Electric vehicles avoided oil consumption equivalent to 70% of Iran’s exports in 2025
I won’t bother disputing the numbers in the article. They could even be correct for all I know. But the article omits the most important information. Where did the electricity come from in 2025?
(There are several follow-up questions invited by the article but I won’t muddy the waters here.)
Electric vehicles avoided oil consumption equivalent to 70% of Iran’s exports in 2025
And 100% of ICE vehicles avoided runaway lithium-ion battery fires. What’s your point?
European Consumers Seek Out Solar, EVs as Energy Prices Surge
Well that’s daft. Oil prices eventually come down. Electric bills never do. Besides, you spend GBP40,000-odd on an EV, GBP20,000-odd on solar panels to avoid an increase of maybe GBP4 on a fill-up? Dunno who these consumers are but they’re not making the best decisions…
US: No Ban On Oil Exports
Well, obviously. If the price of a commodity goes up, you want to sell more of it.
“If the strait of Hormuz is not consequential to the US, then why did gas prices in the US skyrocket as a result of its closing?”
Trump didn’t say it wasn’t consequential, he said the US doesn’t use it. Which is accurate. Cute meme, try harder next time.
Yes, back in the 1990s I had a single- parent employee who came and asked if she could avail herself of our fleet pricing for new vehicles.
Said that the way fuel costs were increasing, she had to reduce her cost of the daily work commute. So a better mpg car was her solution.
I got out the spreadsheet and showed her it would take ~ 9 years for the savings in fuel to cover the capital outlay differences for a new car.
We agreed to change her work hours so that she could avoid the heavy traffic to & from.
That worked.
Electric vehicles avoided oil consumption equivalent to 70% of Iran’s exports in 2025
Cute headline from Ember (a pro-electrification think tank), but it’s classic apples-to-oranges, green propanda sleight-of-hand.
EVs avoided ~1.7 million bpd of oil use globally in 2025, while Iran exported ~2.4 million bpd through Hormuz. Yes, that’s roughly 70%, but avoided demand isn’t “equivalent” to supply disruption. One is a gradual efficiency gain spread across years and continents; the other is a sudden geopolitical choke-point risk.
EVs didn’t “replace” Iran’s barrels in any meaningful market sense, they just nibbled at total global demand a bit.
It’s like bragging your diet avoided eating 70% of a single fast-food chain’s output while the chain is on fire.
Nice PR spin for green propanda, weak geopolitics.
European Consumers Seek Out Solar, EVs as Energy Prices Surge (and supposedly in the US too)
Bloomberg reports a spike in inquiries for solar/EVs/heat pumps in UK/Germany right after the Iran war kicked of, e.g., Octopus Energy saw +27% solar inquiries one week.
That’s it.
No hard sales data (won’t be available for months), no sustained trend, just anecdotal interest from one supplier and vague “German companies reported a rise”.
Classic early-crisis hype: people google alternatives when prices spike, then most do nothing because upfront costs hurt more than pump pain.
The US mention is pure hand-waving – zero evidence provided.
This is not “consumers fleeing fossils en masse”; it’s a brief Google Trends blip dressed up as revolution.
The Trump admin explicitly ruled it out (“not under consideration”).
Why? Because everyone who understands oil markets knows a ban would be self-owning stupidity: US gasoline prices are tied to global benchmarks, so restricting exports tightens world supply leads to higher global crude which leads to higher US pump prices, plus it kills producer revenue, discourages drilling, and creates pointless Gulf Coast gluts.
A few Congress critters (e.g., Sherman) floated bans for populist points, but the administration shot it down fast.
The “ban to save consumers” idea was always economically illiterate panic – reality just reminded everyone why the export ban was lifted in the first place.
No drama here, just adults saying no to dumb ideas – it’s a shame we don’t have adults in charge of the UK.
It seems your poised every Sunday to spout your nonsense like some demented keyboard warrior who strikes the first, easily parred blow, then scuttles back under the fridge like a cockroach that just remembered it’s Sunday and has dignity to fake.
Maybe I’m being dense, but I still don’t quite understand the hate for home solar or EVs for those it works for. If oil becomes a problem I can fill the car up on wind or solar or gas or coal, it doesn’t really matter. It gives more flexibility even if it doesn’t save on emissions. Also I get it doesn’t work for everyone, but honestly as a suburban dweller who probably does more driving than many peers I still probably only go 150 km a day at most, so more than enough. I assume this is China’s main strategy, they have a lot more coal than oil so the more they can electrify they better positioned they are if things get ugly geopolitically, to me that is a smart hedge, and it doesn’t really matter they use coal because it isn’t really about he environment, that is just a PR talking point. Also having a bit of a libertarian streak in me I like the idea of a ‘solid state’ energy producing item like home solar/battery, but also have a small diesel generator ‘just in case’.
Maybe I’m being dense, but I still don’t quite understand the hate for home solar or EVs for those it works for.
Personally I don’t have an issue with home solar or EVs, if they work for you, go for it.
My issues are these things being forced on me and my tax is being used to subsidise people who are trying to force these things on me, and the lies that these things are environmentally friendlier than ICEs.
As a consumer, I want to choose what’s right for me and in this case it’s my 14 year old Ford Fiesta, which has long paid it’s dues in the environmental game.
This is the old “I got mine” meme. Everyone pays for your convenience in the form of higher energy costs for all. Everyone pays for your convenience in the form of higher highway repair costs generated by heavier EV vehicles. And on and on and on and …
Europe Is Relying More On Coal as Gas Prices Rally on Iran WarSoaring gas prices are pushing Europe to rely more on coal generation, even as demand falls and solar generation increases as sunnier, milder weather sets in.
This is the requirement of the May 23, 2025 Executive Order “Restoring Gold Standard Science” in Section 4:
“(c) When using scientific information in agency decision-making, employees shall transparently acknowledge and document uncertainties, including how uncertainty propagates throughout any models used in the analysis.”
I have not yet seen any instance of a federal agency addressing and applying this EO requirement.
In the following exercise, the propagated uncertainty in temperature projections for step-iterated models that use the RRTM or RRTMG radiative transfer code is evaluated. This addresses the uncertainty arising ONLY from the radiative transfer model’s published error in comparison to its LBLRTM reference. The “cooling rate” error for the troposphere is given at these web pages below as 0.1 K/day. This is understood as a +/- 0.1 K interval in which all the values of cooling rate error will fall. It is only the LW (longwave) part of the modeling that is being evaluated, not the SW (shortwave) part.
“RRTM” = Rapid Radiative Transfer Model. The RRTMG version is optimized for faster General Circulation Model computation. “LBLRTM” = “Line By Line Radiative Transfer Model”.
Because the cooling rate error is stated in K per day, a 365-day projection is posed, in which one day is one step in a theoretical iterated series. The Grok AI agent was prompted to compute the resulting uncertainty in the temperature of the troposphere. The computation itself is very simple. The main reason to use Grok was to have the AI agent step through the background to the answer.
Grok’s final answer: “For the evolving-state iterated computation you outlined, the RSS-propagated [RSS=root-sum-square – dd] uncertainty (±1.91 K after one year) is the better, more defensible estimate.” (This is stated as the interval in which all the possible values are expected to fall.)
A link to the full conversation with Grok is pasted here if you are interested in the entire chain of references and the application of ISO GUM guidance (Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement, JCGM 100:2008) to this case.
Grok explained what the “cooling rate” means – “The radiative cooling rate (sometimes called the radiative heating rate when the sign is positive) quantifies how quickly the temperature of that layer would change if radiation were the only process acting—i.e., ignoring convection, conduction, latent heating, or dynamics.”
There you have it. This implies that none of the pre-stabilized, time-step-iterated, large-grid, discrete-layer, parameter-tuned-to-hindcast climate models (at least the ones using RRTM or RRTMG) possess – or have ever possessed – ANY diagnostic or prognostic authority concerning the radiative influence of incremental CO2, CH4, N2O on “warming.” It’s not even a close call. The uncertainty from just this one source builds up in one year to a value far greater than the ~0.016 K/year long term trend being investigated for attribution.
The “climate” modeling to investigate the influence of rising CO2 levels has been circular all along. It cannot be otherwise and make any sense at all about the nature of radiative computation in a step-iterated simulation.
Very nice analysis. I would only point out that if the climate models were actually complete and physics based the earth would have long ago become a molten rock orbiting the sun devoid of any form of life, probably with all of the atmosphere lost to space. It’s what happens with positive feedback loops sooner or later.
Thanks for your reply. I suppose in this case, I could have just highlighted the absurdity of investigating a 0.016 K per year trend, which is 0.000044 K per day, with a model that cannot compute the longwave radiative influence on temperature any tighter than +/- 0.1 K per day. But I wanted to make the connection to the EO about the propagation of uncertainty.
The heat dome in the Western United States seems to be having quite an impact. “The models were right,” “Mass famines are coming soon,” and the World Weather Attribution tells us that such an event was “virtually impossible” without anthropogenic climate change.
If someone could explain to me how anthropogenic greenhouse gases can govern the atmospheric pressure patterns that create heat domes, I would be grateful, because I’m having trouble understanding it.
I already brought up this current issue under a recent article, but the very principle of climate attribution is so misleading and harmful that it genuinely fills me with despair. I can already hear the alarmists exclaiming, “We told you so, we told you so: Canada in 2021, the American West in 2026,” dancing the Carmagnole—seemingly more delighted than frightened by these unusual temperatures.
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(Philippulus the prophet, in Tintin and The Shooting Star)
“The Carmagnole was a popular song and dance during the French Revolution, particularly during the Reign of Terror (c. 1792–1794), often performed at executions around the guillotine. It originated from a Piedmontese peasant jacket and became a symbol of the militant sans-culottes, representing revolutionary fervor, violent energy, and patriotism.”
In Iran, the IRGC are dancing around that hanging of some teenage boys.
“such an event was “virtually impossible” without anthropogenic climate change”
Most of the USA west is arid if not desert. Why anyone would be surprised that there is a heat dome is silly. So now they have this new scary term, “heat dome”- added to atmospheric river and polar vortex. I suppose if we keep using ff, someday we’ll have all 3 and more at the same time! That’s what the weatherman will be saying other than, “today it’s cold in the northeast, dry in the southwest, raining in the northwest and muggy in the southeast”. But that doesn’t sound frightening – sounds boring and ordinary.
