In 2020, I started downloading and analyzing various parameters from the ERA5 reanalysis model. Here is a Google Drive folder with three plots for a gridpoint near where I live, for all hours of the year 2019: Time series of total column water “tcw” in kg/m^2; time series of downward longwave radiation at the surface “strd” in W/m^2; and a scatter plot of one vs the other.
The point was to better understand the role of water vapor and water droplets/ice crystals in varying the strength of the IR influence of the atmosphere toward the surface. There is very large and rapid variation of tcw throughout the days and seasons, with the value often dropping to near zero kg/m^2 in the winter. The variation of strd is rapid and large also. And when you do a scatter plot of tcw vs strd for the same set of hours, you can see how the so-called “greenhouse effect” narrative about non-condensing IR-active gases is so misleading.
One more thing for today. Sure, any general circulation model applies radiative transfer computations to represent the IR coupling of the atmosphere to the surface, and the radiative loss of energy to space. This includes ERA5 and the forecasting models. No objection – it’s necessary!
But one of my objections to the use of GCMs for long-term climate diagnosis and prognosis concerning GHGs is that there is no way to reliably isolate the longwave influence of incremental CO2, CH4, N2O – from the longwave influence of variable water vapor/droplets/ice crystals on thermal conditions at the surface. It has been fundamentally wrong all along to have used pre-stabilized, large-grid, discrete-layer, time-step-interated, parameter-tuned-to-hindcast GCMs to generate scenarios from pre-specified time-scheduled “forcings.” The entire exercise was circular from the outset, and remains so.
Downwelling longwave radiation is primarilly a function of temperature, not its cause. The concentration of GHGs only has a minor impact on it. Also it is totally unrelated to the GHE.
The words “low denser greenhouse gases block thermal radiation” imply a permanently residing heat caused by GHG’s. Thermodynamically that can’t happen. As the temperature of the atmosphere goes up the radiation intensity from the material involved will also increase. It’s a simple gradient problem. As the low “denser” GHG’s heat up then convection and conduction will drive the heat containing material higher in altitude to a point where it can be radiated to the cooler heatsink we call “space”. What you are describing here is an artifact of using “average” values as a constant over all time. It’s a simplification that is non-physical.
. . . ‘Back radiation’ has nothing to do with it.”
I don’t think that is correct. The greenhouse effect as occurs in Earth’s lower stratosphere is defined by the rate and directions at which LWIR photon energy is:
— first absorbed by LWIR-active gases (predominately H2O, CO2 and CH4),
— then equilibrated via molecular collisions with non-IR “active” gases (predominately N2 and O2),
— then having ALL atmospheric constituents losing that excess energy viaisotropic, broadband thermal radiation.
At low altitudes, a little over half that isotropic thermal radiation is to directed toward deep space, and the remaining is directed back toward Earth’s surfaces. Of course, broadband thermal radiation from lower in the atmosphere is subject to repeated cycles of absorption and re-radiation as the energy very rapidly progresses to top of atmosphere (excluding the scientifically-acknowledged part of the IR spectrum known as the “atmospheric window”).
Hence, “back radiation” can indeed be seen to be a correct physics term for describing part of the processes associated with the GHE.
Ooops . . . my bad in the second sentence of my reply, corrected here: “The greenhouse effect as occurs in Earth’s lower stratospheretroposphere is defined by the rate and directions at which LWIR photon energy is:”
Sure, any general circulation model applies radiative transfer computations to represent the IR coupling of the atmosphere to the surface, and the radiative loss of energy to space. This includes ERA5 and the forecasting models. No objection – it’s necessary!
That’s correct. And yes, it is necessary.
But one of my objections to the use of GCMs for long-term climate diagnosis and prognosis concerning GHGs is that there is no way to reliably isolate the longwave influence of incremental CO2, CH4, N2O – from the longwave influence of variable water vapor/droplets/ice crystals on thermal conditions at the surface.
You literally said there was no objections in the sentence immediately preceding this one. Anyway, the RRTM does isolate the incremental longwave influence of gas species. That’s it primary function. And ERA uses the RRTM.
“Anyway, the RRTM does isolate the incremental longwave influence of gas species.”
No. You keep mistaking the spectral modeling as though it means the same as isolating the influence of CO2 and the other GHGs in the result. Not when clouds, mist, droplets, ice crystals, are involved.
No I’m not. The RRTM tells you how much radiation is emitted/absorbed given the abundance of a gas species in the atmosphere and how that radiation effects the gridded data provided by ERA5. Spectral modeling is contained within the HITRAN database. The RRTM uses the spectral modeling of gas species contained within HITRAN to calculate the radiative effect of those gas species within the atmosphere. And the RRTM does take into account clouds, mist, droplets, ice crystals, etc. and much more. In fact, it’s handling of these elements in the atmosphere are likely far more complex and comprehensive than you realize. I encourage you to look at the source code and see for yourself.
“I encourage you to look at the source code and see for yourself.”
The functions and parameterizations and coding of RRTM, or similar modeling, are not in dispute here. You should know this from previous exchanges.
The issue is whether any model using such code to apply a computed radiative effect from incremental CO2 tells you anything at all about cause and effect of a trend in observed conditions at the surface. There’s way too much action going on dynamically, including cloud formation and dissipation, precipitation, energy conversion, etc. to establish any time-step radiative condition at any layer in any grid box with sufficient fidelity for such attribution.
DD,
Count me as one scientist in agreement with your comments.
Yes, so much is going on.
The topic lacks a clear, agreed description of the mechanisms that seem to keep global temperatures in their narrow range shown from proxies.
Currently, some researchers invoke CO2, others claim dominance of orbital change with respect to the sun. There might be more mechanisms. It is unwise to think that there is only one mechanism.
Thanks, David – you always do great work here. Obviously, the relationship between ‘tcw’ and ‘strd’ is non-linear, to say the least. I would also question if these are modeled or measured parameters, and if the latter, what instrumentation is used, as much of the alarmist narrative hinges on the importance of so-called back radiation, which I don’t think has ever been measured.
so-called back radiation, which I don’t think has ever been measured.
The SURFRAD network is but one example of it being measured. You can even measure it yourself, albeit with limitations, using an inexpensive IR thermometer.
No. Inexpensive IR thermometers only measure within the range of the ‘atmospheric window’, which has been pointed out by many commenters here over the years. Please stop hand waving re. back radiation from GHGs and tell us exactly how it’s supposedly measured. Better yet, read this paper and let us know how the phenomenological physics behind radiant transfer theory can tell us anything re. the transport of thermal energy through the troposphere:
Inexpensive IR thermometers only measure within the range of the ‘atmospheric window’,
Deflection and Specious. Back-radiation does NOT exclude the 8-14 um band which most inexpensive IR thermometers are sensitive to. Said another way… DWIR in the 8-14 um band is still back radiation.
Nevermind that SURFRAD provides broad band measurements anyway. It might not be something you could without significant resources, but it is being done nonetheless by others.
Please stop hand waving re. back radiation from GHGs and tell us exactly how it’s supposedly measured.
By pointing a radiometer or thermopile upward so that it views the DWIR.
Better yet, read this paper and let us know how the phenomenological physics behind radiant transfer theory can tell us anything re. the transport of thermal energy through the troposphere:
I read it. No where in the paper does it say that measurement of DWIR anything equivalent to it is not possible. In fact, the author acknowledges that it is possible. What the author disputes is descriptions or interpretations of how these instruments work.
Side note…a key point of the paper is that one should average the flux the radiometer sees so that it is more accurate and meaningful. This is paper is going to piss off the contrarians who say you cannot average intensive properties.
Side note 2…the quote “The accumulation of a signal over an extended time interval is often used to improve the measurement accuracy by suppressing the effect of random noise.” is going to piss off contrarians who say averaging cannot abate uncertainty.
‘Back-radiation does NOT exclude the 8-14 um band which most inexpensive IR thermometers are sensitive to.’
Let’s be clear p n one has any issue with the idea that condensed matter, e.g., water droplets, ice crystals and dust particles absorb and emit thermal radiation that is detectable at the Earth’s surface by detectors operating within the atmospheric window. Where climate alarmism jumps the shark is in ascribing the thermal radiative properties of condensed matter to GHGs in order to convey the idea that ‘back radiation’ from the latter results in dangerous warming of the Earth’s surface, aka, CAGW.
‘I read it’
Read it again. From page 12:
“Whether spelled out explicitly or not, the key premise of phenomenological photometry as well as of the phenomenological RTT is that matter interacts with the energy of the electromagnetic field rather than with the electro-magnetic field itself. This profoundly false assumption explains the deceitful simplicity of the phenomenological concepts as well as their ultimate failure. Indeed, the very outset of both phenomenological disciplines is the postulation of the existence of the radiance as the primordial physical quantity describing the “instantaneous directional distribution of the radiant energy flow” at a point in space. This is followed by a“derivation” of the scalar RTE on the basis of “simple energy conservation considerations” and the postulation that it is the electromagnetic energy rather than the electromagnetic field that gets scattered by particles and surfaces.”
‘What the author disputes is descriptions or interpretations of how these instruments work.’
Exactly, the idea being that measuring ‘radiance’ via RTT is NOT the same thing as measuring energy flow. In other words, the entire idea that ‘back radiation’ heats the Earth’s surface is a ‘profoundly false assumption’.
Part of the misconception here is conflating temperature with heat. As well as considering “back radiation” as a heat source rather than as “reflected heat”.
Heat loss is functionally T^4 while temperature is just T^1.
If the back radiation causes temperature to fall more slowly over a given time interval then that actually results in *more* heat loss in that time interval. If heat loss is based on T^4 then the longer the temperature stays high then the greater is the amount of heat lost. That increment of heat loss will be both from the object itself (i.e. the earth) plus any reflected heat that gets absorbed. It’s what Planck called “compensation”.
You simply can’t look at the temperature curve and say “the earth gets hotter” because temperature isn’t heat. You *have* to calculate the actual heat loss in joules and climate science never does that. Especially when trying to formulate a “radiative balance”.
It is *my* opinion that the concept of a “photon” has been bastardized beyond recognition in physical science. Planck considered a photon to be nothing more than a quanta of energy. Energy is not a bullet, i.e. a particle. Your reference addresses this.
Consider:
Science today talks about radiation only interacting with molecules that have a “dipole” moment. A “dipole” is an EM concept.
Radiative flux is defined as energy/time-area. Again, energy is not a bullet. If a photon is a bullet then how does a 100watt signal differentiate itself from a 1000watt signal? Is it like the difference between a .410 shotgun shell vs a 10guage shotgun shell? More pellets in the signal? Bigger pellets being used?
The energy in a “photon” is frequency dependent. How does a bullet have a frequency? EM signals have a frequency, a bullet does not.
Planck’s treatise speaks to things like “polarization” of radiating rays. Planck: “We have finally to allow for the polarization of the emitted radiation. Since the medium was assumed to be isotropic the emitted rays are unpolarized. Hence every ray has just twice the intensity of one of its plane polarized components, which could, e.g., be obtained by passing the ray through a Nicol’s prism.”
Bullets wouldn’t have plane polarized components.
If you ask most AI’s if a low frequency EM wave can have more energy than a high frequency EM wave they will answer no because the energy in an EM wave is based on frequency.
If you ask most AI’s if a low frequency EM wave with an amplitude of 100 carries more energy than a high frequency wave with an amplitude of 1 they will answer yes.
The answer to this seeming paradox is that if a photon is just a quanta of energy and not a particle then both can be true. If a photon is a particle then it becomes difficult to have both be true.
A 100 watt low-freq signal will have lots of low-energy quanta while a 100 watt high-freq signal will have fewer high-energy quanta of energy.
But the energy in both will be related to the amplitude of the EM wave.
Somehow, somewhere, a “quanta” of energy got morphed into being a “particle”. I suspect as a simplification to explain EM waves without having to resort to Maxwell’s equations and actual quantum physics. The fact that an atom or molecule can only emit/absorb a specific quanta of energy doesn’t make that quanta into a particle.
‘I suspect as a simplification to explain EM waves without having to resort to Maxwell’s equations and actual quantum physics.’
That’s Mishchenko’s take as well. Based on his article (posted, above), the electromagnetic and radiative transfer guys haven’t been playing too well together for most of the past century.
In any event, I suspect that the RTT paradigm will be defended to the last man within climate ‘science’ due to its tractability in grant-generating models that allow industrial CO2 emissions, aka, Western civilization, to be vilified.
Let me point out that Planck’s work was done prior to the advent of “quanta” (he invented it)and his his work on radiant heat was partly the need to find a method of describing how a spring could only be energized by a force with a given frequency.
Planck in Part II, Chapter 1, used Maxwell’s equation to derive the theoretical underpinning of the force being transmitted by an EM wave. That force is what causes heating.
I am sure you know that using Maxwell’s equations with vector calculus is daunting. Planck throws the math around like counting things in kindergarten. He uses the right-rule which I am sure is unheard of to except for physicists and EE’s.
Pyrgeometers measures radiance, NOT energy flux. Effectively, the phenomenological physics of radiant transfer theory (RTT) does allow one to convert radiance to temperature, so in theory the SURFRAD folks could have saved a few bucks and used conventional thermometers to measure in-situ temperatures. But, then again, local temperatures aren’t very scary, and the real point of the exercise is to buttress the premise that human CO2 emissions present a danger to the Earth’s climate.
As for vW&H, while I like the idea that they can use the alarmists’ own junk science to ‘show’ that doubling CO2 will have only a minimal effect, by not calling the bad science of RTT out, they and other lukewarmers continue to leave the door open for the climate alarmists, who have billions of taxpayer dollars at their disposal, to weaponize science on behalf of the Left.
Feel free to nit pick and correct my admittedly poor physics syntax. However, if your intent is to imply an actual connection between phenomenological RTT and the real physics of electromagnetic theory, it’s already been tried without success. See Sec. 3.3 (page 15) of the attached article:
Thanks for your reply. Sorry for taking so long to respond. The ERA5 tcw and strd values are modeled outputs. Balloon radiosondes would be a primary active input to keep the model updated for temperature, humidity, and winds. Satellite imaging is assimilated for cloud cover. There are numerous other active input sources as well.
