Net Zero is dead in the United States and the last rites have been administered in the devastating official report from the Department of Energy. Released earlier this week, the report cancels the decades-long censorship imposed by so-called ‘settled’ climate science. It is compiled by five eminent scientists and is a systematic take-down of the claims, methodologies and motivations driving activist scientists, politicians and opinion formers promoting the hard-Left Net Zero fantasy. Despite its ground-breaking importance, to date it has been largely ignored by mainstream media including the BBC and Guardian.
Computer models are said to offer “little guidance” on how much of the climate responds to higher levels of carbon dioxide, most extreme weather events are not increasing, sea levels in North America show no increasing trend while weather attribution claims are challenged by natural climate variation along with an admission that they were originally designed with ‘lawfare’ in mind. For Anthony Watts, who has spent decades challenging the ‘settled’ politicised science, the most important consideration is that the report, “directly confronts the exaggerated and politicised rhetoric that has dominated headlines for decades”.
Watts, who runs the Watts Up With That? (WUWT?) site that was responsible for publicising the infamous Climategate scandal, argues that the new report is unique in that it has both official status and author independence. It is not a think tank paper or an article in a ‘dissenting’ journal. “It’s rare to see scientists of this calibre (with backgrounds at NASA, IPCC and major universities) allowed to directly challenge prevailing policy narratives with government resources behind them”, he notes. The work is a “comprehensive critique” quoting extensively from peer-reviewed literature with clear explanations of scientific uncertainties and climate model error.
For regular readers of WUWT? and other inquiring publications such as the Daily Sceptic, many of the issues discussed in the report will be familiar. In the last four years, your correspondent has written nearly 500 articles on climate science and Net Zero in an attempt to fill in the significant reporting gaps left by the narrative-driven mainstream media. Many of the papers quoted are familiar, not least in the section that deals with the sensational ‘greening’ of the planet caused by higher levels of CO2.
The report quotes from recent work that shows extensive plant and crop growth due to the atmospheric fertilisation that has enhanced photosynthesis and improved water use efficiency. Over the past 60+ years, the authors observe that there have been thousands of studies on the response of plants to rising CO2 levels, and the overwhelming theme is that they benefit from the extra gas. In 2016, Zhu et al detected greening over 25%–50% of the planet. But there is a near official news blackout on the subject. A few mentions can be found in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports but overall, observe the authors, “the Policymakers Summaries, Technical Summaries and [IPCC] Synthesis reports of AR5 and ASR6 do not discuss the topic”.
Needless to say there are few kind words for the climate projections based on the notorious IPCC emission scenario known as RCP8.5. Most academic climate impact studies in recent years are based on this extreme scenario, “that is now considered implausible”. Why is this castigation important – because RCP8.5 litters the scientific clickbait literature and has a key role in promoting the Net Zero plan. Most stories in mainstream media debunked in recent years by the Daily Sceptic and others – from the future collapsing Gulf Stream to the disappearing coral – are based on this trash “business-as-usual” computer model pathway.
Climate models are noted to be the primary tool used to project future climate changes in response to higher levels of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. It might be added that their outputs are the basis of 40 years of fear mongering designed to drive Net Zero and the destruction of the hydrocarbon industrial economy. “Of great concern”, continue the authors, “is the fact that after several decades of the climate modelling enterprise involving approximately three dozen models operated by research centres around the world, the range of future warming they produce in response to a hypothetical doubling of CO2 extends over a factor of three”. This range of disagreement among models has not decreased for decades, they add.
Those inclined to use less charitable language might comment that climate models are useless for the purpose of providing genuine science upon which reasonable public policy can be determined – and always have been.
Much of the recent climate fear mongering surrounds ‘extreme’ weather events and the suggestion that something Nature has always thrown at life on Earth can now be directly attributed to the actions of humans. The most prominent in this field is the Green Blob-funded World Weather Attribution (WWA) run out of Imperial College in London and headed by BBC favourite, Dr Friederike Otto. “WWA’s extensive promotion of non-peer-reviewed findings, its open admission to shaping analyses to serve litigation, and its methodological challenges have sparked controversy”, it is noted. The biggest problem (apart from using computer models) is the lack of past data on extreme weather events. A few years of data allied to an unproven conviction that all current warming is caused by humans, cannot provide guidance for events that crop up as outliers. If paleoclimate reconstruction are considered, “it becomes very difficult for an event to pass thresholds of what is expected from natural variability”, it is concluded.
US Department of Energy: A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the US Climate. Authors – John Christy Ph.D, Judith Curry Ph.D, Steven Koonin Ph.D, Ross McKitrick Ph.D, Roy Spencer Ph.D.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
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The Green Blob will respond by doubling down.
No, they will most likely respond by ignoring the report. They will pretend it doesn’t exist.
Why the down votes?
This is the epitome of a wise man’s words.
Net zero content?
net zero bots?
Personally I wonder what the original comment was exactly given an “Editor’s Comment was disappeared
As you’ve likely noticed, try two is below. I didn’t trust the system enough clear the old, big text and paste in maybe proper sized text. I also hoped my editor privs would let me delete try one, but maybe that trick doesn’t work any longer.
My apologies for any confusion. I’ll figure out computers one of these years. 🙂 50 years isn’t long enough.
Where is you comment? Do I need special glasses to read it.
I think he was listing all the benefits of Net Zero…
Net Zero is dead in the United States
I’ve got news for you, Net Zero is very much, er, alive and well(sic) everywhere else in the western world, particularly in the UK. Guess what?
“Climate change is here, now. Until the world reaches Net Zero CO2 emissions, with deep reductions in other greenhouse gases, global temperatures will continue to rise. That will inevitably lead to increasingly extreme weather…
…
Priority actions
Make electricity cheaper.
Provide confidence and certainty to scale heat pump deployment in existing buildings.
Implement regulations to ensure that new homes are not connected to the gas grid.
Introduce a comprehensive programme to decarbonise public sector buildings.
Accelerate the electrification of industrial heat.
Effectively deliver rapid expansion of the low-carbon electricity system.
Put policies and incentives in place to ramp up tree planting and peatland restoration.
Develop policy to ensure that the aviation industry takes responsibility for its emissions reaching Net Zero by 2050.
Finalise business models for engineered removals.
And…
Publish a strategy to support skills.
The science is unambiguous. Only by achieving Net Zero CO2 emissions, with deep reductions in other greenhouse gases, can the UK stop contributing to an ever-warmer climate.
https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/progress-in-reducing-emissions-2025-report-to-parliament/
What a load of complete, total and utter bolleaux.
I doubt the UK s 1% contribution will make much difference World wide, CO2 is increasing food production and a slight warming will also help.
Be my guest and tell Mad Ed…
The UK’s 1% will probably be completely outweighed by the CO2 emitted producing the wind turbines using coal in China that mad Ed will not tell us about.
It is my opinion that increasing extreme weather is dependent on increasing atmospheric temperature differentials; and currently all three differentials are decreasing, day/night, Summer/Winter and artic /tropics.
“I’ve got news for you, Net Zero is very much, er, alive and well(sic) everywhere else in the western world, particularly in the UK.”
So many trends start in the US. The rest of the world will soon follow, though they’ll deny it in the short term.
CO2 IS AN ABSOLUTELY VITAL FOR GROWING FLORA AND FAUNA; NET ZERO IS A SUICIDE PACT
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/co2-is-an-absolutely-vital-gas-ingredient-for-growing-flora-and
.
The IPCC, etc., has dubbed CO2 as having magical global warming power, based on its own “science”
The IPCC, etc., claims, CO2 acts as Climate Control Knob, that eventually will cause runaway Climate Change, if we continue using fossil fuels.
The IPCC, etc., denies the Little Ice Age, uses fraudulent computer temperature projections.
.
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.
.
Net-zero by 2050 to-reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact, to 1) increase command/control by governments, and 2) enable the moneyed elites to become more powerful and 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, already for at least 40 years; extremely biased, money-losing CNN, NPR, PBS, Colbert’s Late-Night Show, come to mind.