The drought and aridity of the American West, compared to the humidity of Louisiana, is notably what made Buffalo Bill hunt bison and not alligators (which my mother, while traveling in Florida, learned from signs that you should not feed them, which is, of course, common sense).
Some people make somewhat absurd comparisons: ‘If we take the current heat in the western US and equate it to France, it would be 38 degrees Celsius in such-and-such a place.’
These come from so-called climate specialists. I fear they are actually people who have tacked the term ‘climatologist’ onto their original field of expertise
Yes, the winter in the West (Wyoming) has been most unusual, but not something that has not happened before. The winter of ’83 – ’84 was similar; this one has been peculiarly dry. There is a cause: it is called La Nina. Note that the WUWT link to the ‘ENSO Meter’ does not function, but there is a website that has (approximately) weekly updates on El Nino/La Nina. I found it in just a few seconds with a search engine (“Klimata Projecta” , or something like that — — supposedly it is from the Australian BoM [Bureau of Meteorology], but I recall reading that Australia was going to discontinue ENSO forecasting … ).
Many parts of the West have been under Red Flag conditions: a Red Flag means no open campfires or outdoor cooking, wood cutting, tobacco use must be inside of a structure/vehicle, etc. We just had a grassland fire near my city. It was contained within 36 hours, but the dry conditions persist.
For my area, the annual average precipitation is about 31 – 32 cm.
Our “wet” season is about to begin. April and May are the two wettest months in my area, and we hope that the high pressure system(s) that have kept us dry will abate enough to make up for the existing deficit. As an example, one La Nina winter, we received just over a metre of snow in a three-day period in April.
No one here would complain about that this year. It would be welcomed with cheers and thanks giving,
Such high temperatures must be difficult to bear. I hope you’ll get some snow this year.
I myself live right next to a pine forest. When it is very hot and very dry, it takes so little for a fire to start. I hope the woods have been properly maintained in recent years; otherwise, during an especially dry summer, it would only take some fool tossing a cigarette butt on a trail for everything to go up in flames. But that won’t be the fault of climate change! Only of thoughtlessness.
I wish you good courage, and may the coolness return quickly.
You comment (equate it to France) caused me to recall being inTucson in June of 1976 (+ or – a year) when the temperature hit 117° (47°C). And Search Assist tells me “The hottest temperature ever recorded in France is 46.0°C (114.8°F), which occurred in Vérargues, Hérault, on June 28, 2019.”
Further: “The hottest temperature ever recorded in Tucson was 117°F on June 27, 1990. This record is part of a long history of extreme temperatures in the area.”
My advice: Don’t go to Tucson in June. 🙂
Or Vérargues, Hérault either.
My parents moved from Illinois to Arizona in July 1952. The day we arrived in Phoenix, the thermometer at the motel indicated 118°F. High temperatures are not a new phenomenon in the Sonora Desert, although it is now more humid and it doesn’t cool off as much at night at it did back in the ’50s.
I remember experiencing a few days of oppressive heat many years ago in the Gers, in the town of Condom (you have the right to laugh, English-speaking friends. There is, in fact, a condom museum there, even though the place has nothing to do with contraception, aside from its name! This initiative was reinforced by the fear of AIDS in the 1990s.)
It must have been over 40 degrees Celsius—it was awful. My parents told me to stay in the shade. Young children don’t always realize when they’re hot. On top of that, I was recovering from a viral meningitis, and since I had been put on antibiotics after the lumbar puncture was contaminated by the testing lab (they preferred to be safe rather than sorry, although viral meningitis is more like a severe flu than a life-threatening emergency), exposure to the sun after of antibiotics causes spots to appear on the skin. What I remember from that summer episode is both vague and very strange. It was there that I discovered the love song of the toads, truly melodious when it rises from under the stones into the evening air.
Just saw a weather map with what looks like a glass dome over much of the nation- red hot of course- like the nation is burning up. Strange, but that dome doesn’t reach over New England. I wish it would. Drizzle and cold today. I wouldn’t mind if New England became semi-tropical. Or semi-arid. As long as it gets warmer!
In Colorado, we are breaking high temperature records set back in 1910. There were few automobiles back then, and no airports (a couple more decades away).
Personally, I enjoy weather in the 80’s here on the plains, and I also enjoy spring skiing conditions in the mountains. We can always use more precipitation, however.
I also enjoy temperatures around 30 degrees Celsius. I’m less fond of snow (the cold tends to trigger a slight neural sensitivity on the left side of my skull when the wind blows on my neck).
Are you referring to automobiles and airports in relation to the urban heat island effect?
There is no established connection between CO2 and any weather event, including how jet streams are configured, and how high and low pressure systems position themselves.
The Western/Central U.S. is currently sitting underneath a high pressure system that is bringing high temperatures in the area. This is perfectly normal and happens all the time. No CO2 required.
Weather Attribution, the last refuge of the Climate Alarmist Charlatans, is nothing but speculation, assumptions, and unsubstantiated assertions. This is not science.
All of this is very new in our modern age. I’m sure that exciting theses in the history of science will be written about it in a few decades. We always think we are the last, the strongest, and the smartest. When it comes to irrational beliefs and susceptibility to apocalyptic predictions, I honestly don’t see what separates us from our most distant ancestors.
strativarius
March 22, 2026 4:26 am
Friar Miliband is desperately trying to keep the [fly]wheels from falling off.
No, the Iran War Doesn’t Prove Ed Miliband Right Alongside the claim that you should love mosquitos and wasps, the Guardian’s Environment Correspondents opinion section carries three attempts to turn the Iran crisis into an opportunity for the UK’s green agenda. – DS
Howabout a bit of communism?
Oil has empowered capitalism, and some of the world’s most exploitative regimes. Move away from it and we can solve some of the key issues we face – Moonbat
As an exemplar Cuba is doing well. But even Moonbat isn’t ‘hard’ enough for some, like David Schwartzman (Department of Biology, Howard University, Washington):
George Monbiot’s recent conclusion that capitalism is the real problem is long overdue, but he fails to deconstruct economic growth with respect to its qualitative versus quantitative aspects, likewise the energy source for society. Further, his apparent support for a Green New Deal lacks strategic analysis, and his continued boost for nuclear (fission) power is unwelcome. – tandf
The choir is increasingly singing unto itself. Everybody else has moved on. Rosebank, Jackdaw… why does Friar Miliband hesitate? That’s true belief in the one true faith.
I’m having a blast with ChatGPT. Haven’t had this much fun in years. I just gave it a family photo from about 1918- of my mother’s family. It was in poor condition. GPT vastly enhanced it, adding color and just brightening it. I don’t have any plan for my use of this AI as I’m retired. Just playing with it. Just got an offer to get the plus version for free for a month so I’ll experiment with that.
I’ve always loved political cartoons. I could imagine such a cartoon but have less than zero art skills. now I’ve got an artist in my office. 🙂
Previously I had GPT make images of robot foresters, and it working in the woods with Big Foot. I’ve also had it make an image of a sleazy robot lawyer charming the jury. 🙂
I’d love see one of the editors here write an essay on AI. It’s from reading the use of AI by the regulars here that got me interested- not sure if any full essays have been written on the topic and posted here. But AI is evolving so fast, a new one could be written monthly. I suspect most of the regulars here are using it to some extent. There are hundreds of YouTube videos on the topic. But I’m especially interested in the use by the folks here- in particular regarding the climate topic.
(I am going to follow the custom of pretty well everyone who shares an opinion on AI and refrain from bothering to define my terms.)
There are niches for AI. But of all things, it ain’t intelligent. Nor will it ever be.
What it very likely will be, is much better packaged. The things it really can do, like enhancing old family snaps, or natural language translation, or rewording tedious texts, will be seamlessly incorporated, giving other tools a sheen of intelligence. But we must avoid being enchanted by its fluency. It’s not thinking and never will. (The same goes for many charismatic natural intelligences who sometimes capture our attention.)
Depends on how you define “intelligent”. It can be intelligent without being conscious. It doesn’t have a soul. But when I ask it questions, I get seemingly intelligent responses. And what really amazes me is how fast it is. I can ask it a long, complex question with several paragraphs. The response is within a second or two. Blows my mind.
“seemingly” being the operative word, JZ. All it is is a probability engine. It puts words together based on probability. It’s useful for some things but never rely on it for anything important.
I realize the basic reality that it’s putting one word after the other as you say, but how does it do image and video work. I’m truly amazed at it image creation talent. Just subscribed for the video tool by using the free month option for the Plus version. Can’t wait to start playing with it.
Even so, that it’s doing one word after the other but dam, it sure seems a lot smarter than that.
Pretty much the same – putting one pixel after another based on pattern matching. That’s why hands are such a problem.
And it definitely can appear smart, which is why we have to keep reminding ourselves that it’s only an illusion of intelligence. There are already enough sad stories about people who forgot.
When I was a senior in high school in ’67, my class took a field trip to MIT. Walked around- saw their nuclear reactor. Saw into a big room with professors in white coats doing experiments with students. Saw their computer with a keyboard. It was running program- I think i was called something like Eliza. You could chat with it. Of course it had only a small capability. But for me it was exciting- all of that stuff. I wanted to be a scientist like them- but ended up deep in the forests for half a century. Possibly a better option in some ways. That’s what I get for reading Walden Pond. 🙂
I remember Eliza. It was mostly smoke and mirrors. It would respond with something along the lines of, “That’s very interesting. Tell me more.” All the ‘intelligence’ was being provided by the programmer, understanding how a human would respond to a statement encouraging the user to talk.
From what I have seen, it does a decent job of simulating intelligence, using proper English, and mountainous recall of facts. What it totally lacks is wisdom. The instant it sends a final reply; it totally forgets all of the new information it found in the contact.
Whatever, I find it’s great for investors. It can gather data for comparisons of different companies in seconds. Ask enough questions about a company’s finances and it will give responses, followed by suggestions like, ‘This summer major contacts are up for renewal. They will not be the old standard flat-rate contracts. Would you like to see which contracts are being finalized and the new rate structure?’ You could read reams of financial data with no mention of contracts. Or you could ask questions like, ‘Which companies will benefit most if AI data centers are moved to West Virginia?’ Very useful. Markets have been going down; my portfolio’s been going up.