David what can we glean from this ? The money shot seems to be as follows. Seems to indicate that if the atmosphere is dry-ish, then it takes a lot of downwelling LW increase to make it “moister”…while if the atmosphere has lots of moisture the amount of LW has progressively less effect…. .or the opposite if you’re focused on absolutes, not change of values…This all could be a function of cloud cover, and the WV that was needed to form those clouds, and of course, the LW those clouds show to the surface during nighttime.
Thanks for your reply.
Some points of interest:
-This is one grid point, so the variation of tcw is mainly from the passing of warmer/wetter and cooler/drier air masses. I don’t draw any inferences about the surface influencing the water content of the atmosphere.
-Other things being equal at any point in time, a higher value of tcw increases the longwave influence on the surface, with a large effect at low values, diminishing at higher values. This is a huge effect compared to the annual average increase of GHG “forcing” on the order of 0.035 W/m^2 per year.
-At any point in time, any particular value of tcw might involve more or less longwave influence toward the surface, depending on temperature, clouds, etc. This is the vertical spread within the scatter plot.
-The very dry conditions dramatically reduce the longwave influence (i.e. relating to the poorly named “greenhouse effect”) of the atmosphere toward the surface. To me, this means the dry periods, especially the winter season, provide plenty of opportunity for “excess” sensible heat (e.g.,perhaps related to incremental GHGs) from the rest of the year to be more freely rejected directly to space from the surface “skin.”
“To me, this means the dry periods, especially the winter season, provide plenty of opportunity for “excess” sensible heat (e.g.,perhaps related to incremental GHGs) from the rest of the year to be more freely rejected directly to space from the surface “skin.””
Climate science refuses to admit that heat loss is a time related function. Heat that is gained doesn’t have to be immediately lost. That’s why comparing incoming radiative flux with outgoing radiative flux tells you nothing. Flux is joules/sec-m^2. Climate science always forgets that dimension abbreviated as “sec”. And since heat loss over time is related to T^5 you can’t do a simple average flux of (Fmax + Fmin)/2. The average of T^5 is not the same as an average of T.
If climate science really wanted to be a real physical science the heat impact to the earth probably should be integrated from the start of La Nina_1 to the end of La Nina_2 for both flux_in and flux_out.
“…heat loss is a time related function.” This is one reason why I composed the time-lapse videos of the Band 16 visualizations from NOAA. The radiative “trapping” of “heat” was a misdirection which served for persuasion, but not for sound analysis.
From today’s UK Telegraph. Story Tip. These people are insane.
Labour has unveiled plans to introduce a petrol and diesel lorry ban as part of their net-zero drive.
Ministers have announced an end to the sale of new fossil fuel-powered trucks in a move that opens up a new battle with the Tories and Reform.
They have ruled out allowing the continued use of low-carbon or synthetic fuels, meaning that from 2040 all new heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) will have to be electric.
[…………………]
In a consultation document published last week, the Department for Transport set out three options for enforcing the new petrol lorry ban.
The first would see manufacturers set annual quotas for the number of electric HGVs they must sell, similar to how the petrol car ban will work.
Another option laid out by ministers is to follow the EU’s approach and set haulage companies ever decreasing carbon emissions caps.
Finally, delivery firms could be required to ensure that an ever increasing proportion of their fleet was electric, eventually reaching 100 per cent.
Yep, totally bonkers, particularly since HS2, the rail project which would release more freight capacity on the West Coast Main Line, has had its northern section cancelled – the bit that by-passes the present bottleneck in Staffordshire!
I asked Grok how much generating capacity that would require. The answer was around 25-30 GW of conventional capacity, and about double that if it was wind. The wind estimate is based on average capacity generation, and is before any provision to cover intermittency.
So you have to add to this the amount of wind required to cover the 30GW of gas that will shortly be retired, and the 10GW of nuclear also shortly to close. That’s around 80GW of wind in addition to the 30GW now installed.
So accoding to Grok, the UK would need in total about 140GW of wind, plus provision for intermittency. At the moment Ed is hoping to get to 90GW of wind with no provision for intermittency.
And none of it has any provision for what to do when its delivering 10% of faceplatefor a couple of weeks on end in the winter.
Why not ask it yourself? The explanation given was pretty detailed.
Your estimate has left out trucks, and its also left out capacity factor. And it seems to have assumed that demand is even throughout the 24 hour period, which of course it isn’t.
If total daily demand is 240GWh [which happens to be 10GW x 24] that does not mean you can meet it with 10GW installed faceplate. If you try you will produce blackouts.
But ask Grok yourself and post the results, if you’re serious.
While you’re at it, how much wind capacity do you think it will take to replace the current 30GW of gas?
The explanation given for the grok part was one sentence. And yes, it left a lot out, because you have varying capacity factor for conventional energy, need backup there too, you have transmission and battery losses. Then you have people that can charge from their home a few month a year. Properly calculating all of this would take more time than I’m willing to spend, so this is just a rough calculation to get the general order of magnitude. Even accounting for all that, I doubt my estimate of one third of Groks is very far off, especially since many buses are already electrified. The same applies to cars, with around 1.8 million fully electric vehicles out of roughly 40 million.
I don’t use AI, but if you want to blindly follow someones AI output without questioning be my guest.
Just put a Grok said in front of my posts, maybe you like them then.
I am suggesting you ask grok yourself, you will get a couple of pages of explanation and derivation. You say “I doubt my estimate of one third of Groks is very far off”. Fine, ask it, read its rationale, and then come to a conclusion. Its not about blindly following AI output, its about looking at the reasoning supplied, whether by AI or by a person.
Your own method appears to be the same as that used by the UK Government and political class in developing energy policy. Its at the level of literary criticism, when what is needed is a science and engineering approach.
Do you actually know what an order of magnitude is? Are you really saying that for public policy purposes on energy estimates which are within one order of magnitude will do just fine?
Ask grok and see what you think of its reasoning. Might have a shock. And if you can’t be bothered, don’t come to conclusions for which you have zero quantitative justification.
It depends on who writes the history. If the descendants of today’s progressive left academia writes it, Ed Milliband will be painted as a Hero of The Revolution.
Do firetrucks, aircraft and the heavy machinery used in agriculture and construction get free passes on CO2 emissions?
Humans in the UK exhale ca. 68 million kilograms of CO2 everyday. To this should be added the CO2 emissions from the domestic animals ranging from cattle to canaries. What is Mad Ed plans for these emissions?
Does Mad Ed have a plan for controlling emission from soda pop and beer?
For clarity, the following facts should be considered.
1) This is an existing policy – the plan is to end the sale of all new fossil‑fuel HGVs by 2040. This aligns with the UK’s legally binding climate targets and the broader transition to zero‑emission transport.
2) This policy was introduced in 2011 by the Conservative Government.
3) The new thing, that is being mis-reported in the deadwood press, is that the Labour Party is consulting as to how this could be achieved.
No point reading the wretched rags of the raving right. They will leave you misinformed, which is worse than being uninformed.
Go to the horse’s mouth and read the Government website.
Alexander is a smart and intelligent woman. Unfortunately like a lot of other smart and intelligent people she has got lost in the group think of party peers.
You have to understand their situation: they are surrounded by completely uniform, no dissent, associates. Any deviation from the party line, however absurd the party line may be, will result in ostracism. Every day you read (in the rabid right wing press of course!) about people dismissed or cancelled for expressing the wrong opinions in public. About climate, race, immigration, gender, history…
The progressive political classes are in panic mode, because of the polls, and not just what the polls show about Labour, but what they show about Reform. The extent of their panic is shown by the Labour cancellations of the May local elections.
Of course cancelling the elections will just increase the anger and contempt which seems to be the main sentiment the British have for their government at the moment. But they are between a rock and a hard place. There is no way out for them. So the mechanism of cognitive dissonance means that they collectively close their eyes and rally round and deny any possibility that their course is possible to change.
When a cult’s key beliefs are falsified by experience, the initial result is to reinforce the belief of the members, and to lead to increasingly rabid denunciations of dissenters in the ranks. This is what we are seeing now. You think electric trucks are mad? Just wait, there’s a lot more where that came from!
Wherever it appeared is not the point. It was an accurate piece, and the policy it was summarizing did confirm that the government is committed to this mad idea. Yes, it was introduced by the Conservative Government. Its still mad. Just like the Climate Change Act was passed under a Labour Government but strengthened under a Conservative one (Theresa May). It was and still is mad.
The UK problem in the last couple of decades has been the complete derangement of the entire political and media class of all parties – Labour, Conservatives, Plaid, SNP, Liberals.
The Conservative Party appears to be waking up, maybe too late for it to have a future. But the others are still lost on another planet wondering what women are and whether disbelief in Islam is a kind of racism, and if so what should be done about it.
I’ve seen shipping companies in the US try to do the math to get an electrical hookup for 18-24 EV trucks. The power companies laugh at them when they come in asking for more power than the rest of the city they reside in.
But, I assume the UK is just rolling in gobs and gobs of extra power to supply for these vehicles. ROFL
Unless the EV plans are accompanied by plans for additional power generation, they are just planning on buggering the entire country.
That’s ridiculous…you put in a transformer from 25Kv down to the charging voltage of a couple of dozen volts…and it’s about the load of a welding shop…not a city….unless you have charging cables that are too big and heavy to carry…
I weary of seeing Europe degenerate into collective insanity. When they, like addicts, “hit rock bottom” it may be too late.
Ron Long
January 11, 2026 2:21 am
In the southwest part of Argentina in the Province of Chubut, five large fires have been raging in the National Forest of Los Alerces (trees like redwoods or sequoias), for several days, and three of the fires have merged into the biggest one. The fires are being cited as “the greatest climate disaster the region has ever known”. The climate claim appears to have two elements, one is that there was an unusually dry Spring, and the other is that the evil Petrochemical companies were involved. The politicians are making obvious references to CAGW aspects. OK, how were the Petrochemical companies involved? There were gasoline accelerants detected at all five fire start points.
If you spot a typo or wish to make corrections to posted comment, move the mouse pointer to the lower right corner of the comment box, and there will appear a small gear wheel. Click on the gear wheel and the instruction:
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Typoe alert: you need new humor and sarcasm sensors.
Explanation for the pedantic: “sand” is sarcastic shorthand for “silicon”, as in solar panels.
Redundant explanation for the Department of Redundancy Department: your “fix” would result in the redundant “and and”.
Suggestion for the jump-to-conclusions crowd: think for five seconds before jumping. The conclusion you think you see may be a mirage and you won’t get where you think you are going.
ETA: And just for fun, your corrective action is incorrect. Clicking the gear brings up the dropdown menu with one single choice, “Edit”. There is no “Manage Content” step.
Suggestion: Don’t suggest things you haven’t tried yourself.
Thanks for the info about “sand” panels. First time this old organic chemist of 81 years has read about this new usage for silicon.
My instruction about the gear wheel is incorrect. If you place mouse pointer on the gear wheel the “Manage Comment” appears. If you then click on the gear wheel “Edit” appears. Click on it to get your comment for making corrections.
Those species are fire resistant- what about the species in that National Forest? Is there a similar problem as in the Western USA- decades of fire prevention making those forests more likely to have severe fires? Is there any forest mgt. work in those forests or are they more like American National Parks with a no cut policy?
Joseph, there does not appear to be any management of fire danger in Los Alerces. I think your comment about fire resistance for very large trees is correct, they burn some bark near the ground and not too much, especially if it is windy and the fire moves through quickly. The latest update is a total of 6,000 hectares burned, or 60 square kilometers.
Rather than competing in a mature technology dominated by century-old manufacturers, Türkiye has chosen to enter electric mobility, where technological shifts reset competitive positions. Now it’s time for it to use a market of 90 million people to leverage its independence in economic and energy aspects.
Do you ever read the nonsense articles you post, and if you do, do you cast a critical eye over them before posting? I’m guessing not.
A quick search tells me the following:
“Türkiye is already ahead of Europe.”
The article cites about 18% of new car sales being electric and 164,650 units sold to show Türkiye leads Europe, but it doesn’t mean most cars on the road are electric. Replacing an entire car fleet takes many years, so short‑term sales spikes don’t equal long‑term dominance.
“Electrification fixes the current account.”
Switching cars from petrol to electricity can cut oil imports, but it doesn’t automatically fix the trade balance. Batteries, cells, and critical minerals are imported; if Türkiye imports those at scale, the savings on oil can be offset by new import bills. Also, extra electricity demand will require more gas or coal generation.
“TOGG and local projects guarantee jobs and tech transfer.”
Independent analysts warn TOGG faces profitability and competition risks, and attracting Chinese or European investment can both help and crowd local firms.
“Policy and incentives are stable.”
The article leans on current tax breaks and tariffs. Those policies can change quickly; recent ÖTV (special tax) adjustments already affected demand spikes, showing how fragile growth can be if incentives are rolled back.
The piece underplays charging infrastructure, grid upgrades, and equity issues. Rolling out chargers and upgrading distribution networks is expensive and takes time; without careful planning, benefits concentrate among wealthier buyers.
Heating can be more of an energy drain than cooling. Max temps likely to be seen by EV’s would be ~120ºF or 50ºF higher than 70ºF. Min temps likely to be seen by EV’s would be below -30ºF or 100ºF lower than 70ºF.
I post this comment for the benefit of new commers to this website. Some of them might not know how to expand the chart for better viewing and return to Comments.
Jeff, I am using an iPad. No mouse. Just a finger. However, for the benefit of any other users, “double tapping” on the image enlarges it to its own screen. Then, tapping on the image takes you to the next image on the blog (or the previous). Tapping outside the image closes and returns to the comment.
I thank you for your support. I am also a one finger typist. I just type rather slowly one character at a time. I visually check the key before pushing on it. So just go slow.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/magazine/ocean-acidification-carbon-geoengineering.html reports on using sodium hydroxide to reverse ocean acidification.
The first question to ask, is it needed?
The second question is, even if the answer to the first question is yes, then is a strong alkaline solution like sodium hydroxide overkill, doesn’t it destroy the natural buffer solution that is based on carbonic acid and (bi)carbonates (my chemistry knowledge is somewhat lacking in this), thus the “cure” is worse than the “disease”? If a person is found to be acidotic would these people advocate for infusing them with caustic soda solution (I really hope not!)?
Where did I say the sodium hydroxide was created from salt, it’s not even implied in anything I said?
The linked article states that the sodium hydroxide was poured into the ocean not that it was created there, if it were then the alleged cure would be orders of magnitude worse than the alleged problem.
