1912 Exceptionally wet and stormy August—wettest August on record in England & Wales 1884 Severe winter storm in January, but August that year also saw unsettled conditions 1833 Hot summer with violent thunderstorms reported in southern England 1782 Reports of gales and flooding in late summer, possibly August 1703 The Great Storm (November), but summer that year was also notably stormy
Weather is always worserer when you record every billionth of a degree and every unicorn fart
What name is given to this thunderstorm in other European countries? Do they allow the UK to name all the thunderstorms for them, or do they give them different names when they enter their territory? Are there any European nations that do not name thunderstorms?
That’s an interesting question. As far as I can tell, there are three bureaux involved:
“29th August 2024: Met Éireann, along with the National Weather Services of the UK (Met Office) and the Netherlands (KNMI), has released the list of new storm names for the 2024/2025 storm season, which starts on Sunday 1st September. Each of the three meteorological services has contributed seven names to this season’s list. “ https://www.met.ie/met-eireann-releases-storm-names-for-the-2024-25-season
This caught my eye…
UK Met Office Head of Situational Awareness Will Lang
The EPA is now accepting comments on the proposed rule to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding and its regulatory application for vehicles.
Here is the opening summary from the main document (emphasis mine):
“ACTION:
Proposed rule.
SUMMARY:
In this action, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to repeal all greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty vehicles and engines to effectuate the best reading of Clean Air Act (CAA) section 202(a). We propose that CAA section 202(a) does not authorize the EPA to prescribe emission standards to address global climate change concerns and, on that basis, propose to rescind the Administrator’s prior findings in 2009 that GHG emissions from new motor vehicles and engines contribute to air pollution which may endanger public health or welfare. We further propose, in the alternative, to rescind the Administrator’s prior findings in 2009 because the EPA unreasonably analyzed the scientific record and because developments cast significant doubt on the reliability of the findings. Lastly, we propose to repeal all GHG emission standards on the alternative bases that no requisite technology for vehicle and engine emission control can address the global climate change concerns identified in the findings without risking greater harms to public health and welfare.”
I am inclined to put together a comment supporting the underlined element of the proposed action.. I’ll have to think about that some more, as to how to best make that point.
Let me chime in with a critique of the entire structure of “climate change science” as it exists. (I would appreciate any evidence of my error.)
First, if one sets out to study climate change, I would expect to encounter discussions of the descriptors that make one local climate different from another, things like daily and seasonal temperature range, seasonal variations in humidity, cloudiness, precipitation, wind direction and strength, etc. Instead I find only thermometer readings, and not the variety of thermometer readings across the earth, but only their “average”, or, even more ridiculous, the difference between two such calculations given with an implied accuracy of 0.01K. We’ve all heard the aphorism “When the only tool you have is a hammer …” It seems that the only tool of “climate change science” is the thermometer.
To the contrary, all the descriptors of climate relate to how energy in various forms affects a certain locale. This is reasonable because, after all, what we should be studying is the transport of energy from the sun, which arrives primarily on the sunlit tropics, is transported, primarily by the atmosphere (and oceans), across the earth’s surface, and then is ejected, on balance, to space. Thermometer readings are inadequate for this purpose. For example, each day the earth evaporates an amount of water equivalent to the entire weight of CO2 in the atmosphere )10^12 tonnes) absorbing energy, per gram, that would raise the temperature of a kilogram of CO2 1K, and does it without changing the air’s thermometer reading at all. This energy is then transported to higher altitudes where, by condensation, it is ejected to space. Again, without changing a thermometer reading. Against this enormous energy transport background, the energy involved in changing the atmospheric “average thermometer reading” by a fraction of a degree per decade is trivial. Lost in the noise! Absolutely unimportant!
A climate is much more than the events of weather. Go to to Wikipedia and look up the “Köppen-Geiger Climate Classification System. The climate of a region is determined by latitude and longitude, geography, geology, surface waters, flora and fauna.
Wldimir Köppen (1846-1940) and Rudolf Geiger (1894-1981) were the original climate scientists.
A climate is much more than the events of weather.
Here’s the IPCC –
Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the average weather, or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period for averaging these variables is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization.
Luckily, there is a “broad sense”, and no doubt a “slippery sense”, and a “non-sense” description of climate.
Even the Köppen-Geiger Climate Classification System is practically useless. What is the use? Who cares? I might be a trifle cynical, but just arbitrarily sorting things into categories is pointless, if there is no purpose.
The atmosphere is chaotic. It is impossible to predict future states with any more skill than a 12 year old – who can easily “predict” that the Sun will rise tomorrow, that summer is hotter than winter, and so on.
If people believe otherwise, good for them. I won’t willingly pay for them to follow their dreams.
The IPCC definition of climate is incomplete. The IPCC is a political organization whose objective is to supply the justifications for the UN to distribute, via the UNFCCC and the UN COP, funds from the rich donor countries to poor countries to help them cope them with global warming and climate change. The poor countries are the former colonies of the Europeans who plundered the colonies. For them, this is pay back time.
There is nothing wrong classification systems because that is what curious scientists do. Biologists classify flora and fauna. Geologist classify rock and minerals. We organic chemists classify organic compounds into classes such as alkanes, alkenes, alkynes, ethers alcohols, acids, etc.
To continue where I left off, it seems that the thermometer-readers have difficulty representing “cloud effects” in their “climate” models. Let’s examine the process of cloud formation and function to help them out. Starting as the newly-formed volume of water vapor, roughly half the density (H2O) of air (N2,O2), is being lifted by the denser, drier air that displaces it. Accordingly, it both cools and expands until it reaches conditions (P,T) that support condensation (the dew point). These conditions must be such that the energy released by condensation is immediately radiated away without a raise in temperature, as that would curtail condensation. Likewise, a lowering of temperature would increase condensation. This delicate balance is reinforced by the radiation (T^4) equation. Once again, the thermometer is not adequate to measure this energy flow. The buildup of condensate into a cloud will continue as long as conditions permit, but clouds have another function to perform. In daylight they are involved in receiving and rebounding (reflecting) energy (sunlight) of various wavelengths, while at night the radiation comes from below. An imbalance in this energy process could either stop or speed up condensation.
To add just a bit more complexity to the problem, the condensation of just a few grams of water means the almost instantaneous reduction of a fairly large volume of gas to essentially a point (drop). I think the resulting effect on surrounding gas could fairly be called turbulence. while nature abhors disequilibrium, sometimes these processes create significant energy imbalances- think 500 mile long lightening bolts! Of course, the same thing happens in reverse but at higher P & T with evaporation at the earth’s surface.
Okay, there you have it, boys and girls, a concise physical description of the cloud process. All you need do is translate it to math. Try to do it relying only on thermometer readings, if you please.
Good work, hiskorr.
Many processes on earth and in the atmosphere can and do produce heat. So far, great attention has been given to radiative physics showing that water vapour and CO2 can interact with radiation to make heat, but only a comparatively tiny corpus of research has followed through with “where does the heat go?”
In the absence of controlled experiments because there is no “Earth B”, the door remains open to snake oil salesmen who refuse to accept that nobody knows if this radiative energy causes global warming, or cooling, or nothing of consequence because the comparative importance of heat dissipation factors is not yet known with any confidence.
Please work to halt those who chant that “greenhouse gas heating done it” while not knowing where it went eventually.
That half-baked mechanism requires that “natural variation” is downplayed because it might be a better alternative.
Come on, you research scientists, if you accept that our atmosphere has warmed by 1.5C or whatever as recovery after a little ice age, please answer this: What mechanism caused this alleged warming after the ice age? I have never seen a convincing mechanism. Likewise, no clue as to why we had a little ice age, though the current research by people like Richard Willoughby, Willis Eschenbach, Willy Soon and others dealing with convective overturning, clouds, ice etc is rather exciting. Geoff S
no requisite technology for vehicle and engine emission control can address the global climate change concerns identified in the findings without risking greater harms to public health and welfare
Yes, this is true. And its also true that moving to EVs in the US and UK will have no effect whatever on the global climate.
Should we be reducing vehicle emissions in cities? Yes, and there has been a lot of progress in that. Should we be making cities more friendly to people living, walking and cycling than they currently are with cars, where traffic management seems only to have one aim, to allow more cars to drive through residential streets as fast as possible, regardless of the effects on quality of life of people living there? Yes, proper traffic engineering on the Dutch and Danish models. The Dutch record on reducing traffic deaths, and in particular reducing child traffic deaths, shows what can be done.
But should se be trying to do any of this by legislating to oblige everyone to use EVs? Almost certainly not. The sole result is likely to be making cars unaffordable and less usable, hence simply reduce car ownership, without attending to the real problem, the real causes, and the best proven solutions.