The exchange was about 1,600 words. A little on the long side for a comment here. Basically, it demonstrated the tension between the LLM’s consensus bias and me pointing out that it had just agreed that the boiler plate response was not supported by facts.
Scissor
March 22, 2026 6:08 am
Deep underground small nuclear reactor technology is interesting. A pilot plant is supposed to be completed this year in Kansas.
Investor-owned electric utilities, too, must provide clean electricity by 2040 – generated from wind and solar, not natural gas or coal. Utilities in Oregon must heed state climate goals advanced by lawmakers, governors and regulators. They require gas utilities to cut emissions 50% by 2035 and 90% by 2050. Several cities in the state also have sought to curb emissions by restricting natural‑gas hookups through bans, fees and code changes.
Haven’t the politicians in Oregon learned that the Endangerment Finding of 2009 for CO2 has been recently rescinded by Administrator Lee Zeldin of the EPA? I guess that info from Washington takes awhile to travel from the east coast and over the Rocky Mountains to west coast.
Utilities can certainly use nothing but wind and solar generated electricity. But it will come with lots of interruptions (usually called blackouts,) several per day. Has anybody told the lawmakers?
The lawmakers are probably not interested. Their primary concern is getting re-elected by doing things that their constituents value and making sure that they are aware of what the lawmakers have done. One of the downsides of democracy is that perceptions are more important than reality.
Eventually the light will come on. When AI data centers decide to build in other states because of energy bottlenecks they’ll change course. One of the complaints is that centers don’t create many jobs, but look at it from a politician’s position: those centers generate tens of millions in new local tax revenues each year. Precisely because they don’t bring a lot of jobs means local expenses – roads, schools, utility infrastructure, parks, etc – do not increase. They have millions they can spend without raising taxes, and the local voters would suffer no ‘inconveniences’. All of it play money.
Scissor
March 22, 2026 7:24 am
The latest Chinese anti-stealth radar systems, along with anti-aircraft missile interceptors, have gone on sale.
Book R&C: de Waart – Crisis or Hoax: Chapter 6 Nailed it!
Well, the earlier conversation thread w/ WE is deep in the weeds so let’s reset with the fundamentals.
GHE says without it Earth would become 33 C cooler, an average -18 C ice ball. No way!
Earth is cooler with the atmosphere/water vapor/30% albedo not warmer. Near Earth outer space is 394 K, 121 C, 250 F. 288 K w – 255 K w/o = 33 C cooler -18 C Earth is just flat wrong. Dividing discular 1,368 by 4 to average 342 over spherical ToA is wrong.
Ubiquitous GHE heat balance graphics don’t balance and violate LoT. TFK_bams09 is a case in point although there are dozens of clones.
Solar balance 1: 1,368/4=342*.7=240-80=160 in = out 17 + 80 +1st 63. Balance complete.
Calculated balance 2: 396 up = 333 “back” + 2nd 63 out.
63 appears twice but only figures once violating GAAP.
160 arrives 160 is ALL!!! that can leave.
396 models the Earth as an imaginary 16 C BB which generates 100s of imaginary “extra” W/m^2 out of imaginary thin air violating LoT 1 & requiring that imaginary LoT abomination imaginary “back” or “net” radiation.
And no, it is not measured.
IR instruments think targets are BB and must be corrected w actual emissivity if not, e.g. 63/396=0.16
BTW Spencer’s ice pile experimental observations contradict his hypothesis. Exposed ice pile creates cooling convection currents which cools the warmer surface. Concealed ice pile stifles convection and warm surface warms.
Kinetic heat transfer processes of contiguous atmospheric molecules render surface BB impossible. By definition all energy entering and leaving a BB must do so by radiation.
Entering: 30% albedo = not BB. OLR: 17sensible & 80 latent = not BB. TFK_bams09: 97 out of 160 leave by kinetic processes, 63 by LWIR = not BB.
As demonstrated by experiment, the gold standard of classical science.
For the experimental write up see: https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
Search: Bruges group “boiling water pot” Schroeder
RGHE theory is as much a failure as caloric, phlogiston, luminiferous ether, spontaneous generation and several others.
When GHE fails the entire CAGW house of cards implodes like the Titan submersible.
re: “requiring that imaginary LoT abomination imaginary “back” or “net” radiation. And no, it is not measured.”
Just curious …. have you ever tried this trick – using a non-contact IR (about 14 um wavelength IR window IIRC) ‘thermometer’ read the clear (not cloudy; this can be discussed separately) sky ‘temperature’ on different days, notably a day with high humidity versus a day with low humidity … have you ever tried this trick?
PS. I was an early user of a hand-held non-contact temperature measurement device trade named “Heat Spy” in the mid 1980’s … calibration for emissivity of the ‘read’ surface was made via a dial on the rear of the pistol-shaped device.
I use a handheld IR gun to read cloud bottom temperatures on occasion….reasonably accurate for that…clear sky temp is another story due to highly variable water vapor content….interesting devices once you understand the emissivity of the surface you are looking at and the absorptivity of water vapor and CO2 in the air path between the surface and your device. NS obviously prefers calibrated liquid expansion devices called “thermometers” that give no actual indication of heat flow as compared to thermopiles. /s
I was a results engineer over half of my lucrative 35 years in power generation. I know plenty about IR instruments.
USCRN and SURFRAD IR instruments point at the ground and measure, say, 16 C.
How do they know this is correct?
They are calibrated to agree within 0.3 C of other surface measurements in the site’s suite of instruments or periodic calibrations by the OEM or other service. It’s in the site manual.
BTW these instruments go nuts at night. The ground heats and cools differently from the 1.5 m “surface.”
S-B is applied to 16 C to get 396 W/m^2 assuming the surface is a 1.0 emissivity BB. This, of course, is incorrect.
The correction emissivity is 63/396 or 0.16 (TFK_bams09)
The correct measurement is 0.16 * 396 = 63.
The 396/333/63 duplicate energies and “back” radiation vanish as does the LoT debate.
No, the correct thermal emissivity of ground, rocks, sea water is about .96 Overly simplified because of the mosaic of various different ground and sky temperatures but very roughly by SB….
63= .96 * sigma* [Tsurface^4 – Tsky^4]
And “How do they know this is correct…(For IR thermometers)?” Answer…same way they know the expansion of liquid mercury can be used in a glass tube to read temperature for mercury thermometers….many tests, experiments, and calibrations….
BTW, your knowledge of IR instruments seems rudimentary at best. My reference book on the subject is “Infrared Thermal Imaging”, Vollmer & Mollman. You should get one. “Radiative Heat Transfer” by Modest which I also have on my shelf is too difficult for us old engineers, especially ones like yourself that think “back radiation” breaks the 2nd law.
“If the Earth did not have an atmospheric
blanket, most of the radiation absorbed
during the day would be radiated into
space at night. The Earth would be so
cold that the oceans would freeze!”
This is just flat wrong!!
No GHE = no GHGs = no water vapor = no clouds, snow, ice, oceans, 30% albedo and barren Earth bakes in 250 F solar wind much like the Moon, 400 K lit side, 100 K dark.
Blanket obeys Q = U A (Thot – Tcold) which is not a GHE.
This is what happens with no GHG or atm. With no atmosphere, leaving the surface is approx 370 watts, top right graph…gonna get a lot colder after a short while compared to normal TOA of 240 watts.
“The thermometer is pointed first at a clear patch of sky (reading 27 deg. F), and then an adjacent cloud (reading 41 deg. F):
Now, my question is this:
What caused the IR thermometer reading to warm up by 14 deg. when it went from clear sky to the cloud?
I’m especially interested to hear an answer from those who tell me there is no such thing as downwelling sky radiation (aka “back radiation”). No matter what you believe is happening, it is rather obvious that the cloud influences the temperature reading differently than clear sky. (If you are thinking it is a reflected sunlight effect, you can perform the experiment at night and see the same effect; furthermore, the highest cloud temperatures you will get are from the thickest, *blackest* clouds on the bottom…so it’s not a reflected sunlight effect).”
Would you like to tell Roy Spencer Ph.D. that he is talking and coming up with experimental results that are “Garbage”?
Pointing IR thermometer at clouds is incompetence^3.
Satellites used for meteorological purposes point their IR “thermometers” at clouds. I would say it is the opposite. Not pointing them at clouds would be incompetent.
I have one, a Klein
Pointing it at the sky delivers open circuit noise. It is way beyond its designed ability, field of view & range. Read the book.
Tweaking the emissivity setting produces temperature and power flux that clearly do not exist.
As demonstrated by experiment.
USCRN & SURFRAD incorrectly uses a BB surface.
The instrument was not designed to do this.
Sky dragons are imaginary, detecting them clueless.
The standard weekly Nicholas Schroeder post of scientific imbecility:
Let’s try to correct for new readers…just one of the many misstatements he makes…this being the RGHE “breaking” the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics….
So…wrong…let’s look at “back radiation” from another angle. Let’s not call photons “heat” in the classical caloric sense until they are absorbed. IF IT WASN’t that way, outer space would be hot instead of being -273K with lots of photons flowing through it…
Let’s just call the 333W “electromagnetic radiation” emitted by a 277K black body to its surroundings, for the time being, without any reference to the temperature of the surroundings. A body hotter than 277K will send photons of a wide spectrum towards the 277K body. The 277K body also sends its wide spectrum of photons towards the hotter body. The net result is that, mathematically, the energy in the 277K spectrum of photons must be subtracted to calculate the “net” photon energy….which becomes the “net heat”.
If the hotter body cools to 277K, it still emits photons, as does the original “cold” 277K body, but the “net heat exchange” simply reduces to zero. There is no failure of the second Law of thermodynamics. Heat flows from hot to cold. ALWAYS. This aspect of the Stephan-Boltzmann equation is explained in some detail to every engineering student during their first lecture on radiative heat transfer.
Why ? Because calculating heat loss from a boiler tube surrounded by hot flue gas using SB without accounting for the radiation coming from the hot flue gas will result in probable catastrophic heat exchanger failure via selection of materials that aren’t adequate for the high temperature. Or electronics components in a chassis will fail due to heat from their surrounding components, etc, etc…Apparently NS missed the class.
“Back Radiation” in general is simply the result of the surroundings having a temperature.
If your face is at 30 C it emits about 300 W/M^2 worth of photons. Your metabolism does not have to make up this heat loss… because if the walls around you are also 30C, those walls are also emitting 300W/M^2 back to your face…for a net heat transfer of zero watts. See how it works now, Nicholas ?