I agree that concentrated sodium hydroxide would be disastrous to the local ecosystem.
According to Konrad Krauskopf, well-known Stanford geochemist, the oceans will never become acidic. He speculated in his textbook that stagnant pools enriched in hydrogen sulfide might make it to pH 7 — neutral. The natural (bi)carbonate/borate buffering system appears to be able to handle anything that can the thrown at it, as long as it is a weak acid like carbonic. Strong acids are another story. They may have played a role in the Great Dying of the End Permian.
The famous volcanic CO2 seeps in Indonesia (and elsewhere) have apparently saturated the water column with CO2, yet remain only slightly below pH 8, and the corals seem to be fine.
The claimed open-ocean decline in pH from 8.2 to 8.1 is based on a computer climate model that estimated the pre-industrial pH as 8.2. Much of the historical data has been ignored as not being reliable, as if a computer model is! If you didn’t read the article linked below when it was first published, you might find it interesting.
Do you have the associated localities for those pH measurements? I’m suspicious that the pHs below 7 represent brackish tidal waters that have low buffering capacity or surface waters diluted with acidic rainwater.
I am aware that it’s a non-problem, but as it is seen as a problem with the addition of sodium hydroxide as a “solution”. My concern is the potential catastrophe arising from treating the non-problem with such drastic measures without consideration for the fallout from those measures.
Do those yokels have any idea how big the ocean is and how much sodium hydroxide they’d need to make any measurable change? That’s about the most inefficient way to waste resources I can think of, much worse than solar panels and wind turbines.
The oceans are vast- any effort to change their chemistry, even if a good idea in theory, is hopeless given the volume of water.
Jim Ross
January 11, 2026 2:48 am
Apologies if the following update has been discussed already, but it is of some significance to anyone who references and/or analyses the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) data. The process used to convert the ‘raw’ monthly sea surface temperature (SST) data to anomaly values is subject to a moving 30-year baseline. With the latest monthly SST value coming available (December 2025), a new baseline of (1995-2025) has been derived and applied. Obviously, the ‘raw’ SST data is unaffected, but all anomaly values (the monthly Niño-3.4 index) and ONI values (rolling 3-monthly average of the index) since January 2011 have changed.
The quoted reason for making this change (which occurs every 5 years) is that the SST data “are increasingly incorporating longer-term trends that do not reflect interannual ENSO variability”. This is a rather important assumption and the applied process is, of course, the reason that ONI values appear to be neutral over the longer term. Beware the circular argument!
The changes to the 30-year baseline from the previous one are small, less than 0.2C, but this could affect classification given the criterion of 0.5C bands. For example, the ONI value for January 2025 (Dec-Jan-Feb) changes from -0.59C to -0.44C. What is even more interesting in this particular update is the fact that every single monthly SST value for the new 30-year baseline is lower than the previous baseline for 1991-2020. The value for January (26.38C) is even lower than the 1956-1985 baseline for January (26.42C)!
Yes, these differences are very small, but they are contrary to a continually warming baseline. More analysis is required, but these values would appear to reflect a problem with the process in that the baseline itself is skewed by the balance (or lack thereof) between El Niño and La Niña events.
To add a bit of perspective on the above, here are the SST data for the Niño 3.4 region of the equatorial Pacific since 1950, updated to December 2025. The range for “interannual ENSO variability”, i.e. between the largest El Niño (warmer) and La Niña (cooler) events is 4C. The second plot shows the same data since 1995 together with the relevant baseline data, which is at a maximum in May each year and serves as a useful timeline for the actual (measured) SST variations. The three most significant El Niño events show a very distinctive character, including the 2023-2024 event.
The other issue is that the ONI is increasingly becoming a skewed metric as a result of global SSTs increasing faster than ENSO SSTs. Specifically, La Nina’s are amplified while El Nino’s are attenuated relative the global backdrop. This is the impetus of the newer RONI metric. [van Oldenborgh et al. 2021] [L’Heureux et al. 2024]
Westfieldmike
January 11, 2026 3:04 am
BATTERY CARS AND HYBRIDS SORNED EARLY
A FOI request to DVLA has revealed some interesting facts. Full battery cars are being SORNED after aprox. 4 years, hybrids at around 6 years. Petrol and diesel at around 15 and 25 years. This would indicate that these vehicles are too expensive to repair, or unable to be repaired. Early battery failure could be the main reason.
It’s a UK word for a UK government form. No reason for non-UK people to know it.
There are five obvious reasons why EVs are likely to have shorter lives:
1) They are more expensive and as such, are premium products. After five years they are no longer a premium products but are still more expensive than the runarounds that are used for utilitarian purposes. As such, they have no sell on, second hand market.
2) The batteries decline.
3) Advances in EV technology are fast. China is taking over the UK market, previously we were stuck with inferior designs at inflated costs (looking at you Tesla, but also other brands). Why settle for a second hand vehicle at the same price as a brand new design from China?
4) Tesla’s were being bought as a virtue signal, “Look how much I spend to be nice to the planet; aren’t I good”. But the Tesla brand is now tarnished beyond repair by its association with Elon Musk, the world’s riches man who took food form the mouths of the world’s poorest children – beyond parody for a Bond Villain. Driving a Tesla now bears a stigma that most people want to avoid.
5) Most EVs were bought by company’s a fleet vehicles to meet the company’s corporate green box ticking duties. Fleets are usually sold on to the employees at cut down rates or sold on to dealers. But the corporate demand is boosted by the need to fulfil those green policy objectives and avoid bad publicity that may affect the share price (risk management) . Individuals do not have that requirement. So the demand is not there.
SORN stands for Statutory Off Road Notification, which is a legal process in the UK to inform the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) that a vehicle is being kept off the road. This means the vehicle does not need to be taxed or insured, but it cannot be parked or driven on public roads.
In Hawaii last month, I couldn’t help but notice that there are a lot of 30 to 40 year old ice vehicles still on the road, particularly pickup trucks used by small businesses.
A mechanic once told me that a car can last forever if you take care by following the owner’s manual instructions. Look at Cuba, all the cars are mid 1950 GMs and Fords especially Triple Five Chevrolets.
AND if they don’t use salt on the roads! About 5-years ago I sold a 1970 IH Scout Aristocrat shortly after having the engine re-built. I had had one fuel tank replaced because it had developed a leak; then a rigid brake-line snapped in the cold. Then, I discovered that there were at least 5 small holes in the body that were allowing spiders and other things to get into the interior. That car had almost 500,000 miles on it and had spent most of its life in California. But after 15 years in Ohio, all the protective oil-saturated dust was gone.
Sorned” is the simple past tense and past participle of the verb “sorn,” which means to make a Statutory Off Road Notification for a vehicle in the UK, indicating that it is not being used on public roads. This allows the vehicle owner to stop paying tax and insurance for that vehicle while it is off the road. In the USA, ‘states’ control such things. There are vehicles specifically exempted from licensing fees, but the language is very different.
I didn’t know what SORN stood for before viewing this. Definitely a sign that EVs are not going to be taking over the vehicle fleet using the current technology.
MrGrimNasty
January 11, 2026 3:46 am
Miliband Net Zero set to cost UK £4.5T, still a vast underestimate I expect.
The cost of the collapse of the UK economy has not been included in this figure.
Mad Ed really is mad. As is his political party. Mad Ed looks like the UK version of Joe Biden. Everything Joe did caused harm to the United States. It looks like everything Mad Ed does is causing harm to the UK.
“We vote them in. An uncomfortable fact: we (collectively) are very stupid.” All political parties are collectives. That is how they work. The antidote Is individualism. More specifically, independent representatives.
That this can only be achieved by individuals behaving as individuals is beyond ironic.
According to the report, Trump directed the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) to draft an invasion plan. However, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have pushed back, arguing that any such operation would be unlawful and lack congressional approval.
Trump may have requested an invasion plan, although that plan has probably already been done in the past. The military does planning for all sorts of contingencies.
What sounds like the leftwing lie is the part about how Trump’s generals are pushing back and telling Trump it may be unlawful and lacks congressional approval.
Whoever wrote this lie hss no familiarity with how things work at the Pentagon and assumes Trump doesn’t know the law and is prepared to break it. Typical Leftwing BS.
The Pentagon is known to have contingency invasion plans sitting on the shelf for every geographic area considered of strategic importance to the US. One for Greenland has to have been sitting on the shelf since the late 1930’s. It could be that the most recent update includes bringing along enough HR personnel to hire every adult resident of Greenland as a Pentagon employee at a salary of $100,000 per year per person.
“Show me a dissenting general.” Well actually Tom there are a few…..General John F Kelly was on Trumps team first time round. He certainly was a dissenting General by the end. didn’t he call him a fascist? Milley also had no time at all for Trump calling him a “fascist to the core.” Oh and HR McMaster thought Trump’s behaviour on Jan 6 was a betrayal of his oath to support the constitution. Then there was Mark Esper (a Lieutenant Colonel, Army) who said after stolen documents were found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, that stashing them there was an “irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation’s security at risk.”
there are others Tom but you get the idea.
“The Democrats have still refused to accept that Trump won, and have behaved far worse than anything that happened on Jan 6.” What crap are you talking now? You really are just a lone space cadet aren’t you. The dems (H Clinton and K Harris) went to Trumps first and second inauguration. Trump on the other hand could not find the balls to go to Bidens. Trump the forever petulant child he is, was sulking. Not worthy of being called a man let alone a president.
“Global temperature is a worthless metric that in no way furthers the debate on climate science.”
I think regional temperature readings are a worthwhile metric.
The regional temperatures recorded in the past may not be as accurate on the numbers as we would like, but the numbers, even if inaccurate to an extent, do establish a temperature profile for the Earth.
The regional temperature profiles show that since the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850, the temperatures have operated in a cyclical manner with temperatures warming up to a high point in the 1880’s, then cooling to a low point in the early 1900’s, then warming again up through the 1930’s high point, which was equally warm to the 1880’s high point, and then temperatures cooled down through the 1970’s (equally cool to the early 1900’s), and then the temperatures again warmed to a high point in 1998, which was equivalent to the high points in the 1880’s and the 1930’s, and 2016 and 2024.
Now, we can argue about the accuracy of the temperature readings, but as far as a global temperature profile goes (not the same as a global temperature average), the profile will be the same all over the world, without regard to the accuracy of the measuring instruments because the measuring instruments of that era were all off by the same amount since they used the same type of equipment, so the temperature profile of warming, cooling and repeating remains intact in the written record.
We have an accurate picture of the Earth’s past climate in the regional temperature records. They show it was just as warm in the recent, recorded past, as it is today, and show that temperatures are independent of the amount of CO2 in the air. There is no unprecedented heat today.
It’s not any hotter now than in the recent past, and CO2 has no measureable effect on the Earth’s temperatures or climate as the climate warms and cools without regard to how much CO2 is in the air at the time.
Here are 600 original, regional charts that show the cyclical movement of the Earth’s climate. It warms for a few decades and then cools for a few decades, and the difference between the warmest point and the coolest point is a little more than 2.0C. That’s what history shows.
“, but as far as a global temperature profile goes (not the same as a global temperature average), the profile will be the same all over the world”
Tom, as much as I respect you this is misleading to the average person.
1. Temperature is not climate. 2. Temperature is not weather. 3. Temperature is not heat.
It doesn’t matter if you are using a global or regional area.
Too many people will not recognize that you are talking TEMPERATURE trends and not climate trends. It’s the basic problem climate science has – climate science can’t differentiate between temperature and climate for some reason. I suspect it has to do with money.
Go to Wikipedia and read about the Köppen Climate Classification System. The two main parameters in this system are temperature and rainfall. Wladimir Köppen (1846-1940) and his colleague Rudolf Geiger (1894-1981) were meteorologists and were the first climate scientists.
Global temperature is a worthless metric that in no way furthers the debate on climate science.
It is one of the metrics used to test the global warming hypothesis. That by itself makes it invaluable to the debate.
I think people who label it “worthless” are doing so because it cannot be used to falsify that hypothesis since it is increasing. In other words it is worthless in defense of their position that global warming is not happening.
No “hotter and hotter and hotter” Hockey Stick temperature profile to be seen anywhere in the data.
First, the “hockey stick” is in reference to the shape of the global average temperature plot over several hundred years. So you’re graph is not relevant to the topic.
Second, What happens to the graph of the US average temperature when you consider the biases arising from changes in station sighting, instrument, and time-of-observation changes?
Unadjusted data does not match the right hand graph either.
Two FAKED graphs.. well done
Marty
January 11, 2026 6:14 am
Lately we have been hearing a lot in the news about Greenland. Did you know that the population of Greenland is a mere 57,000 of which 88% are Innuits? That means that the Danish and European derived population of Greenland is less than 7000. In other words, we are looking at the population equivalent of a very small town. While I don’t know the local political situation in Greenland, I wonder how the majority native Innuits there feel about those 7000 Europeans? Do the Innuits regard themselves as a colony of Denmark? Did Denmark ever ask the native Innuits whether they wanted to be a part of Denmark? I’m not arguing for or against American annexation of Greenland. And force against Denmark ought to be off the table. But Greenland’s link to Denmark looks awfully weak.
“Greenland’s link to Denmark looks awfully weak” Everyone knows that. The mineral rights are open for development. And everyone knows that the USA has the right to put as many troops as it wants in Greenland for the USA’s defence. And everyone knows that two NATO countries going to war benefits no-one, except Russia and China.
Whatever the USA wants from Greenland can be easily negotiated – except annexation. But annexation is what Trump wants.
The problem is that Trump needs a big showpiece for the 250th anniversary on 4th July so as he can get his face on Mt Rushmore.
Meisha
January 11, 2026 7:11 am
I’m a retired quantitative social science PhD, undergraduate aero-engineering, living in Southwest Florida in a master-planned upper-income (almost all college-educated) community of about 2,000. I’ve studied climate science since 2006, am pretty knowledgeable, and understand most of the science even if I can’t run all the equations myself. I’m considering giving a talk/ discussion on climate change and the fact that science does not clearly (or possibly very much at all) support the theory that humankind-generated CO2 (or activity in general) is having a significant effect on climate, most notably temperature.
