From the imagers aboard the GOES East and GOES West geostationary satellites, NOAA generates visualizations of Derived Motion Winds, overlaid on a background of the GEOCOLOR composite images. The first link activates a time-lapse of the most recent 72 hourly images from GOES East, centered on the Americas. The second link is for GOES West centered over the Pacific. At each link, wait for the amination to load, then it will keep playing. Take a look.
Derived Motion Winds key: Red barbs: High level winds: 100 – 400mb, altitude approximately 23,000 – 46,000 ft. (7-14 km). Cyan barbs: Mid-level winds: 400 – 700mb, altitude: approximately 10,000 – 23,000 ft. (3 – 7 km). Yellow barbs: Low-level winds: > 700mb, altitude: approximately < 10,000 ft. (< 3 km)
The NOAA wind symbology is such that each “barb” represents 10 Knots in the direction the symbol points. A pennant represents 50 Knots.
The images help us to “connect the dots” to appreciate the importance of energy conversion throughout the depth of the troposphere: [Internal energy + potential energy] <–> [kinetic energy]. The highly variable kinetic energy of the wind over time, location, and altitude is implied in these visualizations. And let’s not forget the energy transport power of water vapor in the circulation from low alititude to high, and from the tropics to the poles. Dynamic self-regulation.
More here about the concept of energy conversion in the text description of this short time-lapse video of plots of the ERA5 “vertical integral of energy conversion” parameter at latitude 45N as an example. This is not new to regular readers here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDurP-4gVrY
Bottom line: The atmosphere is the compressible working fluid of its own heat-actuated circulation. It is energized dynamically throughout its depth.
What is the scientific issue this relates to? The energy involved in the computed minor improvement in the IR absorbing power in the clear atmosphere from incremental CO2, CH4, N2O – the “forcing” – where does it end up? It’s not a trick question.
Gregory Woods
February 9, 2025 2:15 am
Is the planet actually warming? Maybe, maybe not, This retired ME believes that Sea Level Rise is a valid ‘warming’ proxy. And have we seen any acceleration of SLR in our lifetimes? According to the data NO. Maybe I am missing something, but for me, if no increase in SLR then no increase in ‘Global Temperature’, if that can even be determined.
You got a green + from me. your point is a good one. It is important to include land rise and subsidence in the measurement whenever possible, too.
As for the meaningfulness of “global temperature”, in itself, it’s meaningless. I live on a steep bluff, and due to slope, sun direction, and wind flow through gorges, two of my closest neighbors have different climates than I do. And these are only a short walk away. HOWEVER, the direction and even magnitude of our “climate change” could likely be estimated by a change in our properly recorded mean temperature, if measured over an adequate number of decades. Similarly, a global temperature number is meaningless. Global temperature change, if properly and consistently determined, may be worth noting.
Additionally, to do a thorough accounting, one should take into account terrestrial water removed from aquifers that has ended up in the oceans (as well as from melting glaciers), the deepening of the ocean basins from the weight of that additional water (isostatic adjustment), and the possibility of more water residing in the atmosphere as a result of the Clausius-Clapeyron equation predicting greater potential absolute humidity with warming. There is also the emission of steam from volcanoes as a result of subducting tectonic slabs dehydrating, which is probably much greater than the estimates obtained from terrestrial volcanoes alone. NASA has documented the Earth ‘greening’ because of CO2, and vegetation holds water. It is not a trivial problem accounting for all the variables.
Also oceans cover 70% of the planet, and the weight of the denser and higher silicate slabs that we call “continents” could be sinking, raising the sea floor and thus the relative sea level, not to mention the mantle contains much more water than the oceans…..Satellite soundings make assumptions about the land surface that can’t be verified below the first few microns of ocean surface. Of course polar ice melt is an obvious component of SLR, but closure of the calcs seem to be lacking by about 10% and that is after a fairly large confirmation bias component….
If pur planet is not warming, then it is cooling. Anyone who doubts ALL the data showing warming must be assuming cooling, based on NO DATA at all.
That is science denying Stage IV.
You can call me all the names you want to.
I dont care.
But I will never be so stupid as to claim there has been no global warming since 1975 or that CO2 emissions were not ONE of the causes.
In addition, it could be unchanged, and whatever change being observed is of little significance compared to natural variability on the scale of one’s purview.
Regardless of one’s beliefs, it’s actions that matter that impact oneself and others. Constructing windmills is a modern way to sacrifice virgins to appease a volcano deity. It really doesn’t matter whether the former belief is true or not to those being sacrificed.
The high stand of the oceans was 5-6000 years ago. Since then, the sea level is down six feet. Must be warming a lot to turn six feet of water into ice.
According to scientific evidence, sea level was likely higher than today at some points within the past 6,000 years, particularly around the mid-Holocene period (between 6,000 and 5,000 years ago), where glacial melting had largely ceased but the Earth’s crust was still adjusting, causing sea levels to be higher in certain regions than they are now; however, on a global average, sea levels have been relatively stable over the last few thousand years with only minor fluctuations
Just as a matter of logic, there are other options:
1) The world is warming. 2) The world is cooling. 3) The world is staying the same temperature. 4) The world is oscillating around a mean point with constant frequency. 5) The world is oscillating around a mean point with an increasing frequency. 6) The world is oscillating around a mean point with a decreasing frequency.
7) The world is oscillating around a rising point with constant frequency.
8) The world is oscillating around a rising point with an increasing frequency.
9) The world is oscillating around a rising point with a decreasing frequency.
10) The world is oscillating around a falling point with constant frequency.
11) The world is oscillating around a falling point with an increasing frequency.
12) The world is oscillating around a falling point with a decreasing frequency.
There are probably other options too. But those are just the obvious ones.
Are you sure the data can categorically rule out all but option 1?
There has been global warming since 1975. That is a fact that should not be doubted as one commenter here did: A great way to not be taken seriously during any conversation about global warming. Say it did
not happen, and then get laughed at.
We have no data that allows for a scientifically or statistically valid determination of Global Temperature.
To obtain such a thing the following are required:
A clear rigorous definition of what “average global temperature” means.Selection of an instrument with adequate accuracy, precision and repeatability and reproducibility to assure that all measurement sites are measuring the same thing in the same way.Random selection of a sufficient number of sampling locations to assure statistical significance and representativeness.Regular verification and recalibration of instruments.A sufficiently long record of measurements to allow for determination of random variability, identification of faulty data and outliers.
There are more requirements, but as none of these have been met in the data sets currently available it is not valid to make any claims that involve discussion of “global average temperature”. That is simply an undefined quantity that we have no adequate means to measure. The closest thing we do have is the satellite data for the troposphere from UAH which at least has a clear definition of what it measures and good global sampling. But satellites have a relatively short record and do not cover temperatures in the near surface level where we live.
Something else that is rarely mentioned outside of WUWT, is that any estimate of a nominal value of the ‘GMST’ should include a propagation of error calculation of the Confidence Interval (AKA Uncertainty) with a specified probability (typically +/-2 sigma). If done properly, it will be discovered that the uncertainty is so large as to have the nominal value to be of little practical value except possibly the sign of the annual trend.
The nominal annual temperature (arithmetic mean of daily mid-range values) is commonly reported to at least 2 and sometimes 3-significant figures to the right of the decimal point, based on a rationalization that the precision can be improved by taking a large number of readings and averaging the mid-range values of the diurnal extreme temperatures, which do not occur the same time every day. However, such manipulations to attempt to improve the precision are only justified if the measurements have the property of stationarity. That means that neither the mean or standard deviation vary with time and the data are approximately Gaussian in distribution; also, the same thing should be measured every time with the same instrument, which is impossible with moving air masses. It should be obvious that any time-series with a trend has a mean that changes with time, therefore it violates the stationarity requirement!
The statistics Empirical Rule says that the standard deviation for a Normal distribution can be approximated by dividing the range of a large data set by 4 (or to be more conservative, by 6). When one applies the Empirical Rule, the estimate of the standard deviation for the annual ‘average’ is several ten’s of degrees, not hundredth’s of a degree, as is commonly reported by those who call themselves experts. There is obviously a problem with the reported precision of annual and even monthly ‘averages.’ One of the problems is that even the global surface temperature distribution (let alone a single hemisphere) is skewed because of the uneven distribution of land and ocean; there is a long tail on the cold side! Succinctly, the other problems are that the variations are not random because the same instrument (thermometer) is not used for every measurement, the siting conditions (Stevenson Screen and surrounds) are not the same, and the same air mass is not measured with STP conditions. Every gust of wind moves a parcel of air over ground (or water) with different temperatures and elevations, thus changing the temperature and pressure of the air mass.
The best that one can legitimately do is to report the statistics on the raw data of recorded temperatures, without invalid corrections for the number of measurements, and say that the arithmetic mean and standard deviation of the mid-range values for poorly-spaced samples, from a collection of thermometers of unknown calibration status, located in weather stations existing during the year (of varying but unknown siting quality), is xx0 +/-x0 deg C. Anything else is simply putting one’s thumb on the scale.
Working with so-called anomalies does not correct for most of the above stated problems.
As a post script, the temperature of the globe without the humidity (or derived Heat Index) is less informative than the Heat Index. However, humidity measurements do not go back as far as temperature measurements.
There’s only 2 choices, warming or cooling? Or perhaps there’s some word that describes neither warming or cooling.
Besides, you wrongly assume that if the planet is warming, then the cause is from human greenhouse gas emissions. I’d like to see your evidence for that.
The global media, at the behest of the climate activists, are still trying to find, and lying about, climate refugees.
The truth is rising sea level is a minor side issue for Gardi Sugdub. These people have always lived with their toes in the water. But the island is now massively overpopulated, and has GROWN in size because of haphazard land reclamation using, amongst other rubbish, the smashed up coral reef that used to protect and replenish the island!
Most of Antarctica, with about 90% of land ice, has a permanent temperature inversion. That causes a NEGATIVE greenhouse effect and the surface temperature gets colder.
There are two ice shelves and a small peninsula that have some warming, but the claimed melting there (150 gigatons a year) is much smaller than the likely the margin of error in the total Antarctica ice mass estimate of 24.4 million gigatons.
The ice shelf melting and peninsula melting is from ocean heat / underseas volcanoes.
strativarius
February 9, 2025 3:33 am
Incredibly stupid, or gaslighting the nation? Flywheel Miliband is trolling the nation today in the pages of the national 6th form student protest publication, aka The Grauniad. But first a word from their economics guru, Will Hutton:
If that were true they’d be ditching net zero yesterday. Gas remains cheapest of the lot, aside maybe from coal; but that isn’t an option right now as they dynamited the last coal station. Great green PR.
Miliband claims:
“The net zero economy is the economic growth opportunity of the 21st century. That is why the chancellor has shown such leadership in driving forward with clean energy industries, establishing a national wealth fund to invest in cable factories and clean steel, supporting publicly owned Great British Energy and backing investment in carbon capture jobs in the north-west and Teesside.”
