Out of curiosity, I specified a simple climate “model” for Grok3, the AI agent on X, to pursue the main idea about uncertainty.
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Question to Grok:
Consider a simplified step-iterated Earth climate model which projects an annualized global average surface air temperature, abbreviated GASAT. The task is to compute a projected GASAT for each step for 100 steps. Each step is one year. The radiative climate forcing is 0 W/m^2 in the initial state at step 0. The GASAT is given as 15C at step 0. The assumed radiative forcing increases by 0.035 W/m^2 each year. The response of GASAT to radiative forcing is given to be exactly 0.5C/(W/m^2). Absorbed solar energy is given as a constant value in W/m^2 throughout the projection. The climate model operates at each step on the GASAT value from the previous step, to compute and apply an annualized outward thermal flux in W/m^2, emitted back to space, to then compute a new GASAT to pass to the next step. The epistemic uncertainty of this outward thermal flux is given to be +/- 4 W/m^2. Through the response function, this introduces a +/- 2C uncertainty in the new GASAT at each step. It is intended to apply the root-sum-square method to propagate the uncertainty through the projection. What is the projected GASAT in degrees C, and what is the uncertainty of the projected GASAT in +/- degrees C, at steps 10, 50, and 100?
Final answer from Grok, after analysis:
At step 10: Projected GASAT = 15.175°C ± 6.324°C
At step 50: Projected GASAT = 15.875°C ± 14.142°C
At step 100: Projected GASAT = 16.75°C ± 20°C
My followup:
Does the uncertainty at steps 10, 50, 100 imply a large fluctuation in model output, or does it instead simply define an interval in which the GASAT is expected to lie, but cannot be precisely determined with this model?
Answer from Grok:
The uncertainty defines a range within which the GASAT is expected to lie, reflecting the model’s imprecision rather than predicting large fluctuations. With this simplified model, the projected GASAT is a deterministic trend (15°C + 0.0175°C × step), and the uncertainty (±2*sqrt(n)°C) indicates how much trust [bolded dd] we can place in that projection as errors compound over time. The true temperature is likely somewhere within these bounds, but the model cannot pinpoint it more precisely due to the given epistemic uncertainty.
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Discussion:
Entirely apart from climate models, many hold that an expectation of “some” sensible heat gain down here from incremental CO2 is justified. This opinion arises from CO2’s IR absorption and emission characteristics and from consensus radiation transfer theory. On the other hand, there are good reasons from space-based sensing and from atmospheric dynamics to expect a “negligible” end result. I often post about this in comments here at WUWT.
But either way, the use of step-iterated, parameter-tuned climate models to run the IPCC “forcing” scenarios has been fundamentally unsound all along because of the implications of accumulating uncertainty. This ought not be a mystery. Even the Grok AI agent knows how to deal with it.
So how much trust can we place in the model outputs? None. It doesn’t matter that some models have followed the observations more closely than others. None of these step-iterated models have any diagnostic or prognostic authority at all concerning incremental CO2, CH4, N2O, etc.
P.S. Yes, I know that GASAT is an absurdly weak indicator of the energy state of the climate system.
P.P.S. Yes, I also know that this exercise is posed with the assumption that a deterministic warming MUST occur, making it circular. That is exactly what the complex models do, as the “warming” is baked in from the start! This is because the investigation uses a pre-stabilized model and is framed as a matter of “forcing” + “feedback” in respect to rising concentrations of CO2 and other non-condensing IR-active gases.
Indeed. I come back to this time after time especially when people state their views using equations, because i see all these attempts in what i call a reasonable position namely the inherent uncertainty in the interaction of the variables/ parameters who are in themselves problematic.
Even something as supposedly simple as: ‘x agrees w observations’ turns out anything but straightforward. I do like the lab hypothesis and theories derived from it. Other than that i entertain myself learning about the various ways scientists are dealing w atmospheric physics and climate. Some make more sense than others.
Modeling the models as in the linked publication is fun. It shows exactly what we are dealing with. A stack of uncertainties. We have to remember that people decide how wide the margins are in order to sell their product. Nobody is going to accept a model w too broad margins. That limits the models. Then we get an average as if that is some indication of reliability. Fun and games!
TAR Chapter 14 page 771 The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.
The same as a drunk walk chart?
The same as the double pendulum illustration?
That great double pendulum video Kip Hansen
put up years ago has been removed by YouTube.
Those are great points, Steve, but it’s not the same thing. Even if the system being modeled were simple and linear, the epistemic uncertainty of even just one component of the computation accumulates as the result is passed from one step to the next and so on.
Following that quotation from the TAR, the text continues,
“Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive and requires the application of new methods of model diagnosis, but such statistical information is essential.” That approach pretends that the uncertainty can be reduced by more runs of more models, as if it were a matter of a distribution of outcomes from random variation.
After looking up the definition of epistemic I am reminded of this quote:
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know. Donald Rumsfeld
Steve,
missed the one relevant to the climate debate out . ..
Finally there are unkown knowns
things they know but for the sake of embarrassment pretend they dont know
I would just add that for the models to say anything ‘meaningful’ about temperature, they first have to say something meaningful about energy accumulation. They don’t:
Specifically, let’s consider an energy accumulation model where energy accumulates due to a total increase in CO2 forcing, F. Further, let’s assume that this forcing occurs ratably at the beginning of each of N time steps over a total time, T, say 100 years. Assuming certainty, we can express the increase in accumulated energy (per square meter) at the end of any time step, n (1,2,…N) as:
n x (n+1) /2 x F/N x T/N
However, we also know from comparing observed data to the output of the GCMs that there is error, hence uncertainty, C, in the amount of cloud forcing, which by itself is a major factor in energy accumulation. The amount by which this uncertainty has accumulated at the end of any time step in our model can be expressed as:
n x C x T/N
Given this uncertainty in cloud forcing, it is clear that in order for us to have any confidence in our model’s ability to provide a meaningful measure of energy accumulation due to CO2 forcing, we must have:
n x (n+1) /2 x F/N x T/N >= n x C x T/N, or after consolidating terms,
F >= 2 x C x N / (n+1)
For the simplest case, where a single ‘pulse’ of CO2 takes place at the beginning of a single time step, we have n=N=1, and the required condition to obtain a meaningful result reduces to:
F >= C
However, in more ‘realistic’ cases, where CO2 is emitted over time and many time steps are needed to numerically ‘solve’ the complex fluid dynamics of climate, it is easy to verify that the hurdle to obtain a meaningful result quickly rises to:
F >= 2*C
So, given data from your comment, i.e., F = 0.035×100 = 3.5 W/m^2, and C = 4.0 W/m^2, can our model tell us anything meaningful about energy accumulation? The answer in both cases, above, is ‘no’. And if we can’t make meaningful predictions of energy accumulation from CO2 emissions using a simple model, there’s no way we can make meaningful predictions of temperature from the GCMs.
Many here at WUWT are familiar with Pat Frank’s “Propagation of Error…” paper from 2019. It is important to grasp the fundamental issue with the buildup of uncertainty in the step-iterated climate models.
To recap:
Each iteration inherits the uncertainty of the previous step, then increases the uncertainty via whatever calculations are done during the next step.
Pat’s paper dealt with only a single source of uncertainty, there are others that can only compound the situation.
Nearly all of the peer reviewers used the (hand-waved) argument that “the error can’t be this big.” This only demonstrated their abject lack of understanding of even the basics of measurement uncertainty, because error is not uncertainty—they are two entirely different quantities.
Error is defined as the distance from the true value of a measurement result, while uncertainty is an estimate of the interval over which the true value of a quantity is expected to lay.
Instead of equating it with “error”, uncertainty should instead be viewed as the limit to the state of knowledge about a measurement. Thus the successive iteration steps of a climate model are like progressively defocussing an optical microscope.
Lastly, averaging the outputs of a basketful of different climate models cannot improve the image in the microscope.
“Each iteration inherits the uncertainty of the previous step, then increases the uncertainty via whatever calculations are done during the next step.”
Old stat caution, “Stacking Hypotheses” or something like that. Must be a new world.
Logically, there can only be one best model in an ensemble. If it happens to be the median, then averaging all the models does not shift the mean, it only results in an increase in the standard deviation.
However, it is an unproven assumption that the ensembles will be normally distributed around the true value or even the best. They might all be so unskillful as to be unuseful. Assuming that one model might actually be close to the correct answer, and thereby be the best, averaging it with all the other models in the ensemble will dilute the impact of the best model. In that case, increasing the number of models used in averaging does not lead to greater accuracy or precision; it weights the unskillful models more, leading to a worse answer. The farther out on the tail of the probability distribution the best model is, the more severely the additional addends corrupt the average. ‘Democracy’ does not improve averaging.
I also note how important it was that Pat demonstrated the successful emulation of the climate model outputs using simplified computation from the prescribed “forcings.” (Credit also to Willis Eschenbach for his parallel work on this point.) That emulation is what enabled the propagation of error analysis to be done so efficiently, and to use an annual “step.” And it also showed me how the entire climate modeling enterprise has been able to brazenly mislead so many with the GHG “forcing” and “physics-based” narrative. It still seems hard even for technically trained researchers to grasp the circular reasoning at the core of the consensus “science.” Being a retiree helps, I guess, by removing the pressure to conform to the narrative.
strativarius
April 13, 2025 2:22 am
Steel yourself…
Ed Miliband’s Net Zero policies blamed for leaving British Steel on brink of collapse
We’re in Ministry of Silly Walks territory. Only this time Silly Walks is getting far more than MoD.
E. Schaffer
April 13, 2025 5:18 am
I’d like to encourage a little discussion here. Based on the emagram below..
a) how much will the lapse rate change for every K of warming?
b) how will this affect the GHE?
c) then what is the magnitude of this negative feedback?
Since all the lines are close to parallel from -60 to +40…for all practical purposes the answers are a) 0 b) 0 c) 0 However, if one takes a slightly more rigorous view, there is a small change in slope especially of the moist adiabat, of about 5 gm/kg per degree at 40 C to 0.2 gm/kg at -40 C, call it an average of .02 gms per degree C….so really at surface conditions of about 20 gms per kg mixing ratio and assuming 20 C of 33 C GHE is caused by water vapor, then .05 additional per degree is .05/20X20. =0.05 degrees per degree, not measurable on your mercury thermometer….so c) still ~0 No guarantee on the calcs this AM due to insufficient caffeine intake….
We’re engineers ES, of the type classically trained in math, physics, chemistry, electricity, strength of materials, heat transfer etc., not the geomatics or medical tech types, who useful as they may be, are short on the basics in the aforementioned topics. People don’t try to follow our advice until the bridge has collapsed and they want to know if it’s safe to walk in the wreckage.….
You cannot get any discussion started because the graph is nothing more than a way to plot soundings. This alone tells a person absolutely nothing about the processes that led to the observed sounding. If an atmosphere were restricted to moving heat from the surface upward vertically only, what would the sounding look like? Then suppose that heat were being added by advection laterally from some direction, with radiative transfer still operating, what would the sounding look like? Finally, suppose that heat were pulled from the surface through convection plus some latent heat processes, along with everything mentioned earlier.