.
CO2, just 0.042% in the atmosphere, is a weak absorber of a small fraction of the absorbable, low-energy IR photons.
CO2 has near-zero influence on world surface temperatures.
CO2 is a life-giving molecule. Greater CO2 ppm in atmosphere is an absolutely essential ingredient for: 1) increased green flora, which increases fauna all over the world, and 2) increased crop yields to better feed 8 billion people.
At About 30% Annual W/S Electricity on the Grid, Various Costs Increase Exponentially
The W/S subsidies uglify the countryside, kills birds and bats, whales and dolphins, fisheries, tourism, view-sheds, etc.
The weather-dependent, variable/intermittent W/S output, often too-little and often too-much, creates grid-disturbing difficulties that become increasingly more challenging and more costly/kWh to counteract, as proven by the UK and California for the past 5 years, and Germany for the past 10 years, and recently in Spain/Portugal.
.
All have “achieved” near-zero, real- growth GDPs, the highest electricity prices/kWh in the EU, and stagnant real wages for almost all people, while further enriching the jet-setting elites who live in the poshest places.
.
Their angry, over-taxed, over-regulated native populations, already burdened by the wind/solar/batteries nonsense, and then further burdened by the elites bringing in tens of millions of uninvited, unvetted, uneducated, unskilled, ghetto-trash/crime-prone poor folks, from dysfunctional countries, who are sucking from the multiple, government-program tits, while making minimal efforts to produce goods and services; a chaotic, culture-destroying burden the native populations never voted for.
.
The climate is not any different, 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 at most 1.5 C +/- 0.25 C, of which:
.
1) Urban heat islands account for about 65% (0.65 x 1.5 = 0.975 C), 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, plus the waste heat of fuel burning. Japan, China, India, Europe, etc., have similar heat islands
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/16/live-at-1-p-m-eastern-shock-climate-report-urban-heat-islands-responsible-for-65-of-global-warming/
2) CO2 accounts for about 0.3 C, with the rest from
3) Long-term, inter-acting cycles, such as coming out of the Little Ice Age,
4) Earth surface volcanic activity, and other changes, such as from increased agriculture, deforestation, especially in the Tropics, etc.
.
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 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. See URL
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/about.html
Can’t wait for the scientific genius Ed Miliband and his advisors to step up and tell us why he is not cancelling Net Zero here in the UK.
Perhaps his mate George Monbiot or Greta Thunberg need to tell him the essential science he is so focused on. If he is really stuck, he could talk to Al Gore or Jacinda Arden….there are so many scientific minds in the climate alarmist camp to help him.
Mann, oh Mann, oh Mann…..
If you really want to understand Ed (who does?) you have to remember he idolised his father and his father had certain views on the English…
The 17 year old refugee known as Adolphe (later Ralph) Miliband had this to say about the country that took his family in…
“‘The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world . . . you sometimes want them almost to lose (the war) to show them how things are. They have the greatest contempt for the Continent . . . To lose their empire would be the worst possible humiliation.'”
Mad Ed has taken up the challenge. As for his sense of patriotism, er, loyalty to his islamic vote…
Ed Miliband pushing to recognise Palestinian state – The Telegraph
[Please ignore/delete my first comment – something dumb on my rebuilt Linux system is making some cut & pasted text way too big. Let’s try a copy from an emacs buffer.]
“Devastating Official US Report”
So where’s the devastation? Yes, it’s a good report – I added it and Roy Spencer’s introduction to my https://wermenh.com/climate/ . (Note that Roy’s title is the much tamer “Some Thoughts on Our DOE Report Regarding CO2 Impacts on the U.S. Climate.”)
Sorry for the rant, there are days I wish for something like the old USENET “kill file” for mail lists, YouTube videos, KickStarter projects, and WUWT where I could tell them to not bother me with subject lines that include ultimate, world’s first, awesome, humiliate, destroy, stunning, slaughter, etc. And devastate.
A work in progress…
“rebuilt Linux system”
Creations of Rube Goldberg and William H. Robinson just flashed in my mind.
John, Whenever my desktop is getting too lame, I rebuild the _other_ system with new motherboard/CPU/peripherals and install a new Linux from scratch. Then spend a huge amount of time installing current apps (mysql is always good for a headache or two), cleaning up some old disk areas (I rebuilt my home directory and left out GBs of browser cache/cookies/crap, .jpg thumbnails, etc.)
I think the old system was setup eight years ago, support ended three years ago, binaries disappeared 1 1/2 years ago, and I had to use my Windows 10 laptop for more and more daily work.
The biggest problem in terms of files to edit is that Python V2 is no longer available on the distribution, so hey, it’s been time to migrate to V3, and oh good, the “2to3” converter is still around. However, it doesn’t get everything, especially my early Python code for my weather station and a USPS periodicals mailing. Those were written in V1.5.2 days. I think I had to edit every Python program that is used at least monthly. And the “newer” program that updates the “ENSO Meter” image here.
To further annoy common sense, my Davis VP weather station uses a RS232 link (I bought a DB-9 cable so I could watch the breakout box from my desk – I have plenty of DB-25 stuff, but hey, time to catch up) and the mail list gets printed on Dad’s old IBM ProWriter that can take tractor feed labels – I think it’s 45 years old. So I look for motherboards that still have on-board serial and parallel ports.
Next up: I built a Raspberry Pi “system” yesterday that ultimately will be running a couple of ancient PDP-10 programs with a 2/3rds scale replica of the first model’s console (with lights and switches!) https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp10. Well, the graphics hack will be a new, but final PDP-10 program translated from ancient PDP-11 assembler version. It’ll be great.
After that I’ll be spending more time on climate and WUWT stuff.
I am elated to learn that you take over the maintenance and preservation of the late John Daly’s website “Still Waiting For Greenhouse”. I site his website often in comments here and elsewhere. His charts of temperature plots from the many weather stations located around the world are valuable resource because they show no warming up to 2002 and temperature data has not undergone any “adjustments” and “homogenizations”.
I have made reference to his website in recent submissions to the EPA and the Federal Register. If everyone learned of his website, all the claims about of the greenhouse CO2 causing global warming and climate change would vanish overnight.
Shown below is a screen shot of the home page.
PS: If you click on the image, it will become clear and expand. Click on the “X” in circle to return to comment text.
I’m pleased you found that. I discovered the site missing one day due to the death of the person who took it over when Daly died. The ISP wouldn’t let take over the the account, in part because of old Email that was never mine, they were quite helpful in creating a new account for me and directing WWW refs to my account.
I was not surprised to find a less welcome reception at the DNS host I settled on not creating an account after discovering anyone can pay for DNS renewals there. So, I get no Email from them, but remember to renew john-daly.com .
Hmm. Looks like the https security certificate expired. I’ll look into it.
Shown in the chart (See below) are plots of temperatures from the Furnace Creek weather station in Death Valley. I use this chart often in comments because Death Valley is a famous Natural Monument and very remote.
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.
If I have formatted text I want to get rid of, I copy it to Notepad, which removes any formatting, then copy into the comment.
Notepad doesn’t run on Linux. So I use emacs for that.
The problem with my emptied post is that what I pasted looked fine in the text (edit) box, but huge when I posted it.
Because it is a rushed hack job clearly produced for no other reason than providing the government flimsy backing to gut US emissions regulations at any cost. Why is the government hiding the 2025 NCA? Why did the government fire everyone involved with planning the sixth NCA?
Because it historically has been politically compromised crap.
100%!
It is not. If you want to see what politically compromised crap looks like, look no further than the DOE report. The Sixth NCA is congressionally mandated to be completed in 2028. What do you think will happen there?
If you want to see what politically compromised crap looks like, look no further than
the DOE reportany of the IPCC SPMs.Fixed it for you.
If you really want to see politically compromised crap read no further than Alanj comments.
I see that you still can’t find anything in the report, that is actually wrong.
I’ve posted thorough critiques of the report in other threads. I see you’ve adopted a “play dumb” defense mechanism.