Those walls are sustaining a kinetic convective energy loop
“…at 30 C it emits about 300 W/M^2”
Not as a BB it doesn’t.
Perhaps 200 W/m^2 might be handled by kinetic processes, i.e. cond/conv/advec/latent.
How much heat is lost by convection is another additive item altogether, just as in your cartoon evaporation and convection are other items…but surfaces emit electromagnetic radiation at some factor called emissivity x 5.67*10-8 x Tkelvin^4 ……for most materials emissivity is about .95, which means 95% approximation to a Black Body. How much net heat leaves “THot” depends how much offsetting EMR the surface is receiving from it’s surroundings, the “back radiation” you foolishly insist does not exist.
Temperature is a function of kinetic modes, radiation is a function of temperature.
The greater the participation of kinetic the cooler and lower the emissivity.
The surrounding EMR is actually the kinetic modes.
As demonstrated by experiment: https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
Search: Bruges group “boiling water pot” Schroeder
63 appears twice but only figures once violating GAAP.
First…63 does not appear at all in the diagram.
Second…you are violating the 1LOT with your calculations because you are ignoring some of the inputs and outputs.
160 arrives 160 is ALL!!! that can leave.
333 also arrives. That means 161 + 333 = 494 needs to leave or be retained. Note that 17 + 80 + 396 = 493 is the amount that leaves while 1 is the amount retained.
396 models the Earth as an imaginary 16 C BB which generates 100s of imaginary “extra” W/m^2 out of imaginary thin air violating LoT 1 & requiring that imaginary LoT abomination imaginary “back” or “net” radiation.
There is no extra 100s of W.m-2. Each layer in the diagram has a balanced budget consistent with the 1LOT.
The back radiation is not imaginary. It is no less real than any other body with a temperature which has to emit radiation consistent with Planck’s Law.
I wonder if part of the misunderstanding is the conflation of energy and heat. Bodies can emit and absorb energy even though there is no heat transfer between them. Heat is the net transfer of energy. It is what you get when you add up all the inputs and outputs.
I invite you to consider Eli Rabbet’s blue-plate-green-plate thought experiment which is a simple and trivial scenario that can help you understand fundamental concepts before moving on to the vastly more complex real world.
It was not determined via a trivial SB-law calculation if that’s what you meant. Read [Trenberth et al. 2009] for details on how this value was actually determined.
160 arrives at the surface, 160 is all that can leave.
This statement violates the 1LOT because it ignores the other inputs.
396 is 236 more that arrived at the surface, 54 more than from the sun violating LoT 1.
Patently False. Simple arithmetic tells us it is 121 W.m-2 LESS than what arrived at the surface.
The disparity between the monthly anomalies posted by the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN) and ClimDiv appears to be increasing.
Last month, February 2026, saw the biggest discrepancy between the two values in their joint period of record (since Jan 2005), with USCRN fully 0.63F (0.35C) warmer than ClimDiv. Long-term, the two data sets diverge at a rate of +0.14F (+0.08C) per decade; but over the past five-years that rate of divergence has increased to +0.46F (+0.26C) per decade.
The rate of warming in USCRN (Jan 2006 – Feb 2026) is now +0.89F (+0.50C) per decade, versus +0.75F (+0.42C) per decade in ClimDiv.
WUWT describes USCRN as:
… a properly sited (away from human influences and infrastructure) and state-of-the-art weather network…
Given that the ‘properly sited‘ USCRN is warming appreciably faster than the adjusted ClimDiv and that the disparity between the two appears to be increasing, especially over the past five-years, shouldn’t consideration now be given to finding out why it is that the NOAA adjustment process for ClimDiv appears to be artificially cooling it?
I think that what they are trying to say is that “were it not for …” the oceans would be higher than what they are. The bottom line is that tide gauges reflect the net increases, which is the practical concern. Satellite proxies give the theorists something to play with to keep them amused.
Free speech:
My family ran me off FaceBook.
I deleted my LinkedIn account after the “fact checkers” suspended my account for three weeks. CDC was not a valid source.
YouTube (Google) straight out told me they terminated my account for my Covid 19 and climate comments & my appeal was rejected.
I quit X and SubStack fed up with the unrestrained bots and trolls.
MSN’s algorithm blocks comments at random & without appeal.
Years ago USA Today & Disqus placed a permanent ban on my E-mail address.
I sense that AOL has labeled my Email as spam so anything I send goes straight into the recipient’s spam folder where they never see it.
I’m back to snail mail trusting that USPS does not intercept and trash it.
So much for free speech.
Simon
March 22, 2026 6:45 pm
What sort of person, let alone a president, writes words like this, when a long serving public servant and war hero dies?
“Robert Mueller just died, good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
Crossfire hurricane, the Russian collusion hoax, pee tape, and numerous other tales. Much of that was initiated by the Obama administration and Hillary campaign, Fusion GPS.
All of the work Mueller did was verified and resulted in a number of Trumps team being prosecuted. Shall I list them and what they did? I’m happy to.
As for the other stuff… that had nothing to do with Mueller who after all was doing a job he was asked to do. And let’s be clear, Robert Mueller was a Republican who served under both administrations. You don’t get to do that without being highly respected (I’m going to go out on a limb here and Say Hegseth and Bondi won’t be in the next government).
And Mueller was a decorated war veteran. The draft dodger Trump isn’t worthy of shining his shoes.
U.S. Democrats are extremely dangerous to the United States and to other nations of the world.
Consider that Democrats are so stupid/reckless that they almost put nuclear weapons in the hands of religious fanatics with a death wish.
Had Kamala Harris been elected instead of Trump, the Mad Mullahs of Iran would now have enough enriched uranium for dozens of nuclear weapons.
If Kamala had been elected, there would have been no efforts to reign in the Mad Mullahs. There would have been no bunker-buster American bombs destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities, so the Iranians would have been enriching all this time.
And now we know the Mad Mullahs had missiles capable of reaching just about all of Europe.
So, if Kamala were elected, today, the Mad Mullahs would be in a position to blackmail every nation in the region including all of Europe with nuclear weapons. I wonder if the Mad Mullahs would make an example of a country or two, just to show the rest they are serious and can do what they threaten? I bet they would not mind killing a few million people to show they mean business.
Aren’t you glad Trump took all that trouble away from you? You should be if you have any sense.
Stupid people can cause us a lot of problems.
Don’t vote for stupid/dangerous people. Which means don’t vote for Democrats. They are detrimental to everything real Americans hold dear. They are Poison to the body politic. They are nothing but trouble. Just look at what they are doing today: Resist! Undermine! Lie and Distort! That’s the Democrats for you.
I’m just at a loss for words Tom that you would write about Democrat lies, when Tom you have a president who campaigned on no more wars in the Middle East….. then storms off to start a war in his first year…. in the Middle East. Is that not a lie or Olympic proportions? Does that make you angry? Do you not feel betrayed? And Tom you are the one who celebrates low fuel prices. How are they now where you live?
Are you saying that someone should always support what they first said, that their first utterance is sacrosanct, and they should never utter another word on the topic?
“When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do, sir?” ― John Maynard Keynes
When intelligence provides reasons to believe that the Iranians have at least a half-ton of U-235 enriched to 60%, with the next step being weapons grade, I would say that not taking action to protect the world from a nuclear exchange would be a dereliction of duty. I can’t believe that you would be upset because someone with the power to do something to prevent imminent radioactive fallout around the world didn’t stubbornly refuse to break his word. Your priorities are misguided.
Trump did not campaign on “no more wars in the Middle East”. Trump never made such a statement.
The Republican Isolationists and Nervous Nellie’s claim that is Trump’s intent, but all that is, is wishful thinking on their part. They see what they want to see, not what is really there.
So, no, Trump did not lie. Trump has always said, for decades, that the religious fanatics in Iran cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Trump discovered that the Mad Mullahs were within a matter of weeks of having enough material for 11 nuclear weapons, and Trump decided there was no time to waste and proceeded to stop this threat to the U.S. and the world.
Fuel prices are up about a dollar a gallon around here. A very small price to pay to keep nuclear weapons away from religious fanatics with a death wish. And it is only temporary, as prices will come down when the war winds down.
Trump says he is negotiating with Iranian officials now. The U.S. stock market was up 1,000 points the last time I looked.
Just a couple of things President Trump: Don’t destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure. The new leaders of Iran and the people will need that infrastructure; and don’t make a deal that leaves religious fanatics in charge in Iran.
It should be noted that about 5,000 U.S. Marines are headed for Iran, and there are reports that the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division is also headed that way.
So it’s not over yet. But it is only a matter of time.
Yep he did say he would not start a war in the Middle East and he also said that kamal Harris would….
“I’ve read it many times that World War III will begin in the Middle East. That’s not going to happen… We’re not going to have a World War III if we’re smart“.
“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into”
“We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with”
“We had no wars. They said, he will start a war. I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
Talking about Obama … “Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective.”
“We’ve spent $8 trillion in the Middle East, and we’re not fixing our roads in this country? How stupid. How stupid is it? And we’re not fixing our highways, our tunnels, our bridges, our hospitals, even.”
Then he said this…
“They know Kamala and her warmonger Cabinet will invade the Middle East, get millions of Muslims killed and start World War III.”
I think Tom, on the basis of all this, the American voters could assume Trump was saying he was not going to go to war in the Middle East……
“Trump says he is negotiating with Iranian officials now.”
But that’s a lie Tom. Iran have said they will not negotiate at this time and that Trump is backing down. Do I trust what Iran says… no. But I don’t Trust Trump to tell the truth either. He is a monumental many times over Internationally disgraced liar.
“So it’s not over yet. But it is only a matter of time.”
Hmmm that’s what they said about Vietnam
You don’t have to be Einstein’ cousin to know Trump lies all the time. Recent lies =
Kristi Noem did get permission from Trump to run her add campaign.
Iran is not in talks with the US to end the war.
“So you are inclined to believe the Mad Mullahs as opposed to believing Trump.” Trump lies daily. The Iranians have their backs to the wall. Of course they will lie. Soooo…. Fact is I don’t believe either of them and for good reason.