I would like to have access to a solid open-source PowerPoint presentation (can be any length and with speaker notes even better) that I could edit for size and use to speak with a small group (~40) in our community’s speaker series. My preference is to go a mile wide/ and maybe a bit more than an inch deep, starting from paleo data, the basics of heat transfer, the type and quality of data on which climate science is based, and explanations for how what is frequently presented in media, including scientific press releases, is just not well-supported despite what many scientists claim.
There’s a lot of information here at WUWT, but I don’t have the time to put something together myself from that material.
Can anyone provide a link to such a presentation(s)?
“significant effect on climate, most notably temperature.”
I don’t have a presentation to offer but I would ask the attendees right at the start if Las Vegas and Miami have the same climate even though both have very high daily temperature maximums. If they say “no”, then ask why would they equate temperature with climate?
“I would like to have access to a solid open-source PowerPoint presentation (can be any length and with speaker notes even better) that I could edit for size and use to speak with a small group (~40) in our community’s speaker series.”
You are unlikely to find an “open source PowerPoint presentation” that you can edit without violating the ethics of implicit copyright retained by the author(s), unless such permission is clearly given in writing in the presentation itself. One alternative would be for you to contact the author(s) to request permission to use their material as-is.
Having said that, there many excellent slide presentations that can be found via Web searches that will provide guidance/examples of PowerPoint slides that you yourself could prepare/customize for your own presentation.
I highly recommend Web searching the following for information you can readily adapt to your purpose:
— articles here on WUWT from various authors
— publications/presentations by William Happer
— publications/presentations by Richard Lindzen
— publications/presentations by Judith Curry
— publications/presentations by Andy May
— publications/presentations by John Clauser
with, of course, my apologies to a host of other excellent scientists/authors that I have not specifically named but who have likewise have spoken out against the fake “science” used by many AGW/CAGW alarmists.
And, if you are very lazy, get Copilot to create the PowerPoint from the list ToldYouSo gives, as well as this website.
Then check it carefully. The AI fantasises should be obvious.
And it should be quite quick.
I would guide the Ai to split your presentation into 5 sections:
A) Introduction. Say why you care (Hmm, Ai cannot write that for you but it’s only one slide).
B) What is the correct temperature? Discuss what we actually want the climate to be. Do we want some desert, no desert, rain forest, no rain forest, farmlands for miles and miles that are watered and warmed – or do we just want consistency (weather that never changes)? Conclude that with the obvious “That is politics, not science. Russia and Canada have different demands to India and Brazil. So what do we actually have right now and is this a crisis? If so, for whom?”
C) The science bit.
Three themes:
First, a quick diversion into Beer-Lambert’s Law and the idea that extra CO2 has an impact that declines exponentially, so we use doublings rather than addings.
Second theme, “How much does the climate warm if we double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?” Ask why nobody in the audience can answer this critical question – the basic settled science of Global Warming. It should be a surprise that it is not common knowledge. We all ought to know this, shouldn’t we?
Third Theme: The great range of guesses as to that settled science (can be got from this site). Note also that the observationally constrained estimate for climate sensitivity are generally lower than the purely modelled guesses.
D) Weather not Climate. Which is more important? Weather causes the problems. We need to adapt to the weather which is faster and greater variation than the climate. Back to politics – how do we adapt? With Infrastructure investment. How long does infrastructure last before we need to replace it anyway? And if we need another 2 inches on a flood defence when it’s next renovated, is that a problem?
E) Conclusion. No-one agrees what the world should be. No-one knows what the world will be. No-one knows what we need to do about the climate, but we do know what we need to do about the weather, and that’s probably enough.
MCourtney, just excellent advice! . . . thank you. Especially with the warning of being very circumspect about using Copilot (or any other AI bot) to prepare a slide presentation for you. There is apparently a huge bias in current AI that favors the AGW/CAGW narrative of humans being the primary cause of “climate change”, as if such never occurred prior to, oh, some 300,000 or so years ago.
I would also add that, with regards to your suggested “The science bit” section, any presentation should have near the start of such a true, science-based explanation of what the “green house gas effect” is and why it is real and unavoidable but can be asymptotic in effect. Toward this end, please find a succinct summary of such given in another of my comments under this article, near the top.
Finally, although Meisha might find hostile questions coming from his audience(s), IMHO it is nonetheless worth his effort to provide science-based information that just might cause a few minds to examine their “confirmation bias” and/or to question “stuff” coming from the MSM.
. . , true, science-based explanation of what the “green house gas effect” is and why it is real . . .
This assumes the audience is even more gullible and ignorant than you, and can be conned into believing that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter.
Being a trained and practicing scientist, I am well aware of copyright issues, which of course have to be addressed before using anyone else’s work. Thanks for the heads up, however.
In the dark red bar at the top, find FAILED PREDICTIONS.
You can entertain a group for an hour going through these – each is a prediction followed by a charles/anthony [?] rejoinder. If the attendees enjoy it, they may invite you back. Ask what questions they have? Go back and respond to those.
For some background information on the greenhouse effect and global warming, please go to the late John L. Daly’s website “Still Waiting For Greenhouse” available at http://www.john-daly.com. The site many charts, graphs and essays.
From the home page go to the end and click on: “Station Temperature Data”. On the “World Map” click on Australia. A list of weather stations is displayed. Click on “Adelaide”. The chart (See below) shows a plot of average annual temperature from 1857 to 1999. In 1857 the concentration of CO2 was 280 ppmv (0.55 g CO2/cu. m. of air) and by 1999 it had increased to 368 ppmv (0.72 g CO2/cu. m. of air) but there was no corresponding increase air temperature at this port city. Instead there was cooling. Note how little CO2 there is in the air. Be sure to check all the charts for Australia.
This chart falsifies the claim by the IPCC that CO2 cause warming of air. Use the back arrow to return to the list of stations. Clicking the back arrow again displays the ” World Map”. At the end of the home page there is a list of essays on the greenhouse effect and global warming.
John Daly found over 200 weather stations that showed no warming up to 2002. If you click on the chart it will expand and become clear. Click on the “X” in the circle to contract the chart and return to Comments.
I appreciate everyone’s efforts to support my Quixotic journey…to convince at least a few people that global warming is not likely impacted much by man-made CO2 and, even if it is, the outcome is unlikely to be seriously deleterious; indeed, may well be more positive than negative for mankind.
The good news is I live in a part of the US where people are willing to be thoughtful and tend to not be to be ideologically opposed to anything and everything they might associate with people of a different political persuasion from theirs, although I’m sure there will be a few who will find my effort to get them to understand what climate science really says and doesn’t say as being offensive in principle.
Many good resources around, many are ‘open-source’ so with attribution, you should be OK.
Lengthy, technical, but one of the best I’ve seen: Poyet (free download, about 800 pages). You could pick a single topic from among his several, and make a good 40 minute presentation out of almost anything.
One place I’ve found useful to start with ‘agnostics’ and ‘true believers’ (in human-caused climate change), is to start with asking them what the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is. Very few can give an accurate answer. Randomly, someone does, but if no one is able to come within 10ppm of the correct answer, hold onto that answer.
Then, ask, ‘is the IPCC the world-renowned authority on climate?’ If they answer in the affirmative, then ask them what portion of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is the direct result of human use of fossil fuels.
Again, hold the answer; diverge into your presentation. Near the end, re-visit your first question, viz., the present-day concentration. Then, the lynch-pin in your discussion is the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), Ch 6, page 471. It takes just a bit of arithmetic, but if the IPCC is the ‘final authority’, the human contribution to increasing CO2 is a mere 4% of the annual, global carbon cycle. Ergo, changing human fossil fuel use would have minimal-to-no-impact on changing CO2 concentration(s).
Poyet does a similar calculation (in my mind, more robust) and comes up with human-CO2 as about 7 – 8%, at most; likely, the truth lies somewhere in between the two.
A PBS NOVA special, “Arctic Sinkholes (2022),” ostensibly a scientific explanation of enigmatic craters in permafrost on the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia, is actually a screed on global warming. It has been shown on TV locally at least four times that I’m aware of. It is actually about methane emissions in the Arctic, which the program accuses humans of being responsible for, despite acknowledging that the methane is derived from the decomposition of natural organic detritus in the permafrost where it has been sequestered for at least thousands of years.
The program spends considerable time discussing methane bubbles coming from a small, shallow tundra meltwater lake (Esieh) near the north-west coast of Alaska, showing dramatic explosions of out-gassing methane, which the researchers purposely ignited. The coverage demonstrates that the nominal one-meter-deep lake is unusual because there is a central feature of a rapid drop-off of the bottom, near the center, reaching to about 15-meters in depth. This prompts the researchers to do a VLF-radio geophysical mapping and profiling survey of the lake and surroundings. They conclude that the anomalous methane activity is the result of what they call “fossil” methane emissions from a thawed area below the hole in the lake bottom, at a depth of about 500-feet (150m), which provides a ‘chimney’ for the methane to escape between still-frozen permafrost in surrounding areas. However, they assert that the phenomenon is the result of anthropogenic global warming. Although, that assertion is supported only by supposition. They don’t ask the obvious question – “Why is the localized source of the “fossil” methane 500-feet below the warming atmosphere, the claimed source of heat that melted the permafrost in one spot, but not the entire area?”
The predominance of methane, rather than CO2, is evidence that the thawed source area is an anaerobic (or oxygen-depleted) area. Otherwise, the methane would get converted to carbon dioxide and water. They also state that isotope analysis dismisses the possibility that the methane is coming from near the surface. What they don’t acknowledge, let alone explain, is how a warming, oxygen-rich atmosphere is causing localized melting 500-feet below the surface, when the lack of oxygen suggests little or no communication between the atmosphere and the methane source area. They show that numerous faults have been mapped in the area, and casually suggest that they play a role, without specifying exactly how. I would suggest that the faults provide a conduit for warm hydrothermal fluids to melt the permafrost well below the surface. Therefore, it is geological activity that is immediately responsible for the methane, which itself could also have a geological source, rather than just biological.
That might also explain the blow-outs on the Yamal Peninsula. As warm, hydrothermal water melts the deep permafrost, and anaerobic bacteria decompose the buried organic material, a localized over-pressure situation develops that causes the overlying sediments to burst upwards, causing the craters to form, without any combustion-explosion necessary. While igniting methane is a spectacular way to demonstrate that it is explosive, the lack of burning or charring evidence does not support the idea that the Yamal sinkholes are the result of a chemical explosion.
When the paradigm of human activity becomes the end-all, be-all of unusual phenomena, scientists stop looking for alternative explanations. This is not much different from primitives blaming volcano eruptions or earthquakes on ‘the gods being displeased.’
Terrific details and commentary! Thank you. Your example is just further evidence of the wisdom of the Bard: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
— as spoken by Hamlet in the Shakespeare play Hamlet
In 2020, I started downloading and analyzing various parameters from the ERA5 reanalysis model. Here is a Google Drive folder with three plots for a gridpoint near where I live, for all hours of the year 2019: Time series of total column water “tcw” in kg/m^2; time series of downward longwave radiation at the surface “strd” in W/m^2; and a scatter plot of one vs the other.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jYmAm6Cc88hmyFhrUWE3vyDMJ0h5p_cg?usp=sharing
The point was to better understand the role of water vapor and water droplets/ice crystals in varying the strength of the IR influence of the atmosphere toward the surface. There is very large and rapid variation of tcw throughout the days and seasons, with the value often dropping to near zero kg/m^2 in the winter. The variation of strd is rapid and large also. And when you do a scatter plot of tcw vs strd for the same set of hours, you can see how the so-called “greenhouse effect” narrative about non-condensing IR-active gases is so misleading.
One more thing for today. Sure, any general circulation model applies radiative transfer computations to represent the IR coupling of the atmosphere to the surface, and the radiative loss of energy to space. This includes ERA5 and the forecasting models. No objection – it’s necessary!
But one of my objections to the use of GCMs for long-term climate diagnosis and prognosis concerning GHGs is that there is no way to reliably isolate the longwave influence of incremental CO2, CH4, N2O – from the longwave influence of variable water vapor/droplets/ice crystals on thermal conditions at the surface. It has been fundamentally wrong all along to have used pre-stabilized, large-grid, discrete-layer, time-step-interated, parameter-tuned-to-hindcast GCMs to generate scenarios from pre-specified time-scheduled “forcings.” The entire exercise was circular from the outset, and remains so.
Thank you for your interest in this matter.
What do you expect to see there?
Downwelling longwave radiation is primarilly a function of temperature, not its cause. The concentration of GHGs only has a minor impact on it. Also it is totally unrelated to the GHE.
The GHE is defined by
“Back radiation” has nothing to do with it!
The words “low denser greenhouse gases block thermal radiation” imply a permanently residing heat caused by GHG’s. Thermodynamically that can’t happen. As the temperature of the atmosphere goes up the radiation intensity from the material involved will also increase. It’s a simple gradient problem. As the low “denser” GHG’s heat up then convection and conduction will drive the heat containing material higher in altitude to a point where it can be radiated to the cooler heatsink we call “space”. What you are describing here is an artifact of using “average” values as a constant over all time. It’s a simplification that is non-physical.
I don’t think that is correct. The greenhouse effect as occurs in Earth’s lower stratosphere is defined by the rate and directions at which LWIR photon energy is:
— first absorbed by LWIR-active gases (predominately H2O, CO2 and CH4),
— then equilibrated via molecular collisions with non-IR “active” gases (predominately N2 and O2),
— then having ALL atmospheric constituents losing that excess energy via isotropic, broadband thermal radiation.
At low altitudes, a little over half that isotropic thermal radiation is to directed toward deep space, and the remaining is directed back toward Earth’s surfaces. Of course, broadband thermal radiation from lower in the atmosphere is subject to repeated cycles of absorption and re-radiation as the energy very rapidly progresses to top of atmosphere (excluding the scientifically-acknowledged part of the IR spectrum known as the “atmospheric window”).
Hence, “back radiation” can indeed be seen to be a correct physics term for describing part of the processes associated with the GHE.
Ooops . . . my bad in the second sentence of my reply, corrected here:
“The greenhouse effect as occurs in Earth’s lower
stratospheretroposphere is defined by the rate and directions at which LWIR photon energy is:”Mea culpa.
You think that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter.
Completely laughable. [laughing]
That’s correct. And yes, it is necessary.
You literally said there was no objections in the sentence immediately preceding this one. Anyway, the RRTM does isolate the incremental longwave influence of gas species. That’s it primary function. And ERA uses the RRTM.