You cannot answer any of these questions because the diagram tells us nothing about processes, except for the case of no heat transfer (adiabatic) parcel lift or fall. Have a look at the soundings taken 12 hours apart in this addendum. I have attempted to explain why the soundings change based on observables, but my answer is probably not a unique “solution”.
Amongst people who claim to be CC and GHE “experts”, I have found pulling up a recent Skew-T diagram from a nearby city airport and asking what the lines mean…will quickly change the conversation to football…you’ll get pretty good answers out of sailplane pilots…
Coeur de Lion
April 13, 2025 5:32 am
It’s well accepted that since the start of the satellite age fifty years ago, there has been no change in cyclone frequency or intensity (Cato Institute et al et al). Extrapolating American landfalls as a yardstick backwards it seems likely that there has been no change for a century, So alarmists have a structure which has ‘extreme’ events underneath the most measurable metric with no extremes. Perhaps there haven’t been any ‘extreme’ events?
Oh by the way why so few cyclones in the southern hemisphere? Anyone know?
Already, Trump has waged war on everything that builds prosperity and wellbeing: democracy, healthy ecosystems, education, healthcare, science, the arts. Yet, amid the wreckage, and despite some slippage, his approval ratings still hold between 43 and 48%: far higher than those of many other leaders. Why? I believe part of the answer lies in a fundamental aspect of our humanity: the urge to destroy that from which you feel excluded.
DDE, one of the truly sane Presidents, 1952 -1960, foresaw the Deep State and its military-industrial complex, which has multiplied into additional complexes to form the present, totally out of control federal government.
“48%: far higher than those of many other leaders. Why?” Perhaps because he is trying to do what he said he would. He got about 77.3 million votes in the 2024 presidential election, which accounted for about 49.8% of the total votes cast.
Anyone who gets hid “news” from the Guardian and BBC is a biased fool, being fooled some more…..
Trump is trying to reduce the 50 years of trade deficits and balance of payment deficits.
Trump is trying to reduce decades of waste fraud and abuse in the federal government, which often leads to deficit spending, because there are no controls, computers do not talk to each other, ancient software systems.
Plus, Trump has to undo all the border bull crap, and DEI bull crap, and gender bull crap, etc.
Without a doubt, this means stepping on some people’s toes.
Would you rather have 10 years of 1930s-style depression?
Deficit Spending, Debt and Interest
Deficit spending and printing Treasury bonds to “paper” the deficit is inflationary, because that “out-of-thin-air money” comes with an interest rate and a debt.
Right now, the interest on that debt is more than ONE $TRILLION PER YEAR.
That interest is also “paid for” with printing Treasury bonds to “paper” the interest.
On and on it goes, whistling past the graveyard, stretching the rubber band.
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Very often, many of our wealth/job-sucking trading “partners” use the money of their trade surpluses to 1) buy Treasury bonds, or to 2) buy US companies, or to 3) invest in their own export industries to increase exports, or 4) whatever.
. A Part of the Rip-Off
They charge high prices for auto parts sent to Mexico, then assemble these “expensive” parts in their Mexico assembly plants, then ship whole cars to their dealerships into the US, DUTY FREE.
That way minimal tax is paid on near-zero profits reported to the IRS in the US, maximum profits are reported in home countries, and maximum taxes are paid on these profits to home governments.
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All that has nothing to do with “quantitative easing”, which involves the Federal Reserve declaring it has money which it loans to banks and other financial entities that over-extended themselves on issuing dubious loans, etc.
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When I studied finance about 6 decades ago, some sanity still prevailed, more or less.
To-day, the US is in very deep debt do-do, and the rest of the world aims to keep the US in its do-do, while professing “to be helpful”.
The corrective medicine may require a long-term, induced coma until the patient finally tries to rise from the ashes.
Lopsided Trade Agreements
Prior to NAFTA, Canada and Mexico always had annual trade deficits with the US
After NAFTA, Canada and Mexico, with investments by European and Asian companies, have huge DUTY-FREE annual trade surpluses with the US.
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After NAFTA, foreign (and US) companies shipped parts to Mexico and assembled cars, with their entire production shipped DUTY-FREE into the US.
That is Trojan Horse exploitation that is sucking wealth/jobs from the US.
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After NAFTA, Dutch companies shipped automated greenhouses, the size of airplane hangars, to Canada (which provides nearly free gas as an incentive), with their entire production shipped DUTY-FREE into the US.
That is Trojan Horse exploitation that is sucking wealth/jobs from the US
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Dutch/Belgian conglomerates own more than 50% of the food supermarkets on the US East Coast.
That means plenty of shelf space for European farm goods to the disadvantage of US farmers.
Europe has been doing this since the disastrous 1960s Kennedy Round, which opened US markets, without the US getting any lower tariffs and lower non-tariff barriers from Europe.
Euro elites loved Kennedy
. Free Trade?
Japan has a 700% tariff on US rice. India has a 100% tariff on US rice, Egypt has a 65% average tariff on all US goods. Canada has a 290% tariff on US dairy products.
Canada’s current economy would not be viable without the US as a neighbor. Same with Mexico
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Living in Vermont, we buy, throughout the year, electricity (GMP), propane (IRVING), gasoline (IRVING), and some greenhouse vegetables and flowers from heavily subsidized Canadian/Dutch companies in Quebec.
Perot, a Texas businessman, predicted NAFTA would be sucking tens of $billions of wealth and millions of jobs out of the US. Deluded, brainwashed Americans laughed at Perot.
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Trump is doing the right thing with tariffs to increase US production of goods and services for domestic use and export,
that will employ tens of millions of workers, build strong families and communities, and will reduce imports of goods and services, and will transform decades of wealth/job-sucking trade deficits into trade surpluses to MAGA German Economist: Trump Tariffs are Saving US https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/german-economist-trump-tariffs-saving-us
My understanding is that the 290% tariff on US dairy is only beyond a certain limit which has never been met. If this is true then how credible is the rest of your post?
You only have a one sided view of the issue. You think US farmers are being screwed because they can’t sell as much as they want to Canadian markets. The problem is that 10% overproduction of dairy in Wisconsin can flood the entire Eastern Canadian market and put all Eastern Canadian dairy farms out of business by dumping it cheaply on another market (exactly Trump’s contention with say Chinese steel). When the situation reverses, the price of dairy products in Canada goes way way up, exports to Canada end up nearly halted as Canadian markets have to compete with the 10x-as-large U.S. markets. It takes a dairy farmer a couple of years to rebuild his herd and if you are foreclosed on, no bank will lend you money to get you back in the business.
Secondly, ALL COUNTRIES protect their basic farm industries. History has shown that countries who rely on foreign powers for basic nutrition are in big trouble when those foreign powers decide to get snarky.
So there you have it…no amount of cajoling of the Canadian government policies are going to result in US farmers displacing Canadian farmers from the Canadian market…US trade gurus thinking Canada is a good country to dump production on to reduce their subsidy costs and make US dairy farmers “rich” are simply deluded….just give up….keep Canadian farmers out of the U.S. market all you want that’s your prerogative…just live with the export quotas you are given by Canada to protect Canadian dairy and be glad you didn’t have to dump more milk down the sewer due to your two year cyclical buy-more-cows-to-make-more-money-overproduce-lousy prices-seek government handouts- send-cows-to-the-hamburger-factory-not-really-a-good-plan….
Wilpost, I lived in Woodstock (VT) in 1966-68, while in the Army and assigned to the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover (NH). My wife and I would buy our meat from a butcher shop down the road. Once a month, we would drive down to Fort Devens (MA) to shop at the PX. We would typically spend about $100 on non-perishables and go home with about 20, tall paper bags filled to the top, pretty much filling up the bed of my ’64 Chevy pickup. Today, I go to my local Kroger weekly, and if I can get away with only spending $100 for myself, I leave with a bunch of flimsy brown plastic bags, about half-full, that manage to cover the bottom of the shopping cart. I hate inflation.
Clyde,
I do the food shopping for the two of us.
A few years ago, I used to spend about $100/week, now about $130/week, buying the same stuff.
I call that the Biden-autopen-cabal factor, which, with help of the USAiD-subsidized Corporate Media, has screwed up more than most people wanted to realize when it was happening.
How to undo it all is a Herculean task
In my case, my annual income increase has greatly outpaced annual inflation, because of saving and investing for 60 years.
Ahhh, INFLATION….
The real purpose of G-5,7,10 meetings is to co-ordinate HOW MUCH they want inflation to be. They control this by DETERMINING how much money they issue to their banks for lending out to their populace and local governments for “projects” which can be housing, hiways, artillery, or moon rovers. Since there likely isn’t any more wealth in the system at that point, the new money just dilutes the existing money…and the inflation becomes a tax on citizens savings and investments. And just one of the many taxes revenue departments impose on their population (as the G-10 leaders’ plans get filtered down to local bureaucrats). It’s a real government moneymaker…..if governments have capital gains taxes or inheritance taxes. (They all do). Basically by the time children inherit their parents property and savings, at 2% per year inflation, the government taxes will take 1/4 of the value.
If their plans succeed, the increased prosperity resulting from the increased projects also results in increased wages and the populace having a better “lifestyle”. The balance is pretty fine however…countries that have a lot of corruption that funnels capital away from the common good, or decide they need lunar rovers when they need flood control can easily undo the indirect nature of such economic rope-pushing.
Monbiot completely wrong. Trumps approval is way below that now.
And with every flip flop he does and exclusion for his mates (electronics for Apple) on tariffs, it falls further.
And his approval on the economy is at an all time low….. Just saying. You know the economy that he convinced people he was some sort of genius on. https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-update-economy-2051976
And, I suppose you base that on reading the Gruniad? How is it you are such an expert on his approval when you live so far away? I suspect it is wishful thinking.
There is this thing called the internet… it joins us.
Everything I have read, says he is falling in the polls….. And rightly so. This last week has been an utter shambles. He changes his mind by the day at a time when people are wanting certainty and confidence.
But if you think I am wrong, I’m happy to see what you got?
Didn’t need to quote them, I had so many to pick from. I note you have not come back with even one article vouching from Trumps crazy decisions of late. Even Fox seem to be exasperated with him.
Speaking of “extreme ineptitude” I see the Dow is down another huge jump today. Don the Con looks to be in huge “tariff” trouble now. The sad thing is he is going to take so many older people down who’s 401k’s are plummeting.
“Countries have agreed a global deal to tackle shipping emissions, after nearly ten years of negotiations.
The agreement covers the vast majority of the world’s commercial shipping and means that starting in 2028, ship owners will have to use increasingly cleaner fuels or face fines.
The deal was nearly derailed after Saudi Arabia forced a last minute vote and the US pulled out of talks in London – but it eventually passed on Friday.”
end excerpt
Trump is not going along with this carbon tax and will retaliate against anyone who tries to impose such a tax.
I guess the United Nations is now a rule maker and tax collector for the whole world, with the exception of the United States.
There’s your retaliation target, President Trump: The United Nations.bureaucracy. Go get them! They think they run the world. They don’t.