And I see Trump has TACOed again. Frankly the master strategist has backed himself into a corner here. Iran for all its military weakness holds the cards (as Trump would say) with the strait. I think from here, Trump is going to “claim victory” then scuttle off and hope petrol prices come down before the midterms. If they don’t he is in serious trouble. Meanwhile the new regime in Iran will be more militant and hatred fuelled. This is looking like a complete and utter “ballsup” the likes of which the US has never seen. And all because Bibi convinced him to go into a war he promised he would not fight, by stroking his ego.
Your bias makes you incapable of seeing the situation clearly.
You are not alone. There are millions of leftists with the same kind of flawed view of reality. But lots of fools thinking the same way doesn’t mean any of them have it right.
I’m sure glad I don’t live in the world you live in. It must be very stressful trying to deal with all the loony, Leftwing conspiracy theories.
Divorced from reality and you don’t know it.
Lots of people in this world are divorced from reality. I think that is why the world is in the sorry state it is now in.
But a guy like Trump can get most of the world back on the right track. That’s what he is doing right now. Democrats want to fight him every step of the way.
Lefties can whine and cry but Trump has three more years to continue making America Great Again.
Trump is exceeding all expectations. His detractors can’t stand his success. Too bad, so sad.
“Lefties can whine and cry but Trump has three more years to continue making America Great Again.” Not if he loses bigly in the mid terms. You and I know he will be in serious trouble if he can’t turn this fuel price thing around. Americans don’t like wars and they don’t like inflation. And you are right, we live in different worlds. I see Trump as a corrupt self serving con man. You see him as some sort of saviour. I say mine is reality and you say your is. The good news is in a free world we both get to have an opinion. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Indian wars 1620 to 1900
War of Independence April 19, 1775 to Sept 3, 1783
War with East coast tribes, French & Spanish
Barbary piracy wars
War of 1812 – 1815
War w Mexico – 4/1846 to 2/1848
Plains Indians 1800 to 1900
Civil war 4/12/1861 to 5/26/1865
Spanish American war 4/21/1898 to 8/13/1898
Banana wars 1898 to 1934
WW I 7/28/1914 to 11/11/1918
WW II 9/1/1939 to 9/2/1945
Korea 6/25/1950 to 7/27/1953
Iran, CIA coup 1953
Bay of Pigs April 1961
Grenada 11/25/1983
Vietnam 1950 to 1973
Noriega 1989
Somalia 1990s – TBD
Persian Gulf war 8/2/1990 to 1991
Afghanistan 9/11/2001 to 2021
Crisis or Hoax
Jules de Waart
Page 173
“Without that greenhouse effect, Earth would have been about thirty-three degrees Celsius colder.”
Origin: 288 K w – 255 K wo = 33 C
Just flat wrong.
No GHE means no GHGs – all of them – not just no CO2 (no vegetation) but no CH4 and no water vapor.
No water vapor means no clouds, snow, ice, for that matter water/oceans, no 30% albedo and a naked, barren Earth bakes in the 250 F solar wind becoming much like the Moon, 400 K lit side, 100 K dark.
I do not need a hundred reasons why GHE is no good, one is sufficient.
However, here are two more.
The ubiquitous GHE power flux balances don’t plus violate GAAP and LoT 1 & 2.
The kinetic heat transfer properties of the contiguous atmospheric molecules render a black body surface model impossible.
Solar model
1,368 W/m^2 discular ISR
Divide by 4 to average over spherical ToA (dumb)
342 W/m^2
Diminished by 31.3% albedo (no consensus on this)
342*.687=235 W/m^2
-67 absorbed in atmosphere (not really)
168 net/net arrives at the surface
168 arrives = 168 leaves, LoT 1
168 – 24 sensible – 78 latent = 1st 66 LWIR by difference.
Balance is closed!!
So, where is this 1st 66? Up someone’s sleeve, down a boot top?
Calculated model
Assumes S-B BB 15 C, 288 K, surface used to fill denominator of emissivity ratio, 66/390=0.169.
390 – 324=2nd 66 LWIR.
Duplicate 66’s violate GAAP.
390 out of thin air is 48 more than arrived from Sun, 222 more than arrived at surface violating LoT 1.
324 “back” cold to hot wo work violates LoT 2.
Not that it matters.
The duplicate 390/324/66 model can be erased, the solar balance is still complete and the BB surface, “back” radiation, GHE, CAGW issues all go “poof” like the Titan submersible.
Electric vehicles avoided oil consumption equivalent to 70% of Iran’s exports in 2025
https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/electric-vehicles-avoided-oil-consumption-equivalent-to-70-of-irans-exports-in-2025/
As could be predicted:
European Consumers Seek Out Solar, EVs as Energy Prices Surge
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-18/uk-german-consumers-seek-out-solar-evs-heat-pumps-due-to-iran-war?t
(It’s happening in the US too…)
For those who think the US will ban exports to keep their prices low.
US: No Ban On Oil Exports
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/US-No-Ban-On-Oil-Exports.html
Electric vehicles avoided oil consumption equivalent to 70% of Iran’s exports in 2025
I won’t bother disputing the numbers in the article. They could even be correct for all I know. But the article omits the most important information. Where did the electricity come from in 2025?
(There are several follow-up questions invited by the article but I won’t muddy the waters here.)
Where did electricity come from? Silly man, it came from a plug.
That’s _Iran’s_ oil exports – the Strait of Hormuz constrains much more, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and UAE for example.
Electric vehicles avoided oil consumption equivalent to 70% of Iran’s exports in 2025
And 100% of ICE vehicles avoided runaway lithium-ion battery fires. What’s your point?
Well that’s daft. Oil prices eventually come down. Electric bills never do. Besides, you spend GBP40,000-odd on an EV, GBP20,000-odd on solar panels to avoid an increase of maybe GBP4 on a fill-up? Dunno who these consumers are but they’re not making the best decisions…
Well, obviously. If the price of a commodity goes up, you want to sell more of it.
Trump didn’t say it wasn’t consequential, he said the US doesn’t use it. Which is accurate. Cute meme, try harder next time.
Yes, back in the 1990s I had a single- parent employee who came and asked if she could avail herself of our fleet pricing for new vehicles.
Said that the way fuel costs were increasing, she had to reduce her cost of the daily work commute. So a better mpg car was her solution.
I got out the spreadsheet and showed her it would take ~ 9 years for the savings in fuel to cover the capital outlay differences for a new car.
We agreed to change her work hours so that she could avoid the heavy traffic to & from.
That worked.
Who collects this garbage for you?
Cute headline from Ember (a pro-electrification think tank), but it’s classic apples-to-oranges, green propanda sleight-of-hand.
EVs avoided ~1.7 million bpd of oil use globally in 2025, while Iran exported ~2.4 million bpd through Hormuz. Yes, that’s roughly 70%, but avoided demand isn’t “equivalent” to supply disruption. One is a gradual efficiency gain spread across years and continents; the other is a sudden geopolitical choke-point risk.
EVs didn’t “replace” Iran’s barrels in any meaningful market sense, they just nibbled at total global demand a bit.
It’s like bragging your diet avoided eating 70% of a single fast-food chain’s output while the chain is on fire.
Nice PR spin for green propanda, weak geopolitics.
Next one
Bloomberg reports a spike in inquiries for solar/EVs/heat pumps in UK/Germany right after the Iran war kicked of, e.g., Octopus Energy saw +27% solar inquiries one week.
That’s it.
No hard sales data (won’t be available for months), no sustained trend, just anecdotal interest from one supplier and vague “German companies reported a rise”.
Classic early-crisis hype: people google alternatives when prices spike, then most do nothing because upfront costs hurt more than pump pain.
The US mention is pure hand-waving – zero evidence provided.
This is not “consumers fleeing fossils en masse”; it’s a brief Google Trends blip dressed up as revolution.
Final one
The Trump admin explicitly ruled it out (“not under consideration”).
Why? Because everyone who understands oil markets knows a ban would be self-owning stupidity: US gasoline prices are tied to global benchmarks, so restricting exports tightens world supply leads to higher global crude which leads to higher US pump prices, plus it kills producer revenue, discourages drilling, and creates pointless Gulf Coast gluts.
A few Congress critters (e.g., Sherman) floated bans for populist points, but the administration shot it down fast.
The “ban to save consumers” idea was always economically illiterate panic – reality just reminded everyone why the export ban was lifted in the first place.
No drama here, just adults saying no to dumb ideas – it’s a shame we don’t have adults in charge of the UK.
“EVs offer the largest lever to cut import bills”
But you have to import the EVs and wind and solar tech, while green energy drives up electricy price.
“US: No Ban On Oil Exports”
With America’s huge balance of trade deficit, it’s important to export whatever we can including energy.
You’d have a somewhat better case for EVs if the current AI nonsense wasn’t promising to send electricity bills sky high.
It seems your poised every Sunday to spout your nonsense like some demented keyboard warrior who strikes the first, easily parred blow, then scuttles back under the fridge like a cockroach that just remembered it’s Sunday and has dignity to fake.
Is MUR a plant, posting articles here specifically for them to be dismantled in the replies?
He’s definitely a vegetable 🤣 🤣 🤣
Maybe I’m being dense, but I still don’t quite understand the hate for home solar or EVs for those it works for. If oil becomes a problem I can fill the car up on wind or solar or gas or coal, it doesn’t really matter. It gives more flexibility even if it doesn’t save on emissions. Also I get it doesn’t work for everyone, but honestly as a suburban dweller who probably does more driving than many peers I still probably only go 150 km a day at most, so more than enough. I assume this is China’s main strategy, they have a lot more coal than oil so the more they can electrify they better positioned they are if things get ugly geopolitically, to me that is a smart hedge, and it doesn’t really matter they use coal because it isn’t really about he environment, that is just a PR talking point. Also having a bit of a libertarian streak in me I like the idea of a ‘solid state’ energy producing item like home solar/battery, but also have a small diesel generator ‘just in case’.
Personally I don’t have an issue with home solar or EVs, if they work for you, go for it.
My issues are these things being forced on me and my tax is being used to subsidise people who are trying to force these things on me, and the lies that these things are environmentally friendlier than ICEs.
As a consumer, I want to choose what’s right for me and in this case it’s my 14 year old Ford Fiesta, which has long paid it’s dues in the environmental game.
This is the old “I got mine” meme. Everyone pays for your convenience in the form of higher energy costs for all. Everyone pays for your convenience in the form of higher highway repair costs generated by heavier EV vehicles. And on and on and on and …
So you got yours at the expense of everyone else.