“Anyway, the RRTM does isolate the incremental longwave influence of gas species.”
No. You keep mistaking the spectral modeling as though it means the same as isolating the influence of CO2 and the other GHGs in the result. Not when clouds, mist, droplets, ice crystals, are involved.
No I’m not. The RRTM tells you how much radiation is emitted/absorbed given the abundance of a gas species in the atmosphere and how that radiation effects the gridded data provided by ERA5. Spectral modeling is contained within the HITRAN database. The RRTM uses the spectral modeling of gas species contained within HITRAN to calculate the radiative effect of those gas species within the atmosphere. And the RRTM does take into account clouds, mist, droplets, ice crystals, etc. and much more. In fact, it’s handling of these elements in the atmosphere are likely far more complex and comprehensive than you realize. I encourage you to look at the source code and see for yourself.
“I encourage you to look at the source code and see for yourself.”
The functions and parameterizations and coding of RRTM, or similar modeling, are not in dispute here. You should know this from previous exchanges.
The issue is whether any model using such code to apply a computed radiative effect from incremental CO2 tells you anything at all about cause and effect of a trend in observed conditions at the surface. There’s way too much action going on dynamically, including cloud formation and dissipation, precipitation, energy conversion, etc. to establish any time-step radiative condition at any layer in any grid box with sufficient fidelity for such attribution.
That’s all for now.
DD,
Count me as one scientist in agreement with your comments.
Yes, so much is going on.
The topic lacks a clear, agreed description of the mechanisms that seem to keep global temperatures in their narrow range shown from proxies.
Currently, some researchers invoke CO2, others claim dominance of orbital change with respect to the sun. There might be more mechanisms. It is unwise to think that there is only one mechanism.
Thanks for your reply, Geoff.
“It is unwise to think that there is only one mechanism.”
Exactly.
Thanks, David – you always do great work here. Obviously, the relationship between ‘tcw’ and ‘strd’ is non-linear, to say the least. I would also question if these are modeled or measured parameters, and if the latter, what instrumentation is used, as much of the alarmist narrative hinges on the importance of so-called back radiation, which I don’t think has ever been measured.
The SURFRAD network is but one example of it being measured. You can even measure it yourself, albeit with limitations, using an inexpensive IR thermometer.
Most IR thermometers do not measure in the CO2 range.
It takes a special instrument called a Pyrgeometer.
When one of these is used there is a tell-tale dip in the downward radiation in the CO2 range.
Deflection and Specious. Back radiation occurs because of things other than CO2.
“ of things other than CO2.”
Thanks,
You just killed the AGW back radiation from CO2 myth !! 🙂
Affirming a Disjunct. Just because other things can cause back radiation does not mean that CO2 cannot.
‘You can even measure it yourself…’
No. Inexpensive IR thermometers only measure within the range of the ‘atmospheric window’, which has been pointed out by many commenters here over the years. Please stop hand waving re. back radiation from GHGs and tell us exactly how it’s supposedly measured. Better yet, read this paper and let us know how the phenomenological physics behind radiant transfer theory can tell us anything re. the transport of thermal energy through the troposphere:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20140012672/downloads/20140012672.pdf
Deflection and Specious. Back-radiation does NOT exclude the 8-14 um band which most inexpensive IR thermometers are sensitive to. Said another way… DWIR in the 8-14 um band is still back radiation.
Nevermind that SURFRAD provides broad band measurements anyway. It might not be something you could without significant resources, but it is being done nonetheless by others.
By pointing a radiometer or thermopile upward so that it views the DWIR.
I read it. No where in the paper does it say that measurement of DWIR anything equivalent to it is not possible. In fact, the author acknowledges that it is possible. What the author disputes is descriptions or interpretations of how these instruments work.
Side note…a key point of the paper is that one should average the flux the radiometer sees so that it is more accurate and meaningful. This is paper is going to piss off the contrarians who say you cannot average intensive properties.
Side note 2…the quote “The accumulation of a signal over an extended time interval is often used to improve the measurement accuracy by suppressing the effect of random noise.” is going to piss off contrarians who say averaging cannot abate uncertainty.
‘Back-radiation does NOT exclude the 8-14 um band which most inexpensive IR thermometers are sensitive to.’
Let’s be clear p n one has any issue with the idea that condensed matter, e.g., water droplets, ice crystals and dust particles absorb and emit thermal radiation that is detectable at the Earth’s surface by detectors operating within the atmospheric window. Where climate alarmism jumps the shark is in ascribing the thermal radiative properties of condensed matter to GHGs in order to convey the idea that ‘back radiation’ from the latter results in dangerous warming of the Earth’s surface, aka, CAGW.
‘I read it’
Read it again. From page 12:
“Whether spelled out explicitly or not, the key premise of phenomenological photometry as well as of the phenomenological RTT is that matter interacts with the energy of the electromagnetic field rather than with the electro-magnetic field itself. This profoundly false assumption explains the deceitful simplicity of the phenomenological concepts as well as their ultimate failure. Indeed, the very outset of both phenomenological disciplines is the postulation of the existence of the radiance as the primordial physical quantity describing the “instantaneous directional distribution of the radiant energy flow” at a point in space. This is followed by a“derivation” of the scalar RTE on the basis of “simple energy conservation considerations” and the postulation that it is the electromagnetic energy rather than the electromagnetic field that gets scattered by particles and surfaces.”
‘What the author disputes is descriptions or interpretations of how these instruments work.’
Exactly, the idea being that measuring ‘radiance’ via RTT is NOT the same thing as measuring energy flow. In other words, the entire idea that ‘back radiation’ heats the Earth’s surface is a ‘profoundly false assumption’.
Part of the misconception here is conflating temperature with heat. As well as considering “back radiation” as a heat source rather than as “reflected heat”.
Heat loss is functionally T^4 while temperature is just T^1.
If the back radiation causes temperature to fall more slowly over a given time interval then that actually results in *more* heat loss in that time interval. If heat loss is based on T^4 then the longer the temperature stays high then the greater is the amount of heat lost. That increment of heat loss will be both from the object itself (i.e. the earth) plus any reflected heat that gets absorbed. It’s what Planck called “compensation”.
You simply can’t look at the temperature curve and say “the earth gets hotter” because temperature isn’t heat. You *have* to calculate the actual heat loss in joules and climate science never does that. Especially when trying to formulate a “radiative balance”.
Tim, you’re a fan of all things Planck. I’d be interested in your take on the following:
https://issuu.com/johna.shanahan/docs/241129_photons_and_photonic_confusion_-_2
It is *my* opinion that the concept of a “photon” has been bastardized beyond recognition in physical science. Planck considered a photon to be nothing more than a quanta of energy. Energy is not a bullet, i.e. a particle. Your reference addresses this.
Consider:
Planck’s treatise speaks to things like “polarization” of radiating rays. Planck: “We have finally to allow for the polarization of the emitted radiation. Since the medium was assumed to be isotropic the emitted rays are unpolarized. Hence every ray has just twice the intensity of one of its plane polarized components, which could, e.g., be obtained by passing the ray through a Nicol’s prism.”
Bullets wouldn’t have plane polarized components.
If you ask most AI’s if a low frequency EM wave can have more energy than a high frequency EM wave they will answer no because the energy in an EM wave is based on frequency.
If you ask most AI’s if a low frequency EM wave with an amplitude of 100 carries more energy than a high frequency wave with an amplitude of 1 they will answer yes.
The answer to this seeming paradox is that if a photon is just a quanta of energy and not a particle then both can be true. If a photon is a particle then it becomes difficult to have both be true.
A 100 watt low-freq signal will have lots of low-energy quanta while a 100 watt high-freq signal will have fewer high-energy quanta of energy.
But the energy in both will be related to the amplitude of the EM wave.
Somehow, somewhere, a “quanta” of energy got morphed into being a “particle”. I suspect as a simplification to explain EM waves without having to resort to Maxwell’s equations and actual quantum physics. The fact that an atom or molecule can only emit/absorb a specific quanta of energy doesn’t make that quanta into a particle.
‘I suspect as a simplification to explain EM waves without having to resort to Maxwell’s equations and actual quantum physics.’
That’s Mishchenko’s take as well. Based on his article (posted, above), the electromagnetic and radiative transfer guys haven’t been playing too well together for most of the past century.
In any event, I suspect that the RTT paradigm will be defended to the last man within climate ‘science’ due to its tractability in grant-generating models that allow industrial CO2 emissions, aka, Western civilization, to be vilified.
Let me point out that Planck’s work was done prior to the advent of “quanta” (he invented it)and his his work on radiant heat was partly the need to find a method of describing how a spring could only be energized by a force with a given frequency.
Planck in Part II, Chapter 1, used Maxwell’s equation to derive the theoretical underpinning of the force being transmitted by an EM wave. That force is what causes heating.
I am sure you know that using Maxwell’s equations with vector calculus is daunting. Planck throws the math around like counting things in kindergarten. He uses the right-rule which I am sure is unheard of to except for physicists and EE’s.
‘I am sure you know that using Maxwell’s equations with vector calculus is daunting.’
Yes, that’s why my undergraduate degree is in ChE, not EE.
Try reading the first couple of pages of this paper that describes pyranometer and pyrgeometer operation quite well.
https://scienceofclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/SCC-2025-vWijngaarden-Happer.pdf
Pyrgeometers measures radiance, NOT energy flux. Effectively, the phenomenological physics of radiant transfer theory (RTT) does allow one to convert radiance to temperature, so in theory the SURFRAD folks could have saved a few bucks and used conventional thermometers to measure in-situ temperatures. But, then again, local temperatures aren’t very scary, and the real point of the exercise is to buttress the premise that human CO2 emissions present a danger to the Earth’s climate.
As for vW&H, while I like the idea that they can use the alarmists’ own junk science to ‘show’ that doubling CO2 will have only a minimal effect, by not calling the bad science of RTT out, they and other lukewarmers continue to leave the door open for the climate alarmists, who have billions of taxpayer dollars at their disposal, to weaponize science on behalf of the Left.
“NOT energy flux”
Steradianally challenged, you are…
Feel free to nit pick and correct my admittedly poor physics syntax. However, if your intent is to imply an actual connection between phenomenological RTT and the real physics of electromagnetic theory, it’s already been tried without success. See Sec. 3.3 (page 15) of the attached article:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20140012672/downloads/20140012672.pdf
Thanks for your reply. Sorry for taking so long to respond. The ERA5 tcw and strd values are modeled outputs. Balloon radiosondes would be a primary active input to keep the model updated for temperature, humidity, and winds. Satellite imaging is assimilated for cloud cover. There are numerous other active input sources as well.
Thanks, David. I had assumed that these outputs were modeled, hence the scientific analogy to ‘begging the question’ in logic.
Oof. *iterated* not *interated* – not enough coffee.
Unintended duplicate.
David what can we glean from this ? The money shot seems to be as follows. Seems to indicate that if the atmosphere is dry-ish, then it takes a lot of downwelling LW increase to make it “moister”…while if the atmosphere has lots of moisture the amount of LW has progressively less effect…. .or the opposite if you’re focused on absolutes, not change of values…This all could be a function of cloud cover, and the WV that was needed to form those clouds, and of course, the LW those clouds show to the surface during nighttime.
Thanks for your reply.
Some points of interest:
-This is one grid point, so the variation of tcw is mainly from the passing of warmer/wetter and cooler/drier air masses. I don’t draw any inferences about the surface influencing the water content of the atmosphere.
-Other things being equal at any point in time, a higher value of tcw increases the longwave influence on the surface, with a large effect at low values, diminishing at higher values. This is a huge effect compared to the annual average increase of GHG “forcing” on the order of 0.035 W/m^2 per year.
-At any point in time, any particular value of tcw might involve more or less longwave influence toward the surface, depending on temperature, clouds, etc. This is the vertical spread within the scatter plot.
-The very dry conditions dramatically reduce the longwave influence (i.e. relating to the poorly named “greenhouse effect”) of the atmosphere toward the surface. To me, this means the dry periods, especially the winter season, provide plenty of opportunity for “excess” sensible heat (e.g.,perhaps related to incremental GHGs) from the rest of the year to be more freely rejected directly to space from the surface “skin.”
Just my quick thoughts.
“To me, this means the dry periods, especially the winter season, provide plenty of opportunity for “excess” sensible heat (e.g.,perhaps related to incremental GHGs) from the rest of the year to be more freely rejected directly to space from the surface “skin.””
Climate science refuses to admit that heat loss is a time related function. Heat that is gained doesn’t have to be immediately lost. That’s why comparing incoming radiative flux with outgoing radiative flux tells you nothing. Flux is joules/sec-m^2. Climate science always forgets that dimension abbreviated as “sec”. And since heat loss over time is related to T^5 you can’t do a simple average flux of (Fmax + Fmin)/2. The average of T^5 is not the same as an average of T.
If climate science really wanted to be a real physical science the heat impact to the earth probably should be integrated from the start of La Nina_1 to the end of La Nina_2 for both flux_in and flux_out.
“…heat loss is a time related function.”
This is one reason why I composed the time-lapse videos of the Band 16 visualizations from NOAA. The radiative “trapping” of “heat” was a misdirection which served for persuasion, but not for sound analysis.
100%
Unintended duplicate.
From today’s UK Telegraph. Story Tip. These people are insane.
Labour has unveiled plans to introduce a petrol and diesel lorry ban as part of their net-zero drive.
Ministers have announced an end to the sale of new fossil fuel-powered trucks in a move that opens up a new battle with the Tories and Reform.
They have ruled out allowing the continued use of low-carbon or synthetic fuels, meaning that from 2040 all new heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) will have to be electric.
[…………………]
In a consultation document published last week, the Department for Transport set out three options for enforcing the new petrol lorry ban.
The first would see manufacturers set annual quotas for the number of electric HGVs they must sell, similar to how the petrol car ban will work.
Another option laid out by ministers is to follow the EU’s approach and set haulage companies ever decreasing carbon emissions caps.
Finally, delivery firms could be required to ensure that an ever increasing proportion of their fleet was electric, eventually reaching 100 per cent.
luckily Liebour won’t be anywhere near power from 2028 for several generations.
Yep, totally bonkers, particularly since HS2, the rail project which would release more freight capacity on the West Coast Main Line, has had its northern section cancelled – the bit that by-passes the present bottleneck in Staffordshire!