Whereas you yourself have no need whatsoever to pretend…
The critiques you have posted elsewhere have no scientific basis; they are simply your opinion. You besmirch the intelligence of the authors of any science-based comments as your main critique. You use the fallacy of Appeal to Authority as your main fallback support. You never show any personal research, graphs, or mathematics to support your positions. Basically, you use innuendo and argumentative fallacies to claim you know what you are talking about. You are a pseudoscientist.
You offered no specific or substantive rebuttal to any of my criticisms so your opinion isn’t very useful here. Lots of flailing.
That, my friend, is a result of you posting nothing of substance. Opinions without supporting evidence are simply unverified statements that have no substance. There are no substantive facts or evidence to rebut. If you want substantive rebuttals, post something with some depth like quoted facts and figures.
My arguments around the DOE report are pointing out fallacious reasoning or deliberate mischaracterizations of published research, not data errors. There are no “figures” needed to do this. But, again, you were not part of the conversation and offered no input whatsoever. You’ve done far, far less than the little you are trying to accuse me of.
My arguments around the DOE report are pointing out what I THINK are fallacious reasoning or deliberate mischaracterizations
There, I fixed it for you. Without supporting evidence to justify what you think, you are just blowing pee into the wind with the effect!
Well, yes. And your challenge would be to try to defend the DOE report against the arguments I’ve made, which you haven’t even attempted to do.
You are making the assertions, it is up to you to validate them.
In case you missed it, I started the discussion about an optimum temperature.
You said you didn’t care about an optimum temperature. That is totally illogical. If you are going to tout rising temperatures as a problem, then it is up to you to show WHY! Pontificating that rising temps are a problem “just because I said so”,simply tells folks you cat prove it it is a problem.
Keep trying to justify a guess with nothing but your say so, it makes you look as smart as Einstein ! /sarc
I did validate them, and you never challenged them. I concede that you did offer an irrelevant rabbit trail, but you did not directly engage with a single point made. I take an inability to engage as a tacit concession.
The Sixth NCA is congressionally mandated to be completed in 2028. What do you think will happen there?
Based on recent results, the Congressionally-mandated Sixth NCA to be completed in 2028 will be the most scientifically rigorous climate assessment ever produced by the U.S. government and it will contradict much of the previous five assessments, all of which have been produced primarily by biased climate alarmists.
If I want to see what politically compromised crap looks like, I can peruse the previous five National Climate Assessments, the EPA “Endangerment” Finding, and the climate.gov website, all of which have been critically reviewed numerous times here at Watts Up With That. It’s refreshing to finally see scientific rigor being applied to government agencies that have been held captive by climate alarmists.
I read the Fifth NCA. I read the IPCC summary for policy makers. They did not match at all.
The Fifth had a lot of glossy photographs and was chocked full of propaganda, not science.
AlanJ why don’t you just accept the fact for the next 3.5 years your lefty ideals are going to get a flogging it will go a lot easier for you. I
Gosh! How can you breathe out knowing what you know?
Rushed?
It’s been thirty years in the writing.
It was written in two months by five authors with zero peer review or input from any scientific or government agencies. I agree that it is a Gish-gallop rehash of the tired arguments these five have been making for decades. It’s an absolute joke.
Secret peer review? How about public world-wide review? Every scientific and government agency will get their shot at it … publicly!
Oh I am certain the report is going to be publicly eviscerated by the scientific community. It’s garbage. But it’s already being used by the EPA as a primary justification for rolling back emissions regulations. So what exactly is the public comment period supposed to achieve? It’s too late to substantively revise the bad science actively being used to drive bad policy.
And why do you think the five authors of this report would actually react to any valid criticism from the scientific community? They didn’t invite relevant experts into the process to begin with. They treat the broader community with utter disdain.
Peer review only counts when its members of his cabal doing the reviewing.
Alan’s just upset because the Left is rapidly losing its ability to impose “double secret probation” via
peerpal review on anyone who dares question any of its preferred science or economic paradigms.I thought the Endangerment Recission report was finished prior to the release of the DOE report.
I guess seeing into the future counts.
Funny. The IPCC reports were included. Guess IPCC is either not scientific or government (all members are political appointees).
Here are my comments to Roy Spencer’s introduction on his blog. I should have included a note calling out his reference to 1930s weather, I’d love to have the time to learn why that was such an extreme decade (and why I keep seeing repeats of that weather).
This is a superb post. Roy, you’ve touched on nearly all things I decided are the big points since 2008 when I got deeply involved in understanding what climate change is all about.
The only two things I can think of off hand that you may have missed are James Hansen (though I don’t know what I would say about him) and the Holocene Warm Period (aka Climate Optimum) some 5,000-7,000 years ago. It was warmer then than it is now, yet we survived. That is the major thing that makes me confident we will survive the current warm period. (I’m not so sure about surviving the next glaciation.)
I’ll add a link to this from my climate WWW page. BTW, the last entry in my “Preservation” section are links to Chris Landsea’s resignation letter. Well worth saving.
The ‘joke’ is you.
Please note that the Guardian led today on the threat from plastics (based on one of those Lancet papers).
It’s like when AGW took over from deforestation.
Out of nowhere – another world ending threat comes along.
We’re so lucky that they never come along in parallel, always in series.
The retreat to a new hill to fight on is a sure sign that this paper is not easily knocked back.
And again, more explicit this time.
Chemical pollution a threat comparable to climate change, scientists warn | Environment | The Guardian
They may even have a point, this time. So long as they accept that dosage matters.
You didn’t disappoint anyone! More inuendo and besmirching of character. Is that all you have in your toolbox?
The BBC, Guardian et al have to ignore these developments until they are given instructions on what to write by climate alarm HQ “CoveringClimateNow”.
All the Darth Vaders at BBC etc would have registered so far is that there has been a major “disturbance in The Force”.
Figuring out what to do about it will take some rational, considered analysis of the situation, something which the BBC et al are not known to have ever demonstrated.
Not worth the powder.
As usual, Alan can’t point to anything in the report that is wrong, other than its conclusions.
Since it doesn’t match what he wants to believe, it is evil and must be destroyed.
The website is being updated with information from actual science, which requires removing heaps of politicized pseduo-science products of previous administrations. All of that requires careful review. In the meantime, it’s better to shut the whole thing down immediately to stop the decades-long deception by previous administrations.
The Trump administration has revised the requirements for data used to advise public policy to conform to the scientific method and for the data and methods to be made publicly available. You would think scientists would be elated, but the climate
sciencealarmism community is furious. For decades they have gotten away with publishing their politicized pseudo-science to dupe the public, polishing their turd with a veneer of respectability because it’s on a government website.Most of what is claimed to be the “consensus” in climate science isn’t actually science. It fails rigorous scientific review, as John Christy Ph.D, Judith Curry Ph.D, Steven Koonin Ph.D, Ross McKitrick Ph.D, Roy Spencer Ph.D painstakingly illustrated in their excellent “Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.” So decades of crap has to be reviewed and removed from the website to conform to the new requirement to be scientifically rigorous.
It is beyond ironic that the crowd who moaned that they were being silenced is suddenly pro-censorship.
There is no censorship! You are free to make your comments known. You can use your preferred style of innuendo and character assassination. I doubt those will be considered in high regard.
It is not censorship. The pages are not being deleted. They are moved to an archive that is accessible, should anyone care to read them.
You certainly have an exceedingly high opinion of yourself and an overbearing self-righteousness.
AlanJ
As an advocate of US CO2 emission regulation and reduction, could you answer the following questions.
The US government is repealing national climate policies, and trying to drive a repeal of climate policies all over the world. Asking me hypotheticals about what might happen if the US existed in a complete vacuum with zero influence or impact on global policies or energy transitions is just being disingenuous.
The gamble the Trump admin is making is that they can keep the world reliant on US fossil fuel exports by coercing a market shift away from renewables, meanwhile China is betting that they can make the world increasingly reliant on cheap Chinese renewable technology like solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries. This is a bet that the US is simply going to lose.
“The US government is repealing national climate policies,”
So what?
