Development, Nov 14, 2024
file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/6736f22057fc7.pdf
Biden EPA Falsely Touts First Climate Change Arrest
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Dec 9, 2024
Energy & Environmental Review: December 9, 2024
By John Droz, Jr., Master Resource, Dec 9, 2024
After Paris!
Global South’s Energy Rebellion at COP29 Signals a New Future
By Vijay Jayaraj, CO2 Coalition, Dec 11, 2024
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
The Green Blackout Part IV: The Details
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 11, 2024
Human Contribution to Atmospheric CO2: How Human Emissions Are Restoring Vital Atmospheric CO2
By Ferdinand Engelbeen, Renee Hannon, and David Burton, CO2 Coalition, Dec 12, 2024
Link to report: The Human Contribution to Atmospheric CO2: How Human Emissions Are Restoring Vital Atmospheric CO2
By Ferdinand Engelbeen, Renee Hannon, and David Burton, CO2 Coalition, December 2024
Percent dry weight (biomass) increases of cantaloupe for 300, 600 and 900 ppm increases in the air’s CO2 concentration.
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 11, 2024
From the CO2Science archive:
Problems in the Orthodoxy
New Queensland Environment Minister Affirms His Climate Skeptic Views
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 12, 2024
Seeking a Common Ground
Did Fewer Clouds Contribute to This Year’s Global Warming?
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 8, 2024
Link to one paper: Recent global temperature surge intensified by record-low planetary albedo
By Helge Goessling, AAAS Science, Dec 5, 2024
Link to second paper: Tonga eruption increases chance of temporary surface temperature anomaly above 1.5 °C
By Stuart Jenkins, et al., Nature Climate Change, Jan 12, 2023
[SEPP Comment: Less cloud cover in the troposphere particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, or more water vapor in the stratosphere?]
How Universities Went Off Track
Politicization of the American University, Part 3
By Roeber Pielke Jr, His Blog, Dec 8, 2024
Measurement Issues — Surface
Hot Death Valley Days: Don’t Trust Those Temperatures
By Roy Spencer, His Blog, Dec 13, 2024
It is my opinion that “official” Death Valley temperatures should use the Stovepipe Wells site data, which come from state-of-the-art Climate Reference Network instrumentation. The traditional site near the Death Valley National Park Visitors Center should only be used for entertainment purposes.
Measurement Issues — Tropics
Amazon forests really are cloud machines (and the climate models had no idea)
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Dec 10, 2024
Link to press release: The Amazon rainforest as a cloud machine: How thunderstorms and plant transpiration produce condensation nuclei
By Goethe University Frankfurt-am-Main, Dec 4, 2024
Link to paper: Isoprene nitrates drive new particle formation in Amazon’s upper troposphere
By Joachim Curtius, et al., Nature, Dec 4, 2024
Measurement Issues – Missing Heat
“Climate Change Indicators: Heat Waves”
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Dec 11, 2024
Changing Weather
Update on the Windstorm and Power Outages
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Dec 13, 2024
This means more pressure difference (gradient) over Puget Sound and NW Washington, which means more wind, particularly over and near Puget Sound.
Changing Climate
New Study: Over The Last 8000 Years Centennial-Scale Megadrought Periods Were Driven By Cooling
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Dec 9, 2024
Link to paper: Centennial-scale cooling-induced megadroughts in Myanmar’s tropical arid region over the past 8000 years
By Jie Li, et al., Quaternary Science Reviews, June 15, 2024
From the abstract: The future impact of global warming on tropical arid regions is unclear due to uncertainties about the correlation between rising temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns.