Yes, I know. It was always a utopian pipe dream. It’s one thing to get major powers talking routinely to avoid conflict. It’s another thing entirely to cede sovereignty to unelected Portuguese socialists and third world despots. It may have had some merit in the 40s and 50s but the fruit of that tree is poisonous.
There was a low-sulfur fuel mandate for all maritime shipping on Jan 1, 2020, and it resulted in higher global temperatures because of the less polluted air.
However, this temperature increase is currently being masked by rising pollution levels from China and India, which, unfortunately, are too high, and are driving temperatures lower. .
Rich Davis
April 13, 2025 7:08 am
I would like to start a discussion about AI robots and the impact on human work.
A really disturbing idea that I have been ruminating on for some time is that the vast majority of elites have no sense that human life has intrinsic value.
The corollary to this is that if AI robots can perform nearly all work at lower cost, elites will no longer have any incentive to maintain ‘excess’ humans. They can build armies of superior soldiers and police and systems of surveillance and control to gradually reach a point where they can cull the population with impunity.
To the elites, the sole value of human beings is the value of the work they produce in excess of the cost of getting them to perform that work.
Sometimes the work performed produces tangible goods, sometimes services. A special case in the category of services is voting in an election. Currently a vast army of non-productive humans are valued by certain elites because they vote for the left-wing politicians who keep them ill-fed, ill-housed, and ill-cared for medically.
The elite have wage slaves and clients. The purpose of the clients is to maintain the fiction of Democracy. Just enough social services are provided that a majority vote for the faction keeping them on the welfare plantation.
If the situation is allowed to tilt too far toward the welfare state, industry collapses and the elite whose primary interest is tied up in industry fight back, purportedly on behalf of those who work hard for a living (not the elite espousing those views of course, just their wage slaves).
It should require no real effort to demonstrate that the overwhelmingly atheistic elite have zero concern about human life as an inherent value. I will only mention in passing, abortion and medical aid in dying.
How can we hope at this late date to resist this dystopian outcome?
Self-propelled grape harvesting machine became important in the 1960s.
How is this not a good thing? If you haven’t harvested a few tons of grapes by hand during a sunny fall week you won’t understand.
As for your comments about elites, I know none nor how they think, so can’t comment.
I am not a Luddite. Mechanization in agriculture has of course been a boon to human flourishing as in many other areas where human labor is leveraged by machines. Similarly, computers have not (thus far) replaced humans, but rather have enhanced human output.
But now we see the prospect of total automation of virtually everything. Humans would harm productivity even if enslaved. Why would the owner of the robot factory share his wealth with those who provide him nothing of value?
Money is not a thing in and of itself. It ultimately represents labor. If nobody works, what does money represent? How does a dirt-poor subsistence farmer participate in an economy where robots can do everything? They have no capital, so their only option is to remain as primitive subsistence farmers I suppose.
Anyone who does not own a robot factory will have to live off their savings, since there will be no market for their labor. But since their savings are in the form of fiat currency that has no use to the owner of the robot factory, (he doesn’t need any human labor), it will only be useful as a medium of exchanging the goods that other people already own that they would like to exchange. Eventually all such people will exchange all their wealth for food and medicine, and then shelter when they must exchange their homes for food or medicine. They will become paupers or subsistence farmers if the robot factory owners even tolerate it.
Is this the meaning of you will own nothing and be happy? I believe the ‘you will own nothing’ part. I don’t see any logical reason why the robot factory owners will give everyone robots and material goods to make us happy, in return for nothing.
Now if the robot factory owner likes to go on nature hikes, and they have no need of human workers, what stops them from deciding to euthanize or at least sterilize all the excess humans encroaching on nature and spoiling their enjoyment?
I did hear a comment a few days ago when a person was asked how the U.S. can compete with nations who pay their workers much less than in the U.S., and his answer was basically: Robots!
Cheap robot labor might help the U.S. compete in markets, but it would displace a human worker, so I think hiring robots and firing humans is not going to go over well in some aspects of life.
And you combine that with 5G and satellite communication and AI like grok3, it seems inevitable that fully autonomous robots with superhuman strength, speed, intelligence, accuracy, and dexterity are on the horizon if not already here.
Which job can such a robot not do better and cheaper than a human? If they cost $30k and last for ten years, and use 20KW-hrs a day operating 24/7 (note I have no idea how much energy would be used-that’s a wild ass guess), at $0.20/KW-hr, the annual cost of that worker would be $4,460. But that worker does the work of at least 4.2 humans who only work 8/5. The robot that likely is substantially more productive and has far better quality, costs about $0.51/hr.
Not only that, but they can be as big or as small as necessary to be optimized for a particular operation. They can work in hazardous environments.
I can’t think of a job that a robot can’t do, maybe you can?
What good is owning a robot factory if no one has money to buy the output of the factories? What good will money be if there is no production of new things?
Were it not for the Second Amendment, what you propose might come to pass. However, I suspect a lot of the ‘deplorables’ might take umbrage at being culled. That is probably why democrats are so anxious to convince the public that firearms are intrinsically evil and need to be banned. First the guns, and then finally the plastic butter knives. How small does a prison have to be before one realizes it is a prison?
I think you put far too much faith in the second amendment. I wouldn’t assume that it’s impossible to build these robots with armor and firepower and numbers and of course tactics that show no fear that would overwhelm any defenses.
But aside from that, if nobody has a job and giving up weapons is a condition of living in the 15-minute city where you own nothing and are happy, how many will opt to starve? You can keep your guns but not if you want to live in Utopia City owned by the robot factory owners.
How many took the mRNA shots and regret it now when it’s too late? (I for one). They didn’t have to force most people who thought they were protecting their grandparents and didn’t want to be branded as kooks.
No first or second amendment in Europe or Canada or Australia or New Zealand. Isn’t there already ULEZ and pervasive surveillance? Aren’t perfectly ordinary populist/conservatives banned from government formally or informally in Germany, France, and Romania? Isn’t it a crime to insult big brother both in the UK and the eUSSR?
The point of my remark is that for the UK and NZ, it is already too late. They don’t really have the option of saying “No” to the 15-minute city. Plastic butter knives are not effective against anything.
Only a fool plays by the opposition’s rules. A well-placed rifle shot can take out a major transformer that supplies power to the main computers, or chinks in the ‘armor’ at flexible joints of the robots. All one has to do is disable the mobility of the robots, not destroy them completely.
First, getting a “robot” to function safely. It can’t even be done for primitive machines like cars. Fine for elevators, trains, traffic lights etc. Not so good at reproducing the actions of even a moderately stupid human being driving a motor vehicle.
Second, AI? Actual Idiocy – if you expect actual thought.
Even the least intelligent manual worker can generally perform tasks that are beyond the capabilities of the most advanced current robots. I’m sure you can think of many instances. Humans are amazingly adaptable, self repairing, come in many different shapes and sizes – and can manufacture all sorts of things.
Don’t waste a good worry.
jvcstone
April 13, 2025 7:40 am
Some observations—not wanting to beat a dead horse. I have spent many more of my daylight hours out doors than inside my entire life,and have been an observer of nature as far back as I can remember. I remember watching contrails back in the late 40’s-early 50’s with great interest as that was before jet travel was the common mode of flight, so they were a “strange sight” for a young boy. Never did they extend much more than a few plane lengths before dissipating-nothing like what are claimed to be contrails today. Occasionally such a contrail can still be observed, especially on a clear cloudless day. It is this cloudless day thing that I have found to be “different” today than what I remember from not too many years ago.
What should be bright blue skies aren’t. Yea, looking straight up, it’s pretty blue (not the brilliant deep blue of years ago), but look to the horizon in any direction and it’s gray/white. Glance towards the sun, and the sky is white. In fact there have been days recently when I could almost look directly at the sun as if through a strong filter. This is not what I remember seeing in years past. You might say it’s smog, but since I live in a rural setting many miles (hundreds) from any major urban area, I don’t think so. I remember a couple of years ago when I first noticed the horizon haze, thinking I was seeing smoke, and called the country dispatch number to see if there was a brush fire reported in the area–nope, no fire that particular day. Now, I’m not claiming any thing–just reporting what my old eyes are seeing, and the air around me today is not the same as it use to be. Would be interesting to collect a quart jar of it and have it analyzed if I knew how to do that.
Leaving out lots of details, my result from cataract surgery was like going to Oz (b/w vs color). Its hard to explain how profound it is to suddenly see better than you ever remember at 64yoa. I hope you have the same experience. (speaking to jcvstone and mr – started my reply at the wrong place)
According to my pilot friend flying his 747 from Amsterdam, up to the 1960s, he could see the pollution domes of each East Coast city. After that, those domes merged into a wall.
That has nothing to do with CO2, which is an absolutely essential ingredient for growing all green flora which supports abundant fauna, and increases crop yields to feed 8 billion people.
Jvc, there is such a vast difference in tech between the 40’s and now. A 777’s engines are putting out about 175,000 horsepower as it climbs to altitude, whereas a DC-3 had three 1200 HP engines. The service altitude of a DC-3 was 23,000 ft, and the service altitude of a 777 is 38,000 feet. So, much more proclivity to form contrails and at elevations where they can be seen from further away.
New Gas Pipeline Direly Needed in New England
Most New England states have gone absolutely apeshit about environmental and other issues.
Rational thinking by independent STEM professionals is replaced with inane slogans by brainwashed nincompoops with signs at gatherings, as duly reported, ad nauseam, by the government-subsidized Corporate Media.
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No state can make laws that reach beyond its borders to affect other states, countries, people, companies.
Every state attorney knows this. Every law student knows this.
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Section 401 of the Clean Water Act (CWA) has a provision that allows states to block federally approved projects, if they do not meet local environmental standards.
That provision likely would be declared unconstitutional by a Republican-leaning Supreme Court.
Trump has declared a National Energy Emergency
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New England has needed a new gas pipeline from Pennsylvania to New England, already for about 20 years.
States trying to stop it may be in violation of interstate commerce laws
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The gas pipeline is direly needed to save the near-zero/real-growth New England economy from brown-outs/black-outs in winter.
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It is highly likely, New England will have much higher electricity prices, c/kWh, due to increased, weather-dependent, grid-disturbing, environmentally destructive, highly subsidized, wind and solar systems on the grid, and increased super-expensive, highly subsidized, short-life, battery systems to counteract the ups and downs of wind/solar outputs, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365
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By now, it should be abundantly obvious, no additional offshore windmills will be built. for at least the next 10 years, if Vance becomes President after Trump.
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New England is one of the worst areas for onshore wind and solar.
In the US, the worst area for solar is in cloudy/rainy/foggy Washington State area
In the US, the worst area for wind is in the South
This has been known for at least 4 decades by states and the federal government.
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HIGH COST/kWh OF W/S SYSTEMS FOISTED ONTO A BRAINWASHED PUBLIC https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-cost-kwh-of-w-s-systems-foisted-onto-a-brainwashed-public
One can argue pretty convincingly that over the past generation inability to access a nat gas alternative to coal led to the closure of many pulp mills in Maine.