Rachel from accounts has tanked the economy:
Rachel Reeves’ “Bank Economist” Myth Busted Rachel Reeves’ “British Chess Champion” Myth Busted (she came 26th) Bank of England Halves 2025 Growth Forecast Etc – Guido Fawkes
I can only conclude that Flywheel’s concern for his fellow (working class) people comes from his natural malice, bigotry and contempt. Which he got from his father.
Building infrastructure has always been counted as economic growth. If people buy more beer this year than they did last year, that adds to economic growth too. That does not change if you don’t like what the money/labor hours wes spent on.
Most federal government spending is transfer payments. About two thirds. The big transfer programs are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Of the $7 trillion of annual government spending, almost $2 trillion was borrowed money. About 23% of total US debt is held by people and institutions in other nations. That money was voluntarily invested by people and institutions for an annual interest payment in return. It was NOT taken out of their pockets.
More than half of the $841 billion annual Department of Defense budget is now spent on private sector military contractors
$5 trillion of the $7 trillion was tax revenues “taken out of people’s and business’s pockets”.
Musk found at least $100 billion of Treasure payments with no SSN and no ID
.
Those likely were payments to NGOs, the gift bags, free clothes, and free credit cards, free transportation, free rent, free food, free healthcare, etc., to millions of illegals
.
With freebies like that, no wonder the desperados came by the millions from all over.
A good deal of that money is being pocketed by local US politicians in Chicago, etc., who do not want to send the illegals back, because that would stop their gravy train.
Post says:”That money was voluntarily invested by people and institutions for an annual interest payment in return. It was NOT taken out of their pockets.”
From your answer you don’t seem to know where the government gets the money to pay the “interest payment” you mention. The interest payment is either taken from my pocket via taxes or my children’s or grandchildren’s pocket depending on the length of the bond.
The government has no money except that which it takes via taxes from us. Or prints out of thin air.
Government do not print money
The Fed controls the money supply.
Governments tax or borrow money.
If they spend $1 and borrow $1, they will pay perhaps 4% interest to the government bond holder each year BEFORE federal taxes on the interest. I own about $78,000 of short term Treasury debt. I took that money out of my pocket by myself for risk free interest, as stocks are now at all time record valuations, ad i am too old for risks like that.
The money our government borrowed from foreigners is not out of America’s pockets.
If you are a US working man the government is taking money out of your pocket and sending me $50,000 Social Security a year. Thanks for working.
More beer, more belly growth, bigger pants, longer belts.
What a way to increase GDP!.
.
A screwed up way to MAGA
. European Owners of US offshore windmills can claim:
1) An energy communities tax credit worth 10 percent
2) A base tax credit of 30 percent
3) State tax credit incentives of up to 10%
YOUR tax dollars are building these projects so YOU will have much higher electric bills.
.
A screwed up way to MAGA
Remove YOUR tax dollars and none of these projects would be built, and YOUR electric bills would be lower.
.
A great way to MAGA
High Costs/kWh of Wind and Solar Foisted onto a Brainwashed Public
.
The three main US subsidies are:
Federal and state tax credits, up to 50%, and cash grants,
5-y Accelerated Depreciation write off of the entire project
Deduction of interest of borrowed money
.
The effect of the three items is to reduce the owning and operating cost of a project by 50%, which means electricity can be sold at 50% less than it costs to produce.
Utilities pay 15 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from fixedoffshore wind systems
Utilities pay 18 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from floating offshore wind
Utilities pay 12 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from larger solar systems
I don’t want any tax credits, subsidies or mandates for alternative energy They are a waste of money.
But I also do not want a president ignoring Congress and the courts like a dictator.
Impounding funds approved by Congress and cancelling agencies formed by Congress and funded by Congress.
Trump is acting like a dictator, completely ignoring Congress.
He is, by far, the worst President in US history because of the WAY he is doing things.
A power grab never before tried by any President.
We have lost our Constitutionally limited Republic and the Constitution is now just an old piece of paper
Yet Republicans cheer for Trump like trained seals. A dictator is cool, they “think”, if he does what we want done, Congress can pass a budget and go home for a year. Dictator Trump will spend the money whatever way HE wants to.
Congress is supposed to be in charge of taxes. Tariffs are taxes. Trump just slaps tariffs on whatever nations he feels like that day and says Fa-Q to Congress.
WE HAVE A DICTATOR NAMED TRUMP
AND THAT IS MUCH WORSE THAN THE ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SUBSIDIES, TAX CREDITS AND MADATES EVER WERE
I bought a case of beer.
Did NOT open the cans
Applied to Biden admin. for a DOE CO2 Capture loan. They turned me down. because I forgot the 10% for The Big Guy.
As of January 2023, the province of Shandong, which lies to the south of Beijing, houses the highest number of coal power plants, at over 400 units.
Beijing itself, meanwhile, does not have a single operational coal power plant within its municipality.
Trouble is, “coal plant” can cover anything from a small factory based plant (still lots of little ones in operation) to the big grid scale plants.
Either way, the numbers on the chart look like they are “bogus”, to say the least.
If they are counting the individual thermal units, they may be somewhere near correct, but then Australia would have far more than 18… certainly not 6.
The chart needs to be filed in the circular drawer!
Keep reading the thread.
The chart numbers were worse than numbers pulled out of a hat. They were pulled out of a place two feet below the back of a hat. Least accurate chart I have ever seen at WUWT. I took the time to provide the latest data. For which I will get the usual down votes.
The sad fact is commenter Wojick is a professional energy writer, and yet he was fooled. He also believes all global warming is caused by El Ninos, which is another subject.
Globally, over 1.6 million MW of new coal-fired electricity generation have come online between 2000 and 2024 according to the data in the spreadsheet below….
Includes over 25,800 MW of new generation in the U.S. between 2000 and 2015. Nothing since then. Much of the new generation in the past 25 years was built in Asia, especially China and India.
I imagine that all of this new construction is going to continue in both developed and developing nations in the years ahead. Ed Milibrand needs to be fitted for a clown suit.
These coal power plant numbers are grossly inaccurate BS. All of them should be ignored. Wojick has presented what may be the least accurate chart ever posted at WUWT. Obviously, he did not verify any of the numbers.
Examples:
INDIA As of January 2025, India has 93 coal power units under construction or on hold. This includes 40 units that are likely to be commissioned and 53 units that are on hold. The chart claims 446 Grossly inaccurate
JAPAN
As of April 2024, there were 166 coal-fired power plants operating in Japan.
The chart says 90
SOUTH AFRICA
According to available information, as of 2025, South Africa is expected to have around 15 coal power plants still operating,
The chart says 79
PHILIPPINES
According to the most recent data available, as of December 2023, there are approximately 60 coal-fired power plants operating in the Philippines,
The chart says 19
EU
According to available data, as of 2023, there are approximately 256 coal-fired power plants operating across the European Union.
The chart says 468
CHINA
Following a period of rapid coal power plant approvals, China has significantly decreased the number of new coal power projects being permitted in 2024, with some reports stating that only a few dozen new coal plants are being approved. According to available data, China is expected to have around 1,100 operational coal power plants in 2025, with a potential decrease as the country aims to retire some coal capacity by that time; The chart says 2,363
In some cases, a number of smaller plants are closed and replaced by a much bigger modern plant. Plus there are expansions. all complicating making an accurate count. In any case, while numbers increase more slowly or even decline, coal consumption rises.
There comes a time when the benefit of the doubt should run out.
I was deceived for a while into believing that Richard Greene was just an ill-tempered self-aggrandizing petty douchebag loser and that was what was causing him to be a terrible spokesman for conservative politics and climate realism.
I was willing to believe that despite his annoying asshattery, he just wanted to convince fellow skeptics to avoid unsupported claims because of the discrediting effect on skepticism in general when easily debunked claims are shot down by climate alarmists.
I was wrong. He is nothing more than a troll. He is cultivating a persona that everyone despises so that he can discredit reasonable climate skepticism. He is doing all he can to fire up those who make crazy unscientific claims and drive them to greater extremism in opposition to his despicable ridicule.
The best way to deal with a troll is to shun him. Never reply to him. Always down-vote him. Post your own comment or reply to a non-troll’s comment. Never give him any oxygen.
“Greene was just an ill-tempered self-aggrandizing petty douchebag loser”
I’m adding that complement to my resume
You are an expert at throwing down childish insults, but have you even tried to refute any science claims, or any data, in any of my comments? Not even a weak attempt to refute just one sentence in ANY of my comments. Just leftist style character attacks. Print your comment. Have it framed and send it to your mother. She would be proud of you!
I got my data from Google AI which I have found to be accurate. Sometimes the numbers are from 2024 or 2023 rather than January 2025
India
Google AI coal plants planned
40
(53 on hold)
Chart coal plants planned
446 !
Google AI coal plants in operation
285
Chart coal plants in operation
589 !
Australia had no Google AI data. An official Australia government website said 24 coal plants but did not specify a year, so I did not include the 24 in my original comment. The BS chart said 6.
24 was from this link:
Australia is also, however, considering 46 coal mining for export projects (62% of all such projects worldwide) including 16 new, 28 expansion and 2 reopening. Somebody has to supply coal to the new coal plants!
IEA ‘Coal 2024 Analysis and Forecast to 2027’ (Dec. 2024)
Recently Willis had an article where he demonstrated the greenhouse effect had remained constant over the full 25 years of NASA CERES satellite data collection. How is this possible?
1) As CO2 increases scientists have measured an increase in downwelling IR at the surface. Why doesn’t this warm the surface?
2) As CO2 increases we should see increased absorption of upwelling IR high in the atmosphere. Climate science claims this will raise the effective radiation altitude which would be cooler thus forcing the surface to warm. Why isn’t this happening?
3) As CO2 increases the main absorption band should widen allowing more energy to be absorbed at its edges. This effect shows up in radiation models and has been detected by satellites. Why doesn’t it cause warming.
Many folks will claim these are happening and warming must happen, therefore the lack of increased greenhouse warming must be due to an unknown feedback which is countering these warming effects. They are wrong. There are direct physical processes in play which prevent any warming from occurring.
The data from the NASA CERES satellites has validated these processes are real. In addition, we have NOAA radiosonde data described in Miskolczi 2010, 2023 which produces the same result. In total, we have 77 years of scientific data which confirms no change in the strength of the greenhouse effect.
Skeptics need to push the new Trump administration to stop accepting climate science claims that CO2 increases cause warming. Only then can the climate debate be won.
In fact we need a research program into why it is not happening. The $2.6 billion a year US Global Change Research Program should be redirected to this issue.
Yes, I believe there are experiments that could verify the physics involved. There are also a lot of data like Willis used that could validate this science. All it would take is people digging deeper into the physics.
There is no need for experiments or a research program to explain the physics. All of the fundamental principles are well established.