Hence, to better understand the potential long-term consequences of climatic warming or cooling for tropical arid regions we compared a pollen record from the annually laminated sediments of a crater lake in Myanmar with ice core records of the Siberian High, both of which have an annual resolution. Our findings reveal that over the past 8000 years, the Myanmar region experienced six significant drought events, three of which coincided precisely with intensifications of the Siberian High-pressure system. Furthermore, five out of these six events were synchronous with the North Atlantic Bond events within the limit of the dating uncertainties. Conversely, warm periods were associated with increased precipitation along with relatively short-lived drought events. [Boldface added]
Changing Seas
When Scientists, Skeptics and Eco-Loons All Agree, Except for Catastrophic Storytelling
By Anonymous, WUWT, Dec 8, 2024
Body size and early marine conditions drive changes in Chinook salmon productivity across northern latitude ecosystems
By Megan L. Feddern, et al., Global Change Biology, Oct 8, 2024 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Changing Cryosphere – Land / Sea Ice
Arctic tundra now emitting more carbon gases than it absorbs, annual report says
The Arctic Report Card, issued by NOAA, describes how Arctic regions in Alaska and elsewhere are transforming as permafrost warms, wildfires intensify and ice melts
By Yereth Rosen, Alaska Beacon, Dec 11, 2024 [H/t Carbon Brief]
Link to: 2024 Arctic Report Card
By Staff, NOAA in the Artic, 2024
[SEPP Comment: What did it do during earlier warming periods?]
Has Trump Already Solved Global Warming?
By I & I Editorial Board, Dec 11, 2024
Link to paper: Spatial and temporal patterns of land surface temperature in Greenland from 2000-2019
By Nitinun Pongsiri, et al. Mausam [Thailand], April 2, 2024
Editor’s note: Google’s AdSense ad network immediately demonetized this article, calling it “unreliable and harmful.”
[SEPP Comment: Yet NOAA’s Arctic Report Card says the Arctic is warming while Greenland is not?]
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Got Climate Questions? Try “Ask NYT Climate”
By Kip Hansen, WUWT, Dec 11, 2024
How It’s Done: Tropical Cyclone Edition
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 11, 2024
“It” in this case is: a hit piece on a well-informed public official who had the audacity to push back against an alarmist distortion of climate science. “How” is: get a reliably biased outfit (in this case the Washington Post) to raise a stink about said public official and rely solely for their missive on a misleading quote from a reliably biased “expert”, while failing to tell the readers about all the evidence that (a) backs up the public official and (b) undermines the expert. The occasion was President-elect Trump’s nomination of Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright as Energy Secretary.
Scientific bloviation
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 11, 2024
Including a piece that says “Fast fashion also has a growing impact on the global climate. It is responsible for an estimated 8% to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and its emissions are projected to grow quickly as the industry expands.” — [Scientific American]
Take Note, VOA, Island Nation’s International Court of Justice Lawsuit Over Sea-Level Rise Is Pointless and Toothless
By Anthony Watts, Climate Realism, Dec 9, 2024
Trump SEC pick wants to ditch landmark climate disclosure rule
Paul Atkins, an SEC commissioner during the George W. Bush administration, says the new rule would burden publicly traded businesses.
By Lesley Clark, Politico, Dec 9, 2024
Trump, who once expressed skepticism about power-hungry cryptocurrencies, received billions of dollars from the industry for his 2024 campaign and said he would launch his own cryptocurrency business.
[SEPP Comment: Where is the evidence?]
Communicating Better to the Public – Exaggerate, or be Vague?
Applying Scale and Context to the Texas Smokehouse Creek Fire
By David Middleton, WUWT, Dec 11, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Middleton points out that a small area in north Texas is a large area in Connecticut.]
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
Absolutely Bonkers
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 13, 2024
On how Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change of the United Kingdom pretend saving becomes a cost.
Massive Cover-up Launched by U.K. Met Office to Hide its 103 Non-Existent Temperature Measuring Stations
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Dec 9, 2024
The recent changes made by the Met Office to its climate average pages shows that the state-funded operation is fully aware of the growing interest in its entire temperature recording business. This interest has grown because the Met Office is fully committed to using its data to promote the Net Zero political fantasy. But it is silent on the biggest concern that has been raised of late, namely the promotion of temperatures, accurate to one hundredth of a degree centigrade, obtained from a nationwide network where nearly eight out of 10 stations are so poorly sited they have internationally-recognized ‘uncertainties’ as high as 5°C.
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
Climate Grief vs. Climate Optimism: Why Not Open the Mind?