Thanks for this. Note that (1) EPA was wrong at the time and (2) the science now indicates there is no threat are two very different arguments. I prefer (2).
At the MLO in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in dry air is currently 429 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has mass of 1.29 kg and contains a mere 0.84 g of CO2 STP. This minor trace amount of CO2 in air can have no effect on weather and climate. Now consider the following:
In air at 70° F and 70% RH , the concentration of H2O is 14,780 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has a mass of 1.20 kg, and contains 11.9 g of H2O and 0.78 g of CO2. To the first approximation and and all things being equal, the amount of the greenhouse effect (GHE) for H2O is by:
GHE = moles H2O/moles H2O+moles CO2 = 0.66/0.66 +0.02 = 0.97 or 97 %
This calculation assumes that a molecule of H2O and molecule of CO2 each absorbed about the same amount of out-going long wavelength IR light. Actually H2O absorbs more IR light than CO2. H2O is dominate greenhouse gas by far
and there is no need to be concerned with emission of CO2 from the use of fossil fuels.
This comment was sent to the EPA and the Federal Register
Harold,
For tiny amounts of atmospheric CO2, 400 ppm or so, each molecule has to do a lot of work and must turn over rapidly to be ready for its next cycle of absorption/emission.
Do you have a number that is the highest level of energy that a CO2 molecule can be raised to? Can you then combine that energy capacity with a turnover time to estimate a maximum allowed flux or flow of energy?
When undergrads our age studied these concepts atomic quantum processes were taught because molecular examples were still being researched and becoming understood, so not taught much. I confess that my flux query might be naive or flat wrong. Geoff S
The future of net zero in the UK is now becoming clear. It will eventually lead to debt default and a visit from the IMF. But the causal chain is not what you might expect. Its not that the spend on net zero will become unaffordable and lead to default, huge though those expenses are.
What is in the process of happening is that the costs of net zero are largely disguised and spread throughout the economy in the form of higher energy prices. This in turn leads to lowered economic activity, lower growth, lower incomes.
This leads to less tax receipts.
But the problem the government has is that its financial supporters, the unions, are expecting both every more wage increases and legislation which makes it easier to strike and harder to lay people off. The left of the Labour Party is also demanding keeping the existing welfare payments and adding to them.
There are more and more tax increases, but they don’t really solve the problem, because the country is now at the point of tax take and indebtedness where when you increase taxes you don’t get anything like the increase in tax receipts that you had expected. The classic instance is imposing VAT on private education. People, confronted with all the other tax increases and falls in disposable income just take their children into public schools. They can’t afford the increase in fees. The result is, add up the rise in teacher unemployment and the extra costs in accommodating these students in the state sector, you hardly get any increase in receipts. Applies to a lot of the latest government bright ideas to raise taxes.
This then leads to a situation where current expenses are met out of debt, there not being enough tax revenues to fund them any other way, and most recently some of the interest on the existing debt is being paid out of selling new debt.
Tax employment, as they have done with the National Insurance increases and increased minimum wage, and you get less of it, followed soon afterwards by less taxes from those lost wages.
But underlying all that is the siphoning off of huge amounts of money on the net zero program, which is what makes it impossible to fund the rest of the welfare programs and trade union pork other than out of increased debt, and is on the point of making it impossible to service the debt other than by raising more of it..
So the UK now pays higher interest on its debt than Greece. The IMF people are checking their carry on luggage and getting packed for emergency takeoff. And the elephant in the room which no-one but Reform dares talk about is net zero. Meanwhile, of course, global emissions and the climate go on just as before. They don’t care one way or the other whether the UK goes broke trying to do the impossible on electricity generation.
It seems to be called in Miliband speak ‘leading the world’. But to what?
VAT on school fees was never about revenue. It is motivated by the politics of envy.
And as much as I detest Milliband (see my other post on this thread), “leading the world” on Net Zero had practically unanimous cross-party support when the Tories were in power. The whole political class in this country has the fervour. It is one of the reasons I told a local Tory organiser to burn the whole thing to the ground and start again.
Until this post, I had no idea that England was taxing kids for going to private schools. How can anyone live there? No freedom of speech; can’t carry a gardening tool because it resembles a knife. Maybe Charles the Second needs to go the way of Charles the First, and take the rest of the government with him.
Given the Constitutional Republic nature of U.S. governments, people with assets have been moving from Leftist high-tax States to relatively lower-tax States that also eschew high-spending social welfare scams.
by Niall Ferguson who references another Ferguson – – –
“What I call Ferguson’s Law states that any great power that spends more on debt service than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power. The insight is not mine but originates with the Scottish political theorist Adam Ferguson, whose “Essay on the History of Civil Society” (1767) brilliantly identified the perils of excessive public debt.”
The biggest enemy of the UK is not Russia, but it’s Labor/Tory “leadership”.
Farage would be a welcome, long-overdue change, provided he has control of Parliament and eviscerates the bureaucracy, deports illegals by the millions to where they came from.
MAKE THE UK VIABLE AGAIN
I find the photos of Ed Milliband gurning at us from these pages triggering. Especially the ones in which he seems to be attempting a winsome expression. Please keep them to the necessary minimum; ideally none at all.
Now that matters of global warming have been resolved with the CWG Report, perhaps it’s time to return to basics. Why does the atmosphere grow colder with altitude? This was first asked by Kelvin in 1862. He proposed equilibria in gravitational fields were isentropic, not isothermal and called his model, “Convective Equilibrium” . https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/39422#page/178/mode/1up
Maxwell and Boltzmann were soon to show equilibria remained isothermal even in gravitational fields. Nevertheless, Convective Equilibrium, g/Cp, persists today as the only viable response. Were earth’s atmosphere pure argon, its lapse rate would be 19K/km and independent of density, Cp being a heat capacity per unit weight.
The question here posed, is the adiabatic lapse rate the lapse rate or a lapse rate? Happer and Spencer have opined an atmosphere sans GHGs needs be isothermal. Lev Landau has shown the adiabatic lapse rate defines the necessary condition for the absence of convection. The tropopause is a sharp physical boundary between regions with dissipative and equilibrium lapse rates, not unlike a first-order phase transition. What determines the magnitude of convective energy flux in the troposphere?
Climate models apparently define convection as the difference between radiative theory and reality. CO2 makes a negligible contribution to Cp and thermal gradients. But, should lapse rates be a dissipative function, additional degrees of freedom are available to minimize gradients and global warming. For fluxes of electric currents through wires and fluids through pipes, gradients increase with flux. For entropy fluxes through tropospheres?
Quondam…back to basics….
Equation 5….but such a view will get negative reviews from a number of WUWT commenters.
or we could just say that Boltzman, Maxwell, Loschmidt, even Feynman, ruminated on lapse rate and said an ideal gas atmosphere would be constant temperature. (Well not Loschmidt)
Meteorologists generally invoke convective effects to explain lapse rate rather than get caught up in statistical mechanics of gas molecules in a gravitational field, Lagrangians and all that stuff are hard.
This does not really happen in our own atmosphere, [ . . . ] It is not an isothermal atmosphere.
A column of gas, hotter at one end than the other, cannot be isothermal. The atmospheric lapse rate is the measurement of the rate of change of temperature within an atmospheric column of air.
The lowest temperature of the troposphere is dependent on the vapour pressure of H2O. At 200K the vapour pressure is less than 1Pa. There is not enough water molecules to radiate any more heat. The emissivity of the atmosphere at 200K is so close to zero it is unmeasurable. Hence that is all it can cool. Above the tropopause there are other molecular species including CO2 that tend to heat rather than cool. So the vapour pressure of water defines the tropopause.
Convective instability depends on the atmosphere losing heat at high altitude and gaining heat at low altitude, As long as there is enough water in the atmosphere, it develops convective instability. That requires around 30mm of water column. That level occurs around 287K surface temp over oceans with the current atmospheric mass.
So the tropical atmosphere over 300+K water guarantees convective instability and cyclic instability at 303K ensures a saturated, well mixed column close to convective equilibrium every 4 to 6 days. The instability develops over a few days. I explain in detail how the instability materialises over night following an afternoon convective storm here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/07/17/toward-a-deterministic-model-of-cloud-development-over-ocean-warm-pools/
I now know that convective overshooting is the limiting control on the ocean surface temperature. That occurs when the base of the column below the LFC has more energy than needed to bring the column back into equilibrium after instability.