“meanwhile China is betting that they can make the world increasingly reliant on cheap Chinese renewable technology”
By renewable you mean having to be renewed/replaced every five years?
How dare :Trump believe that the government shouldn’t control everything.
Do you speak Chinese? Are you paid by them? Chinese stuff with booby traps and transmitters seem to be what you’re actually pushing…or are you just plain stupid?
On the contrary, I actually agree with your God Emperor Trump that China poses a threat to US economic interests, and I would like to see us meet the challenge. The problem is that, as often, Trump is the wrong answer to the right question.
So who, in your estimation, is?
Do you actually believe that not buying Chinese windmills and solar panels is the wrong answer to Chinese dominance in this area? So what do you think is the right answer?
The right answer is to drive American manufacturing of renewables technology. Position us to build the best batteries and windmills and solar panels. Trump is actively trying to kill the US renewables industry that was actually gaining momentum under the IRA. The right way to control Chinese access to our markets is to allow Chinese companies to build US-based plants that employ US workers and share technology developments with us. What he’s doing instead is a desperate ploy to keep the world hooked on US FF exports while burying our heads in the sand and pretending that China isn’t outpacing us in renewables.
He’s talking about protecting American energy independence by reverting to coal when in actuality domestic demand for US FF is outpaced by supply. China is building more and more advanced EVs that cost less and less while Trump is by all appearances hoping for the announcement of new coal-fired automobiles.
So again, who do you believe would better serve America’s interests in all this, if Trump is the “wrong answer”?
If I were you, I wouldn’t worry too much about the DoE report – all of its authors accept the premise that radiative transfer models accurately portray how the thermal radiation absorbed by GHGs near the Earth’s surface is conveyed to the upper troposphere. In other words, they only disagree with you on the extent to which further CO2 emissions will result in warming, hence the so-called ‘physics’ will remain in place to support whatever restrictions the Left desires when they are next back in charge of the EPA.
Agreed.
The ‘Red Team’ Gang-of-5’s Report is the very essence of Lukewarmism.
So let the AlanJays attack it all they will, in order “to support whatever restrictions the Left desires when they are next back in charge of the EPA.”
There’s a good chance that what comes next against them (the AJs) will be so much stronger — it will concede nothing to radiative transfer / GHGs — that they will regret their battle against the Lukewarmers.
That was also my conclusion. We could do so much better.
Well, to quote Donald Rumsfeld, “[y]ou go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time”. At some point, of course, I’d like to see an open debate of the physics between the proponents of radiative transfer models and those who propose that collisions between GHGs and non-IR active gas species results in a predominantly convective troposphere.
Renewables technology is a total WASTE of time and money.
It is unreliable, unsustainable, and extremely expensive if you want it to provide solid reliable energy.
“Renewable” Energy is, and always has been a means to extract wealth from ordinary citizens and transfer it to the elites.
Al Gore’s net worth has increased from $700 000 to ca. $300 million.
A. Gore’s investment company is worth an estimated 11 billion.
Actually, in most situations an energy mix is the most efficient answer to produce electricity
Typically with renewables under 20% so
You want to go into a manufacturing war with China … good luck with that 🙂
Perhaps start by looking at labor and other input costs and you might see the stupidity you just posted.
The only threat to the US economy is the same as that to UK, Germany Australia etc…
… ie the Net-Zero anti-CO2 agenda..
UK, Germany Australia etc.. are losing to China’s COAL fired economy
Thanks to Trump, the USA is not playing that delusional game any more…
… they will not lose.
He sure has the right answer on illegals along with former dudes in girls sports.
Delusional much?
Failed to answer specific questions.
Failed.
Has Alan ever given specifics in any of his whines?
Not once I can recall.
Translation, Alan knows that he’s supposed to be upset, but he doesn’t know why, and doesn’t need to know why.
You are refusing to answer the questions. If you cannot answer these questions you do not know what the effect of dropping the endangerment finding will be. Or, you know what the answer will be but you do not want to give it.
Think about it a bit, and come up with some numbers. Then we can have a talk about what the numbers mean for policy decisions.
You’re speculating on the motives of the Trump admin and the Chinese government in your last para. I think both speculations are probably wrong. The Trump admin thinks, reasonably enough, that there is no energy transition, and that the attempt to get to net zero by moving generation to wind and solar will not work, will not be affordable, and will do nothing tor either global emissions or the global climate.
But its real motive is its focused on economic growth. High prices for unreliable electricity are not a path to economic growth and prosperity, which are its priority.
As for the Chinese, they do not believe in the climate crisis. Their behavior at COP showed that. But they will make and sell you all the panels and turbines you can pay for. Their approach is, you want to wreck your economy, we are happy to help you. At a price.
Now answer the questions!
You will answer your own hypotheticals and we will use your speculation as a basis of further discussion. If you will not do so, I will assume you are not genuinely interested in discussing your hypotheticals further.
The US is a major exporter of FF. If the concern were domestic energy prices, the admin would be looking for ways to turn exports back. What he actually wants to do is ramp up exports. He wants to outcompete China in the energy sector by making the world more reliant on US exports, ideally by killing China’s renewables dominance (i.e. he’s hoping gutting US emissions regs will reduce demand and investment in renewables tech, both domestically and abroad). It’s a gambit. A stupid one, but that’s what he’s doing. I agree that the admin does not care at all about the climate, the administration is borderline scientifically illiterate, and Trump has surrounded himself with FF industry lobbyists grifting him.
I don’t know if the Chinese government genuinely cares about climate change, but they at least give lip service to the reality of it, and have made substantial green energy goals for the coming years. But it doesn’t matter, because they very much do see the writing on the wall around the energy transition. They’ve been architecting market dominance for decades by investing in manufacturing and development for renewables technology (while investing heavily in their own grid infrastructure). China controls most of the global market supply for lithium ion batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. They’ve driven market prices for these technologies so low that they are ecnomically competitive with fossil fuels, and becoming more and more so. The Chinese gambit is to get the world hooked on cheap Chinese renewables in the same way Trump wants to get the world hooked on cheap US FF exports. The difference is that China is right and Trump is wrong.
No, we don’t do it like this. You are claiming that dropping the endangerment finding will have some definite large global effects. Fine, say what they are. Or stop claiming there are any.
Speculating about the motivations of the different countries is a distraction from this point. If you have no idea what the effects will be, you cannot tell if they are large or small or none.
And by the way, whether or not it will have any global effects, and if so what they are, the thing that justifies having it, the only thing, is that there are effects on the US population.
That’s what the EPA is there for. Its not the UN.
So, what effects will the dropping of the endangerment finding have on Americans?
You can’t or won’t say, you have no reason to object to dropping it.
Sorry, I already set the terms for engaging with your contrived hypotheticals. You’ve chosen not to meet them. That ends the conversation.
Fine. We know who you are, then, and it ain’t pretty.
Here is an example of what AllanJ and similar refuse to provide. For obvious reasons:
“In 2022, the emissions from U.S. cars and light duty trucks totalled 1.05 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (GtCO2, EPA 2024). Meanwhile global CO2 emissions from energy use totalled 34.6 GtCO2 (Energy Institute 2024). Hence U.S. cars and light trucks account for only 3.0 percent of global energy-related CO2 emissions.”
But its very important to take the country to EVs as soon as possible. To save the planet, you see.
Now do the same thing for all the other insane and pointless green energy measures. You won’t.
Three percent of global emissions is not a small figure to tackle. This is more than the emissions of most countries, and is the largest single source if emissions in the US. You’re also ignoring that the endangerment finding the basis for regulating emissions across transportation, energy, and industry, not just light duty autos.
The logical basis of your argument is absurd to begin with: if I need to lose fifty pounds, the first 1.5 pounds is part of that weight loss.
Glad I wasn’t eager to entertain your absurd hypotheticals.
A brief summary of my “reading” of the “discussion” so far …
OP by “michel” (timestamped “August 4, 2025 7:16 am”) : “AlanJ … could you answer the following questions.”