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Dec 11, 2024
It is grief and grieving in AlarmistLand. Jonathan Watts of The Guardian wrote:
Climate instability and nature extinction are making the Earth an uglier, riskier and more uncertain place, desiccating water supplies, driving up the price of food, displacing humans and non-humans, battering cities and ecosystems with ever fiercer storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts and forest fires.
Tidbits
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 11, 2024
“There are two major groups of phytoplankton, Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) – which evolved 3.5 billion years ago, invented oxygenic photosynthesis, and gave rise to all land plants – and Microalgae.” Do we have to make the point again about species that flourished for hundreds of millions or, in this case, billions of years of much warmer conditions being able to survive warmth?
They’re dreaming of a brown Christmas
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 11, 2024
Expanding the Orthodoxy
Climate Science You Can Believe
By Tony Thomas, Quadrant, Dec 9, 2024
This climate super-bureaucracy is the brainchild of Andy Pitman of UNSW, chair of the Science Academy’s National Committee for Earth System Science and director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. He’s also the chap who let the climate cat out of the bag when he told an audience in 2019 that global warming doesn’t cause droughts, rather the opposite, since warm air holds more water
Questioning European Green
Germany’s Economic Malaise Offers a Warning
Wolfgang Münchau’s new book chronicles the decline of a postwar powerhouse.
By Samuel Gregg, City Journal, Dec 11, 2024
Questioning Green Elsewhere
Facebook Commissions a 2GW Fossil Fuel Powered Data Center
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 8, 2024
[SEPP Comment: After playing the golden boys of unreliable wind and solar, high-tech companies do not wish to pay the costs of making unreliable power, reliable; thus, sticking the public with the bill.]
Funding Issues
For years the CCP has been sending millions to US universities and NGOs to promote Green Energy
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Dec 12, 2024
The Washington Free Beacon found a climate non-profit called Energy Foundation China was run by former Chinese Communist Party officials.
The Political Games Continue
The Wailing Scientists of Washington: Fear-Mongering in Lab Coats
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Dec 12, 2024
Litigation Issues
Supreme Court could narrow the scope of federal environmental reviews, with less consideration of how projects would contribute to climate change
By J.B. Ruhl, The Conversation, Dec 4, 2024 [H/b Jim Buell]
More bluntly, if the court rules that agencies don’t have to consider indirect effects that are out of their direct regulatory control, most agencies could simply ignore indirect climate change impacts, since they have no direct control over sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
Although the Supreme Court hasn’t addressed NEPA directly since 2004, many of its recent rulings seem designed to reduce the power of regulatory agencies. In my view, NEPA isn’t likely to fare well under that agenda.
Supreme Court appears likely to curb environmental law after arguments
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Dec 10, 2024
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires consideration of environmental impacts before these projects are approved — and the results of that evaluation could lead to mandated mitigation of environmental harms. At issue in the case is whether and when upstream and downstream environmental impacts should be considered as part of these environmental reviews.
5 takeaways from the Biden carbon rule’s big day at the DC Circuit
By Niina H. Farah, Lesley Clark, E & E News, Dec 9, 2024 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
EPA’s latest attempt to control planet-warming emissions from the nation’s sprawling power sector came under scrutiny last week from the nation’s second-highest bench.
During nearly three hours of oral argument, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit asked a number of highly technical questions about EPA’s rule but seemed skeptical that the regulation ran afoul of the Supreme Court’s limits on the agency’s regulatory power.
Trump-appointed Judge Neomi Rao took the lead in challenging the feasibility of EPA’s focus on widespread implementation of carbon capture and storage, or CCS, technology for existing coal- and new gas-fired power plants in its 2024 rule.
[SEPP Comment: Indicating the end of the Chevron Deference?]
Natural Climate Change not on Trial
By Jennifer Marohasy, Her Blog, Dec 14, 2024
In 2022, the U.N. Human Rights Committee found that Australia had failed to adequately protect indigenous Torres Islanders against adverse impacts of climate change. Other cases relate to Project Approval and Corporate Accountability, but there is generally an absence of questioning the IPCC position that climate change during the industrial era has been predominantly caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. However, an examination of the scientific literature reveals that the assumption ‘the science is settled’ needs to be carefully reconsidered.