Deficit Spending, Debt and Interest
Deficit spending and printing Treasury bonds to “paper” the deficit is inflationary, because that “out-of-thin-air money” comes with an interest rate and a debt.
Right now, the interest on that debt is more than ONE $TRILLION PER YEAR.
That interest is also “paid for” with printing Treasury bonds to “paper” the interest.
On and on it goes, whistling past the graveyard, stretching the rubber band.
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Very often, many of our wealth/job-sucking trading “partners” use the money of their trade surpluses to 1) buy Treasury bonds, or to 2) buy US companies, or to 3) invest in their own export industries to increase exports, or 4) whatever.
. A Part of the Rip-Off
They charge high prices for auto parts sent to Mexico, then assemble these “expensive” parts in their Mexico assembly plants, then ship whole cars to their dealerships into the US, DUTY FREE.
That way minimal tax is paid on near-zero profits reported to the IRS in the US, maximum profits are reported in home countries, and maximum taxes are paid on these profits to home governments.
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All that has nothing to do with “quantitative easing”, which involves the Federal Reserve declaring it has money which it loans to banks and other financial entities that over-extended themselves on issuing dubious loans, etc.
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When I studied finance about 6 decades ago, some sanity still prevailed, more or less.
To-day, the US is in very deep debt do-do, and the rest of the world aims to keep the US in its do-do, while professing “to be helpful”.
The corrective medicine may require a long-term, induced coma until the patient finally tries to rise from the ashes.
If AI robots eliminate the need for human labor and give a small group of people massive armies of super-soldiers, I think all those trillions of dollars will become meaningless abstractions.
Farmland bought up by robot factory owners and then operated by robots will drive human farmers to bankruptcy. Nobody will have a job, so they will be unable to pay the mortgage. If you own your home, you eventually run out of savings to pay for food or medical services and you have to sell your property to the robot factory owners who own the farms and the hospitals that are run by robots as well. Robot police and soldiers will prevent any uprising.
To ensure an orderly liquidation of the excess population, I suppose the first phase involves giving everyone a decent living doing nothing. (‘You will own nothing and be happy’)
Then gradually enforcing ideological conformity on pain of losing privileges and barely getting by. Maybe casting you into chaotic violent neighborhoods. Eventually to stay in the comfortable neighborhoods you must have at most one child. Then it will only be for the childless and the sterile.
At the point where it is obvious to everyone that the carbon they want to eliminate is you, it will be too late. Step out of line and an AI robot takes hold of you and gives you a lethal injection and carries away your carcass. Clearly it wouldn’t reach that point overnight, But who can deny that many of these things are already present in embryonic form?
What is the point of operating robot farms if nobody has a job and therefore don’t have the money to buy food? Land will decrease in value if no one wants to farm it. There only needs to be enough land cultivated to feed those living behind fences and gates. For that matter, what good will money be if there is no exchange of good and services? Perhaps the model of an antebellum plantation that produced everything needed by the owner and her family, with slaves replaced by robots, with feral humans living off the land outside the gated communities is the dystopian future that robotics will bring us.
NET ZERO = CANADIAN CARNEY CARNAGE
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Mark Carney and the Liberal Party have “set a mandatory target that all new light-duty cars and passenger trucks sales be zero-emissions by 2035, accelerating Canada’s target by 5 years.”
NET ZERO policies have destroyed the European economies, to near-zero, real-growth of GDP and stagnant real wages
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Mark Carney was Chair of the UN’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero and was very involved in promoting the WEF’s globalist agenda, including net zero.
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It is reasonable to assume, as Governor of the Bank of England, he would have encouraged British politicians and financial institutions to support such policies.
With economic ‘carnage’, the breakup of Canada will become a reality.
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Already, there is a credible separatist movement in Alberta under Jeffrey Rath.
How will Canada survive without Alberta’s annual transfer payment of $70 billion?
Albertans will thrive without EVs and need NO income tax.
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Trump should refuse to do any business with Canada, unless it adopts:
FREE ENTERPRISE
THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH
THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS
Germany, the UK, France, etc., are in Chaotic De-growth Mode
Their Euro elites are forcing populations to put up with, and pay for, tens of millions of unvetted walks-ins, who make minimal contributions, cause maximal pain, crime and chaos, all while sucking from the government tit.
Spending more on defense and Net-Zero green stuff, will be accelerating de-growth
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The woke elites in Europe and the US are pre-maturely closing, already-paid-for, in-good-working-order, nuclear plants.
The woke elites have banned 1) oil and gas fracking projects, 2) gas/oil pipelines, 3) gas/oil storage systems near power plants, and 4) new energy exploration projects, as part of “leaving it in the ground”
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The US should not bail out Europe by exporting its coal, oil and LNG.
The US should use them to make more products and services for domestic use and exports.
That way the US would reduce imports and increase exports, which would rapidly decrease our decades of wealth/job-sucking trade deficits, and would employ tens of millions of additional US workers, which would strengthen families and communities.
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The very important results of DOGE are not reported by the leftist, USAID-subsidized, Corporate US Media, but the criticisms of DOGE are reported 24/7/365.
The people in New England, the US and Europe are permanently kept in the dark, already for at least 5 decades, or more.
The Social-Media, by gaining eyeballs, is quickly ending the Corporate-Media monopoly, which is losing eyeballs. But the Euro elites are hell-bent to put social media in straight-jackets ASAP, because they provide a public forum for free speech
Alan
April 13, 2025 12:10 pm
What’s going on at Mauna Loa? Every month I check the Mauna Loa web site for updates on both CO² and solar activity. The data are usually updated by the 5th or 6th of the month. But the last couple of months, it’s been really slow. Trump budget cuts or something else?
Why be concerned with CO2, an absolutely vital, life-giving ingredient for ALL plant life?
That facility should be closed down, due to it being irrelevant.
The IPCC has dubbed CO2 as having magical global warming power, based on its own “science”
The IPCC claims, CO2 acts as Climate Control Knob, that eventually will cause runaway Climate Change, if we continue using fossil fuels.
Governments proclaimed, Go Wind and Solar, Go ENERGIEWENDE, go Net zero by 2050, etc., and provided oodles of subsidies, and rules and regulations, and mandates, and prohibitions to make it happen.
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MAGA and burn, baby, burn, may lead to a slightly greater CO2 ppm in atmosphere, which is an absolutely essential gas/ingredient for creating: 1) increased green flora to support abundant fauna all over the world, and 2) increased crop yields to feed 8 billion people. What is not to like?
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The slogan Net-zero by 2050 to-reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact, to increase command/control by governments, and enable the moneyed elites to get richer, at the expense of all others, by using the foghorn of the government-subsidized/controlled Corporate Media to spread scare-mongering slogans and brainwash people.
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But, at about 30% annual W/S on the grid, various costs increase exponentially.
The weather-dependent, variable/intermittent W/S output, often too-little and often too-much output, creates operational difficulties that become increasingly more challenging and increasingly more costly/kWh to counteract, as proven by the UK and California for the past 5 years, and Germany for the past 10 years.
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All three have “achieved” near-zero, real- growth GDPs, the highest electricity prices/kWh, and stagnant real wages for almost all people, while further enriching the elites who live in the poshest places.
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Their angry, over-taxed, over-regulated native populations are further burdened by the elites bringing in tens of millions of uninvited, unvetted, poor, uneducated, inexperienced folks from all over; a chaotic, culture-clashing burden the native populations never voted for.
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All that W/S money uglified the countryside, killed fisheries, tourism, viewsheds, etc.
But the climate is not any different than 30 years ago, even though, atmosphere CO2 increased from 280 ppm in 1850 to 420 ppm in 2025, 50% in 175 years.
During that time, world surface temps increased by about 1.5 C, only about 0.5 C can be attributed to CO2, with the rest from:
1) Long-term cycles, such as coming out of the Little Ice Age,
2) Earth surface changes, due to increased agriculture, deforestation, especially in the Tropics, etc.
3) Urban heat islands, such as about 700 miles from north of Portland, Maine, to south of Norfolk, Virginia, forested in 1850, now covered with heat-absorbing human detritus. Japan, China, India, Europe, etc., have similar heat islands
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BTW, the 1850 surface temp measurements were only in a few locations and mostly inaccurate, +/- 0.5 C.
The 1979-to-present temp measurements (46 years) cover most of the earth surface and are more accurate, +/- 0.25 C, due to NASA satellites.
Any graphs should show these accuracy bands.
The wiggles in below image are due to plants rotting late in the year, emitting CO2, plants growing early in the year, consuming CO2, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/about.html
Japan, China, India, Europe, etc., have similar heat islands
You might be interested in –
“From urban to national heat island: The effect of anthropogenic heat output on climate change in high population industrial countries.”
The hypothesis seems reasonable.
Many here at WUWT are familiar with Pat Frank’s “Propagation of Error…” paper from 2019. It is important to grasp the fundamental issue with the buildup of uncertainty in the step-iterated climate models. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/earth-science/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00223/full
Out of curiosity, I specified a simple climate “model” for Grok3, the AI agent on X, to pursue the main idea about uncertainty.
============
Question to Grok:
Consider a simplified step-iterated Earth climate model which projects an annualized global average surface air temperature, abbreviated GASAT. The task is to compute a projected GASAT for each step for 100 steps. Each step is one year. The radiative climate forcing is 0 W/m^2 in the initial state at step 0. The GASAT is given as 15C at step 0. The assumed radiative forcing increases by 0.035 W/m^2 each year. The response of GASAT to radiative forcing is given to be exactly 0.5C/(W/m^2). Absorbed solar energy is given as a constant value in W/m^2 throughout the projection. The climate model operates at each step on the GASAT value from the previous step, to compute and apply an annualized outward thermal flux in W/m^2, emitted back to space, to then compute a new GASAT to pass to the next step. The epistemic uncertainty of this outward thermal flux is given to be +/- 4 W/m^2. Through the response function, this introduces a +/- 2C uncertainty in the new GASAT at each step. It is intended to apply the root-sum-square method to propagate the uncertainty through the projection. What is the projected GASAT in degrees C, and what is the uncertainty of the projected GASAT in +/- degrees C, at steps 10, 50, and 100?
Final answer from Grok, after analysis:
At step 10: Projected GASAT = 15.175°C ± 6.324°C
At step 50: Projected GASAT = 15.875°C ± 14.142°C
At step 100: Projected GASAT = 16.75°C ± 20°C
My followup:
Does the uncertainty at steps 10, 50, 100 imply a large fluctuation in model output, or does it instead simply define an interval in which the GASAT is expected to lie, but cannot be precisely determined with this model?
Answer from Grok:
The uncertainty defines a range within which the GASAT is expected to lie, reflecting the model’s imprecision rather than predicting large fluctuations. With this simplified model, the projected GASAT is a deterministic trend (15°C + 0.0175°C × step), and the uncertainty (±2*sqrt(n)°C) indicates how much trust [bolded dd] we can place in that projection as errors compound over time. The true temperature is likely somewhere within these bounds, but the model cannot pinpoint it more precisely due to the given epistemic uncertainty.