Circa one BILLION vehicle miles are driven in the U.K. every day. Electrifying that lot is a credible as unicorn farming in Parliament Square!
I asked Grok how much generating capacity that would require. The answer was around 25-30 GW of conventional capacity, and about double that if it was wind. The wind estimate is based on average capacity generation, and is before any provision to cover intermittency.
So you have to add to this the amount of wind required to cover the 30GW of gas that will shortly be retired, and the 10GW of nuclear also shortly to close. That’s around 80GW of wind in addition to the 30GW now installed.
So accoding to Grok, the UK would need in total about 140GW of wind, plus provision for intermittency. At the moment Ed is hoping to get to 90GW of wind with no provision for intermittency.
And none of it has any provision for what to do when its delivering 10% of faceplatefor a couple of weeks on end in the winter.
What be nice to know the calculations grog did.
If we go with passanger car sized vehicles (currently most likely to be replaced), it’s around 256,1 bvm / year, so 0.71 bvm / day
If we go with the lower end we have 0.33 kwh/mile we get
237.44 GWh per day or a bit less than 10GW conventional capacity.
Grog? Is that what you’re smoking?
You don’t smoke grog 😛
And you don’t listen to grok
Why not ask it yourself? The explanation given was pretty detailed.
Your estimate has left out trucks, and its also left out capacity factor. And it seems to have assumed that demand is even throughout the 24 hour period, which of course it isn’t.
If total daily demand is 240GWh [which happens to be 10GW x 24] that does not mean you can meet it with 10GW installed faceplate. If you try you will produce blackouts.
But ask Grok yourself and post the results, if you’re serious.
While you’re at it, how much wind capacity do you think it will take to replace the current 30GW of gas?
The explanation given for the grok part was one sentence. And yes, it left a lot out, because you have varying capacity factor for conventional energy, need backup there too, you have transmission and battery losses. Then you have people that can charge from their home a few month a year. Properly calculating all of this would take more time than I’m willing to spend, so this is just a rough calculation to get the general order of magnitude. Even accounting for all that, I doubt my estimate of one third of Groks is very far off, especially since many buses are already electrified. The same applies to cars, with around 1.8 million fully electric vehicles out of roughly 40 million.
I don’t use AI, but if you want to blindly follow someones AI output without questioning be my guest.
Just put a Grok said in front of my posts, maybe you like them then.
I am suggesting you ask grok yourself, you will get a couple of pages of explanation and derivation. You say “I doubt my estimate of one third of Groks is very far off”. Fine, ask it, read its rationale, and then come to a conclusion. Its not about blindly following AI output, its about looking at the reasoning supplied, whether by AI or by a person.
Your own method appears to be the same as that used by the UK Government and political class in developing energy policy. Its at the level of literary criticism, when what is needed is a science and engineering approach.
Do you actually know what an order of magnitude is? Are you really saying that for public policy purposes on energy estimates which are within one order of magnitude will do just fine?
Ask grok and see what you think of its reasoning. Might have a shock. And if you can’t be bothered, don’t come to conclusions for which you have zero quantitative justification.
You’re right, they are insane.
History will not treat these fanatics kindly.
It depends on who writes the history. If the descendants of today’s progressive left academia writes it, Ed Milliband will be painted as a Hero of The Revolution.
If Minibrain has his way, no-one will know how to write. !
Back to the beginning !!
Do firetrucks, aircraft and the heavy machinery used in agriculture and construction get free passes on CO2 emissions?
Humans in the UK exhale ca. 68 million kilograms of CO2 everyday. To this should be added the CO2 emissions from the domestic animals ranging from cattle to canaries. What is Mad Ed plans for these emissions?
Does Mad Ed have a plan for controlling emission from soda pop and beer?
How about the methane of human and animal farts, and of peat bogs?
Methane quickly converts to CO2 in the atmosphere.
Milliband and Charmer and Co should be kidnapped, like Maduro
Get these screwballs marooned on a small island somewhere in the Pacific.
We should send to Shetland Island in the far North where the winters are long and cold. Pacific islands are too warm and comfy.
Nah, Shetland is too civilised.
South Georgia would be better.
They’re not insane. They’re doing exactly what they said they would do, de-industrialize the West.
Rational insanity.
For clarity, the following facts should be considered.
1) This is an existing policy – the plan is to end the sale of all new fossil‑fuel HGVs by 2040. This aligns with the UK’s legally binding climate targets and the broader transition to zero‑emission transport.
2) This policy was introduced in 2011 by the Conservative Government.
3) The new thing, that is being mis-reported in the deadwood press, is that the Labour Party is consulting as to how this could be achieved.
If you are actually interested in this, the consultation is open until the 17th March 2026.
You can have your say, and learn more at the official Government website here:
New HGV CO2 emissions regulatory framework for the UK – GOV.UK
No point reading the wretched rags of the raving right. They will leave you misinformed, which is worse than being uninformed.
Go to the horse’s mouth and read the Government website.
Go to the horse’s mouth and read the Government website.
The LAST place anybody should believe is an incumbent government’s self-serving web pages.
(you are right about Transport Minister Heidi Alexander though –
she does have a very horsey face)
Haven’t you heard the expression “Don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth”?
Alexander is a smart and intelligent woman. Unfortunately like a lot of other smart and intelligent people she has got lost in the group think of party peers.
You have to understand their situation: they are surrounded by completely uniform, no dissent, associates. Any deviation from the party line, however absurd the party line may be, will result in ostracism. Every day you read (in the rabid right wing press of course!) about people dismissed or cancelled for expressing the wrong opinions in public. About climate, race, immigration, gender, history…
The progressive political classes are in panic mode, because of the polls, and not just what the polls show about Labour, but what they show about Reform. The extent of their panic is shown by the Labour cancellations of the May local elections.
Of course cancelling the elections will just increase the anger and contempt which seems to be the main sentiment the British have for their government at the moment. But they are between a rock and a hard place. There is no way out for them. So the mechanism of cognitive dissonance means that they collectively close their eyes and rally round and deny any possibility that their course is possible to change.
When a cult’s key beliefs are falsified by experience, the initial result is to reinforce the belief of the members, and to lead to increasingly rabid denunciations of dissenters in the ranks. This is what we are seeing now. You think electric trucks are mad? Just wait, there’s a lot more where that came from!
Wherever it appeared is not the point. It was an accurate piece, and the policy it was summarizing did confirm that the government is committed to this mad idea. Yes, it was introduced by the Conservative Government. Its still mad. Just like the Climate Change Act was passed under a Labour Government but strengthened under a Conservative one (Theresa May). It was and still is mad.
The UK problem in the last couple of decades has been the complete derangement of the entire political and media class of all parties – Labour, Conservatives, Plaid, SNP, Liberals.
The Conservative Party appears to be waking up, maybe too late for it to have a future. But the others are still lost on another planet wondering what women are and whether disbelief in Islam is a kind of racism, and if so what should be done about it.
I’ve seen shipping companies in the US try to do the math to get an electrical hookup for 18-24 EV trucks. The power companies laugh at them when they come in asking for more power than the rest of the city they reside in.
But, I assume the UK is just rolling in gobs and gobs of extra power to supply for these vehicles. ROFL
Unless the EV plans are accompanied by plans for additional power generation, they are just planning on buggering the entire country.
That’s ridiculous…you put in a transformer from 25Kv down to the charging voltage of a couple of dozen volts…and it’s about the load of a welding shop…not a city….unless you have charging cables that are too big and heavy to carry…
I weary of seeing Europe degenerate into collective insanity. When they, like addicts, “hit rock bottom” it may be too late.
In the southwest part of Argentina in the Province of Chubut, five large fires have been raging in the National Forest of Los Alerces (trees like redwoods or sequoias), for several days, and three of the fires have merged into the biggest one. The fires are being cited as “the greatest climate disaster the region has ever known”. The climate claim appears to have two elements, one is that there was an unusually dry Spring, and the other is that the evil Petrochemical companies were involved. The politicians are making obvious references to CAGW aspects. OK, how were the Petrochemical companies involved? There were gasoline accelerants detected at all five fire start points.
Should we therefore blame match manufacturers as well?
I think we should blame lumber companies for not cutting down enough trees to make room for more windmills and sand panels.
Typo Alert: “sand” should be “and”.
If you spot a typo or wish to make corrections to posted comment, move the mouse pointer to the lower right corner of the comment box, and there will appear a small gear wheel. Click on the gear wheel and the instruction:
“Manage Comment” appears. Click on it and the instruction: “Edit” appears. Click on it, and comment is displayed in light text. After making corrections to text, click on “Save”.
You have a five minute window for making corrections after posting a comment.
Typoe alert: you need new humor and sarcasm sensors.
Explanation for the pedantic: “sand” is sarcastic shorthand for “silicon”, as in solar panels.
Redundant explanation for the Department of Redundancy Department: your “fix” would result in the redundant “and and”.
Suggestion for the jump-to-conclusions crowd: think for five seconds before jumping. The conclusion you think you see may be a mirage and you won’t get where you think you are going.
ETA: And just for fun, your corrective action is incorrect. Clicking the gear brings up the dropdown menu with one single choice, “Edit”. There is no “Manage Content” step.
Suggestion: Don’t suggest things you haven’t tried yourself.
Thanks for the info about “sand” panels. First time this old organic chemist of 81 years has read about this new usage for silicon.
My instruction about the gear wheel is incorrect. If you place mouse pointer on the gear wheel the “Manage Comment” appears. If you then click on the gear wheel “Edit” appears. Click on it to get your comment for making corrections.
How much do you charge for repairing scarecrows?
It is sufficient to blame the mentally unstable arsonist(s).
Climate Change-caused Wildfires = Deranged Arsonist
There are an abundance of those types of psychos in California.
There seems to be a correlation between population density and deranged arsonists.
“trees like redwoods or sequoias”
Those species are fire resistant- what about the species in that National Forest? Is there a similar problem as in the Western USA- decades of fire prevention making those forests more likely to have severe fires? Is there any forest mgt. work in those forests or are they more like American National Parks with a no cut policy?
Joseph, there does not appear to be any management of fire danger in Los Alerces. I think your comment about fire resistance for very large trees is correct, they burn some bark near the ground and not too much, especially if it is windy and the fire moves through quickly. The latest update is a total of 6,000 hectares burned, or 60 square kilometers.
Update: strong winds today pushed the total burned to 12,000 hectares. There is a $50,000,000.00 Arg Peso reward for arrest of the arsonist(s).
Why Türkiye needs to pull ahead in Europe’s electric vehicle transition
I like the focus on more independence for the county.
Do you ever read the nonsense articles you post, and if you do, do you cast a critical eye over them before posting? I’m guessing not.
A quick search tells me the following:
The article cites about 18% of new car sales being electric and 164,650 units sold to show Türkiye leads Europe, but it doesn’t mean most cars on the road are electric. Replacing an entire car fleet takes many years, so short‑term sales spikes don’t equal long‑term dominance.
Switching cars from petrol to electricity can cut oil imports, but it doesn’t automatically fix the trade balance. Batteries, cells, and critical minerals are imported; if Türkiye imports those at scale, the savings on oil can be offset by new import bills. Also, extra electricity demand will require more gas or coal generation.
Independent analysts warn TOGG faces profitability and competition risks, and attracting Chinese or European investment can both help and crowd local firms.
The article leans on current tax breaks and tariffs. Those policies can change quickly; recent ÖTV (special tax) adjustments already affected demand spikes, showing how fragile growth can be if incentives are rolled back.
The piece underplays charging infrastructure, grid upgrades, and equity issues. Rolling out chargers and upgrading distribution networks is expensive and takes time; without careful planning, benefits concentrate among wealthier buyers.
Not only that, but Turkey is a rather “WARM” place.
EVs and car air-conditioners are not a particularly reliable mix. !
EVs only sell when they are subsidised to the max.. this time with huge differences in the tax rate.
Heaters and EVs don’t mix either.
Heating can be more of an energy drain than cooling. Max temps likely to be seen by EV’s would be ~120ºF or 50ºF higher than 70ºF. Min temps likely to be seen by EV’s would be below -30ºF or 100ºF lower than 70ºF.
Turkey gets nearly all its energy from fossil fuels.
These EVs will still run on COAL, OIL or GAS.
EVs will only ever be a second car for virtue-seeking rich people. !
If you click on the chart, it will expand and become clear. Click on the “X” in the circle to contract the chart and return to Comments.
Please stop. We all know how to use the Internet.
Harold Pierce doesn’t.
I post this comment for the benefit of new commers to this website. Some of them might not know how to expand the chart for better viewing and return to Comments.
Everyone knows. When the mouse hovers over it, it becomes a clickable image. This has been a thing for a couple decades.
Jeff, I am using an iPad. No mouse. Just a finger. However, for the benefit of any other users, “double tapping” on the image enlarges it to its own screen. Then, tapping on the image takes you to the next image on the blog (or the previous). Tapping outside the image closes and returns to the comment.
That’s for iOS 26. It keeps changing.
Love your work Harold.
Any tips for arthritic one-finger typists like me?
I thank you for your support. I am also a one finger typist. I just type rather slowly one character at a time. I visually check the key before pushing on it. So just go slow.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/magazine/ocean-acidification-carbon-geoengineering.html reports on using sodium hydroxide to reverse ocean acidification.
The first question to ask, is it needed?
The second question is, even if the answer to the first question is yes, then is a strong alkaline solution like sodium hydroxide overkill, doesn’t it destroy the natural buffer solution that is based on carbonic acid and (bi)carbonates (my chemistry knowledge is somewhat lacking in this), thus the “cure” is worse than the “disease”? If a person is found to be acidotic would these people advocate for infusing them with caustic soda solution (I really hope not!)?
The production of Sodium hydroxide from salt produces copious quantities of Chlorine gas. Congrats with such an enlightened piece of cluelessness.
Where did I say the sodium hydroxide was created from salt, it’s not even implied in anything I said?
The linked article states that the sodium hydroxide was poured into the ocean not that it was created there, if it were then the alleged cure would be orders of magnitude worse than the alleged problem.
I agree that concentrated sodium hydroxide would be disastrous to the local ecosystem.
According to Konrad Krauskopf, well-known Stanford geochemist, the oceans will never become acidic. He speculated in his textbook that stagnant pools enriched in hydrogen sulfide might make it to pH 7 — neutral. The natural (bi)carbonate/borate buffering system appears to be able to handle anything that can the thrown at it, as long as it is a weak acid like carbonic. Strong acids are another story. They may have played a role in the Great Dying of the End Permian.