Convective overshooting takes the column to supersaturated conditions above 14,000m resulting in very fine ice particles that are slow to descend and limit surface sunshine longer than the equilibrium column. It is commonly seen at the onset of cyclic instability and usually observed with tropical storms. It also occurs with tornados but the instability that causes them is geographic rather than an inherent feature of the atmospheric column.
Anyone who talks about “greenhouse gasses” in relationship to Earth’s climate is fundamentally clueless. Solid H2O controls earth’s climate and radiative balance. No where over oceans radiates above the level of freezing. So any emissions from H2O are inevitably coming off ice. Ice dominates the radiative balance whether it is on land, on water or in the atmosphere. Earth is a water planet and solid water dominates the other phases from the perspective of controlling energy in and out.
To show any effect of CO2 would require identifying the process that alters ice nucleation and/or possible enhanced sublimation or persistence of the ice.
That means ice dominates the release of energy to space. We also know that ice prevents around 30% of the available solar EMR from being thermalised.
There is nothing wrong in using the term”greenhouse gasses” but these gasses are not directly involved in the take and release of energy. That is the domain of solid H2O.
The maximum daily average radiating temperature in the Sahara does occasionally get above 273K. In July this year some locations had a daily average effective radiating temperature of 279K so a little above freezing. But most of the radiation is still coming off ice.
And the Sahara does not contribute to energy uptake on Earth. It suffers a net loss of energy so contributes to net cooling not heating.
To be accurate I should have stated no atmosphere over oceans radiates above 0C. The oceans are where energy gets stored and some of that stored energy contributes to the release over the Sahara.
Ooooh! A multicoloured completely irrelevant graph, is it?
Irradiance? Looks like something the eminently ignorant and gullible Gavin Schmidt would have on his wall. Probably thinks that adding CO2 to air is responsible for the surface cooling at night!
At least you are not that dim – just confused.
Dick Storm
August 3, 2025 2:47 am
Last week we had a heat wave. This resulted in increased electricity demand to run air conditioners. Duh… To run those air conditioners the U.S. 48 states reached a new peak generation of about 760,000 MW. I took some screenshots of electricity generation by fuel during one of these hot days. Coal, nuclear and gas provided the primary energy for over 77% of the electric generation. In the MISO RTO (MidContinent Independent System Operator) it was 79%. The importance of coal is very much underestimated. My blog post here: Energy is the Economy and Electricity is the Life-Blood of western civilization Coal Can Make America’s Electricity Supply Great Again https://dickstormprobizblog.org/2025/07/30/energy-is-the-economy-electricity-is-the-life-blood-of-western-civilization-coal-can-make-americas-electricity-supply-great-again/
Energy racism in condemning coal because it is black and brown rather than white.
I am not into inclusion in the case of energy. The only one that should be connected to a grid is dispatchable generation. As far as I know, Texas, is the only large region that has legislated that requirement. Their exclusion of batteries is inspired as well as obvious.
Snowfalls aren’t “rare” on the New England Tablelands.
Not an every year occurrence by any means, but a dusting of snow in short bursts every few years is nothing unusual for that locality.
Isn’t there snow in the Blue Mountains where people go skiing in winter?
strativarius
August 3, 2025 4:29 am
The UK Civil Service – Home Office: In the office 2 days a week…
Guido Fawkes: The Home Office helpfully put out a memo in its Marsham Street building offering hard-pressed civil servants the chance to request snacks and drinks for the vending machines. It’s a mixed response:
It’s genuine. People leak all kinds of stuff Guido’s way.
Bruce Cobb
August 3, 2025 5:04 am
17 years ago, I believed that manmade global warming was happening. It was all I heard about on the news, and there was even a movie about it (which I never saw), called An Inconvenient Truth. I actually wasn’t even aware of any arguments against it, other than an occasional letter in a local paper by someone I considered a climate crank. In the Fall of 2008, I decided that it should be easy enough to refute what the guy was saying. So I went online, and at first I was only looking for the arguments for, but kept noticing some against. I began to realize that there was an actual debate, and even a battle going on I wasn’t even aware of before. I never wrote that letter, because I began to see that it was possible he was right, at least about some things. We actually met a couple months or so later, and he gave me my first Skeptic book. I’m not sure which one now, but possibly Red Hot Lies by Christopher Horner. In my online search, I noticed that the Skeptic side tended to be rational, and I found the science discussions fascinating, whereas the Warmist side, as in RealClimate and others seemed more interested in shouting at anyone with the slightest doubts or questions. What were they hiding? I settled on Sunsettommy’s blog because of the scientific discussions about the effects of oceans, the sun, and clouds. He also posted articles from other sites, including WUWT. I liked the articles there and the discussions were lively, and I eventually migrated to WUWT. Notice that my interest in the subject was pure, not political. In fact, I was pretty much a tried and true Democrat then, so if anything, I had a motive to simply discount what the Skeptics were saying. But what they were saying actually made a lot of sense, and I saw that more and more. My next Skeptic book, I believe, was Unstoppable (Every 1,500 Years) Global Warming by Singer and Avery, with Part 1 being discussions of paleoclimate, and previous warm and cool periods, with connections to the sun, and Part 2.a brutal take-down of the claims of the Alarmists, particularly about models and the “Consensus” claim. There was a whole lotta fraud going on in the Warmhouse.
With the seeming inevitable collapse of the Climate Industrial Complex, it’s nice to look back sometimes. It’s been a long and bumpy ride. .
I never could fathom the idea that puny humans could destroy all life on the planet. It makes me extremely suspicious of all such claims. The end of snow, of Arctic ice, of polar bears and penguins? Pull the other one! It doesn’t help their cause that every one of their solutions requires massive government expansion beyond the realm of actual physical and fiscal possibility (like replacing all ICE cars with EVs, or rewiring the entire electrical grid, by 2035/2040/2050).
When I first heard of coral bleaching, I looked up corals, and they’ve been around for 200 million plus years. This includes the huge rise in sea level (400 feet?) just 10-15,000 years ago. We puny humans couldn’t kill them all if we tried. CO2 level was 10-15 times as high in the dino age; rising to 450 from 280 isn’t going to tip us into Venus, and the idea that the tipping point could be predicted so accurately (12/10/8/6 years it must be now) is ludicrous.
I don’t have to know squat about climate science to detect such bullshit.
Humans can have no effect on climate because the vast majority live poverty. They consume little and produce little stuff. 71% of the earth is covered with oceans. Humans can no effect on this massive amount of water.
Humans can effect local climate due to the urban island heat effect.
I think it is only one Trump away from rearing its ugly head. The scam is alive and well in Australia. There is so much money invested in “renewables” that rely on mandated theft that it cannot be let fade away. The government wealth fund, for one example, would need to write down billions if “renewables” become stranded assets.
Please go to the late John Daly’s website “Still Waiting For Greenhouse” available at: http://www.john-daly.com. From the home page, page down to the end and click on
“Station Temperature Data”. On the “World Map” click on a region or country to the access temperature data from the weather stations located there. John Daly found over 200 weather stations that showed no warming up to 2002. See next reply.
Shown in the chart is a plot of average annual temperature in Adelaide, which shows a cooling from 1857 to 1999. In 1857 concentration of CO2 in Oz was probably 280 ppmv
(0.55 g CO2/cu. m.) and by 1999 it had increased to ca 300 ppmv (0.59 g CO2/cu. m.) but there was no warming. Instead there was cooling. This chart falsify the hypothesis that the increasing concentration of CO2 in air causes an increase in air temperature. be sure to check all the charts for Oz.
PS: If you click on the chart, it will expand and become clear. Click on the “X” in the circle to return to comment text.
At John Daly’s website in the Station Temperature Data section after you have selected a station chart for viewing, use the back arrow to restore the list of the stations.
The meteorolosists did not issue wind drought warnings that could have averted the disastrous attempt to transition to wind and solar power. Trillions of dollars have been spent around the world rolling out wind and solar infrastructure, and in return, we have more expensive and less reliable power with catastrophic environmental impacts.
The elephant in the net zero room is the wind droughts or dunkelflautes that Australian investigators documented over a decade ago.
When the voters find out about the wind drought problem, that is, when journalists and commentators tell them, the push for net zero could collapse like a punctured balloon.
Wind droughts render the wind and solar power system unfit for purpose in a modern industrial civilisation. Have a look at Germany and Britain. Heroic efforts and buckets of money are being applied to prop up the grids that are contaminated by intermittent energy but it will not work, any more than making steam engines more efficient will enable them to drive a rocket to the moon.
The two major threats to the power supply are windless nights (Texas Feb 2021) and grids with no inertia that collapse during the day due to fluctuations in the solar and wind input (Spain.) The solution in each case is to stop the subsidies and mandates for solar and wind, and get them off the grid.