One must first understand the meaning (not necessarily the mathematics) in “The Quantum Theory of Radiation” published by Einstein in 1917.
One must also understand a principle stated by Heinz Hug several years ago, that there is “no law of conservation of radiation energy.”
It is unfortunate that the true nature of energy transport from the surface to space is being suppressed. It is not so difficult to understand, but impossible to model mathematically because of the complexity of a strongly convecting troposphere, and atmospheric dynamics in general.
“stop accepting climate science claims that CO2 increases cause warming”
That is an ignorant claim refuted by 128 years of evidence.
Willis cherry picked a few satellites for his data out of over 320 climate and weather satellites. He came to conclusions the opposite of NASA, who own the satellites, and Dr. Loeb, who owns the CERES data.
That simply means WE was wrong … and 99.9% of scientists since 1896 have been right about CO2 and the greenhouse effect. The alterative that WE was right and 99.9% of scientists since 1896 have been wrong has a probability of ZERO. Don’t make any science writer into a hero in your eyes, who is always right.
So, you accept “evidence” that supports your long held opinion while rejecting the “evidence” which refutes it. Maybe you should try opening your mind. Maybe there’s an answer which explains all the evidence.
Keep in mind a constant greenhouse effect is not the same as saying the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist. Most of the evidence you mentioned is simply evidence it does exist. WE also found it does exist.
The physics that supports a maximum strength of the greenhouse effect for saturated, well mixed radiative gases is sound.
[I explained once before how this line of unanswerable questioning is not appropriate. If you can’t remember, that’s on you. For a reminder–fossils~ctm]
The model which manifests the greenhouse effect is a model of a flat Earth subjected to constant solar irradiance in radiative equilibrium with no convection. In this “equilibrium” the temperature profile from the surface to space does not change. In such a model, a change in the concentration of IR active gases in the atmosphere will result in a change in the equilibrium temperature profile. There will also be no atmospheric circulation.
I choose not to live on that model Earth. I prefer the real version.
This appears to be an improvement over previous claims attributed to Nikolov. I saw no mention of adiabatic compression as a cause of warming.
He also is on the right track that the loss of energy by the atmosphere is associated with non-radiative factors. However, you still need energy radiated through the atmosphere. He also clearly pointed out water vapor is a factor.
As a result, he ends up explaining away the cooling of the atmosphere with nothing but hand waving. It really is caused by radiative gases. It just turns out to be independent of the concentration of well mixed, radiative gases. This is why only water vapor is important. He just doesn’t quite understand all the physics.
I also love his work on the CERES data. All of the warming is explained by solar energy.
His goal is to poison you to reasonable skepticism and get you radicalized with wild ideas that are easy to debunk.
Some of the things he says are correct but the tell is that he always attacks and ridicules so that you’ll want to believe anything but what he says.
He focuses in on irrelevant factual errors and ignores the big picture. There is no climate emergency. Western countries are committing economic suicide while China and others are eating our lunch.
The van Wijngaarden & Happer paper shows that the troposphere is effectively opaque to IR in the CO2 resonance bands, so adding CO2 will not significantly affect the transport of IR though the troposphere. The increase in CO2 will affect transport of IR above the stratosphere. Increases in downwelling IR is likely due to increases in air temperature.
What Willis pointed out, and he was not the first to do so, was that most of the warming in the last 50 years was due to a decrease in cloud cover. Whether the decrease in cloud cover is related to increase in CO2, decrease in SO2 or something is still an open question.
My comment about Willis is not intended as a criticism, as far as I know he was doing an independent analysis. Good science is defined people doing independent work coming up with the same results.
Not only is the troposphere opaque in the CO2 spectral bands, all the energy is absorbed very low in the atmosphere (10 meters). This is important to understanding why downwelling IR cannot warm the surface and how CO2 driven increases in evaporation directly reduce high altitude water vapor.
The decline of cloud coverage does NOT measure the amount of solar energy blocked by clouds. It is an inaccurate proxy for unavailable data.
The claim of a 7% decline of global average cloud cover in the past 20 years is BELOW the likely margin of error of +/- 10% or MORE.
Therefore the data are statistically insignificant.
I addition, most of the warming after 1975 is at TMIN which is at dawn to 30 minutes after dawn. That is NOT caused by more absorbed solar radiation.
ASR from fewer clouds and less SO2 pollution may be blamed for the smaller TMAX increase in afternoons since 1975.
WE was wrong by ignoring all the evidence of greenhouse warming. Such as the TMIN warming since 1975 and cooling of the stratosphere. Both symptoms of greenhouse warming. NOT solar warming.
This all depends on the definition people give the GHE.
In my view the absorption and emission of IR by CO2 is real and does exist low in the atmosphere. I believe your view is driven by an incorrect application of a long delay time after CO2 molecules are excited by a collision. If you use a near instantaneous delay, all the emissions of IR exist and Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation holds.
As a result, my view supports a real greenhouse effect that reaches a maximum value as saturation occurs.
There are various perspectives on this issue that should be discussed openly. I’m hoping that an article recently submitted by Andy May and me will be published here soon. It is intended to stimulate the discussion around some of these ideas. I am concerned Anthony might be getting a lot of pushback because it does challenge the mainstream narrative. It was submitted many days ago.
I watched your youtube video. The entire argument rests on the inability of CO2 to emit photons low in the atmosphere. Of course, if this was true, we wouldn’t be able to measure IR at the surface. But we can, multiple examples exist. Sorry.
whatever. The most difficult thing to open is a closed mind. FWIW, that video is old and I would revise much of it with what I have learned in the meantime.
I will try to explain. It is not that CO2 does not emit radiation in the troposphere. It is constantly emitting, but the radiation it emits is constantly being absorbed.
The surface radiation is absorbed and thermalized into sensible heat in the first 10m or so of the atmosphere. I believe that is generally accepted as true. The surface radiation field is gone. This excludes the radiation in the atmospheric window, of course.
Throughout the atmosphere, the IR-active gases are continuously excited and de-excited via collisions with other molecules. This is not controversial. Some of these collisions result in spontaneous emission of radiation. This is explained in Einstein’s “The Quantum Theory of Radiation” published in 1917.
This radiation field is locally in equilibrium with the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of molecular kinetic energy, creating a radiation field that has the characteristic of a Planck distribution. The Planck distribution and the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution are intimately related by the common factor exp(hν/kT), as explained by Einstein.
The self-generated radiation field and the molecules are constantly exchanging energy, but they do not transport energy until radiation can escape to space.
This self-generated radiation field emits radiation in all directions. In the troposphere, including at the surface, you can point a spectrometer in any direction into the atmosphere and detect the component of this random field that is directed on the axis of the spectrometer. This is the source of the so-called “back radiation”. You can point it in any other direction and see the component in that direction as well. The radiation field is ubiquitous and has components in all directions.
This self-generated field creates a “pool” of radiation in the troposphere at the GHG frequencies.
As altitude changes, the relative rates of collisional excitation, de-excitation, absorption, and spontaneous emission change. The rate of spontaneous emission is relatively constant, but the rates of collisional excitation and de-excitation decrease with altitude. As water vapor condenses, the rate of absorption decreases rapidly as well.
At a sufficiently high altitude, the rate of spontaneous emission will exceed the rates of de-excitation and absorption, and the radiation from water vapor will escape to space. This begins at about 2 km and continues to about 6 km as shown by Harde (2013).
(I tried to post a photo of a spectrum here. I will edit it in as soon as I figure out how to do it. for now, there is a link)
While all of that was happening, the release of latent heat from condensing water vapor in the troposphere also adds sensible heat to the gas pool. This heat is what reduces the adiabatic lapse rate from the dry rate of ~9.8 K/km to the observed rate of ~6.5 K/km. It also drives additional collisions.
There is an overlap from 14-16 μm between the water vapor and CO2 bands. CO2 is a non-condensing gas, and it absorbs some of the water vapor emissions which creates the “notch” or “divot” on the spectrum. The CO2 is immediately thermalized before it can spontaneously emit, returning the energy absorbed from water vapor emissions as sensible heat to the atmosphere. It is only at about 83 km that the thermalization of CO2 is sufficiently reduced that CO2 can emit to space. That is the tiny peak at the bottom of the absorption “divot”. There is very little energy left at that altitude, and the CO2 emission is negligible.
There is no radiative transfer, radiative forcing, or greenhouse effect needed to explain this.
Water vapor is responsible for almost all of the radiation emitted to space. That is why there is the tropopause.
There is also no need for a human imposed “radiative equilibrium” in any individual atmospheric column. Convective energy carries heat to other parts of the planet where it can be released elsewhere. The Earth is remarkably good at maintaining itself.
“Recently Willis had an article where he demonstrated the greenhouse effect had remained constant over the full 25 years of NASA CERES satellite data collection. How is this possible?”
With NASA anything is possible…… or so it would appear!
Just take a look at the CERES data that Willis says he used for his demonstration.
Who else but NASA could measure Earth’s upwelling longwave surface radiance to 15 significant figures and 12 decimal places?!!! [Note: the 12th decimal place represents trillionths of a Watt per square metre.]
Come to think of it, who else could even measure Earth’s upwelling longwave surface radiance at all, given that there is a longwave-absorbing atmosphere between the surface and the CERES satellites supposedly doing the measuring? And NASA holds all the cards where its data are concerned so if its ‘measurements’ are wrong, how would we even know it?
No, I’m afraid the CERES-data are products of calculation, not measurement. And any calculations can be no better than the assumptions on which they are based. But in the case of the CERES-data in Willis’s analysis, those assumptions are hidden from sight, as are the calculations based upon them. How can anyone place any trust in them at all?
I use a hydrogen torch for quartz blowing quite a bit and the valve on my cheap Chinese torch doesn’t always completely shut off flow. I burned a hole in my sleeve the other day. Hydrogen flames are hot and nearly invisible.
Get some electricity in some manner, hopefully “green.” Then the H2 comes from H2O and then the H2O comes from the combustion of the H2. Repeat.
It all seems quite dumb to me.
One of the biggest problems with a hydrogen economy, which rarely gets mentioned, is that the CO2 that would be emitted by a hydrocarbon is replaced entirely by water, which besides being a more powerful ‘greenhouse gas’ than CO2, will end up increasing the Heat index in the Summer and contribute to rime ice in the Winter, among other things.
Wind turbine blades are some of THE most wasteful pieces of garbage ever created out of the fantasies of small minded men! Those coal mines might be useful some day; now they’ll be filled with useless crap making access difficult! Once again GangGreen proves themselves to be anti-environmental!
According to data from tide gauges, the average global relative sea level rise over the past 100 years is estimated to be around 1.7-1.8 millimeters per year, based on measurements from tide stations worldwide.
The total includes land subsidence, for which data are not reliable for a global average.
Interestingly the IEA say Indonesia became the first country in the world to export more than 500Mt a year of coal in 2024 while it and Australia are the world’s leading exporters.