You avoid mentioning the consumption of natural gas, oil and coal that make the electricity required for your EVs to operate. Why is that?
A picture of your EVs saving all that oil…
Among other things, perceptions amongst Futures traders influence the price, but not the actual availability. It is akin to whistling in the dark.
V8s making a come-back
Automakers Revive V8 Engines Amid EV Shift Backlash
IT IS WHAT PEOPLE REALLY WANT. !!
Europe Is Relying More On Coal as Gas Prices Rally on Iran WarSoaring gas prices are pushing Europe to rely more on coal generation, even as demand falls and solar generation increases as sunnier, milder weather sets in.
As could be predicted.
Fact-checking desirable.
This is the requirement of the May 23, 2025 Executive Order “Restoring Gold Standard Science” in Section 4:
“(c) When using scientific information in agency decision-making, employees shall transparently acknowledge and document uncertainties, including how uncertainty propagates throughout any models used in the analysis.”
I have not yet seen any instance of a federal agency addressing and applying this EO requirement.
In the following exercise, the propagated uncertainty in temperature projections for step-iterated models that use the RRTM or RRTMG radiative transfer code is evaluated. This addresses the uncertainty arising ONLY from the radiative transfer model’s published error in comparison to its LBLRTM reference. The “cooling rate” error for the troposphere is given at these web pages below as 0.1 K/day. This is understood as a +/- 0.1 K interval in which all the values of cooling rate error will fall. It is only the LW (longwave) part of the modeling that is being evaluated, not the SW (shortwave) part.
“RRTM” = Rapid Radiative Transfer Model. The RRTMG version is optimized for faster General Circulation Model computation. “LBLRTM” = “Line By Line Radiative Transfer Model”.
http://rtweb.aer.com/rrtm_description.html
For RRTM: “the computed cooling rates agree to within 0.1 K/day in the troposphere and 0.3 K/day in the stratosphere”
http://rtweb.aer.com/rrtmg_lw_description.html
For RRTMG: “the computed cooling rates generally agree to within 0.1 K/day in the troposphere and 0.3 K/day in the stratosphere”
Because the cooling rate error is stated in K per day, a 365-day projection is posed, in which one day is one step in a theoretical iterated series. The Grok AI agent was prompted to compute the resulting uncertainty in the temperature of the troposphere. The computation itself is very simple. The main reason to use Grok was to have the AI agent step through the background to the answer.
Grok’s final answer: “For the evolving-state iterated computation you outlined, the RSS-propagated [RSS=root-sum-square – dd] uncertainty (±1.91 K after one year) is the better, more defensible estimate.” (This is stated as the interval in which all the possible values are expected to fall.)
A link to the full conversation with Grok is pasted here if you are interested in the entire chain of references and the application of ISO GUM guidance (Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement, JCGM 100:2008) to this case.
https://x.com/i/grok/share/7898651dc51148c1a24ad5ff305acd83
Grok explained what the “cooling rate” means – “The radiative cooling rate (sometimes called the radiative heating rate when the sign is positive) quantifies how quickly the temperature of that layer would change if radiation were the only process acting—i.e., ignoring convection, conduction, latent heating, or dynamics.”
There you have it. This implies that none of the pre-stabilized, time-step-iterated, large-grid, discrete-layer, parameter-tuned-to-hindcast climate models (at least the ones using RRTM or RRTMG) possess – or have ever possessed – ANY diagnostic or prognostic authority concerning the radiative influence of incremental CO2, CH4, N2O on “warming.” It’s not even a close call. The uncertainty from just this one source builds up in one year to a value far greater than the ~0.016 K/year long term trend being investigated for attribution.
The “climate” modeling to investigate the influence of rising CO2 levels has been circular all along. It cannot be otherwise and make any sense at all about the nature of radiative computation in a step-iterated simulation.
That is all for now.
Very nice analysis. I would only point out that if the climate models were actually complete and physics based the earth would have long ago become a molten rock orbiting the sun devoid of any form of life, probably with all of the atmosphere lost to space. It’s what happens with positive feedback loops sooner or later.
Thanks for your reply. I suppose in this case, I could have just highlighted the absurdity of investigating a 0.016 K per year trend, which is 0.000044 K per day, with a model that cannot compute the longwave radiative influence on temperature any tighter than +/- 0.1 K per day. But I wanted to make the connection to the EO about the propagation of uncertainty.
Hello everyone, I hope you’re doing well.
The heat dome in the Western United States seems to be having quite an impact. “The models were right,” “Mass famines are coming soon,” and the World Weather Attribution tells us that such an event was “virtually impossible” without anthropogenic climate change.
If someone could explain to me how anthropogenic greenhouse gases can govern the atmospheric pressure patterns that create heat domes, I would be grateful, because I’m having trouble understanding it.
I already brought up this current issue under a recent article, but the very principle of climate attribution is so misleading and harmful that it genuinely fills me with despair. I can already hear the alarmists exclaiming, “We told you so, we told you so: Canada in 2021, the American West in 2026,” dancing the Carmagnole—seemingly more delighted than frightened by these unusual temperatures.
(Philippulus the prophet, in Tintin and The Shooting Star)
“Carmagnole”
my new word/day/WUWT
I get one every day.
from Google
“The Carmagnole was a popular song and dance during the French Revolution, particularly during the Reign of Terror (c. 1792–1794), often performed at executions around the guillotine. It originated from a Piedmontese peasant jacket and became a symbol of the militant sans-culottes, representing revolutionary fervor, violent energy, and patriotism.”
In Iran, the IRGC are dancing around that hanging of some teenage boys.
“such an event was “virtually impossible” without anthropogenic climate change”
Most of the USA west is arid if not desert. Why anyone would be surprised that there is a heat dome is silly. So now they have this new scary term, “heat dome”- added to atmospheric river and polar vortex. I suppose if we keep using ff, someday we’ll have all 3 and more at the same time! That’s what the weatherman will be saying other than, “today it’s cold in the northeast, dry in the southwest, raining in the northwest and muggy in the southeast”. But that doesn’t sound frightening – sounds boring and ordinary.
The drought and aridity of the American West, compared to the humidity of Louisiana, is notably what made Buffalo Bill hunt bison and not alligators (which my mother, while traveling in Florida, learned from signs that you should not feed them, which is, of course, common sense).
Some people make somewhat absurd comparisons: ‘If we take the current heat in the western US and equate it to France, it would be 38 degrees Celsius in such-and-such a place.’
These come from so-called climate specialists. I fear they are actually people who have tacked the term ‘climatologist’ onto their original field of expertise
Greetings, Mr. Armand:
Yes, the winter in the West (Wyoming) has been most unusual, but not something that has not happened before. The winter of ’83 – ’84 was similar; this one has been peculiarly dry. There is a cause: it is called La Nina. Note that the WUWT link to the ‘ENSO Meter’ does not function, but there is a website that has (approximately) weekly updates on El Nino/La Nina. I found it in just a few seconds with a search engine (“Klimata Projecta” , or something like that — — supposedly it is from the Australian BoM [Bureau of Meteorology], but I recall reading that Australia was going to discontinue ENSO forecasting … ).
Many parts of the West have been under Red Flag conditions: a Red Flag means no open campfires or outdoor cooking, wood cutting, tobacco use must be inside of a structure/vehicle, etc. We just had a grassland fire near my city. It was contained within 36 hours, but the dry conditions persist.
For my area, the annual average precipitation is about 31 – 32 cm.
Our “wet” season is about to begin. April and May are the two wettest months in my area, and we hope that the high pressure system(s) that have kept us dry will abate enough to make up for the existing deficit. As an example, one La Nina winter, we received just over a metre of snow in a three-day period in April.
No one here would complain about that this year. It would be welcomed with cheers and thanks giving,
Mark H
Hello to you, dear Sir!
Such high temperatures must be difficult to bear. I hope you’ll get some snow this year.
I myself live right next to a pine forest. When it is very hot and very dry, it takes so little for a fire to start. I hope the woods have been properly maintained in recent years; otherwise, during an especially dry summer, it would only take some fool tossing a cigarette butt on a trail for everything to go up in flames. But that won’t be the fault of climate change! Only of thoughtlessness.
I wish you good courage, and may the coolness return quickly.
You comment (equate it to France) caused me to recall being inTucson in June of 1976 (+ or – a year) when the temperature hit 117° (47°C). And Search Assist tells me “The hottest temperature ever recorded in France is 46.0°C (114.8°F), which occurred in Vérargues, Hérault, on June 28, 2019.”
Further: “The hottest temperature ever recorded in Tucson was 117°F on June 27, 1990. This record is part of a long history of extreme temperatures in the area.”
My advice: Don’t go to Tucson in June. 🙂
Or Vérargues, Hérault either.
My parents moved from Illinois to Arizona in July 1952. The day we arrived in Phoenix, the thermometer at the motel indicated 118°F. High temperatures are not a new phenomenon in the Sonora Desert, although it is now more humid and it doesn’t cool off as much at night at it did back in the ’50s.
I remember experiencing a few days of oppressive heat many years ago in the Gers, in the town of Condom (you have the right to laugh, English-speaking friends. There is, in fact, a condom museum there, even though the place has nothing to do with contraception, aside from its name! This initiative was reinforced by the fear of AIDS in the 1990s.)
It must have been over 40 degrees Celsius—it was awful. My parents told me to stay in the shade. Young children don’t always realize when they’re hot. On top of that, I was recovering from a viral meningitis, and since I had been put on antibiotics after the lumbar puncture was contaminated by the testing lab (they preferred to be safe rather than sorry, although viral meningitis is more like a severe flu than a life-threatening emergency), exposure to the sun after of antibiotics causes spots to appear on the skin. What I remember from that summer episode is both vague and very strange. It was there that I discovered the love song of the toads, truly melodious when it rises from under the stones into the evening air.
I’m waiting for the hot days on the weather maps to be shown in stark white (white hot) instead of the dark red / purple haze now being used.
Just saw a weather map with what looks like a glass dome over much of the nation- red hot of course- like the nation is burning up. Strange, but that dome doesn’t reach over New England. I wish it would. Drizzle and cold today. I wouldn’t mind if New England became semi-tropical. Or semi-arid. As long as it gets warmer!
In Colorado, we are breaking high temperature records set back in 1910. There were few automobiles back then, and no airports (a couple more decades away).