Rafe starts with: The meteorolosists did not issue wind drought warnings …
I asked DuckDuckGo this question: When was the first weather block recognized?
Search Assist answered: The concept of weather blocks, particularly blocking highs, has been studied for many years, but specific recognition of these patterns in meteorology began to take shape in the mid-20th century. The term “blocking high” and its implications were notably discussed in meteorological literature around the 1950s. [Ref: Wikipedia]
I’ll leave it to others to find out, further, what the weather folks knew and when.
Thanks John, why didn’t I think of searching that question to get clear on the chronology!
I appreciate that blocking highs have been known for some time among meteorologists, the question is, how come that knowledge didn’t get to the public, politicians and policymakers when subsidised and mandated RE started to drive coal out of the grid?
The First Assessment Report from the IPCC recommended a survey of the wind resources of the world with a view to mass wind power and the second assessment report provided a sketchy commentary without any reference to prolonged low wind periods that would be fatal for grids loaded with wind power.
I spoke to some retired meteorologists and they were somewhat defensive, saying that the authorities didn’t seem to be interested in low wind periods. I think they could have tried harder to warn the public
And I think that’s true, at least here in the United States. I think windmills and industrial solar are in the rearview mirror now, with Trump in charge, and the Artificial Intelligence buildup, requiring lots of conventional electricity generation.
A new Era has begun.
How long before the rest of the Western World sees the error of their ways with regard to windmills and industrial solar and no evidence of harm from CO2?
The US selling LNG to Europe is a huge mistake.
Let them go wind/solar until failures like Spain become commonplace.
Only then will they sing the tune of sanity.
I just got through listening to my home State U.S. Senator, Markwayne Mullin, on Fox News Channel, and the way he is talking, the U.S. Senate is going to get some rule changes the next time the Senate meets, to counter the obstructionism of Senate Democrats, who are doing all they can to block President Trump’s nominees to fill important positions in the government.
The American people voted for Trump and they want his nominees approved so Trump can implement the agenda the People voted for.
Mullin is a good friend with Trump, so if he says the Senate is in for some rule changes, then I would think that’s what is going to happen.
Mullin says the Democrats will scream bloody murder, but Mullin says it is the Democrat unprecedented obstructionism which is the cause of these new actions.
The radical Democrats are doing everything in their power to obstruct Trump and the American people.
The radical Democrats are Domestic Enemies of the United States.
Because I’ve been interested the potential for jail time for the people Tulsi Gabbard is outing currently, I wanted to understand that concept more, so when this excellent video of General Flynn and his jail time showed up in my YouTube suggestions, I watched it. It touches on some of your points Tom, and plenty more. Unless I missed it, climate isn’t even mentioned, but he talks about the people who I believe also own the phony climate crisis and wow, are they vile:
Fred Lotte
August 3, 2025 7:55 am
Story tip at arstechnica _AI in Wyoming may soon use more electricity than state’s human residents_
The article states that an AI data center will start out at 1.8GW and scale up to 10GW.
A coal fired power plant that I knew of, burned about 5000 tons a day with a power output of 600 MW.
That works out to about 0.7 lbs per KWH which was very good for the day. Considering the wiggle room the technology had available for improvement that’s probably even pretty good for today.
10GW of power is 16.7 times the output of that generator.
Presuming the same efficiencies,
5000 x 16.7 = 83,500 tons of coal per day!!!!
Natural gas is about 1070 BTU/cuft.
10,000,000 kilowatts * 24hrs≈ 818,913×10^6 BTU -> 765.34 MILLION cuft/day
The natural gas number doesn’t include thermal efficiency. I don’t know what the typical thermal efficiency of a gas turbine is but using a typical very good heat rate value for a coal fired plant, say 7000BTU/KWh gives:
10,000,000 KW x24 Hr =240,000,000 KWh x 7000BTU/KWh = 1,680,000×10^6 BTU -> 1,570.09 MILLION cuft/day.
I leave it to someone else to count the carbon atoms or figure out how many sq miles of windturbines and batteries would be required.
I seem to recall that the human brain requires the equivalent power of about 20 watts.
That would make the AI center = 10,000,000,000 watts/20 watts per human = 500,000,000 humans. About the population of the UE IIRC.
At that efficiency the heat rate drops to 5687BTU/KWh (3412BTU/KWh x1.667)
The gas usage would drop to 1,365,073 x10^6BTU -> 1,275.58 MILLION cuft/day. Still not going to be delivered thru a residential gas line. Also not likely to do good things to the cost of residential and industry heating.
I’m guessing that the thermal eff calc doesn’t include the auxiliary load of probably less than 5% for the CCGT plant. (I’ve made no adjustment for it.)
IIRC the early CCGT plants suffered from short life of the boiler in the GT gas stream. Is that still the case?
Alan
August 3, 2025 8:05 am
We need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere immediately. I’m tired of mowing my yard. When I finished the other day, like Greta, I could see the CO2 being soaked up and I could hear the grass laughing.
Indeed. Constant weeding, cutting and mowing is a drag. Apart from getting rid of nettles and brambles I am now developing the idea of rewilding. I know it’s a Green thing but my recent convertion is so much easier to maintain.
Some ‘weeds’ are delightfully colourful..
This year, I have converted entirely to mowing paths with my DR Mower. There are many many delightful flowering “weeds” some of which are 5 feet and taller. The paths are cool, and it cuts the mowing time way down. The rest of the property out back is wild, but I have built paths through it, replete with bridges. So it’s sort of an oasis. But yeah, we’re “deniers” so that makes us “anti-environment”. SMH.
STORY TIP
Something to Watch. The National Hurricane Center is aware of a Low Pressure cell landward of the African coast (20°N, 14°W). On Tuesday, Ventusky thinks it will be at 10°N, 31°W. The NHC gives it a 40% chance of developing into something by the end of the week.
Named storm Dexter is a different thing, causing storminess along the USA’s southeast coast.
Normally [politically] it’s silly season and the Met Office wants in…
Do not open doors unnecessarily during Storm Floris, Met Office warns
Forecasters issue safety advice for homes and gardens
The Met Office has warned people to only open doors where “needed” during Storm Floris…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/02/storm-floris-do-not-open-doors-needlessly-met-office-warns/
Bonkers and infantile.
1912 Exceptionally wet and stormy August—wettest August on record in England & Wales
1884 Severe winter storm in January, but August that year also saw unsettled conditions
1833 Hot summer with violent thunderstorms reported in southern England
1782 Reports of gales and flooding in late summer, possibly August
1703 The Great Storm (November), but summer that year was also notably stormy
Weather is always worserer when you record every billionth of a degree and every unicorn fart
Michael Fish said: “Don’t worry” in 1987
Now they want us hiding under a table.
In fairness, like John Kettley, Michael was just a weatherman.
You can’t fault Fish’s sentiment.
not at all
Soon the weather graphs will come with sound effects, to create a more complete scare-mongering experience
And bright flash of lightning and howling winds.
People screaming
Or propaganda photos of children with severe illnesses said to be starved by military combatants. Disgusting. Geoff S
https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/media/starving-for-truth-out-of-gaza
“Storm Floris”
What name is given to this thunderstorm in other European countries? Do they allow the UK to name all the thunderstorms for them, or do they give them different names when they enter their territory? Are there any European nations that do not name thunderstorms?
That’s an interesting question. As far as I can tell, there are three bureaux involved:
“29th August 2024: Met Éireann, along with the National Weather Services of the UK (Met Office) and the Netherlands (KNMI), has released the list of new storm names for the 2024/2025 storm season, which starts on Sunday 1st September.
Each of the three meteorological services has contributed seven names to this season’s list. “
https://www.met.ie/met-eireann-releases-storm-names-for-the-2024-25-season
This caught my eye…
UK Met Office Head of Situational Awareness Will Lang
Beware of Breeze Brenda!
Indeed, or even light breeze Brian.
Have any been named with Muslim names? Storm Mohamed?
Not yet…
soon, I’m sure 🙂
I disagree, JZ. They don’t want to risk insulting the wrong people.
We had a YUGE thunderstorm yesterday in central Oregon. My dog got scared.
The EPA is now accepting comments on the proposed rule to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding and its regulatory application for vehicles.
Here is the opening summary from the main document (emphasis mine):
“ACTION:
Proposed rule.