[The full Grok exchange on X is here. https://x.com/i/grok?conversation=1906084643708780692 ]
===============
Discussion:
Entirely apart from climate models, many hold that an expectation of “some” sensible heat gain down here from incremental CO2 is justified. This opinion arises from CO2’s IR absorption and emission characteristics and from consensus radiation transfer theory. On the other hand, there are good reasons from space-based sensing and from atmospheric dynamics to expect a “negligible” end result. I often post about this in comments here at WUWT.
But either way, the use of step-iterated, parameter-tuned climate models to run the IPCC “forcing” scenarios has been fundamentally unsound all along because of the implications of accumulating uncertainty. This ought not be a mystery. Even the Grok AI agent knows how to deal with it.
So how much trust can we place in the model outputs? None. It doesn’t matter that some models have followed the observations more closely than others. None of these step-iterated models have any diagnostic or prognostic authority at all concerning incremental CO2, CH4, N2O, etc.
P.S. Yes, I know that GASAT is an absurdly weak indicator of the energy state of the climate system.
P.P.S. Yes, I also know that this exercise is posed with the assumption that a deterministic warming MUST occur, making it circular. That is exactly what the complex models do, as the “warming” is baked in from the start! This is because the investigation uses a pre-stabilized model and is framed as a matter of “forcing” + “feedback” in respect to rising concentrations of CO2 and other non-condensing IR-active gases.
Thank you for listening.
Indeed. I come back to this time after time especially when people state their views using equations, because i see all these attempts in what i call a reasonable position namely the inherent uncertainty in the interaction of the variables/ parameters who are in themselves problematic.
Even something as supposedly simple as: ‘x agrees w observations’ turns out anything but straightforward. I do like the lab hypothesis and theories derived from it. Other than that i entertain myself learning about the various ways scientists are dealing w atmospheric physics and climate. Some make more sense than others.
Modeling the models as in the linked publication is fun. It shows exactly what we are dealing with. A stack of uncertainties. We have to remember that people decide how wide the margins are in order to sell their product. Nobody is going to accept a model w too broad margins. That limits the models. Then we get an average as if that is some indication of reliability. Fun and games!
Is that the same as:
TAR Chapter 14 page 771
The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system,
and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states
is not possible.
The same as a drunk walk chart?
The same as the double pendulum illustration?
That great double pendulum video Kip Hansen
put up years ago has been removed by YouTube.
Those are great points, Steve, but it’s not the same thing. Even if the system being modeled were simple and linear, the epistemic uncertainty of even just one component of the computation accumulates as the result is passed from one step to the next and so on.
Following that quotation from the TAR, the text continues,
“Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive and requires the application of new methods of model diagnosis, but such statistical information is essential.” That approach pretends that the uncertainty can be reduced by more runs of more models, as if it were a matter of a distribution of outcomes from random variation.
After looking up the definition of epistemic I am reminded of this quote:
There are known knowns.
These are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns.
That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know.
But there are also unknown unknowns.
There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
Donald Rumsfeld
I forget if it was Will Rogers or Mark Twain that said:
“It isn’t the things we know that are the problem. The problem is the things we know that ain’t so.” 😎
Steve,
missed the one relevant to the climate debate out . ..
Finally there are unkown knowns
things they know but for the sake of embarrassment pretend they dont know
Another way to look at unknown knowns. I guess I was being too charitable.
Rumsfeld statDs what many engineers already know. And he left out a fourth possibility:
There are, also, unknown knowns, those things that are holes in our knowledge..
It also assumes that the Climate Scientists are skilled in statistical analysis.
How ’bout Schrodinger’s cat?
Very well done, David!
I would just add that for the models to say anything ‘meaningful’ about temperature, they first have to say something meaningful about energy accumulation. They don’t:
Specifically, let’s consider an energy accumulation model where energy accumulates due to a total increase in CO2 forcing, F. Further, let’s assume that this forcing occurs ratably at the beginning of each of N time steps over a total time, T, say 100 years. Assuming certainty, we can express the increase in accumulated energy (per square meter) at the end of any time step, n (1,2,…N) as:
n x (n+1) /2 x F/N x T/N
However, we also know from comparing observed data to the output of the GCMs that there is error, hence uncertainty, C, in the amount of cloud forcing, which by itself is a major factor in energy accumulation. The amount by which this uncertainty has accumulated at the end of any time step in our model can be expressed as:
n x C x T/N
Given this uncertainty in cloud forcing, it is clear that in order for us to have any confidence in our model’s ability to provide a meaningful measure of energy accumulation due to CO2 forcing, we must have:
n x (n+1) /2 x F/N x T/N >= n x C x T/N, or after consolidating terms,
F >= 2 x C x N / (n+1)
For the simplest case, where a single ‘pulse’ of CO2 takes place at the beginning of a single time step, we have n=N=1, and the required condition to obtain a meaningful result reduces to:
F >= C
However, in more ‘realistic’ cases, where CO2 is emitted over time and many time steps are needed to numerically ‘solve’ the complex fluid dynamics of climate, it is easy to verify that the hurdle to obtain a meaningful result quickly rises to:
F >= 2*C
So, given data from your comment, i.e., F = 0.035×100 = 3.5 W/m^2, and C = 4.0 W/m^2, can our model tell us anything meaningful about energy accumulation? The answer in both cases, above, is ‘no’. And if we can’t make meaningful predictions of energy accumulation from CO2 emissions using a simple model, there’s no way we can make meaningful predictions of temperature from the GCMs.
QED
To recap:
Each iteration inherits the uncertainty of the previous step, then increases the uncertainty via whatever calculations are done during the next step.
Pat’s paper dealt with only a single source of uncertainty, there are others that can only compound the situation.
Nearly all of the peer reviewers used the (hand-waved) argument that “the error can’t be this big.” This only demonstrated their abject lack of understanding of even the basics of measurement uncertainty, because error is not uncertainty—they are two entirely different quantities.
Error is defined as the distance from the true value of a measurement result, while uncertainty is an estimate of the interval over which the true value of a quantity is expected to lay.
Instead of equating it with “error”, uncertainty should instead be viewed as the limit to the state of knowledge about a measurement. Thus the successive iteration steps of a climate model are like progressively defocussing an optical microscope.
Lastly, averaging the outputs of a basketful of different climate models cannot improve the image in the microscope.
“Each iteration inherits the uncertainty of the previous step, then increases the uncertainty via whatever calculations are done during the next step.”
Old stat caution, “Stacking Hypotheses” or something like that. Must be a new world.
Logically, there can only be one best model in an ensemble. If it happens to be the median, then averaging all the models does not shift the mean, it only results in an increase in the standard deviation.
However, it is an unproven assumption that the ensembles will be normally distributed around the true value or even the best. They might all be so unskillful as to be unuseful. Assuming that one model might actually be close to the correct answer, and thereby be the best, averaging it with all the other models in the ensemble will dilute the impact of the best model. In that case, increasing the number of models used in averaging does not lead to greater accuracy or precision; it weights the unskillful models more, leading to a worse answer. The farther out on the tail of the probability distribution the best model is, the more severely the additional addends corrupt the average. ‘Democracy’ does not improve averaging.
Thanks for that good recap.
I also note how important it was that Pat demonstrated the successful emulation of the climate model outputs using simplified computation from the prescribed “forcings.” (Credit also to Willis Eschenbach for his parallel work on this point.) That emulation is what enabled the propagation of error analysis to be done so efficiently, and to use an annual “step.” And it also showed me how the entire climate modeling enterprise has been able to brazenly mislead so many with the GHG “forcing” and “physics-based” narrative. It still seems hard even for technically trained researchers to grasp the circular reasoning at the core of the consensus “science.” Being a retiree helps, I guess, by removing the pressure to conform to the narrative.
Steel yourself…
Ed Miliband’s Net Zero policies blamed for leaving British Steel on brink of collapse
Ed Miliband was humiliated yesterday after his Net Zero policies were blamed for leaving British Steel on the verge of collapse.
…
In a day of political drama, Mr Milibandwas accused of leaving Britain’s steel industry on the edge of extinction with his eco policies.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/34435700/ed-miliband-eco-policies-british-steel/
No change in energy policy… or cost.
Miliband didn’t stay for the whole debate…
We’re in Ministry of Silly Walks territory. Only this time Silly Walks is getting far more than MoD.
I’d like to encourage a little discussion here. Based on the emagram below..
a) how much will the lapse rate change for every K of warming?
b) how will this affect the GHE?
c) then what is the magnitude of this negative feedback?
Since all the lines are close to parallel from -60 to +40…for all practical purposes the answers are a) 0 b) 0 c) 0 However, if one takes a slightly more rigorous view, there is a small change in slope especially of the moist adiabat, of about 5 gm/kg per degree at 40 C to 0.2 gm/kg at -40 C, call it an average of .02 gms per degree C….so really at surface conditions of about 20 gms per kg mixing ratio and assuming 20 C of 33 C GHE is caused by water vapor, then .05 additional per degree is .05/20X20. =0.05 degrees per degree, not measurable on your mercury thermometer….so c) still ~0
No guarantee on the calcs this AM due to insufficient caffeine intake….
4 hrs later….your discussion encouragement doesn’t seem to be working…:-)
I was just curious if people could see what I see.
We’re engineers ES, of the type classically trained in math, physics, chemistry, electricity, strength of materials, heat transfer etc., not the geomatics or medical tech types, who useful as they may be, are short on the basics in the aforementioned topics. People don’t try to follow our advice until the bridge has collapsed and they want to know if it’s safe to walk in the wreckage.….
You cannot get any discussion started because the graph is nothing more than a way to plot soundings. This alone tells a person absolutely nothing about the processes that led to the observed sounding. If an atmosphere were restricted to moving heat from the surface upward vertically only, what would the sounding look like? Then suppose that heat were being added by advection laterally from some direction, with radiative transfer still operating, what would the sounding look like? Finally, suppose that heat were pulled from the surface through convection plus some latent heat processes, along with everything mentioned earlier.
You cannot answer any of these questions because the diagram tells us nothing about processes, except for the case of no heat transfer (adiabatic) parcel lift or fall. Have a look at the soundings taken 12 hours apart in this addendum. I have attempted to explain why the soundings change based on observables, but my answer is probably not a unique “solution”.
Amongst people who claim to be CC and GHE “experts”, I have found pulling up a recent Skew-T diagram from a nearby city airport and asking what the lines mean…will quickly change the conversation to football…you’ll get pretty good answers out of sailplane pilots…
It’s well accepted that since the start of the satellite age fifty years ago, there has been no change in cyclone frequency or intensity (Cato Institute et al et al). Extrapolating American landfalls as a yardstick backwards it seems likely that there has been no change for a century, So alarmists have a structure which has ‘extreme’ events underneath the most measurable metric with no extremes. Perhaps there haven’t been any ‘extreme’ events?
Oh by the way why so few cyclones in the southern hemisphere? Anyone know?
If you mean the South Atlantic Ocean, see:
Hurricane Catarina – Wikipedia
Loony tune corner #94 – George Moonbat Monbiot
Already, Trump has waged war on everything that builds prosperity and wellbeing: democracy, healthy ecosystems, education, healthcare, science, the arts. Yet, amid the wreckage, and despite some slippage, his approval ratings still hold between 43 and 48%: far higher than those of many other leaders. Why? I believe part of the answer lies in a fundamental aspect of our humanity: the urge to destroy that from which you feel excluded.