However Indonesia’s new coal mining for export projects number 6 whilst Australia dwarfs that with 46.
Net Zero by 2030 is so obviously impossible that it should be apparent to everyone that it is a total scam.
NetZero based on windmills and solar panels is equally impossible in 2230.
There’s only one practical way to reach Net Zero on any timeline, and that’s a global crash program to build nuclear power plants à la France in the 1970s.
If France was able to reach 70% after about 15 years using 60-year old technology, then we might guess that the world could duplicate that on a larger scale and reach 100% carbon-free electricity in about 21 years.
Optimistically assuming that it would only take about 4 years to change the regulatory constraints and develop the skilled labor to START such a transition, then maybe carbon-free electricity could be a reality in 2050.
But that covers, what, 30% of total energy use? So that’s still not NetZero. If we allow that the biosphere currently gobbles up half of our emissions, a case could be made that NetZero only requires another 20% of total energy use to stabilize the CO2 concentration. Let’s call that another 70% of current electricity production (.2/.3) to electrify enough transportation and industry to achieve stable CO2 concentration. Ok so another 15 years based on the French experience. So, 2065 nuclear NetZero, if all goes well.
I reckon that this is technically feasible and for that matter, probably not outrageously expensive (at least in comparison to the worthless expenditures of the past three decades wasted on windmills and solar panels).
If the true goal is to stabilize CO2 concentration and nuclear power could do that while maintaining near 100% grid reliability, you would think that rational policy-makers who didn’t have a hidden agenda would choose that path. Yet they are adamantly opposed to that approach.
The reason is that destroying Western civilization is the actual goal and a nuclear NetZero would not achieve the goal.
I think that Trump is a very brave man. The evidence coming out of corruption is even worse than I had imagined. We’re dealing with people who have no moral principles. And so many criminals stand to be exposed.
I hate to say it but the probability of a Deep State coup seems very high. The Uniparty isn’t going to go down without a fight.
“The Uniparty isn’t going to go down without a fight.”
I agree, they won’t go down without a fight. But they are fighting against the wrong guy. Trump defeated their previous efforts, and I think a majority of Americans see what is going on, so the Deep State has a credibility problem now and I don’t think they are going to sway Trump’s supporters.
We’ve been here before and Trump won that one. I think he (and we) will win this one, too.
We just have to wade through a bunch of federal judges to get there. They won’t stop the progress, but they can slow it down.
Rich Davis
February 9, 2025 1:22 pm
How about a topic change? I’m surprised to see no comments about USAID.
This FORMER 😀 (So much winning!) agency for ‘international development’ is primarily NOT about helping poor countries with foreign aid. It is a giant slush fund for deep state malfeasance with a pretense of helping poor countries.
How much of the slush fund has been financing the Climate Emergency propaganda, I wonder?
A look at some batteries: first, ~80 batteries on the GB grid on near blackout day, 8th January: the data are from half hourly metering, and although there are separate figures for each battery underlying the chart there are no separate figures for drawing from the grid (mainly for charging, but also for cooling etc.) and supplying to it, which means that each battery is shown either to have net charged or discharged in each 30 minute period, whereas in reality some of them will have been fluctuating between charging and discharging as grid frequency changed for example: thus the throughput of the batteries and therefore also the losses are underestimated.
Nevertheless, it does show that broadly batteries are attempting two charge/discharge cycles per day when prices make that economic. It is also possible to infer that batteries are making money from ancillary services, since in every period there are batteries both charging and discharging, which you would not see if they were simply relying on energy arbitrage: they would all charge up when it is cheap, and all discharge into peak prices.
Here’s an update on the performance of the Hornsdale Power Reserve battery that I have been monitoring ever since it first started up. The physical performance is slightly degraded again, with most months now below 80% round trip efficiency.
The battery had a more profitable period in the late winter (July-September) when Dunkelflaute conditions afforded good margins for intra day trade. However, it is faced with increased competition from other batteries in the FCAS (Frequency control ancillary service) market that had previously dominated its income stream. Lower throughput volumes reflect reduced opportunities.
Tom Shula
February 10, 2025 10:40 am
Richard Feynman on radiation. Six minutes of food for thought.
About a month ago there was an article about the Antarctic sea ice, I commented:
““Massive Recovery in Antarctica”That certainly qualifies as “hysterical” for a headline using the author’s own language! Reaching the recent average for about three weeks is hardly a “massive Recovery”.”
Since then the sea ice has declined at a faster rate than usual and within the next couple of weeks will probably reach about second lowest in the record, making the post even more ridiculous!
A nice question obout the new Drax CFD: will it pay out on the same basis as the old one? It has a totally different price basis from the wind CFDs, using baseload quotes for six months ahead for each season. That means that there is a fixed guaranteed subsidy whenever this is lower than the strike price – or equally, a tax when it is higher. When the subsidy is small, CFD funded operation is much more sensitive to day ahead prices. When the tax is large the plant simply shuts down unless there is a huge price spike so it can charge enough to cover the tax plus the cost of warming up. The current value of the CFD is £138.16/MWh, so the new one will be worth rather more at around £160/MWh. The current guaranteed CFD subsidy on top of day ahead market price is £52.18/MWh, which is a bit less than their ROC subsidy (around £72/MWh) on 75% of the plant is worth.
But with nuclear shutting down gradually, and plans to reduce gas generation and the supposed limitations on Drax output, the forward market for baseload generation is going to be very thin indeed – leaving prices to be pushed around. Scope for Drax to enhance their margins.
Here we can see how the Baseload Market Reference Price compares with the Intermittent Market Reference Price (Day ahead market). Because of the pricing lag, Drax was able to secure CFD subsidies even as the Day Ahead market surged in 2021, albeit they lost out to a statutory maintenance shutdown in the summer during which Lynemouth kept going. However, as subsidy turned to tax they were kept out of the market, especially with the day ahead market having already fallen back substantially.
A further question about the new arrangements is how will the cap on subsidised output and clawback fo excess profits really work? My bet would be that Drax have retained options to choose subsidised output when market prices are low, and have unsubsidised output when they are high.
The earnings of two hour batteries in GB. They’ve been boosted by batteries now providing the equivalent of spinning reserve power, for which a portion of their capacity must be charged up, but they don’t have to do anything else other than top that up, so leaving the charge/discharge capacity free to operate in other markets unless they get called on, which will be a rare event. Trading provides a good chunk of overall income, and the 2 hour duration allows them to sell into the evening peak to maximum effect, and also to try to optimise their charging. A second peak occurs for teh morning rush hour, so they are able to turn over this capacity twice a day. Access to the Balancing Mechanism is proving lucrative for some if they are well placed to help alleviate transmission constraints for instance.
From the imagers aboard the GOES East and GOES West geostationary satellites, NOAA generates visualizations of Derived Motion Winds, overlaid on a background of the GEOCOLOR composite images. The first link activates a time-lapse of the most recent 72 hourly images from GOES East, centered on the Americas. The second link is for GOES West centered over the Pacific. At each link, wait for the amination to load, then it will keep playing. Take a look.
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk_band.php?sat=G16&band=DMW&length=72&dim=1
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk_band.php?sat=G18&band=DMW&length=72&dim=1
Derived Motion Winds key: Red barbs: High level winds: 100 – 400mb, altitude approximately 23,000 – 46,000 ft. (7-14 km). Cyan barbs: Mid-level winds: 400 – 700mb, altitude: approximately 10,000 – 23,000 ft. (3 – 7 km). Yellow barbs: Low-level winds: > 700mb, altitude: approximately < 10,000 ft. (< 3 km)
The NOAA wind symbology is such that each “barb” represents 10 Knots in the direction the symbol points. A pennant represents 50 Knots.
The images help us to “connect the dots” to appreciate the importance of energy conversion throughout the depth of the troposphere: [Internal energy + potential energy] <–> [kinetic energy]. The highly variable kinetic energy of the wind over time, location, and altitude is implied in these visualizations. And let’s not forget the energy transport power of water vapor in the circulation from low alititude to high, and from the tropics to the poles. Dynamic self-regulation.
More here about the concept of energy conversion in the text description of this short time-lapse video of plots of the ERA5 “vertical integral of energy conversion” parameter at latitude 45N as an example. This is not new to regular readers here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDurP-4gVrY
Bottom line: The atmosphere is the compressible working fluid of its own heat-actuated circulation. It is energized dynamically throughout its depth.
What is the scientific issue this relates to? The energy involved in the computed minor improvement in the IR absorbing power in the clear atmosphere from incremental CO2, CH4, N2O – the “forcing” – where does it end up? It’s not a trick question.
Is the planet actually warming? Maybe, maybe not, This retired ME believes that Sea Level Rise is a valid ‘warming’ proxy. And have we seen any acceleration of SLR in our lifetimes? According to the data NO. Maybe I am missing something, but for me, if no increase in SLR then no increase in ‘Global Temperature’, if that can even be determined.
Global temperature….
A silly construct if ever there were one.
No increase in the rate
Yes, for alarmists, it’s steadily rising like the temperature. Not really a good “I told you so” choice…
You got a green + from me. your point is a good one. It is important to include land rise and subsidence in the measurement whenever possible, too.
As for the meaningfulness of “global temperature”, in itself, it’s meaningless. I live on a steep bluff, and due to slope, sun direction, and wind flow through gorges, two of my closest neighbors have different climates than I do. And these are only a short walk away. HOWEVER, the direction and even magnitude of our “climate change” could likely be estimated by a change in our properly recorded mean temperature, if measured over an adequate number of decades. Similarly, a global temperature number is meaningless. Global temperature change, if properly and consistently determined, may be worth noting.
Additionally, to do a thorough accounting, one should take into account terrestrial water removed from aquifers that has ended up in the oceans (as well as from melting glaciers), the deepening of the ocean basins from the weight of that additional water (isostatic adjustment), and the possibility of more water residing in the atmosphere as a result of the Clausius-Clapeyron equation predicting greater potential absolute humidity with warming. There is also the emission of steam from volcanoes as a result of subducting tectonic slabs dehydrating, which is probably much greater than the estimates obtained from terrestrial volcanoes alone. NASA has documented the Earth ‘greening’ because of CO2, and vegetation holds water. It is not a trivial problem accounting for all the variables.
Also oceans cover 70% of the planet, and the weight of the denser and higher silicate slabs that we call “continents” could be sinking, raising the sea floor and thus the relative sea level, not to mention the mantle contains much more water than the oceans…..Satellite soundings make assumptions about the land surface that can’t be verified below the first few microns of ocean surface. Of course polar ice melt is an obvious component of SLR, but closure of the calcs seem to be lacking by about 10% and that is after a fairly large confirmation bias component….
“Is the planet actually warming? Maybe, maybe not,”
Step right up folks, we have a global warming denier, a rare breed of science denier
Which part of the sentence “Maybe, maybe not,” denies anything?
If pur planet is not warming, then it is cooling. Anyone who doubts ALL the data showing warming must be assuming cooling, based on NO DATA at all.