SUMMARY:
In this action, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to repeal all greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty vehicles and engines to effectuate the best reading of Clean Air Act (CAA) section 202(a). We propose that CAA section 202(a) does not authorize the EPA to prescribe emission standards to address global climate change concerns and, on that basis, propose to rescind the Administrator’s prior findings in 2009 that GHG emissions from new motor vehicles and engines contribute to air pollution which may endanger public health or welfare. We further propose, in the alternative, to rescind the Administrator’s prior findings in 2009 because the EPA unreasonably analyzed the scientific record and because developments cast significant doubt on the reliability of the findings. Lastly, we propose to repeal all GHG emission standards on the alternative bases that no requisite technology for vehicle and engine emission control can address the global climate change concerns identified in the findings without risking greater harms to public health and welfare.”
I am inclined to put together a comment supporting the underlined element of the proposed action.. I’ll have to think about that some more, as to how to best make that point.
Comments can be submitted through September 15th.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Source:
https://www.regulations.gov/document/EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194-0093
Let me chime in with a critique of the entire structure of “climate change science” as it exists. (I would appreciate any evidence of my error.)
First, if one sets out to study climate change, I would expect to encounter discussions of the descriptors that make one local climate different from another, things like daily and seasonal temperature range, seasonal variations in humidity, cloudiness, precipitation, wind direction and strength, etc. Instead I find only thermometer readings, and not the variety of thermometer readings across the earth, but only their “average”, or, even more ridiculous, the difference between two such calculations given with an implied accuracy of 0.01K. We’ve all heard the aphorism “When the only tool you have is a hammer …” It seems that the only tool of “climate change science” is the thermometer.
To the contrary, all the descriptors of climate relate to how energy in various forms affects a certain locale. This is reasonable because, after all, what we should be studying is the transport of energy from the sun, which arrives primarily on the sunlit tropics, is transported, primarily by the atmosphere (and oceans), across the earth’s surface, and then is ejected, on balance, to space. Thermometer readings are inadequate for this purpose. For example, each day the earth evaporates an amount of water equivalent to the entire weight of CO2 in the atmosphere )10^12 tonnes) absorbing energy, per gram, that would raise the temperature of a kilogram of CO2 1K, and does it without changing the air’s thermometer reading at all. This energy is then transported to higher altitudes where, by condensation, it is ejected to space. Again, without changing a thermometer reading. Against this enormous energy transport background, the energy involved in changing the atmospheric “average thermometer reading” by a fraction of a degree per decade is trivial. Lost in the noise! Absolutely unimportant!
A climate is much more than the events of weather. Go to to Wikipedia and look up the “Köppen-Geiger Climate Classification System. The climate of a region is determined by latitude and longitude, geography, geology, surface waters, flora and fauna.
Wldimir Köppen (1846-1940) and Rudolf Geiger (1894-1981) were the original climate scientists.
Here’s the IPCC –
Luckily, there is a “broad sense”, and no doubt a “slippery sense”, and a “non-sense” description of climate.
Even the Köppen-Geiger Climate Classification System is practically useless. What is the use? Who cares? I might be a trifle cynical, but just arbitrarily sorting things into categories is pointless, if there is no purpose.
The atmosphere is chaotic. It is impossible to predict future states with any more skill than a 12 year old – who can easily “predict” that the Sun will rise tomorrow, that summer is hotter than winter, and so on.
If people believe otherwise, good for them. I won’t willingly pay for them to follow their dreams.
The IPCC definition of climate is incomplete. The IPCC is a political organization whose objective is to supply the justifications for the UN to distribute, via the UNFCCC and the UN COP, funds from the rich donor countries to poor countries to help them cope them with global warming and climate change. The poor countries are the former colonies of the Europeans who plundered the colonies. For them, this is pay back time.
There is nothing wrong classification systems because that is what curious scientists do. Biologists classify flora and fauna. Geologist classify rock and minerals. We organic chemists classify organic compounds into classes such as alkanes, alkenes, alkynes, ethers alcohols, acids, etc.
You seem to cynical and bitter.
You seem a bit biased. “Organic chemist”? Only because you have arbitrarily classified chemical compounds as “organic” and “non-organic”, I suppose.
Only joking, no offense intended.
Just cynical – and why not? Don’t you support freedom of speech?<g>
To continue where I left off, it seems that the thermometer-readers have difficulty representing “cloud effects” in their “climate” models. Let’s examine the process of cloud formation and function to help them out. Starting as the newly-formed volume of water vapor, roughly half the density (H2O) of air (N2,O2), is being lifted by the denser, drier air that displaces it. Accordingly, it both cools and expands until it reaches conditions (P,T) that support condensation (the dew point). These conditions must be such that the energy released by condensation is immediately radiated away without a raise in temperature, as that would curtail condensation. Likewise, a lowering of temperature would increase condensation. This delicate balance is reinforced by the radiation (T^4) equation. Once again, the thermometer is not adequate to measure this energy flow. The buildup of condensate into a cloud will continue as long as conditions permit, but clouds have another function to perform. In daylight they are involved in receiving and rebounding (reflecting) energy (sunlight) of various wavelengths, while at night the radiation comes from below. An imbalance in this energy process could either stop or speed up condensation.
To add just a bit more complexity to the problem, the condensation of just a few grams of water means the almost instantaneous reduction of a fairly large volume of gas to essentially a point (drop). I think the resulting effect on surrounding gas could fairly be called turbulence. while nature abhors disequilibrium, sometimes these processes create significant energy imbalances- think 500 mile long lightening bolts! Of course, the same thing happens in reverse but at higher P & T with evaporation at the earth’s surface.
Okay, there you have it, boys and girls, a concise physical description of the cloud process. All you need do is translate it to math. Try to do it relying only on thermometer readings, if you please.
Maybe add UV and O2 ionisation to the temperature contrubtions.
https://journals.uran.ua/tarp/article/view/266490/262573
Let’s not overwhelm the poor dears with their thermometers!
Good work, hiskorr.
Many processes on earth and in the atmosphere can and do produce heat. So far, great attention has been given to radiative physics showing that water vapour and CO2 can interact with radiation to make heat, but only a comparatively tiny corpus of research has followed through with “where does the heat go?”
In the absence of controlled experiments because there is no “Earth B”, the door remains open to snake oil salesmen who refuse to accept that nobody knows if this radiative energy causes global warming, or cooling, or nothing of consequence because the comparative importance of heat dissipation factors is not yet known with any confidence.
Please work to halt those who chant that “greenhouse gas heating done it” while not knowing where it went eventually.
That half-baked mechanism requires that “natural variation” is downplayed because it might be a better alternative.
Come on, you research scientists, if you accept that our atmosphere has warmed by 1.5C or whatever as recovery after a little ice age, please answer this: What mechanism caused this alleged warming after the ice age? I have never seen a convincing mechanism. Likewise, no clue as to why we had a little ice age, though the current research by people like Richard Willoughby, Willis Eschenbach, Willy Soon and others dealing with convective overturning, clouds, ice etc is rather exciting. Geoff S
no requisite technology for vehicle and engine emission control can address the global climate change concerns identified in the findings without risking greater harms to public health and welfare
Yes, this is true. And its also true that moving to EVs in the US and UK will have no effect whatever on the global climate.
Should we be reducing vehicle emissions in cities? Yes, and there has been a lot of progress in that. Should we be making cities more friendly to people living, walking and cycling than they currently are with cars, where traffic management seems only to have one aim, to allow more cars to drive through residential streets as fast as possible, regardless of the effects on quality of life of people living there? Yes, proper traffic engineering on the Dutch and Danish models. The Dutch record on reducing traffic deaths, and in particular reducing child traffic deaths, shows what can be done.
But should se be trying to do any of this by legislating to oblige everyone to use EVs? Almost certainly not. The sole result is likely to be making cars unaffordable and less usable, hence simply reduce car ownership, without attending to the real problem, the real causes, and the best proven solutions.
Thanks for this. Note that (1) EPA was wrong at the time and (2) the science now indicates there is no threat are two very different arguments. I prefer (2).
“Note that (1) EPA was wrong at the time and (2) the science now indicates there is no threat are two very different arguments.”
Noted!
At the MLO in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in dry air is currently 429 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has mass of 1.29 kg and contains a mere 0.84 g of CO2 STP. This minor trace amount of CO2 in air can have no effect on weather and climate. Now consider the following:
In air at 70° F and 70% RH , the concentration of H2O is 14,780 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has a mass of 1.20 kg, and contains 11.9 g of H2O and 0.78 g of CO2. To the first approximation and and all things being equal, the amount of the greenhouse effect (GHE) for H2O is by:
GHE = moles H2O/moles H2O+moles CO2 = 0.66/0.66 +0.02 = 0.97 or 97 %
This calculation assumes that a molecule of H2O and molecule of CO2 each absorbed about the same amount of out-going long wavelength IR light. Actually H2O absorbs more IR light than CO2. H2O is dominate greenhouse gas by far
and there is no need to be concerned with emission of CO2 from the use of fossil fuels.