International Climate Litigation: A Trojan Horse for Global Climate Policy?
By Anonymous, WUWT, Dec 9, 2024
Subsidies and Mandates Forever
Subsidies Galore!
By David Turver, The Daily Sceptic, Dec 9, 2024
We see a truly surreal arrangement of subsidy schemes, ploughing [plowing] hundreds of billions into renewables, alongside additional tens of billions in subsidies to industry to mitigate the impact of the resulting high energy prices. It is completely insane.
Hundreds Of Millions In Subsidies For German Gigafactory In Jeopardy As Northvolt Files Chapter 11
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Dec 8, 2024
Treasury expands language for IRA biogas tax credit
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, Dec 12, 2024
[SEPP Comment: The Inflation “Reduction” Act – the tax subsidy that never stops giving.]
Energy Issues – Non-US
Don’t get smart
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 11, 2024
The Telegraph reports that in Britain, “Thousands sent eye-watering bills after switching to smart meters”. Mind you those were mostly just mistakes, often resulting in bills of over £1,000. But the UK can now boast of a smart grid run by smart people which means, of course, that it now has some of the most expensive power prices in Europe, still behind Germany but rising fast.
More problems with Miliband’s maths
By Andrew Montford, Net Zero Watch, Dec 10, 2024
Link to report: Clean Power 2030: Advice on achieving clean power for Great Britain by 2030
Forward by Fintan Style, CEO, National Energy System Operator (NESO), 2024
Among the Key Messages: Achieving clean power by 2030 will put Great Britain in a strong position.
Miliband’s £300 Energy Saving Is Smoke & Mirrors
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Dec 13, 2024
It goes without saying that these are all the official costings from NESO. I don’t think anybody seriously believes that decarbonisation will be anything like as easy or cheap as they make out.
Energy Issues – Australia
Grid not-fit-for-purpose: On a warm day, Crazy Australia paid $3.5m to industry to *stop* working
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Dec 7, 2024
The Grid Speaks
By Kip Hansen, WUWT, Dec 9, 2024
The Opposition’s nuclear plan saves $260 billion, but it’s still 53% renewable
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Dec 13, 2024
When will one of our 27 government agencies find out what Australians really want to know — what grid would get us the cheapest reliable electricity?
Let’s have a plebiscite on whether we should be paying to “fix” the weather?
Government ABC Accuses Aussie Government of Exaggerating Climate Progress
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 13, 2024
Annual revisions to the methodology, government sponsored ABC reporters questioning the narrative. Is it possible the government is just making the emissions cuts numbers up to suit their political narrative?
[SEPP Comment: Is it more difficult to commit economic suicide in a democratic country than previously thought?]
Energy Issues — US
Rate Inflation in New England (perils of political electricity)
By Allen Brooks, Master Resource, Dec 10, 2024
Link to: The Staggering Costs of New England’s Green Energy Policies
By Isaac Orr, Mitch Rolling, and Trevor Lewis, Always On Energy Research, 2024
file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/ISO-NE-r4c-final.pdf
[SEPP Comment: Net Zero and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) will lead to regional economic suicide.]
How To Fix US Energy After Biden Broke It
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Dec 10, 2024
Stop the ‘green hallucinationists’ plan to close all 200 coal power plants
By Ronald Stein and George Harris, America Outloud News, Dec 9, 2024
Washington’s Control of Energy
Red Tape Is Short-Circuiting Needed Energy Projects
By Josiah Neeley, Real Clear Energy, Dec 12, 2024
Permitting Reform: A Strategic Imperative for U.S. National Security and Global Competitiveness
By Michelle Howard, Paul Segal, Real Clear Energy, Dec 12, 2024
Permitting Reform 1.0 Shouldn’t Wait Until the New Year
By Andrew Mills, Real Clear Energy, Dec 10, 2024
Nuclear Energy and Fears
Europe’s Nuclear Energy and Central Asian Uranium
By Svante E. Cornell , Brenda Shaffer, Real Clear Energy, Dec 11, 2024
Time to Reinvigorate the U.S. Uranium Mining Industry
By Duggan Flanakin, Real Clear Energy, Dec 12, 2024
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
Capping marine mammal harassment constrains offshore wind
By David Wojick, CFACT, Dec 9, 2024
Denmark offers largest offshore wind area for auction, but no one bids anything
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Dec 11, 2024
Wind Power Has Hit Its Limits In Europe
By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, Dec 12, 2024 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Biden doubles tariffs on Chinese solar panel components
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Dec 11, 2024
Carbon Schemes
Carbon Capture Regulations Must Match Pace of Innovation
By Hillary O’Brien, Real Clear Energy, Dec 9, 2024
And yet, despite decades of investment in American CCUS innovation, an out-of-date regulatory bottleneck at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to hold back the full deployment of these critical technologies.