Personally, I enjoy weather in the 80’s here on the plains, and I also enjoy spring skiing conditions in the mountains. We can always use more precipitation, however.
I also enjoy temperatures around 30 degrees Celsius. I’m less fond of snow (the cold tends to trigger a slight neural sensitivity on the left side of my skull when the wind blows on my neck).
Are you referring to automobiles and airports in relation to the urban heat island effect?
Anyway, I hope you get some rain soon!
Yes, thank you.
There is no established connection between CO2 and any weather event, including how jet streams are configured, and how high and low pressure systems position themselves.
The Western/Central U.S. is currently sitting underneath a high pressure system that is bringing high temperatures in the area. This is perfectly normal and happens all the time. No CO2 required.
Weather Attribution, the last refuge of the Climate Alarmist Charlatans, is nothing but speculation, assumptions, and unsubstantiated assertions. This is not science.
All of this is very new in our modern age. I’m sure that exciting theses in the history of science will be written about it in a few decades. We always think we are the last, the strongest, and the smartest. When it comes to irrational beliefs and susceptibility to apocalyptic predictions, I honestly don’t see what separates us from our most distant ancestors.
Friar Miliband is desperately trying to keep the [fly]wheels from falling off.
No, the Iran War Doesn’t Prove Ed Miliband Right
Alongside the claim that you should love mosquitos and wasps, the Guardian’s Environment Correspondents opinion section carries three attempts to turn the Iran crisis into an opportunity for the UK’s green agenda. – DS
Howabout a bit of communism?
Oil has empowered capitalism, and some of the world’s most exploitative regimes. Move away from it and we can solve some of the key issues we face – Moonbat
As an exemplar Cuba is doing well. But even Moonbat isn’t ‘hard’ enough for some, like David Schwartzman (Department of Biology, Howard University, Washington):
George Monbiot’s recent conclusion that capitalism is the real problem is long overdue, but he fails to deconstruct economic growth with respect to its qualitative versus quantitative aspects, likewise the energy source for society. Further, his apparent support for a Green New Deal lacks strategic analysis, and his continued boost for nuclear (fission) power is unwelcome. – tandf
The choir is increasingly singing unto itself. Everybody else has moved on. Rosebank, Jackdaw… why does Friar Miliband hesitate? That’s true belief in the one true faith.
Cuba doing well? Hasn’t their grid just collapsed for the 2nd time in two weeks? Too many unstable inputs, I’d suggest.
I thought the sarc was clear?
Like for Paul Ehrlich, Net Zero is just a breath away.
Cuba seems to have electric grid maintenance problems. Lack of oil is not their only problem.
Trump is stirring up the Old Guard all over the world.
Socialism works well until the wealth created by capitalism runs out.
I’m having a blast with ChatGPT. Haven’t had this much fun in years. I just gave it a family photo from about 1918- of my mother’s family. It was in poor condition. GPT vastly enhanced it, adding color and just brightening it. I don’t have any plan for my use of this AI as I’m retired. Just playing with it. Just got an offer to get the plus version for free for a month so I’ll experiment with that.
I’ve always loved political cartoons. I could imagine such a cartoon but have less than zero art skills. now I’ve got an artist in my office. 🙂
Previously I had GPT make images of robot foresters, and it working in the woods with Big Foot. I’ve also had it make an image of a sleazy robot lawyer charming the jury. 🙂
I’d love see one of the editors here write an essay on AI. It’s from reading the use of AI by the regulars here that got me interested- not sure if any full essays have been written on the topic and posted here. But AI is evolving so fast, a new one could be written monthly. I suspect most of the regulars here are using it to some extent. There are hundreds of YouTube videos on the topic. But I’m especially interested in the use by the folks here- in particular regarding the climate topic.
Meh.
(I am going to follow the custom of pretty well everyone who shares an opinion on AI and refrain from bothering to define my terms.)
There are niches for AI. But of all things, it ain’t intelligent. Nor will it ever be.
What it very likely will be, is much better packaged. The things it really can do, like enhancing old family snaps, or natural language translation, or rewording tedious texts, will be seamlessly incorporated, giving other tools a sheen of intelligence. But we must avoid being enchanted by its fluency. It’s not thinking and never will. (The same goes for many charismatic natural intelligences who sometimes capture our attention.)
Depends on how you define “intelligent”. It can be intelligent without being conscious. It doesn’t have a soul. But when I ask it questions, I get seemingly intelligent responses. And what really amazes me is how fast it is. I can ask it a long, complex question with several paragraphs. The response is within a second or two. Blows my mind.
“seemingly” being the operative word, JZ. All it is is a probability engine. It puts words together based on probability. It’s useful for some things but never rely on it for anything important.
I realize the basic reality that it’s putting one word after the other as you say, but how does it do image and video work. I’m truly amazed at it image creation talent. Just subscribed for the video tool by using the free month option for the Plus version. Can’t wait to start playing with it.
Even so, that it’s doing one word after the other but dam, it sure seems a lot smarter than that.
Pretty much the same – putting one pixel after another based on pattern matching. That’s why hands are such a problem.
And it definitely can appear smart, which is why we have to keep reminding ourselves that it’s only an illusion of intelligence. There are already enough sad stories about people who forgot.
I believe that most LLMs now are capable of passing the “Turing Test.” The major tell is that the grammar is better than most most writers.
A problem with LLMs is that they seem to have been created with the thought in mind of them being surrogate politicians. /s
https://scitechdaily.com/chatgpt-was-asked-the-same-question-10-times-the-answers-kept-changing/
When I was a senior in high school in ’67, my class took a field trip to MIT. Walked around- saw their nuclear reactor. Saw into a big room with professors in white coats doing experiments with students. Saw their computer with a keyboard. It was running program- I think i was called something like Eliza. You could chat with it. Of course it had only a small capability. But for me it was exciting- all of that stuff. I wanted to be a scientist like them- but ended up deep in the forests for half a century. Possibly a better option in some ways. That’s what I get for reading Walden Pond. 🙂
I remember Eliza. It was mostly smoke and mirrors. It would respond with something along the lines of, “That’s very interesting. Tell me more.” All the ‘intelligence’ was being provided by the programmer, understanding how a human would respond to a statement encouraging the user to talk.
From what I have seen, it does a decent job of simulating intelligence, using proper English, and mountainous recall of facts. What it totally lacks is wisdom. The instant it sends a final reply; it totally forgets all of the new information it found in the contact.
Whatever, I find it’s great for investors. It can gather data for comparisons of different companies in seconds. Ask enough questions about a company’s finances and it will give responses, followed by suggestions like, ‘This summer major contacts are up for renewal. They will not be the old standard flat-rate contracts. Would you like to see which contracts are being finalized and the new rate structure?’ You could read reams of financial data with no mention of contracts. Or you could ask questions like, ‘Which companies will benefit most if AI data centers are moved to West Virginia?’ Very useful. Markets have been going down; my portfolio’s been going up.
I offered CTM an experience I had with Bing, but he declined it.
Well, that’s what the open thread is for- about anything.
The exchange was about 1,600 words. A little on the long side for a comment here. Basically, it demonstrated the tension between the LLM’s consensus bias and me pointing out that it had just agreed that the boiler plate response was not supported by facts.
Deep underground small nuclear reactor technology is interesting. A pilot plant is supposed to be completed this year in Kansas.
https://www.deepfission.com/technology
Maintenance?
I imagine that is to be studied in the pilot.
New Your State solar PV developer and state government try to hide environmental impacts of project:
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/forced-commission-indy-report-nonprofit-finds-solar-farm-will-have-major
The climate lunacy in Oregon.
Investor-owned electric utilities, too, must provide clean electricity by 2040 – generated from wind and solar, not natural gas or coal.
Utilities in Oregon must heed state climate goals advanced by lawmakers, governors and regulators. They require gas utilities to cut emissions 50% by 2035 and 90% by 2050. Several cities in the state also have sought to curb emissions by restricting natural‑gas hookups through bans, fees and code changes.
https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2026/03/a-1-gas-pipeline-deal-fuels-debate-on-oregons-energy-future.html
Haven’t the politicians in Oregon learned that the Endangerment Finding of 2009 for CO2 has been recently rescinded by Administrator Lee Zeldin of the EPA? I guess that info from Washington takes awhile to travel from the east coast and over the Rocky Mountains to west coast.
Utilities can certainly use nothing but wind and solar generated electricity. But it will come with lots of interruptions (usually called blackouts,) several per day. Has anybody told the lawmakers?
The lawmakers are probably not interested. Their primary concern is getting re-elected by doing things that their constituents value and making sure that they are aware of what the lawmakers have done. One of the downsides of democracy is that perceptions are more important than reality.
Eventually the light will come on. When AI data centers decide to build in other states because of energy bottlenecks they’ll change course. One of the complaints is that centers don’t create many jobs, but look at it from a politician’s position: those centers generate tens of millions in new local tax revenues each year. Precisely because they don’t bring a lot of jobs means local expenses – roads, schools, utility infrastructure, parks, etc – do not increase. They have millions they can spend without raising taxes, and the local voters would suffer no ‘inconveniences’. All of it play money.
The latest Chinese anti-stealth radar systems, along with anti-aircraft missile interceptors, have gone on sale.
I bet they are going cheap, too!
Back to the Drawing Board for Russian and Chinese anti-aircraft defenses. They did not knock down even one Israeli or U.S. aircraft.
I think Turkey has a lot of that useless Russian equipment. I wonder what they are thinking right about now?
Book R&C: de Waart – Crisis or Hoax: Chapter 6 Nailed it!
Well, the earlier conversation thread w/ WE is deep in the weeds so let’s reset with the fundamentals.
GHE says without it Earth would become 33 C cooler, an average -18 C ice ball. No way!
Earth is cooler with the atmosphere/water vapor/30% albedo not warmer. Near Earth outer space is 394 K, 121 C, 250 F. 288 K w – 255 K w/o = 33 C cooler -18 C Earth is just flat wrong. Dividing discular 1,368 by 4 to average 342 over spherical ToA is wrong.
Ubiquitous GHE heat balance graphics don’t balance and violate LoT. TFK_bams09 is a case in point although there are dozens of clones.
Solar balance 1: 1,368/4=342*.7=240-80=160 in = out 17 + 80 +1st 63. Balance complete.