This comment was sent to the EPA and the Federal Register
Harold,
For tiny amounts of atmospheric CO2, 400 ppm or so, each molecule has to do a lot of work and must turn over rapidly to be ready for its next cycle of absorption/emission.
Do you have a number that is the highest level of energy that a CO2 molecule can be raised to? Can you then combine that energy capacity with a turnover time to estimate a maximum allowed flux or flow of energy?
When undergrads our age studied these concepts atomic quantum processes were taught because molecular examples were still being researched and becoming understood, so not taught much. I confess that my flux query might be naive or flat wrong. Geoff S
The future of net zero in the UK is now becoming clear. It will eventually lead to debt default and a visit from the IMF. But the causal chain is not what you might expect. Its not that the spend on net zero will become unaffordable and lead to default, huge though those expenses are.
What is in the process of happening is that the costs of net zero are largely disguised and spread throughout the economy in the form of higher energy prices. This in turn leads to lowered economic activity, lower growth, lower incomes.
This leads to less tax receipts.
But the problem the government has is that its financial supporters, the unions, are expecting both every more wage increases and legislation which makes it easier to strike and harder to lay people off. The left of the Labour Party is also demanding keeping the existing welfare payments and adding to them.
There are more and more tax increases, but they don’t really solve the problem, because the country is now at the point of tax take and indebtedness where when you increase taxes you don’t get anything like the increase in tax receipts that you had expected. The classic instance is imposing VAT on private education. People, confronted with all the other tax increases and falls in disposable income just take their children into public schools. They can’t afford the increase in fees. The result is, add up the rise in teacher unemployment and the extra costs in accommodating these students in the state sector, you hardly get any increase in receipts. Applies to a lot of the latest government bright ideas to raise taxes.
This then leads to a situation where current expenses are met out of debt, there not being enough tax revenues to fund them any other way, and most recently some of the interest on the existing debt is being paid out of selling new debt.
Tax employment, as they have done with the National Insurance increases and increased minimum wage, and you get less of it, followed soon afterwards by less taxes from those lost wages.
But underlying all that is the siphoning off of huge amounts of money on the net zero program, which is what makes it impossible to fund the rest of the welfare programs and trade union pork other than out of increased debt, and is on the point of making it impossible to service the debt other than by raising more of it..
So the UK now pays higher interest on its debt than Greece. The IMF people are checking their carry on luggage and getting packed for emergency takeoff. And the elephant in the room which no-one but Reform dares talk about is net zero. Meanwhile, of course, global emissions and the climate go on just as before. They don’t care one way or the other whether the UK goes broke trying to do the impossible on electricity generation.
It seems to be called in Miliband speak ‘leading the world’. But to what?
Oblivion.
VAT on school fees was never about revenue. It is motivated by the politics of envy.
And as much as I detest Milliband (see my other post on this thread), “leading the world” on Net Zero had practically unanimous cross-party support when the Tories were in power. The whole political class in this country has the fervour. It is one of the reasons I told a local Tory organiser to burn the whole thing to the ground and start again.
The Tories have opted for a delay, not a cancellation. Thatcher might have described Badenoch’s Tories as soaking wet.
Until this post, I had no idea that England was taxing kids for going to private schools. How can anyone live there? No freedom of speech; can’t carry a gardening tool because it resembles a knife. Maybe Charles the Second needs to go the way of Charles the First, and take the rest of the government with him.
Charles the third.
I thought he’d switch names, seeing as how poor ‘one’ and ‘two’ were. History repeating itself?
Leading the world by bleeding England
No one wants to buy a sinking ship
Time for those with any resources to get out ASAP
Cheers pal!
Given the Constitutional Republic nature of U.S. governments, people with assets have been moving from Leftist high-tax States to relatively lower-tax States that also eschew high-spending social welfare scams.
People are flocking form high tax states CA and NY to low tax state Florida so I have recently read.
An essay in the Wall Street Journal from earlier this year:
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/debt-has-always-been-the-ruinof-great-powers-is-the-u-s-next-02f16402
by Niall Ferguson who references another Ferguson – – –
“What I call Ferguson’s Law states that any great power that spends more on debt service than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power. The insight is not mine but originates with the Scottish political theorist Adam Ferguson, whose “Essay on the History of Civil Society” (1767) brilliantly identified the perils of excessive public debt.”
The biggest enemy of the UK is not Russia, but it’s Labor/Tory “leadership”.
Farage would be a welcome, long-overdue change, provided he has control of Parliament and eviscerates the bureaucracy, deports illegals by the millions to where they came from.
MAKE THE UK VIABLE AGAIN
The biggest enemy of the UK is Mad Ed Milliband!
I find the photos of Ed Milliband gurning at us from these pages triggering. Especially the ones in which he seems to be attempting a winsome expression. Please keep them to the necessary minimum; ideally none at all.
Winsome
Lose some
Now that matters of global warming have been resolved with the CWG Report, perhaps it’s time to return to basics. Why does the atmosphere grow colder with altitude? This was first asked by Kelvin in 1862. He proposed equilibria in gravitational fields were isentropic, not isothermal and called his model, “Convective Equilibrium” .
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/39422#page/178/mode/1up
Maxwell and Boltzmann were soon to show equilibria remained isothermal even in gravitational fields. Nevertheless, Convective Equilibrium, g/Cp, persists today as the only viable response. Were earth’s atmosphere pure argon, its lapse rate would be 19K/km and independent of density, Cp being a heat capacity per unit weight.
The question here posed, is the adiabatic lapse rate the lapse rate or a lapse rate? Happer and Spencer have opined an atmosphere sans GHGs needs be isothermal. Lev Landau has shown the adiabatic lapse rate defines the necessary condition for the absence of convection. The tropopause is a sharp physical boundary between regions with dissipative and equilibrium lapse rates, not unlike a first-order phase transition. What determines the magnitude of convective energy flux in the troposphere?
Climate models apparently define convection as the difference between radiative theory and reality. CO2 makes a negligible contribution to Cp and thermal gradients. But, should lapse rates be a dissipative function, additional degrees of freedom are available to minimize gradients and global warming. For fluxes of electric currents through wires and fluids through pipes, gradients increase with flux. For entropy fluxes through tropospheres?
Quondam…back to basics….
Equation 5….but such a view will get negative reviews from a number of WUWT commenters.
or we could just say that Boltzman, Maxwell, Loschmidt, even Feynman, ruminated on lapse rate and said an ideal gas atmosphere would be constant temperature. (Well not Loschmidt)
Meteorologists generally invoke convective effects to explain lapse rate rather than get caught up in statistical mechanics of gas molecules in a gravitational field, Lagrangians and all that stuff are hard.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375017329_Fundamental_Relation_for_the_Ideal_Gas_in_the_Gravitational_Field_and_Heat_Flow/fulltext/653bb064f7d021785f16021b/Fundamental-Relation-for-the-Ideal-Gas-in-the-Gravitational-Field-and-Heat-Flow.pdf?origin=publication_detail&_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIiwicGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uRG93bmxvYWQiLCJwcmV2aW91c1BhZ2UiOiJwdWJsaWNhdGlvbiJ9fQ
Feynman-
A column of gas, hotter at one end than the other, cannot be isothermal. The atmospheric lapse rate is the measurement of the rate of change of temperature within an atmospheric column of air.
Nothing mysterious.
The lowest temperature of the troposphere is dependent on the vapour pressure of H2O. At 200K the vapour pressure is less than 1Pa. There is not enough water molecules to radiate any more heat. The emissivity of the atmosphere at 200K is so close to zero it is unmeasurable. Hence that is all it can cool. Above the tropopause there are other molecular species including CO2 that tend to heat rather than cool. So the vapour pressure of water defines the tropopause.
Convective instability depends on the atmosphere losing heat at high altitude and gaining heat at low altitude, As long as there is enough water in the atmosphere, it develops convective instability. That requires around 30mm of water column. That level occurs around 287K surface temp over oceans with the current atmospheric mass.
So the tropical atmosphere over 300+K water guarantees convective instability and cyclic instability at 303K ensures a saturated, well mixed column close to convective equilibrium every 4 to 6 days. The instability develops over a few days. I explain in detail how the instability materialises over night following an afternoon convective storm here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/07/17/toward-a-deterministic-model-of-cloud-development-over-ocean-warm-pools/
I now know that convective overshooting is the limiting control on the ocean surface temperature. That occurs when the base of the column below the LFC has more energy than needed to bring the column back into equilibrium after instability.