Reply by “AlanJ” (August 4, 2025 7:49 am) : “Asking me hypotheticals about what might happen if the US existed in a complete vacuum with zero influence or impact on global policies or energy transitions is just being disingenuous.”
michel (August 4, 2025 11:30 am) : “You are refusing to answer the questions. … Think about it a bit, and come up with some numbers. Then we can have a talk about what the numbers mean for policy decisions. … Now answer the questions!”
AlanJ (August 4, 2025 11:47 am) : “You will answer your own hypotheticals and we will use your speculation as a basis of further discussion. If you will not do so, I will assume you are not genuinely interested in discussing your hypotheticals further.”
michel (August 4, 2025 3:01 pm) : “No, we don’t do it like this.”
AlanJ (August 4, 2025 6:27 pm) : “Sorry, I already set the terms for engaging with your contrived hypotheticals. You’ve chosen not to meet them. That ends the conversation.”
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My experience is that even if “michel” had “answered his own hypotheticals” you would simply have questioned his numbers and/or used other “That’s not what I meant …” rhetorical tricks to avoid providing your own concrete numbers in order to facilitate “further discussion”.
To “prove beyond all reasonable doubt” that this conjecture is “true” I will provide some numbers on behalf of “michel”, using the completely unrealistic assumption of :
“Project the 2010-2019 trend, i.e. the decade before the ‘COVID dip and recovery’ distortions, out to 2035”
See attached graphic, with the projection for China based on the 2016-2024 trend added for “visually obvious” reasons.
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A copy of the original questions (to avoid scrolling up and down) :
My answers to michel’s original questions are :
1) Global “FF&I” emissions in 2035 ~= 45.2 GtCO2e
2) US emissions in 2035 almost exactly 5 GtCO2e
3) If US emissions fell to 2.5 GtCO2e in 2035 in isolation ?
Global ~= 45.2 – (5 – 2.5) ~= 42.7 GtCO2e.
4a) Somewhere between “imperceptible” and “none”.
4b) We are unable to measure GMST to a “reasonable” level of accuracy (or precision) today. The same will almost certainly still be true in 2035.
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I have “answered the hypotheticals” on behalf of “michel”.
NB : It would be perfectly reasonable for him to be extremely annoyed with me for “jumping in” and doing so in this manner.
I have also “shown my working”.
Now show everyone that your above claims to want to enter into “further discussion” if your requests were met were actually made “in good faith”.
What are your concrete numbers ?
You don’t actually expect an answer do you?
I gave myself 50-50 odds that there would be no answer at all … but that includes me being late to this particular “bun-fight” so they might have stopped checking on this comments section and moved on to newer articles already, though that turned out not to be the case.
Stripping out the highlighting my “prediction” for the form a reply would probably take if one was provided was :
They actually went for the “questioning one specific number (out of the 3 provided) … and ignore everything else” option.
What I am 99;999% sure of is that “AlanJ” will never, ever, provide a set of direct answers to michel’s original questions … or to any other similar requests made in response to his “bald assertion” claims in the future.
This number is based on reductions arising from the IRA and other emissions reduction policy that Trump is dismantling, it certainly doesn’t reflect a “no emissions regulation whatsoever” scenario.
You are completely, totally and utterly correct (about that specific point).
Now that that’s out of the way ….
1) What are your answers to michel’s original questions ?
2) Please provide references / citations to where you got those “correct” numbers from.
Great, glad we agree. So the contrived hypotheticals don’t matter. Global emissions will be higher than they would have been without the repeal of the endangerment finding. That is the wrong direction. We want to be doing things that will make emissions go down faster, not more slowly.
You take your ball and go home. Only losers do that!
You could be correct in every single claim that you assert here.
And yet no one but a fool would follow your advice …
… if they perceive that you are incorrect re the Timing, or the sequence of events (Critical Path), required to effect an Energiewende.
For what serious person would accept that your Path requires draconian legal measures (the Endangerment Finding) or ruinous government spending (the Inflation Reduction Act) in order to prove itself — that you have something oh-so-much-better than what has worked, what has always worked, all over the world, to lift countries and peoples out of desperate poverty? (Not to mention their Security against foes who suffer under no such illusions.)
There is something missing here … look around and you will find it … the reasons that people feel it in their bones … that they cannot trust you … not to do Stupid Stuff.
“ecnomically competitive with fossil fuels, and becoming more and more so.”
And there’s that delusional LIE yet again.
If you want solid reliable electricity from erratic intermittent supply to the grid …
… the cost is far, far higher than cheap, reliable and clean Coal, Gas and Nuclear.
Yes, coal and gas are far cleaner than wind and solar over its life time and wrt energy produced.
Manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines are both particularly filthy industries, using lots of toxic chemicals.
Then there is the environmental destruction during installation and in use,
Then the massive pollution of the Earth with their final disposal.
Over their short life times, wind and solar are the most polluting forms of energy there is. !
China’s solar power companies shed 33% of their workforce in 2024
Over 40 solar companies have gone bankrupt in the country and 87,000 jobs lost. This followed 3 years of massive expansion sponsored by the Chinese government. Like their Ghost cities there are solar farms all over China which are not producing electricity a great number of which may not even be connected to the electricity grid.
This huge overcapacity sponsored by the government has totally back fired.
I suspect that all the “climate policies” in the world will actually have zero effect on what the climate does. Oh the hubris of some members of our puny species.
The pride comes before the fall.
Countries CANNOT exist on unreliable energy supplies.
Any country that adopts the Chinese pushed wind and solar will lose their economy and manufacturing… to China, with is massive ever increasing amount of COAL fired electricity
This is what China wants.
USA is now not playing that game… and is now winning
Your entire basis for claiming damage to the environment is from model projections using hypothetical assumptions. Why do you believe those while at the same time besmirch those who make different hypothetical assumptions. If you are going to deal in hypotheticals, the least you could do is supply answers to the hypotheticals posed for you.
Couple of more questions for Alan J;
What is the proper amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?? Any guess between roughly 180 ppm and 4000 PPM have historical (geologically speaking) precedent.
What is the proper global avg temperature?? that is if there even is such a critter.
an inquiring mind would like to know
>> the notorious IPCC emission scenario known as RCP8.5.
That scenario uses unreasonably high CO2 forcings (and the next lower RCP4.5 is not much better), but it also has been shown without any doubt or alarmist wiggle room that these and any other old global climate models show significant errors in their cloud micro-physics and their resolution is too low for meaningful description of the real world!
They are obsolete and if any published findings using them must be withdrawn or scutinized to reflect this. They are wrong and worthless without such an analysis, no matter how disalarming their forcings might look!
“Forcings” is their word. It is not applicable to a molecule and the use is bogus.
It is another hijacked word, redefined and repurposed to make them appear legitimate.
Not sure what you mean! The effect of molecules on radiation is very well known and models describing forcings are 300 years old, for example the work of Lambert and Ber.
CO2 cannot create energy out of nothing.
That’s good then, coz you’re correct it doesn’t.
It’s an “insulation” effect.
Not a “heating” effect.
You know, like your winter coat isn’t heated, it just restricts the loss of your body heat to the air.
And as corollary the outside of your coat cools as a result of the inside getting warmer.
Insulation.
And what would the equivalent be on Earth?
That’ll be the lower Stratosphere.
Guess what is happening there? (rhetorical)
You are correct in that the coat is not an energy source. At best, the coats inside will reach the same temperature as you while the outside will remain at the ambient temperature.
Once the inside of the coat reaches the temperature of your body, does your body experience an increase in its temperature?
If your body temperature rises because the coat raises it, will the inside of the coat assume that higher temperature too?
If the inside of the coat assumes that next higher temperature, will it raise your bodies temperature again?
Where does this process ever stop?
Does the resistance to heat flow across the coat just allow the inside of the coat to assume your body’s temperature quicker?