That is science denying Stage IV.
What a total prick you are
I regret that I have but one up-vote to give to your comment!
You can call me all the names you want to.
I dont care.
But I will never be so stupid as to claim there has been no global warming since 1975 or that CO2 emissions were not ONE of the causes.
In addition, it could be unchanged, and whatever change being observed is of little significance compared to natural variability on the scale of one’s purview.
Regardless of one’s beliefs, it’s actions that matter that impact oneself and others. Constructing windmills is a modern way to sacrifice virgins to appease a volcano deity. It really doesn’t matter whether the former belief is true or not to those being sacrificed.
The high stand of the oceans was 5-6000 years ago. Since then, the sea level is down six feet. Must be warming a lot to turn six feet of water into ice.
According to scientific evidence, sea level was likely higher than today at some points within the past 6,000 years, particularly around the mid-Holocene period (between 6,000 and 5,000 years ago), where glacial melting had largely ceased but the Earth’s crust was still adjusting, causing sea levels to be higher in certain regions than they are now; however, on a global average, sea levels have been relatively stable over the last few thousand years with only minor fluctuations
Just as a matter of logic, there are other options:
1) The world is warming.
2) The world is cooling.
3) The world is staying the same temperature.
4) The world is oscillating around a mean point with constant frequency.
5) The world is oscillating around a mean point with an increasing frequency.
6) The world is oscillating around a mean point with a decreasing frequency.
7) The world is oscillating around a rising point with constant frequency.
8) The world is oscillating around a rising point with an increasing frequency.
9) The world is oscillating around a rising point with a decreasing frequency.
10) The world is oscillating around a falling point with constant frequency.
11) The world is oscillating around a falling point with an increasing frequency.
12) The world is oscillating around a falling point with a decreasing frequency.
There are probably other options too. But those are just the obvious ones.
Are you sure the data can categorically rule out all but option 1?
There has been global warming since 1975. That is a fact that should not be doubted as one commenter here did: A great way to not be taken seriously during any conversation about global warming. Say it did
not happen, and then get laughed at.
We have no data that allows for a scientifically or statistically valid determination of Global Temperature.
To obtain such a thing the following are required:
A clear rigorous definition of what “average global temperature” means.Selection of an instrument with adequate accuracy, precision and repeatability and reproducibility to assure that all measurement sites are measuring the same thing in the same way.Random selection of a sufficient number of sampling locations to assure statistical significance and representativeness.Regular verification and recalibration of instruments.A sufficiently long record of measurements to allow for determination of random variability, identification of faulty data and outliers.
There are more requirements, but as none of these have been met in the data sets currently available it is not valid to make any claims that involve discussion of “global average temperature”. That is simply an undefined quantity that we have no adequate means to measure. The closest thing we do have is the satellite data for the troposphere from UAH which at least has a clear definition of what it measures and good global sampling. But satellites have a relatively short record and do not cover temperatures in the near surface level where we live.
Something else that is rarely mentioned outside of WUWT, is that any estimate of a nominal value of the ‘GMST’ should include a propagation of error calculation of the Confidence Interval (AKA Uncertainty) with a specified probability (typically +/-2 sigma). If done properly, it will be discovered that the uncertainty is so large as to have the nominal value to be of little practical value except possibly the sign of the annual trend.
The nominal annual temperature (arithmetic mean of daily mid-range values) is commonly reported to at least 2 and sometimes 3-significant figures to the right of the decimal point, based on a rationalization that the precision can be improved by taking a large number of readings and averaging the mid-range values of the diurnal extreme temperatures, which do not occur the same time every day. However, such manipulations to attempt to improve the precision are only justified if the measurements have the property of stationarity. That means that neither the mean or standard deviation vary with time and the data are approximately Gaussian in distribution; also, the same thing should be measured every time with the same instrument, which is impossible with moving air masses. It should be obvious that any time-series with a trend has a mean that changes with time, therefore it violates the stationarity requirement!
The statistics Empirical Rule says that the standard deviation for a Normal distribution can be approximated by dividing the range of a large data set by 4 (or to be more conservative, by 6). When one applies the Empirical Rule, the estimate of the standard deviation for the annual ‘average’ is several ten’s of degrees, not hundredth’s of a degree, as is commonly reported by those who call themselves experts. There is obviously a problem with the reported precision of annual and even monthly ‘averages.’ One of the problems is that even the global surface temperature distribution (let alone a single hemisphere) is skewed because of the uneven distribution of land and ocean; there is a long tail on the cold side! Succinctly, the other problems are that the variations are not random because the same instrument (thermometer) is not used for every measurement, the siting conditions (Stevenson Screen and surrounds) are not the same, and the same air mass is not measured with STP conditions. Every gust of wind moves a parcel of air over ground (or water) with different temperatures and elevations, thus changing the temperature and pressure of the air mass.
The best that one can legitimately do is to report the statistics on the raw data of recorded temperatures, without invalid corrections for the number of measurements, and say that the arithmetic mean and standard deviation of the mid-range values for poorly-spaced samples, from a collection of thermometers of unknown calibration status, located in weather stations existing during the year (of varying but unknown siting quality), is xx0 +/-x0 deg C. Anything else is simply putting one’s thumb on the scale.
Working with so-called anomalies does not correct for most of the above stated problems.
As a post script, the temperature of the globe without the humidity (or derived Heat Index) is less informative than the Heat Index. However, humidity measurements do not go back as far as temperature measurements.
There’s only 2 choices, warming or cooling? Or perhaps there’s some word that describes neither warming or cooling.
Besides, you wrongly assume that if the planet is warming, then the cause is from human greenhouse gas emissions. I’d like to see your evidence for that.
Great evidence has been collected for 128 years but you could not care less about it.
Stasis
The global media, at the behest of the climate activists, are still trying to find, and lying about, climate refugees.
The truth is rising sea level is a minor side issue for Gardi Sugdub. These people have always lived with their toes in the water. But the island is now massively overpopulated, and has GROWN in size because of haphazard land reclamation using, amongst other rubbish, the smashed up coral reef that used to protect and replenish the island!
It’s a long read, but compare and contrast.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz0lg9pedz1o.amp
https://sumauma.com/en/a-historia-de-uma-ilha-ameacada-pelo-mar-do-caribe/
Sea level rise is a non-issue
Most of Antarctica, with about 90% of land ice, has a permanent temperature inversion. That causes a NEGATIVE greenhouse effect and the surface temperature gets colder.
There are two ice shelves and a small peninsula that have some warming, but the claimed melting there (150 gigatons a year) is much smaller than the likely the margin of error in the total Antarctica ice mass estimate of 24.4 million gigatons.
The ice shelf melting and peninsula melting is from ocean heat / underseas volcanoes.
Incredibly stupid, or gaslighting the nation? Flywheel Miliband is trolling the nation today in the pages of the national 6th form student protest publication, aka The Grauniad. But first a word from their economics guru, Will Hutton:
“Promoting green growth does not make you an ‘eco-nutter’. It’s the only way forward”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/09/promoting-green-growth-does-not-make-you-an-eco-nutter-its-the-only-way-forward
Ergo…
“Labour’s clean energy plan will not only cut emissions but lift hundreds of thousands out of fuel poverty”
Ed Miliband
The party’s agenda is about energy security, lower bills, economic growth and good jobs”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/08/labours-clean-energy-plan-will-not-only-cut-emissions-but-lift-hundreds-of-thousands-out-of-fuel-poverty
If that were true they’d be ditching net zero yesterday. Gas remains cheapest of the lot, aside maybe from coal; but that isn’t an option right now as they dynamited the last coal station. Great green PR.
Miliband claims:
“The net zero economy is the economic growth opportunity of the 21st century. That is why the chancellor has shown such leadership in driving forward with clean energy industries, establishing a national wealth fund to invest in cable factories and clean steel, supporting publicly owned Great British Energy and backing investment in carbon capture jobs in the north-west and Teesside.”
Rachel from accounts has tanked the economy:
Rachel Reeves’ “Bank Economist” Myth Busted
Rachel Reeves’ “British Chess Champion” Myth Busted (she came 26th)
Bank of England Halves 2025 Growth Forecast
Etc – Guido Fawkes
I can only conclude that Flywheel’s concern for his fellow (working class) people comes from his natural malice, bigotry and contempt. Which he got from his father.
Building expensive stuff is not economic growth. It is a drain on growth.
Building infrastructure has always been counted as economic growth. If people buy more beer this year than they did last year, that adds to economic growth too. That does not change if you don’t like what the money/labor hours wes spent on.
I remember when my state had to build a stadium for the Vikings. The state said “but we will have economic growth.”
I kept saying “build 3!” 😉
A screwed up way to MAGA
Read up on the private economy. Every dollar spent by government is taken from someone’s pocket.
Most federal government spending is transfer payments. About two thirds. The big transfer programs are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Of the $7 trillion of annual government spending, almost $2 trillion was borrowed money. About 23% of total US debt is held by people and institutions in other nations. That money was voluntarily invested by people and institutions for an annual interest payment in return. It was NOT taken out of their pockets.
More than half of the $841 billion annual Department of Defense budget is now spent on private sector military contractors
$5 trillion of the $7 trillion was tax revenues “taken out of people’s and business’s pockets”.
Musk found at least $100 billion of Treasure payments with no SSN and no ID
.
Those likely were payments to NGOs, the gift bags, free clothes, and free credit cards, free transportation, free rent, free food, free healthcare, etc., to millions of illegals
.
With freebies like that, no wonder the desperados came by the millions from all over.
A good deal of that money is being pocketed by local US politicians in Chicago, etc., who do not want to send the illegals back, because that would stop their gravy train.
Always follow the money.
Musk claimed $100 billion of Medicare and Medicaid spending was fraud. He did not specify any details so his claim could be total BS
Total Federal Medicare and MEDICAID SPENDING WILL TOTAL ABOUT $1.9 TRILLION A YEAR.
THAT MEANS $100 BILLION WOULD BE 5.5% FRAUD. LESS THA MANY PEOPLE EXPECTED, IF TRUE
YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS INCLUDED IN THE $100 BILLIO CLAIMED BY MUSK BECAUSE HE HAS NOT EXPLAINED HIS CLAIM IN DETAIL
Post says:”That money was voluntarily invested by people and institutions for an annual interest payment in return. It was NOT taken out of their pockets.”
From your answer you don’t seem to know where the government gets the money to pay the “interest payment” you mention. The interest payment is either taken from my pocket via taxes or my children’s or grandchildren’s pocket depending on the length of the bond.
The government has no money except that which it takes via taxes from us. Or prints out of thin air.
Government do not print money
The Fed controls the money supply.
Governments tax or borrow money.
If they spend $1 and borrow $1, they will pay perhaps 4% interest to the government bond holder each year BEFORE federal taxes on the interest. I own about $78,000 of short term Treasury debt. I took that money out of my pocket by myself for risk free interest, as stocks are now at all time record valuations, ad i am too old for risks like that.