[SEPP Comment: Other than using CCUS (carbon capture utilization & storage) for enhancing oil and gas extraction, has any scheme proven viable?]
Health, Energy, and Climate
Emissions of Anesthetic Gases Cause Negligible Warming
By Frits Byron Soepyan, William Happer, Gregory Wrightstone, Dec 12, 2024
Link to Full paper: Emissions of Anesthetic Gases Cause Negligible Warming
By Frits Byron Soepyan, William Happer, Gregory Wrightstone, Dec 11, 2024
Remote exposure to Western wildfire smoke causing heart and lung problems nationwide: Study
By Sharon Udasin, The Hill, Dec 13, 2024
Link to paper: Polluted Air from Canadian Wildfires and Cardiopulmonary Disease in the Eastern US
By Mary E. Maldarelli, et al., JAMA Netw Open, Dec 13, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Weather conditions in Baltimore City, the subject area, were not considered; it may be a spurious correlation. However, better fire and vegetation control methods are needed. The idea of let-it-burn is not as desirable as promoted in the late 20th century.]
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
Big Oil Saved The Whales
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Dec 12, 2024
1861 cartoon
Claim: President Trump is the Product of the Climate Doom Loop
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 10, 2024
Combating Bad Weather With Green Energy
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Dec 11, 2024
“Storm Darragh leaves UK solar farm in pieces in blow to green energy”
EPA: 17.5 Degrees Warming By 2050 [1988]
By Tony Heller, Real Climate Science, Dec 12, 2024
Private Jets, Public Hypocrisy: How Climate Alarmists Just Reinvented Irony
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Dec 10, 2024
Link to: Private aviation is making a growing contribution to climate change
By Stefan Gössling, et al., Communications Earth & Environment, Nov 7, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Will attendees to the World Economic Forum and UN meetings become climate change sceptics?]
“Winter temperatures colder than last ice age
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Dec 12, 2024
[SEPP Comment: During the coming ice age scare in the 1970s, the researchers used bristlecone pine tree rings from the White Mountains of California to demonstrate cooling. Later, Mann et al. used bristlecone pine tree rings in the White Mountains in the infamous hockey-stick to demonstrate “dangerous warming.”]
UK Government ‘Commits’ to Forcing Cattle to Consume Anti-Flatulence Feed Additive
Meanwhile, more than 2.8 million people have signed an online petition calling for another UK general election.
By Leslie Eastman, Legal Insurrection, Dec 10, 2024
UK Embraces Net Zero Electric Military Vehicles
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Dec 10, 2024
[SEPP Comment: New strategy for preparing an attack: Secretly forward deploying necessary electric charging stations and generators at the objective of the attack? Will the enemy decode the secret?]
Yay air travel
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Dec 11, 2024
Canada’s Captain Carbon, Prime Minister Trudeau, jetted from Ottawa to Frederickton to Ottawa to Bermuda to Ottawa to Lima to Rio to Ottawa to Toronto to Ottawa to Montreal to Ottawa to Charlottetown, PEI to Ottawa to Florida between November 11 and 29… but not to Italy. He left that one for Canada’s overwhelmed foreign minister Mélanie Joly who offered “a media call back to discuss her participation in the G7 Foreign Ministers’ meeting that took place in Italy from November 25-26, 2024.”
ARTICLES
1. Science Needs to Win Back Americans’ Trust
Jay Bhattacharya at NIH is a good start.