Climate science is blind as a bat. Assuming that CO2 *is* a cause of the increased greening of the earth, including continued growth of global harvests of food, how do they fold this into their climate models? One of Freeman Dyson’s main criticisms of climate science and their models is that they are not holistic at all. There is no place in their “universe” for the fact that polar bears might benefit from higher CO2, only that they will go extinct because of “global warming”. There is no place in their “universe” for the fact that increased food production will lessen land and water degradation by requiring less land use, fertilizer, and water use for agriculture. There is no place in their “universe” for benefits, only for “bad things” which, as far as I can tell, seem to never happen!
I think canceling the CO2 used by helicopters, small planes, and snowmobiles to hunt and kill Polar Bears was a good thing.
That last point needs to be hammered home. It is remarkable.
Since the alarm was raised, we have had huge investment in climate science. The number of researchers has ballooned. Speaking of balloons, we have used them, and satellites and ARGO buoys and lots of other technological advances… yet still nor progress.
Indeed, as computers have improved over the last 30 years, the science seems to have gone backwards to compensate.
So why have climate scientists failed so badly? Here are some options (can anyone think of anything I have missed?)
A) The climate is too complex to model. It is inherently chaotic with no discernible guiding factor. And thus, the computer models can never be of any use.
B) The input measurements are inadequate. To account for climate change we cannot average over a cubic mile of atmosphere or ocean. We need to have measurements at the scale of every eddy and funnels in the atmosphere or waters. And that’s impossible with modern technology.
C) The basic premise of the models is incorrect. So regardless of what inputs you put in, the output is wrong. They are tuned for the past and so the divergence remains limited for the near future. This explains why the range is always the same.
D) The models are manipulated to ensure that they reach a certain level of climate change; either to stretch from the real down to harmless AGW in order to destroy the planet for humans and empower the cold-blooded lizard people or… to stretch from the real up to catastrophic AGW in order to justify continued funding of the research. Either option is possible, depending on whether the models are created by lizard people or climate scientists.
E) Clouds are still not understood.
F) The range is actually pretty narrow considering the complexities of the climate and so no-one is actually bothering to make the models any better. They are good enough, so no actual research is required. And none is actually being done.
Any other ideas?
“The climate is too complex to model.”
A.Too complex for us to model properly today. Some day, far in the future, we may have the necessary computing power and have enough accurate data to use. But not today.
The rest are on point.
I would add:
G. The models are not holistic. Earth is a biosphere made up of many functional parts. Defining benefits and detriments must consider all parts, not just one – temperature. For instance, increased productivity in agriculture from higher CO2 levels (both photosynthesis *and* temperature/growing season length) means less land farmed, less fertilizer used, less water used – global benefits. Climate science only attributes bad things to higher temperatures, never benefits.
H. Climate science has not defined a boundary condition for maximum daily temperatures. Yet Planck radiation as well as thermodynamic conduction/convection both place a boundary condition of maximum temperatures. It is a failure generated by using mid-range daily temperatures as the analysis data rather than the entire panoply of data available.
To expand on your point G. In the real world, everything affects everything.
For example, changes in rainfall affect the amount and number/size of the plants that are growing.
This impacts albedo, transpiration, CO2 absorption.
Changes in rainfall can also impact erosion, which impacts the amount of material being swept into oceans, which impacts albedo, the amount of plant life in the oceans, CO2 absorption, etc.
A change in anything, can and often does, affect everything else.
The original author is correct when he says the climate is too complex. However, in order to effectively model the climate, we have to understand more than just, the climate. We have to fully understand everything.
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That’s my point B.
My point A was different. Retired_Engineer_Jim got it.
In truth, I could have just stuck with point E to truly describe my opinion of climate science.
As a corrolary to E… Air movement is not well understood.
The atmosphere, and, therefore weather and, ultimately, The Climate, is not only chaotic, but also coupled. Not readily modelable.
The Earth energy systems (dynamic, coupled, etc.) modelled as:
CO2 is input
IR is transfer function
Temperature is output
That is bogus. It is not an energy model.
I’d go with C) stated a little differently. The basic physics of the models is wrong. Specifically, the handling of water vapor.
Models also do a poor job with natural cycles.
Get these two items fixed and you might be able to do a reasonable job modeling our climates.
Fair point.
Although water vapour is a big part of my favourite, point E.
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now…
The enthusiasts are gushing about the success of net zero. Apparently California is 100 renewable most of the time, according to a video I saw yesterday.
And everybody who can is jumping ship.
In the words of a noted patriot “I have not yet begun to fight!”
Electricity in CA is occasionally mostly met from weather dependent generators but there are caveats to that. CA imports electricity, via Path 65 {Pacific DC Intertie}, from the Pacific Northwest that is mostly from hydro power and nuclear. There is about 11% wind and solar in the mix. What part of this (other out-of-state sources also) does CA claim is “net zero”?
Further, if only electricity is referenced, the other energy used in the State is being ignored.
You’re not supposed to notice that guy behind the curtain, John.
The price of electricity in California is twice that of the US average at about 30.55 cents per kilowatt hour. Excepting imports, California runs on all renewables for a portion of about 10 days per year, hardly “most of the time.” The majority source of California electricity remains natural gas.
A few months ago the Spanish Government boasted that the country had achieved a 100% renewable electricity grid. This was followed almost immediately by a huge nationwide blackout.
“hypothetical doubling”
This needs a footnote. Say the formula is 2X = HYP. What is X?
If X = 180, then the atmosphere is already past HYP = 360.
If X = 280, then the atmosphere might get there by 2090. {This, I think, is the meaning.}
Mauna Loa CO2 is now ~430 ppm. Is this the number to be doubled? So, HYP = 860 ppm. Even if this is possible, is it bad?
Indoor growers exceed this amount while crops benefit, and workers are not incapacitated.
If I understand Richard Lindzen’s graph on the subject correctly, a 430ppm increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could not result in more than a 2.15C increase in the average surface temperature of the Earth.
Where on Earth is it average?
What is the optimum (average) temperature for the planet?
It has not been considered except in a few rational cases, that the planet might be headed towards the optimum.
Funny. Reading the hysteria this morning, the first “climate scientist” to object was Al Gore and the second listed is Michael Mann.
On viewing that, I give a 100% credibility rating to the report, and 0 to the complainers.
The Christy et al. report is delightful, but will it make a big difference?
It is satisfying to breath a bit of fresh air, but little shift in positions will occur.
The reason is the argument is over ‘molehills’ viewed as ‘mountains’. Molehills are down in the noise and always capable of disputation. The climate change believers have not previously been convinced by science. That is clear from 40 years of their science manipulation of the molehills into mountains. Turning ‘climate variation’ (what naturally happens in the course of time) into climate change (what is caused by humanity) works well with the low information people. But, does it matter? Is it key?
Let’s talk $.
Even if climate change were about to kill us all, it is irrelevant. The $ are what really matters. That should be no surprise. More than 10$ trillion later, the energy transition is turning into the energy implosion. The reason is not due to climate change, but to how fast the cornucopia of public funds is being depleted. BP is not canceling contracts to build offshore wind turbines because the company cannot do it, but because subsidies are running out.
It turns out that renewable energy systems, in addition to intermittent power plants, include equally expensive components such as grid expansion, backup, inverters, faux rotational inertia, etc.
And, the price is growing exponentially.
Exponential growth can continue only a short time before the resource, $, is consumed.
The Bloomberg NEF plot, attached, includes grid costs only after 2020, but is still incomplete. The IEA has published the grid expansion costs from 2015-2020 (added here). The grid expansion began before 2004, and has continued its exponential growth ever since.
No one noticed until 2020, thus the attached Bloomberg graph.
The remarkable aspect of the energy transition is that so little of it has to do with energy production. It is more than 2/3 about energy consumption. Storing energy is a key element of the renewable energy transition, known perfectly well since the 1980s, but always swept under the rug (or more recently, the cause of conflagrations). The cost of transport is clearly an exponential component since about 2010 – reimagine Musk – now worth 400 $billion. His fortune is a result of this graph, in large part.
Climate variation (change ) is interesting, scientifically. But, I argue that is academic. The real issue is those depleting $.
The answer is simple. Ask anyone. All the government has to do is print more money.