The money our government borrowed from foreigners is not out of America’s pockets.
If you are a US working man the government is taking money out of your pocket and sending me $50,000 Social Security a year. Thanks for working.
More beer, more belly growth, bigger pants, longer belts.
What a way to increase GDP!.
.
A screwed up way to MAGA
.
European Owners of US offshore windmills can claim:
1) An energy communities tax credit worth 10 percent
2) A base tax credit of 30 percent
3) State tax credit incentives of up to 10%
YOUR tax dollars are building these projects so YOU will have much higher electric bills.
.
A screwed up way to MAGA
Remove YOUR tax dollars and none of these projects would be built, and YOUR electric bills would be lower.
.
A great way to MAGA
High Costs/kWh of Wind and Solar Foisted onto a Brainwashed Public
.
The three main US subsidies are:
Federal and state tax credits, up to 50%, and cash grants,
5-y Accelerated Depreciation write off of the entire project
Deduction of interest of borrowed money
.
The effect of the three items is to reduce the owning and operating cost of a project by 50%, which means electricity can be sold at 50% less than it costs to produce.
Utilities pay 15 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from fixedoffshore wind systems
Utilities pay 18 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from floating offshore wind
Utilities pay 12 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from larger solar systems
A screwed up way to MAGA
I don’t want any tax credits, subsidies or mandates for alternative energy They are a waste of money.
But I also do not want a president ignoring Congress and the courts like a dictator.
Impounding funds approved by Congress and cancelling agencies formed by Congress and funded by Congress.
Trump is acting like a dictator, completely ignoring Congress.
He is, by far, the worst President in US history because of the WAY he is doing things.
A power grab never before tried by any President.
We have lost our Constitutionally limited Republic and the Constitution is now just an old piece of paper
Yet Republicans cheer for Trump like trained seals. A dictator is cool, they “think”, if he does what we want done, Congress can pass a budget and go home for a year. Dictator Trump will spend the money whatever way HE wants to.
Congress is supposed to be in charge of taxes. Tariffs are taxes. Trump just slaps tariffs on whatever nations he feels like that day and says Fa-Q to Congress.
WE HAVE A DICTATOR NAMED TRUMP
AND THAT IS MUCH WORSE THAN THE ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SUBSIDIES, TAX CREDITS AND MADATES EVER WERE
I bought a case of beer.
Did NOT open the cans
Applied to Biden admin. for a DOE CO2 Capture loan. They turned me down. because I forgot the 10% for The Big Guy.
Does Rachel Reeves cut her own hair?
As I noted on Friday, it will lift them out of fuel poverty and deposit them on the street.
(And since when is a daydream a plan?)
UK needs new coal fired power plants with advanced technology. So does Oz.
Great graphic on the global coal plant building boom:
?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Good one!
It would be even better if the UK were included.
There are nutters everwhere, but the Commonwealth has way more than its fair share. Why is that?
According to Statistica,
There are a total of 3,092 operating coal-fired power plant units in China.
They burn about 4 BILLION metric ton of coal each year
That creates a lot of wonderful CO2 to grow tea in China and other flora and fauna.
We Are in a CO2 Famine
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/we-are-in-a-co2-famine
As of January 2023, the province of Shandong, which lies to the south of Beijing, houses the highest number of coal power plants, at over 400 units.
Beijing itself, meanwhile, does not have a single operational coal power plant within its municipality.
Trouble is, “coal plant” can cover anything from a small factory based plant (still lots of little ones in operation) to the big grid scale plants.
Either way, the numbers on the chart look like they are “bogus”, to say the least.
If they are counting the individual thermal units, they may be somewhere near correct, but then Australia would have far more than 18… certainly not 6.
The chart needs to be filed in the circular drawer!
You should send this to Sky News Australia.
They’re on the case of the absurdity of the Labor government’s plans there for 100% renewable.
And there’s a federal election coming in May.
Please so send it. It is not mine and I do not know the source.
Don’t send it to anyone!
The numbers are total BS
Elaborate. If you know the numbers are false, you must know what the true numbers are.
Keep reading the thread.
The chart numbers were worse than numbers pulled out of a hat. They were pulled out of a place two feet below the back of a hat. Least accurate chart I have ever seen at WUWT. I took the time to provide the latest data. For which I will get the usual down votes.
The sad fact is commenter Wojick is a professional energy writer, and yet he was fooled. He also believes all global warming is caused by El Ninos, which is another subject.
I have to agree with RG..
Australia actually has 18 operational coal fired power stations., so the 6 number against Australia is certainly bogus.
Globally, over 1.6 million MW of new coal-fired electricity generation have come online between 2000 and 2024 according to the data in the spreadsheet below….
New Coal-fired Power Capacity by Country (MW) – Google Sheets.
Includes over 25,800 MW of new generation in the U.S. between 2000 and 2015. Nothing since then. Much of the new generation in the past 25 years was built in Asia, especially China and India.
I imagine that all of this new construction is going to continue in both developed and developing nations in the years ahead. Ed Milibrand needs to be fitted for a clown suit.
These coal power plant numbers are grossly inaccurate BS. All of them should be ignored. Wojick has presented what may be the least accurate chart ever posted at WUWT. Obviously, he did not verify any of the numbers.
Examples:
INDIA
As of January 2025, India has 93 coal power units under construction or on hold. This includes 40 units that are likely to be commissioned and 53 units that are on hold.
The chart claims 446
Grossly inaccurate
JAPAN
As of April 2024, there were 166 coal-fired power plants operating in Japan.
The chart says 90
SOUTH AFRICA
According to available information, as of 2025, South Africa is expected to have around 15 coal power plants still operating,
The chart says 79
PHILIPPINES
According to the most recent data available, as of December 2023, there are approximately 60 coal-fired power plants operating in the Philippines,
The chart says 19
EU
According to available data, as of 2023, there are approximately 256 coal-fired power plants operating across the European Union.
The chart says 468
CHINA
Following a period of rapid coal power plant approvals, China has significantly decreased the number of new coal power projects being permitted in 2024, with some reports stating that only a few dozen new coal plants are being approved. According to available data, China is expected to have around 1,100 operational coal power plants in 2025, with a potential decrease as the country aims to retire some coal capacity by that time;
The chart says 2,363
And the sources of your figures are? Why not simply provide a link like this for example
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1268457/coal-power-plants-in-china-by-province/
My cut and paste missed the important sentence for India:
As of September 2024, India had 285 coal power plants.
The chart said 446
In some cases, a number of smaller plants are closed and replaced by a much bigger modern plant. Plus there are expansions. all complicating making an accurate count. In any case, while numbers increase more slowly or even decline, coal consumption rises.
There comes a time when the benefit of the doubt should run out.
I was deceived for a while into believing that Richard Greene was just an ill-tempered self-aggrandizing petty douchebag loser and that was what was causing him to be a terrible spokesman for conservative politics and climate realism.
I was willing to believe that despite his annoying asshattery, he just wanted to convince fellow skeptics to avoid unsupported claims because of the discrediting effect on skepticism in general when easily debunked claims are shot down by climate alarmists.
I was wrong. He is nothing more than a troll. He is cultivating a persona that everyone despises so that he can discredit reasonable climate skepticism. He is doing all he can to fire up those who make crazy unscientific claims and drive them to greater extremism in opposition to his despicable ridicule.
The best way to deal with a troll is to shun him. Never reply to him. Always down-vote him. Post your own comment or reply to a non-troll’s comment. Never give him any oxygen.
“Greene was just an ill-tempered self-aggrandizing petty douchebag loser”
I’m adding that complement to my resume
You are an expert at throwing down childish insults, but have you even tried to refute any science claims, or any data, in any of my comments? Not even a weak attempt to refute just one sentence in ANY of my comments. Just leftist style character attacks. Print your comment. Have it framed and send it to your mother. She would be proud of you!
What about Australia? You left that one out.
Australia has 18 operational coal-fired power stations. (not 6)
In the Eastern grid…. Eraring (2880MW), Callide B (700), and Yallourn (1480) are slated for closer by 2028..
But there is nothing reliable to replace them. !
I got my data from Google AI which I have found to be accurate. Sometimes the numbers are from 2024 or 2023 rather than January 2025
India
Google AI coal plants planned
40
(53 on hold)
Chart coal plants planned
446 !
Google AI coal plants in operation
285
Chart coal plants in operation
589 !
Australia had no Google AI data. An official Australia government website said 24 coal plants but did not specify a year, so I did not include the 24 in my original comment. The BS chart said 6.
24 was from this link:
Chapter 2 – Parliament of Australia
Table on that page is probably from about 2017.
Several have closed since then, there are now 18
(table also counts Gladstone, Qld and Bluestone, WA, as two parts each)
Australia is also, however, considering 46 coal mining for export projects (62% of all such projects worldwide) including 16 new, 28 expansion and 2 reopening. Somebody has to supply coal to the new coal plants!
IEA ‘Coal 2024 Analysis and Forecast to 2027’ (Dec. 2024)
The USA is missing from the graphic.
Recently Willis had an article where he demonstrated the greenhouse effect had remained constant over the full 25 years of NASA CERES satellite data collection. How is this possible?
1) As CO2 increases scientists have measured an increase in downwelling IR at the surface. Why doesn’t this warm the surface?
2) As CO2 increases we should see increased absorption of upwelling IR high in the atmosphere. Climate science claims this will raise the effective radiation altitude which would be cooler thus forcing the surface to warm. Why isn’t this happening?
3) As CO2 increases the main absorption band should widen allowing more energy to be absorbed at its edges. This effect shows up in radiation models and has been detected by satellites. Why doesn’t it cause warming.
Many folks will claim these are happening and warming must happen, therefore the lack of increased greenhouse warming must be due to an unknown feedback which is countering these warming effects. They are wrong. There are direct physical processes in play which prevent any warming from occurring.
The data from the NASA CERES satellites has validated these processes are real. In addition, we have NOAA radiosonde data described in Miskolczi 2010, 2023 which produces the same result. In total, we have 77 years of scientific data which confirms no change in the strength of the greenhouse effect.
Skeptics need to push the new Trump administration to stop accepting climate science claims that CO2 increases cause warming. Only then can the climate debate be won.
In fact we need a research program into why it is not happening. The $2.6 billion a year US Global Change Research Program should be redirected to this issue.
Yes, I believe there are experiments that could verify the physics involved. There are also a lot of data like Willis used that could validate this science. All it would take is people digging deeper into the physics.
There is no need for experiments or a research program to explain the physics. All of the fundamental principles are well established.
One must first understand the meaning (not necessarily the mathematics) in “The Quantum Theory of Radiation” published by Einstein in 1917.
One must also understand a principle stated by Heinz Hug several years ago, that there is “no law of conservation of radiation energy.”