This urge, I think, is crucial to understanding politics. Yet hardly anyone seems to recognise it. Hardly anyone, that is, except the far right, who see it all too well.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/13/trump-populists-human-nature-economic-growth
Could this guy get it any more wrong?
Stupid people who are so sure of themselves are the worst!
I think George’s problem is that the only people who seem to take him seriously work for the Grauniad and he knows it. 🙂
Yes, he can…
Guardian columnist George Monbiot came to live in Mid Wales a while ago. We can’t have made him feel very welcome, as he has been campaigning non-stop against our sheep-farming way of life ever since.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/10/the-green-war-on-sheep/#google_vignette
The ‘far right’ — people who hold views like moderates did in the 50s and 60s.
DDE, one of the truly sane Presidents, 1952 -1960, foresaw the Deep State and its military-industrial complex, which has multiplied into additional complexes to form the present, totally out of control federal government.
The video of Eisenhower’s farewell broadcast in January, 1961 is pure gold. His insight was impressive.
In a word … yes.
“48%: far higher than those of many other leaders. Why?”
Perhaps because he is trying to do what he said he would. He got about 77.3 million votes in the 2024 presidential election, which accounted for about 49.8% of the total votes cast.
They disdain what [the] people want. That’s ugly populism.
Anyone who gets hid “news” from the Guardian and BBC is a biased fool, being fooled some more…..
Trump is trying to reduce the 50 years of trade deficits and balance of payment deficits.
Trump is trying to reduce decades of waste fraud and abuse in the federal government, which often leads to deficit spending, because there are no controls, computers do not talk to each other, ancient software systems.
Plus, Trump has to undo all the border bull crap, and DEI bull crap, and gender bull crap, etc.
Without a doubt, this means stepping on some people’s toes.
Would you rather have 10 years of 1930s-style depression?
Deficit Spending, Debt and Interest
Deficit spending and printing Treasury bonds to “paper” the deficit is inflationary, because that “out-of-thin-air money” comes with an interest rate and a debt.
Right now, the interest on that debt is more than ONE $TRILLION PER YEAR.
That interest is also “paid for” with printing Treasury bonds to “paper” the interest.
On and on it goes, whistling past the graveyard, stretching the rubber band.
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Very often, many of our wealth/job-sucking trading “partners” use the money of their trade surpluses to 1) buy Treasury bonds, or to 2) buy US companies, or to 3) invest in their own export industries to increase exports, or 4) whatever.
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A Part of the Rip-Off
They charge high prices for auto parts sent to Mexico, then assemble these “expensive” parts in their Mexico assembly plants, then ship whole cars to their dealerships into the US, DUTY FREE.
That way minimal tax is paid on near-zero profits reported to the IRS in the US, maximum profits are reported in home countries, and maximum taxes are paid on these profits to home governments.
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All that has nothing to do with “quantitative easing”, which involves the Federal Reserve declaring it has money which it loans to banks and other financial entities that over-extended themselves on issuing dubious loans, etc.
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When I studied finance about 6 decades ago, some sanity still prevailed, more or less.
To-day, the US is in very deep debt do-do, and the rest of the world aims to keep the US in its do-do, while professing “to be helpful”.
The corrective medicine may require a long-term, induced coma until the patient finally tries to rise from the ashes.
Lopsided Trade Agreements
Prior to NAFTA, Canada and Mexico always had annual trade deficits with the US
After NAFTA, Canada and Mexico, with investments by European and Asian companies, have huge DUTY-FREE annual trade surpluses with the US.
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After NAFTA, foreign (and US) companies shipped parts to Mexico and assembled cars, with their entire production shipped DUTY-FREE into the US.
That is Trojan Horse exploitation that is sucking wealth/jobs from the US.
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After NAFTA, Dutch companies shipped automated greenhouses, the size of airplane hangars, to Canada (which provides nearly free gas as an incentive), with their entire production shipped DUTY-FREE into the US.
That is Trojan Horse exploitation that is sucking wealth/jobs from the US
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Dutch/Belgian conglomerates own more than 50% of the food supermarkets on the US East Coast.
That means plenty of shelf space for European farm goods to the disadvantage of US farmers.
Europe has been doing this since the disastrous 1960s Kennedy Round, which opened US markets, without the US getting any lower tariffs and lower non-tariff barriers from Europe.
Euro elites loved Kennedy
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Free Trade?
Japan has a 700% tariff on US rice. India has a 100% tariff on US rice, Egypt has a 65% average tariff on all US goods. Canada has a 290% tariff on US dairy products.
Canada’s current economy would not be viable without the US as a neighbor. Same with Mexico
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Living in Vermont, we buy, throughout the year, electricity (GMP), propane (IRVING), gasoline (IRVING), and some greenhouse vegetables and flowers from heavily subsidized Canadian/Dutch companies in Quebec.
Perot, a Texas businessman, predicted NAFTA would be sucking tens of $billions of wealth and millions of jobs out of the US. Deluded, brainwashed Americans laughed at Perot.
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Trump is doing the right thing with tariffs to increase US production of goods and services for domestic use and export,
that will employ tens of millions of workers, build strong families and communities, and will reduce imports of goods and services, and will transform decades of wealth/job-sucking trade deficits into trade surpluses to MAGA
German Economist: Trump Tariffs are Saving US
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/german-economist-trump-tariffs-saving-us
My understanding is that the 290% tariff on US dairy is only beyond a certain limit which has never been met. If this is true then how credible is the rest of your post?
The 290% is a TARIFF wall that cannot be scaled.
As a result, US dairy exports to Canada are minimal, up to quota, which helps Canadian farmers and screws US farmers.
I cannot believe, the US allowed Canada to get away with this during trade negotiations.
You only have a one sided view of the issue. You think US farmers are being screwed because they can’t sell as much as they want to Canadian markets. The problem is that 10% overproduction of dairy in Wisconsin can flood the entire Eastern Canadian market and put all Eastern Canadian dairy farms out of business by dumping it cheaply on another market (exactly Trump’s contention with say Chinese steel). When the situation reverses, the price of dairy products in Canada goes way way up, exports to Canada end up nearly halted as Canadian markets have to compete with the 10x-as-large U.S. markets. It takes a dairy farmer a couple of years to rebuild his herd and if you are foreclosed on, no bank will lend you money to get you back in the business.
Secondly, ALL COUNTRIES protect their basic farm industries. History has shown that countries who rely on foreign powers for basic nutrition are in big trouble when those foreign powers decide to get snarky.
So there you have it…no amount of cajoling of the Canadian government policies are going to result in US farmers displacing Canadian farmers from the Canadian market…US trade gurus thinking Canada is a good country to dump production on to reduce their subsidy costs and make US dairy farmers “rich” are simply deluded….just give up….keep Canadian farmers out of the U.S. market all you want that’s your prerogative…just live with the export quotas you are given by Canada to protect Canadian dairy and be glad you didn’t have to dump more milk down the sewer due to your two year cyclical buy-more-cows-to-make-more-money-overproduce-lousy prices-seek government handouts- send-cows-to-the-hamburger-factory-not-really-a-good-plan….
I thought Trump was the only person who believed all this. I was wrong
Wilpost, I lived in Woodstock (VT) in 1966-68, while in the Army and assigned to the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover (NH). My wife and I would buy our meat from a butcher shop down the road. Once a month, we would drive down to Fort Devens (MA) to shop at the PX. We would typically spend about $100 on non-perishables and go home with about 20, tall paper bags filled to the top, pretty much filling up the bed of my ’64 Chevy pickup. Today, I go to my local Kroger weekly, and if I can get away with only spending $100 for myself, I leave with a bunch of flimsy brown plastic bags, about half-full, that manage to cover the bottom of the shopping cart. I hate inflation.
Clyde,
I do the food shopping for the two of us.
A few years ago, I used to spend about $100/week, now about $130/week, buying the same stuff.
I call that the Biden-autopen-cabal factor, which, with help of the USAiD-subsidized Corporate Media, has screwed up more than most people wanted to realize when it was happening.
How to undo it all is a Herculean task
In my case, my annual income increase has greatly outpaced annual inflation, because of saving and investing for 60 years.
Ahhh, INFLATION….
The real purpose of G-5,7,10 meetings is to co-ordinate HOW MUCH they want inflation to be. They control this by DETERMINING how much money they issue to their banks for lending out to their populace and local governments for “projects” which can be housing, hiways, artillery, or moon rovers. Since there likely isn’t any more wealth in the system at that point, the new money just dilutes the existing money…and the inflation becomes a tax on citizens savings and investments. And just one of the many taxes revenue departments impose on their population (as the G-10 leaders’ plans get filtered down to local bureaucrats). It’s a real government moneymaker…..if governments have capital gains taxes or inheritance taxes. (They all do). Basically by the time children inherit their parents property and savings, at 2% per year inflation, the government taxes will take 1/4 of the value.
If their plans succeed, the increased prosperity resulting from the increased projects also results in increased wages and the populace having a better “lifestyle”. The balance is pretty fine however…countries that have a lot of corruption that funnels capital away from the common good, or decide they need lunar rovers when they need flood control can easily undo the indirect nature of such economic rope-pushing.
strativarius….I hadn’t run across that before….very enlightening concept…thanks for that….
Monbiot completely wrong. Trumps approval is way below that now.
And with every flip flop he does and exclusion for his mates (electronics for Apple) on tariffs, it falls further.
And his approval on the economy is at an all time low….. Just saying. You know the economy that he convinced people he was some sort of genius on.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-update-economy-2051976
And, I suppose you base that on reading the Gruniad? How is it you are such an expert on his approval when you live so far away? I suspect it is wishful thinking.
There is this thing called the internet… it joins us.
Everything I have read, says he is falling in the polls….. And rightly so. This last week has been an utter shambles. He changes his mind by the day at a time when people are wanting certainty and confidence.
But if you think I am wrong, I’m happy to see what you got?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/04/13/trump-approval-falls-economy-poll/83071309007/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-13/cbs-poll-signals-broad-inflation-fears-linked-to-trump-s-tariffs
https://thehill.com/business/economy/5246688-most-believe-trump-tariffs-benefit-wealthy-corporations-poll/
Far-left Trump-deranged clowns who are obviously totally gormless when it comes to understanding Trump’s “Art of the deal” gambits.
75+ nations already wanting to negotiate on tariffs.
HUGE WIN for Trump !
You left out MSNBC, CNN, and the NY Times.
Didn’t need to quote them, I had so many to pick from. I note you have not come back with even one article vouching from Trumps crazy decisions of late. Even Fox seem to be exasperated with him.
The Guardian, BBC, etc.
Even CNN puts the approval rating of the Democrats at an absolute all time historic LOW.
Where they belong as they try to fight to keep their graft and corruption via NGOs going.
Hope you think Jasmine Crockett is the Democrat mouthpiece and leader.. or maybe AOC or Bernie.
So funny watching such extreme ineptitude. !