Sadly, too many people believe that is how it all works.
CO2 IS AN ABSOLUTELY VITAL FOR GROWING FLORA AND FAUNA; NET ZERO IS A SUICIDE PACT
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/co2-is-an-absolutely-vital-gas-ingredient-for-growing-flora-and
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The IPCC, etc., has dubbed CO2 as having magical global warming power, based on its own “science”
The IPCC, etc., claims, CO2 acts as Climate Control Knob, that eventually will cause runaway Climate Change, if we continue using fossil fuels.
The IPCC, etc., denies the Little Ice Age, uses fraudulent computer temperature projections.
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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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Net-zero by 2050 to-reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact, to 1) increase command/control by governments, and 2) enable the moneyed elites to become more powerful and 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, already for at least 40 years; extremely biased, money-losing CNN, NPR, PBS, Colbert’s Late-Night Show, come to mind.
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CO2, just 0.042% in the atmosphere, is a weak absorber of a small fraction of the absorbable, low-energy IR photons.
CO2 has near-zero influence on world surface temperatures.
CO2 is a life-giving molecule. Greater CO2 ppm in atmosphere is an absolutely essential ingredient for: 1) increased green flora, which increases fauna all over the world, and 2) increased crop yields to better feed 8 billion people.
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At About 30% Annual W/S Electricity on the Grid, Various Costs Increase Exponentially
The W/S subsidies uglify the countryside, kills birds and bats, whales and dolphins, fisheries, tourism, view-sheds, etc.
The weather-dependent, variable/intermittent W/S output, often too-little and often too-much, creates grid-disturbing difficulties that become increasingly more challenging and more costly/kWh to counteract, as proven by the UK and California for the past 5 years, and Germany for the past 10 years, and recently in Spain/Portugal.
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All have “achieved” near-zero, real- growth GDPs, the highest electricity prices/kWh in the EU, and stagnant real wages for almost all people, while further enriching the jet-setting elites who live in the poshest places.
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Their angry, over-taxed, over-regulated native populations, already burdened by the wind/solar/batteries nonsense, and then further burdened by the elites bringing in tens of millions of uninvited, unvetted, uneducated, unskilled, ghetto-trash/crime-prone poor folks, from dysfunctional countries, who are sucking from the multiple, government-program tits, while making minimal efforts to produce goods and services; a chaotic, culture-destroying burden the native populations never voted for.
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The climate is not any different, 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 at most 1.5 C +/- 0.25 C, of which:
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1) Urban heat islands account for about 65% (0.65 x 1.5 = 0.975 C), 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, plus the waste heat of fuel burning. Japan, China, India, Europe, etc., have similar heat islands
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/16/live-at-1-p-m-eastern-shock-climate-report-urban-heat-islands-responsible-for-65-of-global-warming/
2) CO2 accounts for about 0.3 C, with the rest from
3) Long-term, inter-acting cycles, such as coming out of the Little Ice Age,
4) Earth surface volcanic activity, and other changes, such as from increased agriculture, deforestation, especially in the Tropics, etc.
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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 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. See URL
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/about.html
‘The climate is not any different, even though, atmosphere CO2 increased from 280 ppm in 1850 to 420 ppm in 2025, 50% in 175 years.’
Also, we supposedly bottomed out ~180 ppm during the last glacial maximum. For the benefit of our alarmist friends, levels below 150 ppm are in the neighborhood of ‘sayonara’ territory.
Very nice.
Unless there are some monumental breakthroughs in electrical storage, Net Zero is unattainable, and few, if any, of these breakthroughs are on the horizon. Likewise with wind- and solar-generated power which by themselves are nowhere near capable of proving inexpensive and reliable power during all weather conditions. So it’s time the climate alarmists and eco-dreamers gave themselves some credibility and promoted what actually works, not just pipe dreams.
“f you want to see what politically compromised crap looks like” – Try IPCC AR6 WG1. They still use Ciasis et al 2013, and they in turn deferred to Archer and Brovkin, 2008. And Archer and Brovkin, 2008 is models all the way down. Strange for something supposedly “The Physical Science Basis”.
You need to (mostly) ignore the “line-by-line approved by government / political appointees” SPM and read the details of the actual report chapters instead, which do include reasonably balanced discussions of various “uncertainties”.
Section 1.5.4, “Modelling techniques, comparisons and performance assessments”, page 221 :
Section 4.2.5, “Quantifying Various Sources of Uncertainty”, page 566 :
Section 7.1, “Introduction, conceptual framework, and advances since AR5”, page 929 :
The “Executive Summary” of Chapter 8, “Water Cycle Changes”, in the “Confidence in Projections, Non-linear Responses and the Potential for Abrupt Changes” sub-section, on page 1058 :
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You will, however, also find many examples provoking a “Why do we need ‘experts’, exactly ?” reactions.
For example, in the SPM C.1.2 paragraph, on page 23, you will find :
The “worst” case of this phenomenon, to me at least, can be found in section 8.2.3.1, “Hydrological processes related to ice and snow”, on page 1072 :
Andrew. Here is a link to astrophysicist Joseph Postma’s most recent post titled “The State of Climate Sophistry.” I recommend this expose to all for an overview of the history behind the radiative physics of climate science. The foundational logic of modern radiation physics-based climate science is the Vacuum Planet Equation of astronomy. Joe as an accredited astrophysicist is eminently qualified to build on his professional expertise and demonstrate the ontological flaw of diluting the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA) insolation using a by-four divisor (1/4).
By diluting this key insolation flux metric by 4, rather than the logically correct divide TOA beam by two divisor (1/2), of a lit hemisphere, Climate Science completely removes night-time from the foundations of climate analysis; and thereby creates a twilight world model that cannot ipso facto generate Earth’s dynamic sunlit powered climate.
Sadly too many people will not understand the trigonometry behind this. Too many don’t understand what a plane wave is and how the energy in that wave strikes each square micrometer of the surface. Using an average flux value diminishes the actual temperatures that evolve as the sun as the earth rotates.
“Watts, who runs the Watts Up With That? (WUWT?) site that was responsible for publicising the infamous Climategate scandal…”
Didn’t know that!
On another thread, one of the infamous trolls posted that the Mann hockey stick graph was not a projection or a prediction, it was a reconstruction of the past.
Ignore the corruption, the bad proxies used, the data manipulation, the “special sauce” applied to eliminate known historical records. Ignore all of that.
Ignore that the media and alarmists (A. Gore) and IPCC used it to predict doom. Ignore that, too.
So, consider reconstruction as it applies to the countless climate models.
After hind casting (aka curve fitting) all they are are reconstructions of the past (however accurate or inaccurate), with no ability to project or predict. They are nothing more than glorified hockey sticks.
Empires that chase the fantasies of Net Zero will crumble and disappear, consigned to history as another example of failure to acknowledge reality.
The following 15 statements discussed with Microsoft Copilot AI define my position on the dual roles of atmospheric thermal radiant opacity and the atmospheric mass-motion environmental lapse rate in defining Earth’s climatic properties under the impact of a single lit hemisphere insolation loading:
1. That the sun only ever shines over half of the surface area of the globe.
2. Sunlight inherently includes its high-frequency energy signature and cannot be treated as a frequency-independent input.
3. For a given beam intensity of sunlight (SI) arriving at the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA) the global lit hemisphere receives an average flux of SI/2
4. The full globe exhausts to space planetary thermal radiation with a flux intensity of SI/4
5. Twice the exhaust flux intensity spread over half the surface area is equivalent to the lit hemisphere insolation flux: (SI/4) *2 = SI/2
6. Half the lit hemisphere insolation flux intensity spread over the full surface area of the globe is equivalent to the global TOA thermal radiant exhaust flux: (SI/2)/2 = SI/4
7. The quality of the lit hemisphere insolation flux of SI/2 is richer (has both a higher frequency and greater intensity) than the quality of the planetary thermal radiant which is exhausted to space.
8. The two flux qualities are not equivalent, and this difference is established by comparing the Stefan-Boltzmann (S-B) temperature of these two distinctly different radiative fluxes.