It is unfortunate that the true nature of energy transport from the surface to space is being suppressed. It is not so difficult to understand, but impossible to model mathematically because of the complexity of a strongly convecting troposphere, and atmospheric dynamics in general.
“stop accepting climate science claims that CO2 increases cause warming”
That is an ignorant claim refuted by 128 years of evidence.
Willis cherry picked a few satellites for his data out of over 320 climate and weather satellites. He came to conclusions the opposite of NASA, who own the satellites, and Dr. Loeb, who owns the CERES data.
That simply means WE was wrong … and 99.9% of scientists since 1896 have been right about CO2 and the greenhouse effect. The alterative that WE was right and 99.9% of scientists since 1896 have been wrong has a probability of ZERO. Don’t make any science writer into a hero in your eyes, who is always right.
.
So, you accept “evidence” that supports your long held opinion while rejecting the “evidence” which refutes it. Maybe you should try opening your mind. Maybe there’s an answer which explains all the evidence.
Keep in mind a constant greenhouse effect is not the same as saying the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist. Most of the evidence you mentioned is simply evidence it does exist. WE also found it does exist.
The physics that supports a maximum strength of the greenhouse effect for saturated, well mixed radiative gases is sound.
Now it’s 99.9% as if that would matter.
Please don’t feed the troll.
So, you accept “
evidence” theory that supports your long held opinion while rejecting the measured data“evidence”which refutes it.[enough with this stupid strawman~ctm]
[I explained once before how this line of unanswerable questioning is not appropriate. If you can’t remember, that’s on you. For a reminder–fossils~ctm]
[they’re stupid questions designed to be non-answerable. stop it. again fossils ~ctm]
Thanks for agreeing with me. even if you don’t want others to see.
No measurable CO2 warming over your life time. 🙂
Your inability to understand is not the dunk you think it is.
I understand completely, that there is no measurable warming by CO2.
Sorry if asking for empirical evidence is so annoying to some people. 😉
What is the empirical evidence, not theory, that fossils represent the morphology of ancient living creatures?
The model which manifests the greenhouse effect is a model of a flat Earth subjected to constant solar irradiance in radiative equilibrium with no convection. In this “equilibrium” the temperature profile from the surface to space does not change. In such a model, a change in the concentration of IR active gases in the atmosphere will result in a change in the equilibrium temperature profile. There will also be no atmospheric circulation.
I choose not to live on that model Earth. I prefer the real version.
How about this model
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2025/01/26/uli-webers-hemispheric-stefan-boltzmann-model/
I was peripherally involved in discussions of that model with Andy. If that was of interest to
you, you might want to read this one.
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2025/02/01/energy-and-matter/?amp=1
Nearly ninety minutes long, so those with the attention span of a goldfish won’t watch. Here’s the conclusions for the afflicted (RG):
This appears to be an improvement over previous claims attributed to Nikolov. I saw no mention of adiabatic compression as a cause of warming.
He also is on the right track that the loss of energy by the atmosphere is associated with non-radiative factors. However, you still need energy radiated through the atmosphere. He also clearly pointed out water vapor is a factor.
As a result, he ends up explaining away the cooling of the atmosphere with nothing but hand waving. It really is caused by radiative gases. It just turns out to be independent of the concentration of well mixed, radiative gases. This is why only water vapor is important. He just doesn’t quite understand all the physics.
I also love his work on the CERES data. All of the warming is explained by solar energy.
If you really want to make preposterous statements expect to be ridiculed.
His goal is to poison you to reasonable skepticism and get you radicalized with wild ideas that are easy to debunk.
Some of the things he says are correct but the tell is that he always attacks and ridicules so that you’ll want to believe anything but what he says.
He focuses in on irrelevant factual errors and ignores the big picture. There is no climate emergency. Western countries are committing economic suicide while China and others are eating our lunch.
Ignore the troll.
A more honest claim would be –
NASA, US taxpayers, who own the satellites99.9% of scientists
Back with that again. You never did provide an actual source. “What I’ve read” isn’t a source.
RG’s sources seem to be “because i said so”
A picture of CO2 working hard to warm the earth.
The van Wijngaarden & Happer paper shows that the troposphere is effectively opaque to IR in the CO2 resonance bands, so adding CO2 will not significantly affect the transport of IR though the troposphere. The increase in CO2 will affect transport of IR above the stratosphere. Increases in downwelling IR is likely due to increases in air temperature.
What Willis pointed out, and he was not the first to do so, was that most of the warming in the last 50 years was due to a decrease in cloud cover. Whether the decrease in cloud cover is related to increase in CO2, decrease in SO2 or something is still an open question.
My comment about Willis is not intended as a criticism, as far as I know he was doing an independent analysis. Good science is defined people doing independent work coming up with the same results.
Not only is the troposphere opaque in the CO2 spectral bands, all the energy is absorbed very low in the atmosphere (10 meters). This is important to understanding why downwelling IR cannot warm the surface and how CO2 driven increases in evaporation directly reduce high altitude water vapor.
The decline of cloud coverage does NOT measure the amount of solar energy blocked by clouds. It is an inaccurate proxy for unavailable data.
The claim of a 7% decline of global average cloud cover in the past 20 years is BELOW the likely margin of error of +/- 10% or MORE.
Therefore the data are statistically insignificant.
I addition, most of the warming after 1975 is at TMIN which is at dawn to 30 minutes after dawn. That is NOT caused by more absorbed solar radiation.
ASR from fewer clouds and less SO2 pollution may be blamed for the smaller TMAX increase in afternoons since 1975.
WE was wrong by ignoring all the evidence of greenhouse warming. Such as the TMIN warming since 1975 and cooling of the stratosphere. Both symptoms of greenhouse warming. NOT solar warming.
“Such as the TMIN warming since 1975″
Classic URBAN warming..
It is possible because the GHE does not exist.
This all depends on the definition people give the GHE.
In my view the absorption and emission of IR by CO2 is real and does exist low in the atmosphere. I believe your view is driven by an incorrect application of a long delay time after CO2 molecules are excited by a collision. If you use a near instantaneous delay, all the emissions of IR exist and Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation holds.
As a result, my view supports a real greenhouse effect that reaches a maximum value as saturation occurs.
There are various perspectives on this issue that should be discussed openly. I’m hoping that an article recently submitted by Andy May and me will be published here soon. It is intended to stimulate the discussion around some of these ideas. I am concerned Anthony might be getting a lot of pushback because it does challenge the mainstream narrative. It was submitted many days ago.
That was a great video you did on the Tom Nelson podcast. 🙂
Thank you.
Hope you have seen the Paul Linsay podcast he did with Tom.
He comments about your presentation 🙂
also says ECS = zero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQt_I-RvGF4&t=3417s
(Paul had a bad cold at the time)
Yes. Paul and I have been in communication on some topics.
Another great Tom Nelson podcast, by Max Derakhshani
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo8lyL6lYQU
Conclusion on image below
I watched your youtube video. The entire argument rests on the inability of CO2 to emit photons low in the atmosphere. Of course, if this was true, we wouldn’t be able to measure IR at the surface. But we can, multiple examples exist. Sorry.
whatever. The most difficult thing to open is a closed mind. FWIW, that video is old and I would revise much of it with what I have learned in the meantime.
I will try to explain. It is not that CO2 does not emit radiation in the troposphere. It is constantly emitting, but the radiation it emits is constantly being absorbed.
The surface radiation is absorbed and thermalized into sensible heat in the first 10m or so of the atmosphere. I believe that is generally accepted as true. The surface radiation field is gone. This excludes the radiation in the atmospheric window, of course.
Throughout the atmosphere, the IR-active gases are continuously excited and de-excited via collisions with other molecules. This is not controversial. Some of these collisions result in spontaneous emission of radiation. This is explained in Einstein’s “The Quantum Theory of Radiation” published in 1917.
This radiation field is locally in equilibrium with the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of molecular kinetic energy, creating a radiation field that has the characteristic of a Planck distribution. The Planck distribution and the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution are intimately related by the common factor exp(hν/kT), as explained by Einstein.
The self-generated radiation field and the molecules are constantly exchanging energy, but they do not transport energy until radiation can escape to space.
This self-generated radiation field emits radiation in all directions. In the troposphere, including at the surface, you can point a spectrometer in any direction into the atmosphere and detect the component of this random field that is directed on the axis of the spectrometer. This is the source of the so-called “back radiation”. You can point it in any other direction and see the component in that direction as well. The radiation field is ubiquitous and has components in all directions.
This self-generated field creates a “pool” of radiation in the troposphere at the GHG frequencies.
As altitude changes, the relative rates of collisional excitation, de-excitation, absorption, and spontaneous emission change. The rate of spontaneous emission is relatively constant, but the rates of collisional excitation and de-excitation decrease with altitude. As water vapor condenses, the rate of absorption decreases rapidly as well.
At a sufficiently high altitude, the rate of spontaneous emission will exceed the rates of de-excitation and absorption, and the radiation from water vapor will escape to space. This begins at about 2 km and continues to about 6 km as shown by Harde (2013).
https://share.icloud.com/photos/097hbRbMLZ5-B9nrzxPkHrBvA
(I tried to post a photo of a spectrum here. I will edit it in as soon as I figure out how to do it. for now, there is a link)
While all of that was happening, the release of latent heat from condensing water vapor in the troposphere also adds sensible heat to the gas pool. This heat is what reduces the adiabatic lapse rate from the dry rate of ~9.8 K/km to the observed rate of ~6.5 K/km. It also drives additional collisions.
There is an overlap from 14-16 μm between the water vapor and CO2 bands. CO2 is a non-condensing gas, and it absorbs some of the water vapor emissions which creates the “notch” or “divot” on the spectrum. The CO2 is immediately thermalized before it can spontaneously emit, returning the energy absorbed from water vapor emissions as sensible heat to the atmosphere. It is only at about 83 km that the thermalization of CO2 is sufficiently reduced that CO2 can emit to space. That is the tiny peak at the bottom of the absorption “divot”. There is very little energy left at that altitude, and the CO2 emission is negligible.
There is no radiative transfer, radiative forcing, or greenhouse effect needed to explain this.
Water vapor is responsible for almost all of the radiation emitted to space. That is why there is the tropopause.
There is also no need for a human imposed “radiative equilibrium” in any individual atmospheric column. Convective energy carries heat to other parts of the planet where it can be released elsewhere. The Earth is remarkably good at maintaining itself.
“Recently Willis had an article where he demonstrated the greenhouse effect had remained constant over the full 25 years of NASA CERES satellite data collection. How is this possible?”
With NASA anything is possible…… or so it would appear!
Just take a look at the CERES data that Willis says he used for his demonstration.
Who else but NASA could measure Earth’s upwelling longwave surface radiance to 15 significant figures and 12 decimal places?!!! [Note: the 12th decimal place represents trillionths of a Watt per square metre.]