Speaking of “extreme ineptitude” I see the Dow is down another huge jump today. Don the Con looks to be in huge “tariff” trouble now. The sad thing is he is going to take so many older people down who’s 401k’s are plummeting.
Story tip
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20xxv22wl9o
“Countries have agreed a global deal to tackle shipping emissions, after nearly ten years of negotiations.
The agreement covers the vast majority of the world’s commercial shipping and means that starting in 2028, ship owners will have to use increasingly cleaner fuels or face fines.
The deal was nearly derailed after Saudi Arabia forced a last minute vote and the US pulled out of talks in London – but it eventually passed on Friday.”
end excerpt
Trump is not going along with this carbon tax and will retaliate against anyone who tries to impose such a tax.
I guess the United Nations is now a rule maker and tax collector for the whole world, with the exception of the United States.
There’s your retaliation target, President Trump: The United Nations.bureaucracy. Go get them! They think they run the world. They don’t.
Kick the UN out of NYC. Good place for another Trump tower. 🙂
US out of UN!
UN out of US!
US created UN (San Francisco) 1945
Yes, I know. It was always a utopian pipe dream. It’s one thing to get major powers talking routinely to avoid conflict. It’s another thing entirely to cede sovereignty to unelected Portuguese socialists and third world despots. It may have had some merit in the 40s and 50s but the fruit of that tree is poisonous.
Tom Abbott:
There was a low-sulfur fuel mandate for all maritime shipping on Jan 1, 2020, and it resulted in higher global temperatures because of the less polluted air.
However, this temperature increase is currently being masked by rising pollution levels from China and India, which, unfortunately, are too high, and are driving temperatures lower. .
I would like to start a discussion about AI robots and the impact on human work.
A really disturbing idea that I have been ruminating on for some time is that the vast majority of elites have no sense that human life has intrinsic value.
The corollary to this is that if AI robots can perform nearly all work at lower cost, elites will no longer have any incentive to maintain ‘excess’ humans. They can build armies of superior soldiers and police and systems of surveillance and control to gradually reach a point where they can cull the population with impunity.
To the elites, the sole value of human beings is the value of the work they produce in excess of the cost of getting them to perform that work.
Sometimes the work performed produces tangible goods, sometimes services. A special case in the category of services is voting in an election. Currently a vast army of non-productive humans are valued by certain elites because they vote for the left-wing politicians who keep them ill-fed, ill-housed, and ill-cared for medically.
The elite have wage slaves and clients. The purpose of the clients is to maintain the fiction of Democracy. Just enough social services are provided that a majority vote for the faction keeping them on the welfare plantation.
If the situation is allowed to tilt too far toward the welfare state, industry collapses and the elite whose primary interest is tied up in industry fight back, purportedly on behalf of those who work hard for a living (not the elite espousing those views of course, just their wage slaves).
It should require no real effort to demonstrate that the overwhelmingly atheistic elite have zero concern about human life as an inherent value. I will only mention in passing, abortion and medical aid in dying.
How can we hope at this late date to resist this dystopian outcome?
Self-propelled grape harvesting machine became important in the 1960s.
How is this not a good thing? If you haven’t harvested a few tons of grapes by hand during a sunny fall week you won’t understand.
As for your comments about elites, I know none nor how they think, so can’t comment.
I am not a Luddite. Mechanization in agriculture has of course been a boon to human flourishing as in many other areas where human labor is leveraged by machines. Similarly, computers have not (thus far) replaced humans, but rather have enhanced human output.
But now we see the prospect of total automation of virtually everything. Humans would harm productivity even if enslaved. Why would the owner of the robot factory share his wealth with those who provide him nothing of value?
Money is not a thing in and of itself. It ultimately represents labor. If nobody works, what does money represent? How does a dirt-poor subsistence farmer participate in an economy where robots can do everything? They have no capital, so their only option is to remain as primitive subsistence farmers I suppose.
Anyone who does not own a robot factory will have to live off their savings, since there will be no market for their labor. But since their savings are in the form of fiat currency that has no use to the owner of the robot factory, (he doesn’t need any human labor), it will only be useful as a medium of exchanging the goods that other people already own that they would like to exchange. Eventually all such people will exchange all their wealth for food and medicine, and then shelter when they must exchange their homes for food or medicine. They will become paupers or subsistence farmers if the robot factory owners even tolerate it.
Is this the meaning of you will own nothing and be happy? I believe the ‘you will own nothing’ part. I don’t see any logical reason why the robot factory owners will give everyone robots and material goods to make us happy, in return for nothing.
Now if the robot factory owner likes to go on nature hikes, and they have no need of human workers, what stops them from deciding to euthanize or at least sterilize all the excess humans encroaching on nature and spoiling their enjoyment?
I did hear a comment a few days ago when a person was asked how the U.S. can compete with nations who pay their workers much less than in the U.S., and his answer was basically: Robots!
Cheap robot labor might help the U.S. compete in markets, but it would displace a human worker, so I think hiring robots and firing humans is not going to go over well in some aspects of life.
Tom, if you’ve seen the videos of Boston Dynamics robots such as this one:
https://youtu.be/I44_zbEwz_w
And you combine that with 5G and satellite communication and AI like grok3, it seems inevitable that fully autonomous robots with superhuman strength, speed, intelligence, accuracy, and dexterity are on the horizon if not already here.
Which job can such a robot not do better and cheaper than a human? If they cost $30k and last for ten years, and use 20KW-hrs a day operating 24/7 (note I have no idea how much energy would be used-that’s a wild ass guess), at $0.20/KW-hr, the annual cost of that worker would be $4,460. But that worker does the work of at least 4.2 humans who only work 8/5. The robot that likely is substantially more productive and has far better quality, costs about $0.51/hr.
Not only that, but they can be as big or as small as necessary to be optimized for a particular operation. They can work in hazardous environments.
I can’t think of a job that a robot can’t do, maybe you can?
All good points, Rich.
I imagine robot workers are inevitable. Our challenge will be how to use them without harming human society.
What good is owning a robot factory if no one has money to buy the output of the factories? What good will money be if there is no production of new things?
Were it not for the Second Amendment, what you propose might come to pass. However, I suspect a lot of the ‘deplorables’ might take umbrage at being culled. That is probably why democrats are so anxious to convince the public that firearms are intrinsically evil and need to be banned. First the guns, and then finally the plastic butter knives. How small does a prison have to be before one realizes it is a prison?
I think you put far too much faith in the second amendment. I wouldn’t assume that it’s impossible to build these robots with armor and firepower and numbers and of course tactics that show no fear that would overwhelm any defenses.
But aside from that, if nobody has a job and giving up weapons is a condition of living in the 15-minute city where you own nothing and are happy, how many will opt to starve? You can keep your guns but not if you want to live in Utopia City owned by the robot factory owners.
How many took the mRNA shots and regret it now when it’s too late? (I for one). They didn’t have to force most people who thought they were protecting their grandparents and didn’t want to be branded as kooks.
No first or second amendment in Europe or Canada or Australia or New Zealand. Isn’t there already ULEZ and pervasive surveillance? Aren’t perfectly ordinary populist/conservatives banned from government formally or informally in Germany, France, and Romania? Isn’t it a crime to insult big brother both in the UK and the eUSSR?
The point of my remark is that for the UK and NZ, it is already too late. They don’t really have the option of saying “No” to the 15-minute city. Plastic butter knives are not effective against anything.
Only a fool plays by the opposition’s rules. A well-placed rifle shot can take out a major transformer that supplies power to the main computers, or chinks in the ‘armor’ at flexible joints of the robots. All one has to do is disable the mobility of the robots, not destroy them completely.
Only one or two minor problems.
First, getting a “robot” to function safely. It can’t even be done for primitive machines like cars. Fine for elevators, trains, traffic lights etc. Not so good at reproducing the actions of even a moderately stupid human being driving a motor vehicle.
Second, AI? Actual Idiocy – if you expect actual thought.
Even the least intelligent manual worker can generally perform tasks that are beyond the capabilities of the most advanced current robots. I’m sure you can think of many instances. Humans are amazingly adaptable, self repairing, come in many different shapes and sizes – and can manufacture all sorts of things.
Don’t waste a good worry.
Some observations—not wanting to beat a dead horse. I have spent many more of my daylight hours out doors than inside my entire life,and have been an observer of nature as far back as I can remember. I remember watching contrails back in the late 40’s-early 50’s with great interest as that was before jet travel was the common mode of flight, so they were a “strange sight” for a young boy. Never did they extend much more than a few plane lengths before dissipating-nothing like what are claimed to be contrails today. Occasionally such a contrail can still be observed, especially on a clear cloudless day. It is this cloudless day thing that I have found to be “different” today than what I remember from not too many years ago.
What should be bright blue skies aren’t. Yea, looking straight up, it’s pretty blue (not the brilliant deep blue of years ago), but look to the horizon in any direction and it’s gray/white. Glance towards the sun, and the sky is white. In fact there have been days recently when I could almost look directly at the sun as if through a strong filter. This is not what I remember seeing in years past. You might say it’s smog, but since I live in a rural setting many miles (hundreds) from any major urban area, I don’t think so. I remember a couple of years ago when I first noticed the horizon haze, thinking I was seeing smoke, and called the country dispatch number to see if there was a brush fire reported in the area–nope, no fire that particular day. Now, I’m not claiming any thing–just reporting what my old eyes are seeing, and the air around me today is not the same as it use to be. Would be interesting to collect a quart jar of it and have it analyzed if I knew how to do that.
With all sincerity, I suggest you look into cataract surgery.
You might have a point, there
I have the same experiences.
Symptoms became more pronounced over the last 8 years.
Cataract surgery now booked for June.
One of the best things I ever had done, though I now need a pair of ‘cheaters’ for close-up work.
Leaving out lots of details, my result from cataract surgery was like going to Oz (b/w vs color). Its hard to explain how profound it is to suddenly see better than you ever remember at 64yoa. I hope you have the same experience. (speaking to jcvstone and mr – started my reply at the wrong place)
jvestone:
Your observations have an explanation.
The current cause of our greyer skies is increased SO2 aerosol pollution from China and India from the proliferation of their coal-fired power plants.
Here is a current image of the global SO2 aerosol pollution.
According to my pilot friend flying his 747 from Amsterdam, up to the 1960s, he could see the pollution domes of each East Coast city. After that, those domes merged into a wall.
That has nothing to do with CO2, which is an absolutely essential ingredient for growing all green flora which supports abundant fauna, and increases crop yields to feed 8 billion people.
Jvc, there is such a vast difference in tech between the 40’s and now. A 777’s engines are putting out about 175,000 horsepower as it climbs to altitude, whereas a DC-3 had three 1200 HP engines. The service altitude of a DC-3 was 23,000 ft, and the service altitude of a 777 is 38,000 feet. So, much more proclivity to form contrails and at elevations where they can be seen from further away.
New Gas Pipeline Direly Needed in New England
Most New England states have gone absolutely apeshit about environmental and other issues.
Rational thinking by independent STEM professionals is replaced with inane slogans by brainwashed nincompoops with signs at gatherings, as duly reported, ad nauseam, by the government-subsidized Corporate Media.