The famous volcanic CO2 seeps in Indonesia (and elsewhere) have apparently saturated the water column with CO2, yet remain only slightly below pH 8, and the corals seem to be fine.
It is just another very stupid idea.. A compendium of all surface pH measurements since 1910 show , if anything a slight increase in pH..
The whole “ocean acidification” hoax is just another thing these clowns get totally wrong.
The claimed open-ocean decline in pH from 8.2 to 8.1 is based on a computer climate model that estimated the pre-industrial pH as 8.2. Much of the historical data has been ignored as not being reliable, as if a computer model is! If you didn’t read the article linked below when it was first published, you might find it interesting.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/31/ocean-ph-accuracy-arguments-challenged-with-80-years-of-instrumental-data/
Do you have the associated localities for those pH measurements? I’m suspicious that the pHs below 7 represent brackish tidal waters that have low buffering capacity or surface waters diluted with acidic rainwater.
Aren’t there areas of deep ocean where there are geological outlets that cause localised volumes of water that are definitely acidic (pH<7)?
Ocean acidification is just another fake CO2 crisis.
I am aware that it’s a non-problem, but as it is seen as a problem with the addition of sodium hydroxide as a “solution”. My concern is the potential catastrophe arising from treating the non-problem with such drastic measures without consideration for the fallout from those measures.
All the animals (fish, lobsters, shrimp, shellfish, zooplankton, etc.) in the oceans exhale CO2, which has no effect on the pH of oceans which is 8.1.
Dumping sodium hydroxide in the oceans would kill all organisms in an instant.
Do those yokels have any idea how big the ocean is and how much sodium hydroxide they’d need to make any measurable change? That’s about the most inefficient way to waste resources I can think of, much worse than solar panels and wind turbines.
The oceans are vast- any effort to change their chemistry, even if a good idea in theory, is hopeless given the volume of water.
Apologies if the following update has been discussed already, but it is of some significance to anyone who references and/or analyses the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) data. The process used to convert the ‘raw’ monthly sea surface temperature (SST) data to anomaly values is subject to a moving 30-year baseline. With the latest monthly SST value coming available (December 2025), a new baseline of (1995-2025) has been derived and applied. Obviously, the ‘raw’ SST data is unaffected, but all anomaly values (the monthly Niño-3.4 index) and ONI values (rolling 3-monthly average of the index) since January 2011 have changed.
The process is described here: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ONI_change.shtml.
The quoted reason for making this change (which occurs every 5 years) is that the SST data “are increasingly incorporating longer-term trends that do not reflect interannual ENSO variability”. This is a rather important assumption and the applied process is, of course, the reason that ONI values appear to be neutral over the longer term. Beware the circular argument!
The changes to the 30-year baseline from the previous one are small, less than 0.2C, but this could affect classification given the criterion of 0.5C bands. For example, the ONI value for January 2025 (Dec-Jan-Feb) changes from -0.59C to -0.44C. What is even more interesting in this particular update is the fact that every single monthly SST value for the new 30-year baseline is lower than the previous baseline for 1991-2020. The value for January (26.38C) is even lower than the 1956-1985 baseline for January (26.42C)!
Yes, these differences are very small, but they are contrary to a continually warming baseline. More analysis is required, but these values would appear to reflect a problem with the process in that the baseline itself is skewed by the balance (or lack thereof) between El Niño and La Niña events.
To add a bit of perspective on the above, here are the SST data for the Niño 3.4 region of the equatorial Pacific since 1950, updated to December 2025. The range for “interannual ENSO variability”, i.e. between the largest El Niño (warmer) and La Niña (cooler) events is 4C. The second plot shows the same data since 1995 together with the relevant baseline data, which is at a maximum in May each year and serves as a useful timeline for the actual (measured) SST variations. The three most significant El Niño events show a very distinctive character, including the 2023-2024 event.
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The other issue is that the ONI is increasingly becoming a skewed metric as a result of global SSTs increasing faster than ENSO SSTs. Specifically, La Nina’s are amplified while El Nino’s are attenuated relative the global backdrop. This is the impetus of the newer RONI metric. [van Oldenborgh et al. 2021] [L’Heureux et al. 2024]
BATTERY CARS AND HYBRIDS SORNED EARLY
A FOI request to DVLA has revealed some interesting facts. Full battery cars are being SORNED after aprox. 4 years, hybrids at around 6 years. Petrol and diesel at around 15 and 25 years. This would indicate that these vehicles are too expensive to repair, or unable to be repaired. Early battery failure could be the main reason.
Maybe they are being SORNed because no scrappie will take them.
had to google that word- how could I be around for 76 years and never heard that word? Or maybe I did and my brain is shrinking and forgot it. 🙂
Never heard of it either.
It’s a UK word for a UK government form. No reason for non-UK people to know it.
There are five obvious reasons why EVs are likely to have shorter lives:
1) They are more expensive and as such, are premium products. After five years they are no longer a premium products but are still more expensive than the runarounds that are used for utilitarian purposes. As such, they have no sell on, second hand market.
2) The batteries decline.
3) Advances in EV technology are fast. China is taking over the UK market, previously we were stuck with inferior designs at inflated costs (looking at you Tesla, but also other brands). Why settle for a second hand vehicle at the same price as a brand new design from China?
4) Tesla’s were being bought as a virtue signal, “Look how much I spend to be nice to the planet; aren’t I good”. But the Tesla brand is now tarnished beyond repair by its association with Elon Musk, the world’s riches man who took food form the mouths of the world’s poorest children – beyond parody for a Bond Villain. Driving a Tesla now bears a stigma that most people want to avoid.
5) Most EVs were bought by company’s a fleet vehicles to meet the company’s corporate green box ticking duties. Fleets are usually sold on to the employees at cut down rates or sold on to dealers. But the corporate demand is boosted by the need to fulfil those green policy objectives and avoid bad publicity that may affect the share price (risk management) . Individuals do not have that requirement. So the demand is not there.
“Why settle for a second hand vehicle at the same price as a brand new design from China?”
Not so sure that’s a great idea either.
Oh, I see.. DUMPED !!!
Are there enough old quarries in the UK ??
I don’t know. Only my ancestors lived in the UK. I don’t talk with them very often. Mostly because they have been dead for a long time.
In Hawaii last month, I couldn’t help but notice that there are a lot of 30 to 40 year old ice vehicles still on the road, particularly pickup trucks used by small businesses.
A mechanic once told me that a car can last forever if you take care by following the owner’s manual instructions. Look at Cuba, all the cars are mid 1950 GMs and Fords especially Triple Five Chevrolets.
AND if they don’t use salt on the roads! About 5-years ago I sold a 1970 IH Scout Aristocrat shortly after having the engine re-built. I had had one fuel tank replaced because it had developed a leak; then a rigid brake-line snapped in the cold. Then, I discovered that there were at least 5 small holes in the body that were allowing spiders and other things to get into the interior. That car had almost 500,000 miles on it and had spent most of its life in California. But after 15 years in Ohio, all the protective oil-saturated dust was gone.
Last forever, as long as you keep replacing stuff. Eventually it’s not the original car any more.
Sorned” is the simple past tense and past participle of the verb “sorn,” which means to make a Statutory Off Road Notification for a vehicle in the UK, indicating that it is not being used on public roads. This allows the vehicle owner to stop paying tax and insurance for that vehicle while it is off the road.
In the USA, ‘states’ control such things. There are vehicles specifically exempted from licensing fees, but the language is very different.
Geoff Buys Cars has a YouTube episode on SORNed EVs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiCGpdhN7Dk
I didn’t know what SORN stood for before viewing this. Definitely a sign that EVs are not going to be taking over the vehicle fleet using the current technology.
Miliband Net Zero set to cost UK £4.5T, still a vast underestimate I expect.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15452411/The-staggering-cost-Ed-Milibands-Net-Zero-drive-finally-revealed.html
Religion in politics can often lead a country astray
Child daycare is apparently a human right for third worlders of whom over 80% are still on government welfare even 10 years after their immigration.
Never could figure that out..
If you are not working, why do your kids need day care 😉
Because the relatives operating the “daycare center” need money to send back home, of course!
The cost of the collapse of the UK economy has not been included in this figure.
Mad Ed really is mad. As is his political party. Mad Ed looks like the UK version of Joe Biden. Everything Joe did caused harm to the United States. It looks like everything Mad Ed does is causing harm to the UK.
How do such idiots get elected to public office?
Follow the money and name everybody involved.
Dominion ?
😉
We vote them in. An uncomfortable fact: we (collectively) are very stupid.
“We vote them in. An uncomfortable fact: we (collectively) are very stupid.” All political parties are collectives. That is how they work. The antidote Is individualism. More specifically, independent representatives.
That this can only be achieved by individuals behaving as individuals is beyond ironic.
It won’t, because our creditors will cut us off long before that. Which means no borrowing for anything. Not for Net Zero; not for anything.
Story tip: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/africas-pipeline-rejects-climate-dogma-and-foreign-control
Trump asked US special forces to plan Greenland invasion, faces resistance from military generals: Report
Stop wetting your pants, it will never happen.
Greenland is an autonomous territory within Denmark. Denmark is a member of NATO.
Trump says and does many things, which never happen. Trump would never ‘invade’ Greenland
Also there is no specific source named, as if this supposed leak, if there was one, was intentional.
Yes.
Sun Tzu writes in “The Art Of War” that feints are a very effective tactic.
Trump uses feints frequently and effectively.
Just ask Iran, Syria and Venezuela, to name a few adversaries.
Another lie put out by the Radical Leftists.
Trump may have requested an invasion plan, although that plan has probably already been done in the past. The military does planning for all sorts of contingencies.
What sounds like the leftwing lie is the part about how Trump’s generals are pushing back and telling Trump it may be unlawful and lacks congressional approval.
Whoever wrote this lie hss no familiarity with how things work at the Pentagon and assumes Trump doesn’t know the law and is prepared to break it. Typical Leftwing BS.
Show me a dissenting general.
The Pentagon is known to have contingency invasion plans sitting on the shelf for every geographic area considered of strategic importance to the US. One for Greenland has to have been sitting on the shelf since the late 1930’s. It could be that the most recent update includes bringing along enough HR personnel to hire every adult resident of Greenland as a Pentagon employee at a salary of $100,000 per year per person.
Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if something was deliberately leaked to trigger the far-left into making further fools of themselves.
“Show me a dissenting general.”
Well actually Tom there are a few…..General John F Kelly was on Trumps team first time round. He certainly was a dissenting General by the end. didn’t he call him a fascist? Milley also had no time at all for Trump calling him a “fascist to the core.” Oh and HR McMaster thought Trump’s behaviour on Jan 6 was a betrayal of his oath to support the constitution. Then there was Mark Esper (a Lieutenant Colonel, Army) who said after stolen documents were found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, that stashing them there was an “irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation’s security at risk.”
there are others Tom but you get the idea.
Kelly is a rabid leftist.. now in line for a court-martial.
Milly was a total sap who no longer has any standing. An irrelevant little Biden toady.
McMaster was ignorant of Trump’s actual actions on Jan 6 because he listened to the MSM.
What was really irresponsible was private Otto Pen under the Biden admin signing all those documents. That put the whole country at risk..
The Democrats have still refused to accept that Trump won, and have behaved far worse than anything that happened on Jan 6.
Basically ever day since Trump’s inauguration, they have been in “distract, disrupt, destroy” mode… like Jan 6 on some ultra-steroid.
“The Democrats have still refused to accept that Trump won, and have behaved far worse than anything that happened on Jan 6.”
What crap are you talking now? You really are just a lone space cadet aren’t you.
The dems (H Clinton and K Harris) went to Trumps first and second inauguration. Trump on the other hand could not find the balls to go to Bidens. Trump the forever petulant child he is, was sulking. Not worthy of being called a man let alone a president.
You’re very gullible.
carried over from a previous article:
“Global temperature is a worthless metric that in no way furthers the debate on climate science.”
I think regional temperature readings are a worthwhile metric.
The regional temperatures recorded in the past may not be as accurate on the numbers as we would like, but the numbers, even if inaccurate to an extent, do establish a temperature profile for the Earth.
The regional temperature profiles show that since the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850, the temperatures have operated in a cyclical manner with temperatures warming up to a high point in the 1880’s, then cooling to a low point in the early 1900’s, then warming again up through the 1930’s high point, which was equally warm to the 1880’s high point, and then temperatures cooled down through the 1970’s (equally cool to the early 1900’s), and then the temperatures again warmed to a high point in 1998, which was equivalent to the high points in the 1880’s and the 1930’s, and 2016 and 2024.
Now, we can argue about the accuracy of the temperature readings, but as far as a global temperature profile goes (not the same as a global temperature average), the profile will be the same all over the world, without regard to the accuracy of the measuring instruments because the measuring instruments of that era were all off by the same amount since they used the same type of equipment, so the temperature profile of warming, cooling and repeating remains intact in the written record.
We have an accurate picture of the Earth’s past climate in the regional temperature records. They show it was just as warm in the recent, recorded past, as it is today, and show that temperatures are independent of the amount of CO2 in the air. There is no unprecedented heat today.
It’s not any hotter now than in the recent past, and CO2 has no measureable effect on the Earth’s temperatures or climate as the climate warms and cools without regard to how much CO2 is in the air at the time.
Here are 600 original, regional charts that show the cyclical movement of the Earth’s climate. It warms for a few decades and then cools for a few decades, and the difference between the warmest point and the coolest point is a little more than 2.0C. That’s what history shows.
https://notrickszone.com/600-non-warming-graphs-1/
Here is the U.S. regional chart as well (Hansen 1999):
No “hotter and hotter and hotter” Hockey Stick temperature profile to be seen anywhere in the data.
Sorry, no, regional is meaningless as well. Averaging two different stations is meaningless, everything else follows on.
“, but as far as a global temperature profile goes (not the same as a global temperature average), the profile will be the same all over the world”
Tom, as much as I respect you this is misleading to the average person.
1. Temperature is not climate.
2. Temperature is not weather.
3. Temperature is not heat.
It doesn’t matter if you are using a global or regional area.