Come to think of it, who else could even measure Earth’s upwelling longwave surface radiance at all, given that there is a longwave-absorbing atmosphere between the surface and the CERES satellites supposedly doing the measuring? And NASA holds all the cards where its data are concerned so if its ‘measurements’ are wrong, how would we even know it?
No, I’m afraid the CERES-data are products of calculation, not measurement. And any calculations can be no better than the assumptions on which they are based. But in the case of the CERES-data in Willis’s analysis, those assumptions are hidden from sight, as are the calculations based upon them. How can anyone place any trust in them at all?
NASA – “Never A Safe Answer”.
Here are some links I’ve been saving.
Starting with, is my math correct regarding the inferred sea level rise is 1.5mm/yr. Cool finding about finger print and other archeological findings:
https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2025/01/analysis-of-fingerprints-on-figurines-recovered-in-heracleion-reveals-women-and-children-also-made-them/
Although I’m not a big fan around hydrogen, given the problems of delivery infrastructure, and costs, hydrogen fuel cell is pretty cool:
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/hydrogen-powered-rescue-truck-just-smashed-world-record-only-spits-out-water
I use a hydrogen torch for quartz blowing quite a bit and the valve on my cheap Chinese torch doesn’t always completely shut off flow. I burned a hole in my sleeve the other day. Hydrogen flames are hot and nearly invisible.
You know what water vapor is, don’t you? It’s a potent greenhouse gas.
Get some electricity in some manner, hopefully “green.” Then the H2 comes from H2O and then the H2O comes from the combustion of the H2. Repeat.
It all seems quite dumb to me.
One of the biggest problems with a hydrogen economy, which rarely gets mentioned, is that the CO2 that would be emitted by a hydrocarbon is replaced entirely by water, which besides being a more powerful ‘greenhouse gas’ than CO2, will end up increasing the Heat index in the Summer and contribute to rime ice in the Winter, among other things.
With the above said, even Clean Technica is publishing hydrogen failures:
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/12/23/another-day-another-hydrogen-transportation-failure-first-mode-edition/amp/
How does Wyoming deal with old wind turbine blades?
How about cheap filler for coal mines?
After all, out of sight out of mind!
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2025/01/13/feds-ok-wyoming-idea-to-use-old-wind-turbines-to-fill-in-coal-mines/
Wind turbine blades are some of THE most wasteful pieces of garbage ever created out of the fantasies of small minded men! Those coal mines might be useful some day; now they’ll be filled with useless crap making access difficult! Once again GangGreen proves themselves to be anti-environmental!
Speaking of Wyoming, Bill Gates just might get his Nuclear power plant there:
https://wyofile.com/natrium-advanced-nuclear-power-plant-wins-wyoming-permit/
Speaking of Bill Gates, I bet he’s jealous of Bill Belichick.
I wonder what made Jordan fall in love with multi-millionaire Bill?
LOL.
Love might be blind but the smell of money is strong.
What good is money if it doesn’t buy you things you enjoy?
Wind power has just so many ways to collapse, let’s see if all them can be found:
https://amp.abc.net.au/article/104903430
According to data from tide gauges, the average global relative sea level rise over the past 100 years is estimated to be around 1.7-1.8 millimeters per year, based on measurements from tide stations worldwide.
The total includes land subsidence, for which data are not reliable for a global average.
See, that’s discrimination right there.
Because NO “data” are reliable for “global averages” in climate constructs.
This ^
Just in: Indonesia to leave the Paris treaty.
Link to news in German.
https://blackout-news.de/aktuelles/indonesien-steigt-aus-pariser-klimaabkommen-aus/
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250206-indonesia-backs-climate-deals-after-envoy-s-paris-skepticism
Interestingly the IEA say Indonesia became the first country in the world to export more than 500Mt a year of coal in 2024 while it and Australia are the world’s leading exporters.
However Indonesia’s new coal mining for export projects number 6 whilst Australia dwarfs that with 46.
Seems to me the envoy is the realist.
Net Zero by 2030 is so obviously impossible that it should be apparent to everyone that it is a total scam.
NetZero based on windmills and solar panels is equally impossible in 2230.
There’s only one practical way to reach Net Zero on any timeline, and that’s a global crash program to build nuclear power plants à la France in the 1970s.
If France was able to reach 70% after about 15 years using 60-year old technology, then we might guess that the world could duplicate that on a larger scale and reach 100% carbon-free electricity in about 21 years.
Optimistically assuming that it would only take about 4 years to change the regulatory constraints and develop the skilled labor to START such a transition, then maybe carbon-free electricity could be a reality in 2050.
But that covers, what, 30% of total energy use? So that’s still not NetZero. If we allow that the biosphere currently gobbles up half of our emissions, a case could be made that NetZero only requires another 20% of total energy use to stabilize the CO2 concentration. Let’s call that another 70% of current electricity production (.2/.3) to electrify enough transportation and industry to achieve stable CO2 concentration. Ok so another 15 years based on the French experience. So, 2065 nuclear NetZero, if all goes well.
I reckon that this is technically feasible and for that matter, probably not outrageously expensive (at least in comparison to the worthless expenditures of the past three decades wasted on windmills and solar panels).
If the true goal is to stabilize CO2 concentration and nuclear power could do that while maintaining near 100% grid reliability, you would think that rational policy-makers who didn’t have a hidden agenda would choose that path. Yet they are adamantly opposed to that approach.
The reason is that destroying Western civilization is the actual goal and a nuclear NetZero would not achieve the goal.
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2025/02/09/it-sure-seems-like-the-press-is-now-threatning-elon-musks-family-over-doge-n2185382
Trump needs to publicly denounce “The Hill”. They are deliberately putting Musk’s family in danger.
If “The Hill” is allowed to attend Trump press conferences, Trump should kick them out now.
Not new news, just more confirmation, Drax woodchip sourcing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxnpzzjed1o
So tired of Winning Bigly!
We can tell how much Trump and his supporters are winning by how loudly the Democrats are screaming.
The Democrats are screaming very loudly now. They are trying to mount another impeachment effort! Three weeks in! They’ve lost their minds.
I think that Trump is a very brave man. The evidence coming out of corruption is even worse than I had imagined. We’re dealing with people who have no moral principles. And so many criminals stand to be exposed.
I hate to say it but the probability of a Deep State coup seems very high. The Uniparty isn’t going to go down without a fight.
“The Uniparty isn’t going to go down without a fight.”
I agree, they won’t go down without a fight. But they are fighting against the wrong guy. Trump defeated their previous efforts, and I think a majority of Americans see what is going on, so the Deep State has a credibility problem now and I don’t think they are going to sway Trump’s supporters.
We’ve been here before and Trump won that one. I think he (and we) will win this one, too.
We just have to wade through a bunch of federal judges to get there. They won’t stop the progress, but they can slow it down.
How about a topic change? I’m surprised to see no comments about USAID.
This FORMER 😀 (So much winning!) agency for ‘international development’ is primarily NOT about helping poor countries with foreign aid. It is a giant slush fund for deep state malfeasance with a pretense of helping poor countries.
How much of the slush fund has been financing the Climate Emergency propaganda, I wonder?
A look at some batteries: first, ~80 batteries on the GB grid on near blackout day, 8th January: the data are from half hourly metering, and although there are separate figures for each battery underlying the chart there are no separate figures for drawing from the grid (mainly for charging, but also for cooling etc.) and supplying to it, which means that each battery is shown either to have net charged or discharged in each 30 minute period, whereas in reality some of them will have been fluctuating between charging and discharging as grid frequency changed for example: thus the throughput of the batteries and therefore also the losses are underestimated.
Nevertheless, it does show that broadly batteries are attempting two charge/discharge cycles per day when prices make that economic. It is also possible to infer that batteries are making money from ancillary services, since in every period there are batteries both charging and discharging, which you would not see if they were simply relying on energy arbitrage: they would all charge up when it is cheap, and all discharge into peak prices.
Here’s an update on the performance of the Hornsdale Power Reserve battery that I have been monitoring ever since it first started up. The physical performance is slightly degraded again, with most months now below 80% round trip efficiency.
The battery had a more profitable period in the late winter (July-September) when Dunkelflaute conditions afforded good margins for intra day trade. However, it is faced with increased competition from other batteries in the FCAS (Frequency control ancillary service) market that had previously dominated its income stream. Lower throughput volumes reflect reduced opportunities.
Richard Feynman on radiation. Six minutes of food for thought.
https://youtu.be/FjHJ7FmV0M4?si=TZ61faG_W3dxZHyo
About a month ago there was an article about the Antarctic sea ice, I commented:
““Massive Recovery in Antarctica”That certainly qualifies as “hysterical” for a headline using the author’s own language!
Reaching the recent average for about three weeks is hardly a “massive Recovery”.”
Since then the sea ice has declined at a faster rate than usual and within the next couple of weeks will probably reach about second lowest in the record, making the post even more ridiculous!
A nice question obout the new Drax CFD: will it pay out on the same basis as the old one? It has a totally different price basis from the wind CFDs, using baseload quotes for six months ahead for each season. That means that there is a fixed guaranteed subsidy whenever this is lower than the strike price – or equally, a tax when it is higher. When the subsidy is small, CFD funded operation is much more sensitive to day ahead prices. When the tax is large the plant simply shuts down unless there is a huge price spike so it can charge enough to cover the tax plus the cost of warming up. The current value of the CFD is £138.16/MWh, so the new one will be worth rather more at around £160/MWh. The current guaranteed CFD subsidy on top of day ahead market price is £52.18/MWh, which is a bit less than their ROC subsidy (around £72/MWh) on 75% of the plant is worth.
But with nuclear shutting down gradually, and plans to reduce gas generation and the supposed limitations on Drax output, the forward market for baseload generation is going to be very thin indeed – leaving prices to be pushed around. Scope for Drax to enhance their margins.
Here we can see how the Baseload Market Reference Price compares with the Intermittent Market Reference Price (Day ahead market). Because of the pricing lag, Drax was able to secure CFD subsidies even as the Day Ahead market surged in 2021, albeit they lost out to a statutory maintenance shutdown in the summer during which Lynemouth kept going. However, as subsidy turned to tax they were kept out of the market, especially with the day ahead market having already fallen back substantially.
A further question about the new arrangements is how will the cap on subsidised output and clawback fo excess profits really work? My bet would be that Drax have retained options to choose subsidised output when market prices are low, and have unsubsidised output when they are high.
The earnings of two hour batteries in GB. They’ve been boosted by batteries now providing the equivalent of spinning reserve power, for which a portion of their capacity must be charged up, but they don’t have to do anything else other than top that up, so leaving the charge/discharge capacity free to operate in other markets unless they get called on, which will be a rare event. Trading provides a good chunk of overall income, and the 2 hour duration allows them to sell into the evening peak to maximum effect, and also to try to optimise their charging. A second peak occurs for teh morning rush hour, so they are able to turn over this capacity twice a day. Access to the Balancing Mechanism is proving lucrative for some if they are well placed to help alleviate transmission constraints for instance.