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No state can make laws that reach beyond its borders to affect other states, countries, people, companies.
Every state attorney knows this. Every law student knows this.
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Section 401 of the Clean Water Act (CWA) has a provision that allows states to block federally approved projects, if they do not meet local environmental standards.
That provision likely would be declared unconstitutional by a Republican-leaning Supreme Court.
Trump has declared a National Energy Emergency
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New England has needed a new gas pipeline from Pennsylvania to New England, already for about 20 years.
States trying to stop it may be in violation of interstate commerce laws
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The gas pipeline is direly needed to save the near-zero/real-growth New England economy from brown-outs/black-outs in winter.
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It is highly likely, New England will have much higher electricity prices, c/kWh, due to increased, weather-dependent, grid-disturbing, environmentally destructive, highly subsidized, wind and solar systems on the grid, and increased super-expensive, highly subsidized, short-life, battery systems to counteract the ups and downs of wind/solar outputs, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365
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By now, it should be abundantly obvious, no additional offshore windmills will be built. for at least the next 10 years, if Vance becomes President after Trump.
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New England is one of the worst areas for onshore wind and solar.
In the US, the worst area for solar is in cloudy/rainy/foggy Washington State area
In the US, the worst area for wind is in the South
This has been known for at least 4 decades by states and the federal government.
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HIGH COST/kWh OF W/S SYSTEMS FOISTED ONTO A BRAINWASHED PUBLIC
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-cost-kwh-of-w-s-systems-foisted-onto-a-brainwashed-public
One can argue pretty convincingly that over the past generation inability to access a nat gas alternative to coal led to the closure of many pulp mills in Maine.
Deficit Spending, Debt and Interest
Deficit spending and printing Treasury bonds to “paper” the deficit is inflationary, because that “out-of-thin-air money” comes with an interest rate and a debt.
Right now, the interest on that debt is more than ONE $TRILLION PER YEAR.
That interest is also “paid for” with printing Treasury bonds to “paper” the interest.
On and on it goes, whistling past the graveyard, stretching the rubber band.
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Very often, many of our wealth/job-sucking trading “partners” use the money of their trade surpluses to 1) buy Treasury bonds, or to 2) buy US companies, or to 3) invest in their own export industries to increase exports, or 4) whatever.
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A Part of the Rip-Off
They charge high prices for auto parts sent to Mexico, then assemble these “expensive” parts in their Mexico assembly plants, then ship whole cars to their dealerships into the US, DUTY FREE.
That way minimal tax is paid on near-zero profits reported to the IRS in the US, maximum profits are reported in home countries, and maximum taxes are paid on these profits to home governments.
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All that has nothing to do with “quantitative easing”, which involves the Federal Reserve declaring it has money which it loans to banks and other financial entities that over-extended themselves on issuing dubious loans, etc.
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When I studied finance about 6 decades ago, some sanity still prevailed, more or less.
To-day, the US is in very deep debt do-do, and the rest of the world aims to keep the US in its do-do, while professing “to be helpful”.
The corrective medicine may require a long-term, induced coma until the patient finally tries to rise from the ashes.
If AI robots eliminate the need for human labor and give a small group of people massive armies of super-soldiers, I think all those trillions of dollars will become meaningless abstractions.
Farmland bought up by robot factory owners and then operated by robots will drive human farmers to bankruptcy. Nobody will have a job, so they will be unable to pay the mortgage. If you own your home, you eventually run out of savings to pay for food or medical services and you have to sell your property to the robot factory owners who own the farms and the hospitals that are run by robots as well. Robot police and soldiers will prevent any uprising.
To ensure an orderly liquidation of the excess population, I suppose the first phase involves giving everyone a decent living doing nothing. (‘You will own nothing and be happy’)
Then gradually enforcing ideological conformity on pain of losing privileges and barely getting by. Maybe casting you into chaotic violent neighborhoods. Eventually to stay in the comfortable neighborhoods you must have at most one child. Then it will only be for the childless and the sterile.
At the point where it is obvious to everyone that the carbon they want to eliminate is you, it will be too late. Step out of line and an AI robot takes hold of you and gives you a lethal injection and carries away your carcass. Clearly it wouldn’t reach that point overnight, But who can deny that many of these things are already present in embryonic form?
You will own nothing, and be happy, will be the mantra on in implanted chip obtained at birth, as required by law.
If you had a thousand cockroaches in your house, would you implant them each with a chip and provide sugar water?
What is the point of operating robot farms if nobody has a job and therefore don’t have the money to buy food? Land will decrease in value if no one wants to farm it. There only needs to be enough land cultivated to feed those living behind fences and gates. For that matter, what good will money be if there is no exchange of good and services? Perhaps the model of an antebellum plantation that produced everything needed by the owner and her family, with slaves replaced by robots, with feral humans living off the land outside the gated communities is the dystopian future that robotics will bring us.
NET ZERO = CANADIAN CARNEY CARNAGE
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Mark Carney and the Liberal Party have “set a mandatory target that all new light-duty cars and passenger trucks sales be zero-emissions by 2035, accelerating Canada’s target by 5 years.”
This is an excerpt from the Liberal Party’s website:
Zero Emissions Vehicles | Liberal Party of Canada
NET ZERO policies have destroyed the European economies, to near-zero, real-growth of GDP and stagnant real wages
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Mark Carney was Chair of the UN’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero and was very involved in promoting the WEF’s globalist agenda, including net zero.
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It is reasonable to assume, as Governor of the Bank of England, he would have encouraged British politicians and financial institutions to support such policies.
With economic ‘carnage’, the breakup of Canada will become a reality.
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Already, there is a credible separatist movement in Alberta under Jeffrey Rath.
How will Canada survive without Alberta’s annual transfer payment of $70 billion?
Albertans will thrive without EVs and need NO income tax.
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Trump should refuse to do any business with Canada, unless it adopts:
FREE ENTERPRISE
THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH
THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS
Germany, the UK, France, etc., are in Chaotic De-growth Mode
Their Euro elites are forcing populations to put up with, and pay for, tens of millions of unvetted walks-ins, who make minimal contributions, cause maximal pain, crime and chaos, all while sucking from the government tit.
Spending more on defense and Net-Zero green stuff, will be accelerating de-growth
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The woke elites in Europe and the US are pre-maturely closing, already-paid-for, in-good-working-order, nuclear plants.
The woke elites have banned 1) oil and gas fracking projects, 2) gas/oil pipelines, 3) gas/oil storage systems near power plants, and 4) new energy exploration projects, as part of “leaving it in the ground”
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The US should not bail out Europe by exporting its coal, oil and LNG.
The US should use them to make more products and services for domestic use and exports.
That way the US would reduce imports and increase exports, which would rapidly decrease our decades of wealth/job-sucking trade deficits, and would employ tens of millions of additional US workers, which would strengthen families and communities.
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The very important results of DOGE are not reported by the leftist, USAID-subsidized, Corporate US Media, but the criticisms of DOGE are reported 24/7/365.
The people in New England, the US and Europe are permanently kept in the dark, already for at least 5 decades, or more.
The Social-Media, by gaining eyeballs, is quickly ending the Corporate-Media monopoly, which is losing eyeballs.
But the Euro elites are hell-bent to put social media in straight-jackets ASAP, because they provide a public forum for free speech
What’s going on at Mauna Loa? Every month I check the Mauna Loa web site for updates on both CO² and solar activity. The data are usually updated by the 5th or 6th of the month. But the last couple of months, it’s been really slow. Trump budget cuts or something else?
There are no cases if you don’t test 😉
Spring Break and March Madness and baseball season
Folks at that hight suffer from DEI insanity.
Why be concerned with CO2, an absolutely vital, life-giving ingredient for ALL plant life?
That facility should be closed down, due to it being irrelevant.
The IPCC has dubbed CO2 as having magical global warming power, based on its own “science”
The IPCC claims, CO2 acts as Climate Control Knob, that eventually will cause runaway Climate Change, if we continue using fossil fuels.
Governments proclaimed, Go Wind and Solar, Go ENERGIEWENDE, go Net zero by 2050, etc., and provided oodles of subsidies, and rules and regulations, and mandates, and prohibitions to make it happen.
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MAGA and burn, baby, burn, may lead to a slightly greater CO2 ppm in atmosphere, which is an absolutely essential gas/ingredient for creating: 1) increased green flora to support abundant fauna all over the world, and 2) increased crop yields to feed 8 billion people. What is not to like?
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The slogan Net-zero by 2050 to-reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact, to increase command/control by governments, and enable the moneyed elites to get richer, at the expense of all others, by using the foghorn of the government-subsidized/controlled Corporate Media to spread scare-mongering slogans and brainwash people.
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But, at about 30% annual W/S on the grid, various costs increase exponentially.
The weather-dependent, variable/intermittent W/S output, often too-little and often too-much output, creates operational difficulties that become increasingly more challenging and increasingly more costly/kWh to counteract, as proven by the UK and California for the past 5 years, and Germany for the past 10 years.
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All three have “achieved” near-zero, real- growth GDPs, the highest electricity prices/kWh, and stagnant real wages for almost all people, while further enriching the elites who live in the poshest places.
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Their angry, over-taxed, over-regulated native populations are further burdened by the elites bringing in tens of millions of uninvited, unvetted, poor, uneducated, inexperienced folks from all over; a chaotic, culture-clashing burden the native populations never voted for.
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All that W/S money uglified the countryside, killed fisheries, tourism, viewsheds, etc.
But the climate is not any different than 30 years ago, even though, atmosphere CO2 increased from 280 ppm in 1850 to 420 ppm in 2025, 50% in 175 years.
During that time, world surface temps increased by about 1.5 C, only about 0.5 C can be attributed to CO2, with the rest from:
1) Long-term cycles, such as coming out of the Little Ice Age,
2) Earth surface changes, due to increased agriculture, deforestation, especially in the Tropics, etc.
3) Urban heat islands, such as about 700 miles from north of Portland, Maine, to south of Norfolk, Virginia, forested in 1850, now covered with heat-absorbing human detritus. Japan, China, India, Europe, etc., have similar heat islands
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BTW, the 1850 surface temp measurements were only in a few locations and mostly inaccurate, +/- 0.5 C.
The 1979-to-present temp measurements (46 years) cover most of the earth surface and are more accurate, +/- 0.25 C, due to NASA satellites.
Any graphs should show these accuracy bands.
The wiggles in below image are due to plants rotting late in the year, emitting CO2, plants growing early in the year, consuming CO2, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere.
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/about.html
You might be interested in –
“From urban to national heat island: The effect of anthropogenic heat output on climate change in high population industrial countries.”
The hypothesis seems reasonable.
Go To NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory for the latest data on the concentrations of CO2, CH4, SF6, etc in the air.
Story tip
https://www.sooeveningnews.com/story/news/regional/2025/04/09/waters-of-2-great-lakes-not-stratifying-in-winter-anymore-why/83014232007/#:~:text=The%20Great%20Lakes%20stratify%20in,the%20temperature%20is%20cold%20enough.
climate change is to blame.