Convective overshooting takes the column to supersaturated conditions above 14,000m resulting in very fine ice particles that are slow to descend and limit surface sunshine longer than the equilibrium column. It is commonly seen at the onset of cyclic instability and usually observed with tropical storms. It also occurs with tornados but the instability that causes them is geographic rather than an inherent feature of the atmospheric column.
Anyone who talks about “greenhouse gasses” in relationship to Earth’s climate is fundamentally clueless. Solid H2O controls earth’s climate and radiative balance. No where over oceans radiates above the level of freezing. So any emissions from H2O are inevitably coming off ice. Ice dominates the radiative balance whether it is on land, on water or in the atmosphere. Earth is a water planet and solid water dominates the other phases from the perspective of controlling energy in and out.
To show any effect of CO2 would require identifying the process that alters ice nucleation and/or possible enhanced sublimation or persistence of the ice.
The major greenhouse gases are H2O and CO2.
Anyone who ignores greenhouse gases is fundamentally clueless.
The net warming effect of CO2 has been about 0.3 C since 1900.
The rest of the 1.5 C warming is due to other causes.
like the black carbon rubber dust and particles from the many billions of tires that hit roads in 1900.
No where on our water world is radiating above 0C.
https://www.goes.noaa.gov/fulldisk_band.php?sat=G19&band=08&length=12
That means ice dominates the release of energy to space. We also know that ice prevents around 30% of the available solar EMR from being thermalised.
There is nothing wrong in using the term”greenhouse gasses” but these gasses are not directly involved in the take and release of energy. That is the domain of solid H2O.
”…nowhere is radiating above 0 C”
WTH you talking about ? You can see here radiating at almost 30 C….
The maximum daily average radiating temperature in the Sahara does occasionally get above 273K. In July this year some locations had a daily average effective radiating temperature of 279K so a little above freezing. But most of the radiation is still coming off ice.
And the Sahara does not contribute to energy uptake on Earth. It suffers a net loss of energy so contributes to net cooling not heating.
To be accurate I should have stated no atmosphere over oceans radiates above 0C. The oceans are where energy gets stored and some of that stored energy contributes to the release over the Sahara.
”…nowhere is radiating above 0 C”
Huh ? Desert is well over 300 K on this one.
0 C=273 K.
The energy transport of H2O phase changes is roughly 3 orders of magnitude greater than that of CO2.
What is a greenhouse gas? Apart from gases found in greenhouses, of course.
Does it have some miraculous properties? Cure baldness and halitosis, perhaps? Can you prove it doesn’t?
MF, you jest…yes miraculous properties compared to IR transparent N2 and O2…see following graph
Ooooh! A multicoloured completely irrelevant graph, is it?
Irradiance? Looks like something the eminently ignorant and gullible Gavin Schmidt would have on his wall. Probably thinks that adding CO2 to air is responsible for the surface cooling at night!
At least you are not that dim – just confused.
Last week we had a heat wave. This resulted in increased electricity demand to run air conditioners. Duh… To run those air conditioners the U.S. 48 states reached a new peak generation of about 760,000 MW. I took some screenshots of electricity generation by fuel during one of these hot days. Coal, nuclear and gas provided the primary energy for over 77% of the electric generation. In the MISO RTO (MidContinent Independent System Operator) it was 79%. The importance of coal is very much underestimated. My blog post here: Energy is the Economy and Electricity is the Life-Blood of western civilization Coal Can Make America’s Electricity Supply Great Again https://dickstormprobizblog.org/2025/07/30/energy-is-the-economy-electricity-is-the-life-blood-of-western-civilization-coal-can-make-americas-electricity-supply-great-again/
Energy racism in condemning coal because it is black and brown rather than white.
I am not into inclusion in the case of energy. The only one that should be connected to a grid is dispatchable generation. As far as I know, Texas, is the only large region that has legislated that requirement. Their exclusion of batteries is inspired as well as obvious.
Climate change down under-
Snow so rare in Australia it sparked a proposal for one NSW couple | Watch
Their children will likely never know what that looks like because it’s so freaking rare.
Snowfalls aren’t “rare” on the New England Tablelands.
Not an every year occurrence by any means, but a dusting of snow in short bursts every few years is nothing unusual for that locality.
Isn’t there snow in the Blue Mountains where people go skiing in winter?
The UK Civil Service – Home Office: In the office 2 days a week…
Guido Fawkes: The Home Office helpfully put out a memo in its Marsham Street building offering hard-pressed civil servants the chance to request snacks and drinks for the vending machines. It’s a mixed response:
I don’t know if that set of responses is brilliantly satirical or lame AF.
(I am inclined to the latter I’m afraid. I don’t think the sort of people they employ have the imagination to rip it.)
It’s genuine. People leak all kinds of stuff Guido’s way.
17 years ago, I believed that manmade global warming was happening. It was all I heard about on the news, and there was even a movie about it (which I never saw), called An Inconvenient Truth. I actually wasn’t even aware of any arguments against it, other than an occasional letter in a local paper by someone I considered a climate crank. In the Fall of 2008, I decided that it should be easy enough to refute what the guy was saying. So I went online, and at first I was only looking for the arguments for, but kept noticing some against. I began to realize that there was an actual debate, and even a battle going on I wasn’t even aware of before. I never wrote that letter, because I began to see that it was possible he was right, at least about some things. We actually met a couple months or so later, and he gave me my first Skeptic book. I’m not sure which one now, but possibly Red Hot Lies by Christopher Horner. In my online search, I noticed that the Skeptic side tended to be rational, and I found the science discussions fascinating, whereas the Warmist side, as in RealClimate and others seemed more interested in shouting at anyone with the slightest doubts or questions. What were they hiding? I settled on Sunsettommy’s blog because of the scientific discussions about the effects of oceans, the sun, and clouds. He also posted articles from other sites, including WUWT. I liked the articles there and the discussions were lively, and I eventually migrated to WUWT. Notice that my interest in the subject was pure, not political. In fact, I was pretty much a tried and true Democrat then, so if anything, I had a motive to simply discount what the Skeptics were saying. But what they were saying actually made a lot of sense, and I saw that more and more. My next Skeptic book, I believe, was Unstoppable (Every 1,500 Years) Global Warming by Singer and Avery, with Part 1 being discussions of paleoclimate, and previous warm and cool periods, with connections to the sun, and Part 2.a brutal take-down of the claims of the Alarmists, particularly about models and the “Consensus” claim. There was a whole lotta fraud going on in the Warmhouse.
With the seeming inevitable collapse of the Climate Industrial Complex, it’s nice to look back sometimes. It’s been a long and bumpy ride. .
I never could fathom the idea that puny humans could destroy all life on the planet. It makes me extremely suspicious of all such claims. The end of snow, of Arctic ice, of polar bears and penguins? Pull the other one! It doesn’t help their cause that every one of their solutions requires massive government expansion beyond the realm of actual physical and fiscal possibility (like replacing all ICE cars with EVs, or rewiring the entire electrical grid, by 2035/2040/2050).
When I first heard of coral bleaching, I looked up corals, and they’ve been around for 200 million plus years. This includes the huge rise in sea level (400 feet?) just 10-15,000 years ago. We puny humans couldn’t kill them all if we tried. CO2 level was 10-15 times as high in the dino age; rising to 450 from 280 isn’t going to tip us into Venus, and the idea that the tipping point could be predicted so accurately (12/10/8/6 years it must be now) is ludicrous.
I don’t have to know squat about climate science to detect such bullshit.
Humans can have no effect on climate because the vast majority live poverty. They consume little and produce little stuff. 71% of the earth is covered with oceans. Humans can no effect on this massive amount of water.
Humans can effect local climate due to the urban island heat effect.
I think it is only one Trump away from rearing its ugly head. The scam is alive and well in Australia. There is so much money invested in “renewables” that rely on mandated theft that it cannot be let fade away. The government wealth fund, for one example, would need to write down billions if “renewables” become stranded assets.
Please go to the late John Daly’s website “Still Waiting For Greenhouse” available at:
http://www.john-daly.com. From the home page, page down to the end and click on
“Station Temperature Data”. On the “World Map” click on a region or country to the access temperature data from the weather stations located there. John Daly found over 200 weather stations that showed no warming up to 2002. See next reply.
Shown in the chart is a plot of average annual temperature in Adelaide, which shows a cooling from 1857 to 1999. In 1857 concentration of CO2 in Oz was probably 280 ppmv
(0.55 g CO2/cu. m.) and by 1999 it had increased to ca 300 ppmv (0.59 g CO2/cu. m.) but there was no warming. Instead there was cooling. This chart falsify the hypothesis that the increasing concentration of CO2 in air causes an increase in air temperature. be sure to check all the charts for Oz.