9. For an average post-albedo lit hemisphere insolation flux of 470 W/m2 the thermal equivalent S-B temperature is 28.6 Celsius. This temperature is sufficient to melt surface water ice and vapourise water into the atmosphere, enhancing atmospheric thermal radiant opacity, and so hindering the loss to space of thermal radiant energy from the planetary surface.
10. For an average global TOA exhaust flux of 235 W/m2 the thermal equivalent S-B temperature is -19.4 Celsius.
11. For a global average surface temperature of 15 Celsius and a global average environmental lapse rate of 6.5 C/km -19.4 Celsius corresponds to average elevation of 5.3 km, which is near to the midpoint mass of Earth’s semi-opaque atmosphere.
12. The Earth’s surface acts as a perfect black body for pedagogical purposes and exchanges thermal energy with the overlying atmosphere by a contact process of diabatic energy exchange.
13. Atmospheric thermal radiant opacity hinders the loss to space of surface thermal radiant energy from the originally insolation-primed surface.
14. Climate is the atmospheric processes of thermalized fluid mass-motion that delivers energy from the lit hemisphere to the global dark side via zonal and meridional advection.
15. Opacity is the governor of atmospheric cooling rates and does not act as a surface energy enhancer by a fictitious process of back-radiation energy amplification.
Conclusion:
Insolation input received over the lit hemisphere initiates diabatic energy exchange at the surface-atmosphere interface, from which zonal and meridional advection redistribute thermalized energy across both diurnal and seasonal domains. The rate and extent of this redistribution are not governed solely by dynamical mechanisms, but are critically modulated by the atmospheric thermal radiant opacity. Opacity defines the altitude and temporal profile of radiative loss by constraining the vertical transparency of the atmosphere. Rather than acting as a feedback amplifier of surface energy, it functions as a regulatory throttle on cooling rates, shaping the conditions under which energy is retained within or released from the tropospheric column.
“8. The two flux qualities are not equivalent, and this difference is established by comparing the Stefan-Boltzmann (S-B) temperature of these two distinctly different radiative fluxes.”
” Rather than acting as a feedback amplifier of surface energy, it functions as a regulatory throttle on cooling rates, shaping the conditions under which energy is retained within or released from the tropospheric column.”
Heat loss is a *time* function. You can’t simply compare instantaneous flux density calculated at a single point in time to determine total heat loss.
A slower cooling rate actually *increases* the heat loss over time. The heat loss is related to the area under the temperature curve. The decay rate determines the area under the temperature curve. A slower decay rate (i.e. slower cooling) means more area under the temperature curve – i.e. *more* heat loss over time.
While the instantaneous flux densities may be different the outgoing radiation goes on 24 hours per day while the incoming radiation only lasts part of the day. For much of the globe the amount of incoming heat is greater than the outgoing heat for less than half of the 24 hour day. You can see this by looking at the part of the diurnal temperature curve with a positive slope versus the part with a negative slope.
I think this is what you are getting at with the second quote above. Your item 8, however, is a little misleading since it doesn’t address the time function part of the equation.
I agree with your point. By averaging away the night, diurnal variations are removed from the canonical model. This lack of night in the canonical model is the root cause of the problem.
Climate science makes so many garbage assumptions in an attempt to “simplify” the functional equations describing the biosphere that their models are just not fit for purpose. It’s like trying to model the elapsed time of a dragster by using only the horsepower output curve of the engine while parameterizing the torque output curve of the engine and the traction of the drive tires. You’ll never get the right answer and will always have to make excuses why the model never matches reality.
I missed this on your first post. It isn’t exactly correct. A plane wave has a constant flux value at every point on the wave. Consequently, every point on the half of a sphere facing the sun will receive exactly the same flux. It is not divided by 2 when considering the available flux.
What changes is the angle with which each pencil in the plane wave intercepts a point on the sphere. A point exactly perpendicular to the wave will receive 100% of the flux. As points further from perpendicular (think latitude) intercept a pencil there will be absorption and reflection. The absorption part is determined by the cosine function. This means as latitude moves away from 0°, less and less is absorbed. That is where tropics, temperate, and arctic zones are derived.
Every point on the earth goes from maximum insolation to no insolation. The radiative temperature of the earth cannot be calculated by using an average due to the T⁴.
Averages simply cannot be scientifically used when trig functions and exponentials are part of the problem. Averages are not a good substitute for integration either.
@jim Gorman. It depends on the cross-sectional area of the beam. I am referring here to the planetary global silhouette, and not a pencil thin beam in the traditional sense. I need to clarify my terminology.
The global silhouette is not a flat plane. If you propose it as such then you also have to propose that the sun insolation is a from a point source and is a spherical wave and is not a plane wave. You have to apply the cosine function in both situations. The absorbed insolation still goes to zero at the edges.
@Tim Gorman The solid angle that the Earth’s disk subtends at the Sun, which is approximately 1 astronomical unit (AU) away, is roughly 1/175,000,000 of a steradian. To all intents therefore the global Earth’s disk silhouette cuts a planar flux illumination surface from the solar radiant emission bubble at our orbital distance of 1 AU.
The silhouette is a disk, but the surface of the disk is not flat.
Here is a diagram and explanation of a plane wave versus a spherical wave.
Here is another diagram where the pencils are parallel and all have the same intensity.
You can divide those pencils into as many as you want. Enough so that every square micrometer receives one pencil. Each square micrometer of the earth will receive the same flux as any other square micrometer. The only difference will be the angle the pencil makes with the surface.
My take is this : The silhouette is a flat disk and has a cross-sectional area of (Pi), but the surface of the hemisphere is not flat and has a cross-sectional area of 2(Pi). Hence divide Intensity by 2.
I agree, but I fail to see the value of your contention.
YMMV
Here is an image from an online textbook.
Practical Meteorology Textbook : R. Stull : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
This text uses a sin 30°, I use cos 60°.
As you can see, the amount of insolation absorbed is based upon the angle of incidence that the insolation strikes the earth. The fact that the earth is not flat is important.
The orbital calculations get complicated quickly when actually using the true surface shape, the tilt of the earth, and the earth’s precession.
The important part is that averages don’t track with either trig functions nor exponential changes in temperature.
The flux is a plane wave. The earth is not a plane. It is a modified sphere. A sphere, when intersecting a plane wave, does not present a 90° surface to the plane wave at all points.
From any point on the equator (at least as a first approximation) the absorbed insolation is related to the cosine of the latitude. Total insolation would be the integral from 0 to π/2 of 2∫ Flat *cos(lΘ)dΘ. where F is the insolation value at the point on the equator and Θ is the latitude. (the 2 is for the NH and SH). From that point on the equator going east and west in longitude the earth will not present a 90° surface to the insolation either. The absorbed insolation will be related to the sine of the latitude. The integral will then be from 0 to π/2 of 2∫ Flong * sin(longitude), the 2 is for the east and west area from the point on the equator. That will give you the total insolation absorbed by the hemisphere of the earth facing the sun at any instance in time.
I suspect we are almost saying the same thing. The double integral above will evaluate to πR^2 as far as area. The issue is that just using πR^2 would lead one to think the SB temperature would be the same for each point on the sphere. Using πR^2 will give the total insolation absorbed but that won’t be the “average” temperature because the sin and cos don’t have a consistent slope from 0 to π/2. Trying to visualize what is happening by just looking at the silhouette of the earth intersecting a plane wave would lead one to think that the temperature at each pole would be same as at the equator since both would get the same insolation from the plane wave.
That’s why I said that if you make the earth into a flat plane then you have to make the sun into a point source with a spherical wavefront. Then you get the insolation at the poles equal to zero and at the equator as the maximum value. The temperature at each point on the plane would not be the same at any point in time.
@jim Gorman. We are discussing two completely different things . I am discussing the total amount of flux the planet cuts out from the solar radiant bubble at a distance of 1 AU. You are discusssing how the solar energy impacts the surface of the globe. Time to stop this pointless ping-pong. Goodbye