Letters, WSJ, Dec 11, 2024 [H/t William Readdy]
A comment following the article:
“As a professor of pediatric eye surgery at a university medical center and principal investigator of NIH grants for 15 years, I can testify to the damage inflicted by the Covid science cancel-culture that Dr. Bhattacharya bravely resisted. The eyesight of dozens of children I treat was damaged permanently by the irrational lockdowns.
Parents were frightened to appear at our children’s hospital, despite the need for imperative surgeries and follow-up monitoring. A colleague across town at another children’s hospital was fired for refusal—on religious grounds—to be vaccinated. I inherited his complex patients and did what I could, disadvantaged by the discontinuity of care.
When I was overheard endorsing the Barrington Declaration and criticizing lockdowns, university leadership informed me I was suspect. When I told children in my office to remove their masks, essential for a thorough neuro-ophthalmologic examination, I was interrogated by HR.
When an informant reported that I delivered a lecture at the University of California, San Francisco, not wearing a mask, I was told I was an unfit leader. I still witness in each clinic the developmental damage wrought by children’s masking, school closures and social isolation: delayed speech skills, learning disabilities and emotional immaturity. The NIH declared the Great Barrington Declaration iniquity; will Americans forgive that prideful sin?
R. Lawrence Tychsen, M.D.
*****************
2. Trump’s Energy Secretary Pick Preaches the Benefits of Climate Change
Fracking CEO Chris Wright points to positive changes produced by global warming, in contrast with what some oil giants say
By Benoît Morenne, WSJ, Dec. 8, 2024
A comment following the article by Ken Haapala
“Wright is right. In physical science, nature is the ultimate and final judge; not politicians and ‘scientists’ with models [that contradict nature]. We are in a brief warm period in an era called Icehouse Earth, with icecaps at both poles. Earth undergoes short periods of warming, with long periods of cooling. Carbon dioxide is saturated, subject to diminishing returns. It takes a lot of new CO2 to raise temperatures. Another Ice Age will come with glaciation in Manhattan and CO2 won’t stop it.”
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The Week That Was: And It Wasn’t Good
A dismal 61% of Britons say they’re dissatisfied with Keir Starmer, marking his worst showing yet as Labour leader.
Government doesn’t fare much better, with a whopping 70% of the public dissatisfied. Even more striking, 65% believe the economy will worsen in the next year
Public money go round…
CBI Economics calculates that the Treasury’s changes to BPR will actually cost the Exchequer over £1 billion more than it brings in. Something something Laffer Curve…
The economists say 125,678 jobs will be lost as a result of the tax, with a £2.6 billion reduction in tax revenue from economic activity as a result. 85% of family businesses surveyed plan to decrease investment and 54% say they will cut jobs. Cutting BPR is only projected to raise £1.38 billion…
This comes as 160,000 family firms represented by 32 trade associations write to Reeves over the weekend to demand a consultation on the IHT relief changes. Badenoch will brandish the new analysis at a BPR conference today while Farage says “Rachel Reeves is no economist.”
https://order-order.com/
Nigel is quite right.
CBI, BPR, IHT I’m not bothering to look up what those acronyms are.
And? I understand little of the [US] acronyms. But I don’t throw a strop about it. Grow up.
Thin skin
Lazy git
Sounds hopeless. In a better world, Starmer would admit that his government is a dumpster fire and request that King Charles dissolve Parliament.
Phew !
So much info , so little time !
😉
All that and not one mention of the alien drone invasion underway in NJ, NY and our military installations. Just think about the new clean, green energy power generation technologies our new alien overlords might provide humanity. Just think about it.
Unless it’s the Lizard people, of course. That would be bad.
NB. I don’t think the IPCC intended to pepper their reports with errors in order to get their major narrative accepted, it’s just that their reports being full of errors accidentally helped to get their major narrative accepted. [Just clarifying].
‘As we engage the new administration, I think we are going to need to adjust our terminology and our language,’ Adm. Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for health for the Department of Health and Human Services, said during an event at the American Geophysical Union’s annual conference last week in Washington, D.C.