PS: If you click on the chart, it will expand and become clear. Click on the “X” in the circle to return to comment text.
At John Daly’s website in the Station Temperature Data section after you have selected a station chart for viewing, use the back arrow to restore the list of the stations.
The meteorolosists did not issue wind drought warnings that could have averted the disastrous attempt to transition to wind and solar power. Trillions of dollars have been spent around the world rolling out wind and solar infrastructure, and in return, we have more expensive and less reliable power with catastrophic environmental impacts.
The elephant in the net zero room is the wind droughts or dunkelflautes that Australian investigators documented over a decade ago.
When the voters find out about the wind drought problem, that is, when journalists and commentators tell them, the push for net zero could collapse like a punctured balloon.
Wind droughts render the wind and solar power system unfit for purpose in a modern industrial civilisation. Have a look at Germany and Britain. Heroic efforts and buckets of money are being applied to prop up the grids that are contaminated by intermittent energy but it will not work, any more than making steam engines more efficient will enable them to drive a rocket to the moon.
The two major threats to the power supply are windless nights (Texas Feb 2021) and grids with no inertia that collapse during the day due to fluctuations in the solar and wind input (Spain.) The solution in each case is to stop the subsidies and mandates for solar and wind, and get them off the grid.
Sources, starting with the failure of the meteorologists to issue wind drought warnings. [They were foundation members of the alarmists’ club in the UN.]
https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/the-late-discovery-of-wind-droughts
Dirt farmers are alert to the threat of rain droughts, but the wind farmers never checked the reliability of the wind supply to become aware of wind droughts, wind lulls, known as Dunkelflautes in Europe.
https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/we-have-to-talk-about-wind-droughts
Rafe starts with: The meteorolosists did not issue wind drought warnings …
I asked DuckDuckGo this question: When was the first weather block recognized?
Search Assist answered: The concept of weather blocks, particularly blocking highs, has been studied for many years, but specific recognition of these patterns in meteorology began to take shape in the mid-20th century. The term “blocking high” and its implications were notably discussed in meteorological literature around the 1950s. [Ref: Wikipedia]
I’ll leave it to others to find out, further, what the weather folks knew and when.
Thanks John, why didn’t I think of searching that question to get clear on the chronology!
I appreciate that blocking highs have been known for some time among meteorologists, the question is, how come that knowledge didn’t get to the public, politicians and policymakers when subsidised and mandated RE started to drive coal out of the grid?
The First Assessment Report from the IPCC recommended a survey of the wind resources of the world with a view to mass wind power and the second assessment report provided a sketchy commentary without any reference to prolonged low wind periods that would be fatal for grids loaded with wind power.
I spoke to some retired meteorologists and they were somewhat defensive, saying that the authorities didn’t seem to be interested in low wind periods. I think they could have tried harder to warn the public
We Win! Is what the sign said.
And I think that’s true, at least here in the United States. I think windmills and industrial solar are in the rearview mirror now, with Trump in charge, and the Artificial Intelligence buildup, requiring lots of conventional electricity generation.
A new Era has begun.
How long before the rest of the Western World sees the error of their ways with regard to windmills and industrial solar and no evidence of harm from CO2?
The US selling LNG to Europe is a huge mistake.
Let them go wind/solar until failures like Spain become commonplace.
Only then will they sing the tune of sanity.
I heard a new term to scare people more – “climate shock.” Apparently, climate change is not inflamatory enough. Good grief.
I thought it went global warming to climate change to climate extinction, but now they want climate shock?
rebranding efforts
I just got through listening to my home State U.S. Senator, Markwayne Mullin, on Fox News Channel, and the way he is talking, the U.S. Senate is going to get some rule changes the next time the Senate meets, to counter the obstructionism of Senate Democrats, who are doing all they can to block President Trump’s nominees to fill important positions in the government.
The American people voted for Trump and they want his nominees approved so Trump can implement the agenda the People voted for.
Mullin is a good friend with Trump, so if he says the Senate is in for some rule changes, then I would think that’s what is going to happen.
Mullin says the Democrats will scream bloody murder, but Mullin says it is the Democrat unprecedented obstructionism which is the cause of these new actions.
The radical Democrats are doing everything in their power to obstruct Trump and the American people.
The radical Democrats are Domestic Enemies of the United States.
Democrats, to save democracy, uninstalled Joe for the dummy Kamala…nothing is beneath them. Nothing.
Because I’ve been interested the potential for jail time for the people Tulsi Gabbard is outing currently, I wanted to understand that concept more, so when this excellent video of General Flynn and his jail time showed up in my YouTube suggestions, I watched it. It touches on some of your points Tom, and plenty more. Unless I missed it, climate isn’t even mentioned, but he talks about the people who I believe also own the phony climate crisis and wow, are they vile:
Story tip at arstechnica _AI in Wyoming may soon use more electricity than state’s human residents_
<https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/07/ai-in-wyoming-may-soon-use-more-electricity-than-states-human-residents/?comments-page=1#comments>
The article states that an AI data center will start out at 1.8GW and scale up to 10GW.
A coal fired power plant that I knew of, burned about 5000 tons a day with a power output of 600 MW.
That works out to about 0.7 lbs per KWH which was very good for the day. Considering the wiggle room the technology had available for improvement that’s probably even pretty good for today.
10GW of power is 16.7 times the output of that generator.
Presuming the same efficiencies,
5000 x 16.7 = 83,500 tons of coal per day!!!!
Natural gas is about 1070 BTU/cuft.
10,000,000 kilowatts * 24hrs≈ 818,913×10^6 BTU -> 765.34 MILLION cuft/day
The natural gas number doesn’t include thermal efficiency. I don’t know what the typical thermal efficiency of a gas turbine is but using a typical very good heat rate value for a coal fired plant, say 7000BTU/KWh gives:
10,000,000 KW x24 Hr =240,000,000 KWh x 7000BTU/KWh = 1,680,000×10^6 BTU -> 1,570.09 MILLION cuft/day.
I leave it to someone else to count the carbon atoms or figure out how many sq miles of windturbines and batteries would be required.
I seem to recall that the human brain requires the equivalent power of about 20 watts.
That would make the AI center = 10,000,000,000 watts/20 watts per human = 500,000,000 humans. About the population of the UE IIRC.
The thermal efficiency of a CCGT system is about 60%
Thanks for the info.
At that efficiency the heat rate drops to 5687BTU/KWh (3412BTU/KWh x1.667)
The gas usage would drop to 1,365,073 x10^6BTU -> 1,275.58 MILLION cuft/day. Still not going to be delivered thru a residential gas line. Also not likely to do good things to the cost of residential and industry heating.
I’m guessing that the thermal eff calc doesn’t include the auxiliary load of probably less than 5% for the CCGT plant. (I’ve made no adjustment for it.)
IIRC the early CCGT plants suffered from short life of the boiler in the GT gas stream. Is that still the case?
We need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere immediately. I’m tired of mowing my yard. When I finished the other day, like Greta, I could see the CO2 being soaked up and I could hear the grass laughing.
Indeed. Constant weeding, cutting and mowing is a drag. Apart from getting rid of nettles and brambles I am now developing the idea of rewilding. I know it’s a Green thing but my recent convertion is so much easier to maintain.
Some ‘weeds’ are delightfully colourful..
I just covered everything with rocks and put in planters for my wife to putter.
My neighbor is rewilding part her meadowland
It starts to look like s..t
That’s why I call corals the weeds of the seas.
Some are dull, others are colorful, and you can’t get rid of the buggers.
A weed is just a plant you don’t like.<g>
My lawnmower is belching CO2 and the lawn is growing 40% more biomass….its a vicious circle…in my case a rectangle….
This year, I have converted entirely to mowing paths with my DR Mower. There are many many delightful flowering “weeds” some of which are 5 feet and taller. The paths are cool, and it cuts the mowing time way down. The rest of the property out back is wild, but I have built paths through it, replete with bridges. So it’s sort of an oasis. But yeah, we’re “deniers” so that makes us “anti-environment”. SMH.
Install artificial turf.
Slowly governments wake up:
Burgum Orders Scale-Back on Solar, Wind Projects Citing Low Energy Efficiency | The Epoch Times
Wonderful lede picture!
STORY TIP
Something to Watch. The National Hurricane Center is aware of a Low Pressure cell landward of the African coast (20°N, 14°W). On Tuesday, Ventusky thinks it will be at 10°N, 31°W. The NHC gives it a 40% chance of developing into something by the end of the week.
Named storm Dexter is a different thing, causing storminess along the USA’s southeast coast.