Too many people will not recognize that you are talking TEMPERATURE trends and not climate trends. It’s the basic problem climate science has – climate science can’t differentiate between temperature and climate for some reason. I suspect it has to do with money.
Go to Wikipedia and read about the Köppen Climate Classification System. The two main parameters in this system are temperature and rainfall. Wladimir Köppen (1846-1940) and his colleague Rudolf Geiger (1894-1981) were meteorologists and were the first climate scientists.
It is one of the metrics used to test the global warming hypothesis. That by itself makes it invaluable to the debate.
I think people who label it “worthless” are doing so because it cannot be used to falsify that hypothesis since it is increasing. In other words it is worthless in defense of their position that global warming is not happening.
First, the “hockey stick” is in reference to the shape of the global average temperature plot over several hundred years. So you’re graph is not relevant to the topic.
Second, What happens to the graph of the US average temperature when you consider the biases arising from changes in station sighting, instrument, and time-of-observation changes?
“It is one of the metrics used to test the global warming hypothesis. That by itself makes it invaluable to the debate.”
So it’s valuable as propaganda, even though it’s meaningless. Got it.
It’s valuable as a way to test the hypothesis.
It might be – if you could actually provide this “hypothesis”.
Warming (global or otherwise) is the result of heat. Go on, tell me I’m wrong.
If you can’t provide an alternative explanation, you are obviously ignorant and gullible, believing that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter!
You can’t test anything with JUNK data fabrications. !!
Except if your junk fabrications match your junk models ,… of course.
The surface data “global temperature” is a complete FABRICATION.
It is totally useless for any rational discussion of anything.
One can use an average of averages of averages to test something?
Wow. Science sure has progressed. /s
An average of averages of averages “of an intensive property that can’t be averaged”.
Global temperature since 1880…… YOU HAVE GOT TO BE JOKING
Show us where the measurements were taken in say, 1900
The left hand graph is a TOTAL FABRICATION !!
Unadjusted data does not match the right hand graph either.
Two FAKED graphs.. well done
Lately we have been hearing a lot in the news about Greenland. Did you know that the population of Greenland is a mere 57,000 of which 88% are Innuits? That means that the Danish and European derived population of Greenland is less than 7000. In other words, we are looking at the population equivalent of a very small town. While I don’t know the local political situation in Greenland, I wonder how the majority native Innuits there feel about those 7000 Europeans? Do the Innuits regard themselves as a colony of Denmark? Did Denmark ever ask the native Innuits whether they wanted to be a part of Denmark? I’m not arguing for or against American annexation of Greenland. And force against Denmark ought to be off the table. But Greenland’s link to Denmark looks awfully weak.
If the Inuit were worried about it, they could easily do something about it.
“Greenland’s link to Denmark looks awfully weak”
Everyone knows that. The mineral rights are open for development.
And everyone knows that the USA has the right to put as many troops as it wants in Greenland for the USA’s defence.
And everyone knows that two NATO countries going to war benefits no-one, except Russia and China.
Whatever the USA wants from Greenland can be easily negotiated – except annexation.
But annexation is what Trump wants.
The problem is that Trump needs a big showpiece for the 250th anniversary on 4th July so as he can get his face on Mt Rushmore.
I’m a retired quantitative social science PhD, undergraduate aero-engineering, living in Southwest Florida in a master-planned upper-income (almost all college-educated) community of about 2,000. I’ve studied climate science since 2006, am pretty knowledgeable, and understand most of the science even if I can’t run all the equations myself. I’m considering giving a talk/ discussion on climate change and the fact that science does not clearly (or possibly very much at all) support the theory that humankind-generated CO2 (or activity in general) is having a significant effect on climate, most notably temperature.
I would like to have access to a solid open-source PowerPoint presentation (can be any length and with speaker notes even better) that I could edit for size and use to speak with a small group (~40) in our community’s speaker series. My preference is to go a mile wide/ and maybe a bit more than an inch deep, starting from paleo data, the basics of heat transfer, the type and quality of data on which climate science is based, and explanations for how what is frequently presented in media, including scientific press releases, is just not well-supported despite what many scientists claim.
There’s a lot of information here at WUWT, but I don’t have the time to put something together myself from that material.
Can anyone provide a link to such a presentation(s)?
“significant effect on climate, most notably temperature.”
I don’t have a presentation to offer but I would ask the attendees right at the start if Las Vegas and Miami have the same climate even though both have very high daily temperature maximums. If they say “no”, then ask why would they equate temperature with climate?
You are unlikely to find an “open source PowerPoint presentation” that you can edit without violating the ethics of implicit copyright retained by the author(s), unless such permission is clearly given in writing in the presentation itself. One alternative would be for you to contact the author(s) to request permission to use their material as-is.
Having said that, there many excellent slide presentations that can be found via Web searches that will provide guidance/examples of PowerPoint slides that you yourself could prepare/customize for your own presentation.
I highly recommend Web searching the following for information you can readily adapt to your purpose:
— articles here on WUWT from various authors
— publications/presentations by William Happer
— publications/presentations by Richard Lindzen
— publications/presentations by Judith Curry
— publications/presentations by Andy May
— publications/presentations by John Clauser
with, of course, my apologies to a host of other excellent scientists/authors that I have not specifically named but who have likewise have spoken out against the fake “science” used by many AGW/CAGW alarmists.
And, if you are very lazy, get Copilot to create the PowerPoint from the list ToldYouSo gives, as well as this website.
Then check it carefully. The AI fantasises should be obvious.
And it should be quite quick.
I would guide the Ai to split your presentation into 5 sections:
A) Introduction. Say why you care (Hmm, Ai cannot write that for you but it’s only one slide).
B) What is the correct temperature? Discuss what we actually want the climate to be. Do we want some desert, no desert, rain forest, no rain forest, farmlands for miles and miles that are watered and warmed – or do we just want consistency (weather that never changes)? Conclude that with the obvious “That is politics, not science. Russia and Canada have different demands to India and Brazil. So what do we actually have right now and is this a crisis? If so, for whom?”
C) The science bit.
Three themes:
First, a quick diversion into Beer-Lambert’s Law and the idea that extra CO2 has an impact that declines exponentially, so we use doublings rather than addings.
Second theme, “How much does the climate warm if we double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?” Ask why nobody in the audience can answer this critical question – the basic settled science of Global Warming. It should be a surprise that it is not common knowledge. We all ought to know this, shouldn’t we?
Third Theme: The great range of guesses as to that settled science (can be got from this site). Note also that the observationally constrained estimate for climate sensitivity are generally lower than the purely modelled guesses.
D) Weather not Climate. Which is more important? Weather causes the problems. We need to adapt to the weather which is faster and greater variation than the climate. Back to politics – how do we adapt? With Infrastructure investment. How long does infrastructure last before we need to replace it anyway? And if we need another 2 inches on a flood defence when it’s next renovated, is that a problem?
E) Conclusion. No-one agrees what the world should be. No-one knows what the world will be. No-one knows what we need to do about the climate, but we do know what we need to do about the weather, and that’s probably enough.
The questions would be hostile.
MCourtney, just excellent advice! . . . thank you. Especially with the warning of being very circumspect about using Copilot (or any other AI bot) to prepare a slide presentation for you. There is apparently a huge bias in current AI that favors the AGW/CAGW narrative of humans being the primary cause of “climate change”, as if such never occurred prior to, oh, some 300,000 or so years ago.
I would also add that, with regards to your suggested “The science bit” section, any presentation should have near the start of such a true, science-based explanation of what the “green house gas effect” is and why it is real and unavoidable but can be asymptotic in effect. Toward this end, please find a succinct summary of such given in another of my comments under this article, near the top.
Finally, although Meisha might find hostile questions coming from his audience(s), IMHO it is nonetheless worth his effort to provide science-based information that just might cause a few minds to examine their “confirmation bias” and/or to question “stuff” coming from the MSM.
This assumes the audience is even more gullible and ignorant than you, and can be conned into believing that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter.
If they do, they deserve everything they get.
Thanks, McCourtney, that’s helpful.
Being a trained and practicing scientist, I am well aware of copyright issues, which of course have to be addressed before using anyone else’s work. Thanks for the heads up, however.
In the dark red bar at the top, find FAILED PREDICTIONS.
You can entertain a group for an hour going through these – each is a prediction followed by a charles/anthony [?] rejoinder. If the attendees enjoy it, they may invite you back. Ask what questions they have? Go back and respond to those.
This is also a good idea. I’ll look into it.
For some background information on the greenhouse effect and global warming, please go to the late John L. Daly’s website “Still Waiting For Greenhouse” available at http://www.john-daly.com. The site many charts, graphs and essays.
From the home page go to the end and click on: “Station Temperature Data”. On the “World Map” click on Australia. A list of weather stations is displayed. Click on “Adelaide”. The chart (See below) shows a plot of average annual temperature from 1857 to 1999. In 1857 the concentration of CO2 was 280 ppmv (0.55 g CO2/cu. m. of air) and by 1999 it had increased to 368 ppmv (0.72 g CO2/cu. m. of air) but there was no corresponding increase air temperature at this port city. Instead there was cooling. Note how little CO2 there is in the air. Be sure to check all the charts for Australia.
This chart falsifies the claim by the IPCC that CO2 cause warming of air. Use the back arrow to return to the list of stations. Clicking the back arrow again displays the ” World Map”. At the end of the home page there is a list of essays on the greenhouse effect and global warming.
John Daly found over 200 weather stations that showed no warming up to 2002. If you click on the chart it will expand and become clear. Click on the “X” in the circle to contract the chart and return to Comments.
Another useful input!
I appreciate everyone’s efforts to support my Quixotic journey…to convince at least a few people that global warming is not likely impacted much by man-made CO2 and, even if it is, the outcome is unlikely to be seriously deleterious; indeed, may well be more positive than negative for mankind.
The good news is I live in a part of the US where people are willing to be thoughtful and tend to not be to be ideologically opposed to anything and everything they might associate with people of a different political persuasion from theirs, although I’m sure there will be a few who will find my effort to get them to understand what climate science really says and doesn’t say as being offensive in principle.
I will chime in, briefly:
Many good resources around, many are ‘open-source’ so with attribution, you should be OK.
Lengthy, technical, but one of the best I’ve seen: Poyet (free download, about 800 pages). You could pick a single topic from among his several, and make a good 40 minute presentation out of almost anything.
One place I’ve found useful to start with ‘agnostics’ and ‘true believers’ (in human-caused climate change), is to start with asking them what the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is. Very few can give an accurate answer. Randomly, someone does, but if no one is able to come within 10ppm of the correct answer, hold onto that answer.
Then, ask, ‘is the IPCC the world-renowned authority on climate?’ If they answer in the affirmative, then ask them what portion of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is the direct result of human use of fossil fuels.
Again, hold the answer; diverge into your presentation. Near the end, re-visit your first question, viz., the present-day concentration. Then, the lynch-pin in your discussion is the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), Ch 6, page 471. It takes just a bit of arithmetic, but if the IPCC is the ‘final authority’, the human contribution to increasing CO2 is a mere 4% of the annual, global carbon cycle. Ergo, changing human fossil fuel use would have minimal-to-no-impact on changing CO2 concentration(s).
Poyet does a similar calculation (in my mind, more robust) and comes up with human-CO2 as about 7 – 8%, at most; likely, the truth lies somewhere in between the two.
OK, not so brief … … …
Hope that helps,
MH
Love the head photo. Great choice!
w.
A PBS NOVA special, “Arctic Sinkholes (2022),” ostensibly a scientific explanation of enigmatic craters in permafrost on the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia, is actually a screed on global warming. It has been shown on TV locally at least four times that I’m aware of. It is actually about methane emissions in the Arctic, which the program accuses humans of being responsible for, despite acknowledging that the methane is derived from the decomposition of natural organic detritus in the permafrost where it has been sequestered for at least thousands of years.
The program spends considerable time discussing methane bubbles coming from a small, shallow tundra meltwater lake (Esieh) near the north-west coast of Alaska, showing dramatic explosions of out-gassing methane, which the researchers purposely ignited. The coverage demonstrates that the nominal one-meter-deep lake is unusual because there is a central feature of a rapid drop-off of the bottom, near the center, reaching to about 15-meters in depth. This prompts the researchers to do a VLF-radio geophysical mapping and profiling survey of the lake and surroundings. They conclude that the anomalous methane activity is the result of what they call “fossil” methane emissions from a thawed area below the hole in the lake bottom, at a depth of about 500-feet (150m), which provides a ‘chimney’ for the methane to escape between still-frozen permafrost in surrounding areas. However, they assert that the phenomenon is the result of anthropogenic global warming. Although, that assertion is supported only by supposition. They don’t ask the obvious question – “Why is the localized source of the “fossil” methane 500-feet below the warming atmosphere, the claimed source of heat that melted the permafrost in one spot, but not the entire area?”
The predominance of methane, rather than CO2, is evidence that the thawed source area is an anaerobic (or oxygen-depleted) area. Otherwise, the methane would get converted to carbon dioxide and water. They also state that isotope analysis dismisses the possibility that the methane is coming from near the surface. What they don’t acknowledge, let alone explain, is how a warming, oxygen-rich atmosphere is causing localized melting 500-feet below the surface, when the lack of oxygen suggests little or no communication between the atmosphere and the methane source area. They show that numerous faults have been mapped in the area, and casually suggest that they play a role, without specifying exactly how. I would suggest that the faults provide a conduit for warm hydrothermal fluids to melt the permafrost well below the surface. Therefore, it is geological activity that is immediately responsible for the methane, which itself could also have a geological source, rather than just biological.
That might also explain the blow-outs on the Yamal Peninsula. As warm, hydrothermal water melts the deep permafrost, and anaerobic bacteria decompose the buried organic material, a localized over-pressure situation develops that causes the overlying sediments to burst upwards, causing the craters to form, without any combustion-explosion necessary. While igniting methane is a spectacular way to demonstrate that it is explosive, the lack of burning or charring evidence does not support the idea that the Yamal sinkholes are the result of a chemical explosion.
When the paradigm of human activity becomes the end-all, be-all of unusual phenomena, scientists stop looking for alternative explanations. This is not much different from primitives blaming volcano eruptions or earthquakes on ‘the gods being displeased.’
Terrific details and commentary! Thank you. Your example is just further evidence of the wisdom of the Bard:
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
— as spoken by Hamlet in the Shakespeare play Hamlet