Calculated balance 2: 396 up = 333 “back” + 2nd 63 out.
63 appears twice but only figures once violating GAAP.
160 arrives 160 is ALL!!! that can leave.
396 models the Earth as an imaginary 16 C BB which generates 100s of imaginary “extra” W/m^2 out of imaginary thin air violating LoT 1 & requiring that imaginary LoT abomination imaginary “back” or “net” radiation.
And no, it is not measured.
IR instruments think targets are BB and must be corrected w actual emissivity if not, e.g. 63/396=0.16
BTW Spencer’s ice pile experimental observations contradict his hypothesis. Exposed ice pile creates cooling convection currents which cools the warmer surface. Concealed ice pile stifles convection and warm surface warms.
Kinetic heat transfer processes of contiguous atmospheric molecules render surface BB impossible. By definition all energy entering and leaving a BB must do so by radiation.
Entering: 30% albedo = not BB. OLR: 17sensible & 80 latent = not BB. TFK_bams09: 97 out of 160 leave by kinetic processes, 63 by LWIR = not BB.
As demonstrated by experiment, the gold standard of classical science.
For the experimental write up see:
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
Search: Bruges group “boiling water pot” Schroeder
RGHE theory is as much a failure as caloric, phlogiston, luminiferous ether, spontaneous generation and several others.
When GHE fails the entire CAGW house of cards implodes like the Titan submersible.
re: “requiring that imaginary LoT abomination imaginary “back” or “net” radiation.
And no, it is not measured.”
Just curious …. have you ever tried this trick – using a non-contact IR (about 14 um wavelength IR window IIRC) ‘thermometer’ read the clear (not cloudy; this can be discussed separately) sky ‘temperature’ on different days, notably a day with high humidity versus a day with low humidity … have you ever tried this trick?
PS. I was an early user of a hand-held non-contact temperature measurement device trade named “Heat Spy” in the mid 1980’s … calibration for emissivity of the ‘read’ surface was made via a dial on the rear of the pistol-shaped device.
I use a handheld IR gun to read cloud bottom temperatures on occasion….reasonably accurate for that…clear sky temp is another story due to highly variable water vapor content….interesting devices once you understand the emissivity of the surface you are looking at and the absorptivity of water vapor and CO2 in the air path between the surface and your device. NS obviously prefers calibrated liquid expansion devices called “thermometers” that give no actual indication of heat flow as compared to thermopiles. /s
Pointing IR thermometer at clouds is incompetence^3.
I think that should be the 4th power. 🙂
Obviously you need to read a little more about IR thermometry…
https://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-12/Measuring%20the%20Temperature%20of%20the%20Sky%20and%20Clouds.pdf
I was a results engineer over half of my lucrative 35 years in power generation. I know plenty about IR instruments.
USCRN and SURFRAD IR instruments point at the ground and measure, say, 16 C.
How do they know this is correct?
They are calibrated to agree within 0.3 C of other surface measurements in the site’s suite of instruments or periodic calibrations by the OEM or other service. It’s in the site manual.
BTW these instruments go nuts at night. The ground heats and cools differently from the 1.5 m “surface.”
S-B is applied to 16 C to get 396 W/m^2 assuming the surface is a 1.0 emissivity BB. This, of course, is incorrect.
The correction emissivity is 63/396 or 0.16 (TFK_bams09)
The correct measurement is 0.16 * 396 = 63.
The 396/333/63 duplicate energies and “back” radiation vanish as does the LoT debate.
No, the correct thermal emissivity of ground, rocks, sea water is about .96 Overly simplified because of the mosaic of various different ground and sky temperatures but very roughly by SB….
63= .96 * sigma* [Tsurface^4 – Tsky^4]
And “How do they know this is correct…(For IR thermometers)?” Answer…same way they know the expansion of liquid mercury can be used in a glass tube to read temperature for mercury thermometers….many tests, experiments, and calibrations….
BTW, your knowledge of IR instruments seems rudimentary at best. My reference book on the subject is “Infrared Thermal Imaging”, Vollmer & Mollman. You should get one. “Radiative Heat Transfer” by Modest which I also have on my shelf is too difficult for us old engineers, especially ones like yourself that think “back radiation” breaks the 2nd law.
“If the Earth did not have an atmospheric
blanket, most of the radiation absorbed
during the day would be radiated into
space at night. The Earth would be so
cold that the oceans would freeze!”
This is just flat wrong!!
No GHE = no GHGs = no water vapor = no clouds, snow, ice, oceans, 30% albedo and barren Earth bakes in 250 F solar wind much like the Moon, 400 K lit side, 100 K dark.
Blanket obeys Q = U A (Thot – Tcold) which is not a GHE.
Garbage…
This is what happens with no GHG or atm. With no atmosphere, leaving the surface is approx 370 watts, top right graph…gonna get a lot colder after a short while compared to normal TOA of 240 watts.
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/direct-evidence-of-earths-greenhouse-effect/
“The thermometer is pointed first at a clear patch of sky (reading 27 deg. F), and then an adjacent cloud (reading 41 deg. F):
Now, my question is this:
What caused the IR thermometer reading to warm up by 14 deg. when it went from clear sky to the cloud?
I’m especially interested to hear an answer from those who tell me there is no such thing as downwelling sky radiation (aka “back radiation”). No matter what you believe is happening, it is rather obvious that the cloud influences the temperature reading differently than clear sky. (If you are thinking it is a reflected sunlight effect, you can perform the experiment at night and see the same effect; furthermore, the highest cloud temperatures you will get are from the thickest, *blackest* clouds on the bottom…so it’s not a reflected sunlight effect).”
Would you like to tell Roy Spencer Ph.D. that he is talking and coming up with experimental results that are “Garbage”?
Satellites used for meteorological purposes point their IR “thermometers” at clouds. I would say it is the opposite. Not pointing them at clouds would be incompetent.
I have one, a Klein
Pointing it at the sky delivers open circuit noise. It is way beyond its designed ability, field of view & range. Read the book.
Tweaking the emissivity setting produces temperature and power flux that clearly do not exist.
As demonstrated by experiment.
USCRN & SURFRAD incorrectly uses a BB surface.
The instrument was not designed to do this.
Sky dragons are imaginary, detecting them clueless.
The standard weekly Nicholas Schroeder post of scientific imbecility:
Let’s try to correct for new readers…just one of the many misstatements he makes…this being the RGHE “breaking” the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics….
So…wrong…let’s look at “back radiation” from another angle. Let’s not call photons “heat” in the classical caloric sense until they are absorbed. IF IT WASN’t that way, outer space would be hot instead of being -273K with lots of photons flowing through it…
Let’s just call the 333W “electromagnetic radiation” emitted by a 277K black body to its surroundings, for the time being, without any reference to the temperature of the surroundings. A body hotter than 277K will send photons of a wide spectrum towards the 277K body. The 277K body also sends its wide spectrum of photons towards the hotter body. The net result is that, mathematically, the energy in the 277K spectrum of photons must be subtracted to calculate the “net” photon energy….which becomes the “net heat”.
If the hotter body cools to 277K, it still emits photons, as does the original “cold” 277K body, but the “net heat exchange” simply reduces to zero. There is no failure of the second Law of thermodynamics. Heat flows from hot to cold. ALWAYS. This aspect of the Stephan-Boltzmann equation is explained in some detail to every engineering student during their first lecture on radiative heat transfer.
Why ? Because calculating heat loss from a boiler tube surrounded by hot flue gas using SB without accounting for the radiation coming from the hot flue gas will result in probable catastrophic heat exchanger failure via selection of materials that aren’t adequate for the high temperature. Or electronics components in a chassis will fail due to heat from their surrounding components, etc, etc…Apparently NS missed the class.
Wow! Mas handwavium.
“Back” radiation is a consequence of the surface BB model which is not possible.
No BB and LoT of “back” becomes moot.
Earth is cooler not warmer.
+
Graphics are garbage.
+
Surface BB not possible.
=
No GHE.
“Back Radiation” in general is simply the result of the surroundings having a temperature.
If your face is at 30 C it emits about 300 W/M^2 worth of photons. Your metabolism does not have to make up this heat loss… because if the walls around you are also 30C, those walls are also emitting 300W/M^2 back to your face…for a net heat transfer of zero watts. See how it works now, Nicholas ?
No.
Those walls are sustaining a kinetic convective energy loop
“…at 30 C it emits about 300 W/M^2”
Not as a BB it doesn’t.
Perhaps 200 W/m^2 might be handled by kinetic processes, i.e. cond/conv/advec/latent.
How much heat is lost by convection is another additive item altogether, just as in your cartoon evaporation and convection are other items…but surfaces emit electromagnetic radiation at some factor called emissivity x 5.67*10-8 x Tkelvin^4 ……for most materials emissivity is about .95, which means 95% approximation to a Black Body. How much net heat leaves “THot” depends how much offsetting EMR the surface is receiving from it’s surroundings, the “back radiation” you foolishly insist does not exist.
Temperature is a function of kinetic modes, radiation is a function of temperature.
The greater the participation of kinetic the cooler and lower the emissivity.
The surrounding EMR is actually the kinetic modes.
As demonstrated by experiment:
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
Search: Bruges group “boiling water pot” Schroeder
Repeating my earlier comment…..”Garbage…”
It is correct. If you want we can work through the derivation together.
Of course they balance.
Surface: (-23) + 23 + 161 + (-17) + (-80) + (-396) + 333 ≈ 0
Atmosphere: (-79) + 79 + 78 + 17 + 80 + 356 – 169 – 30 – 333 ≈ 0
TOA: (-102) + 341 -239 ≈ 0
First…63 does not appear at all in the diagram.
Second…you are violating the 1LOT with your calculations because you are ignoring some of the inputs and outputs.
333 also arrives. That means 161 + 333 = 494 needs to leave or be retained. Note that 17 + 80 + 396 = 493 is the amount that leaves while 1 is the amount retained.
There is no extra 100s of W.m-2. Each layer in the diagram has a balanced budget consistent with the 1LOT.
The back radiation is not imaginary. It is no less real than any other body with a temperature which has to emit radiation consistent with Planck’s Law.
I wonder if part of the misunderstanding is the conflation of energy and heat. Bodies can emit and absorb energy even though there is no heat transfer between them. Heat is the net transfer of energy. It is what you get when you add up all the inputs and outputs.
I invite you to consider Eli Rabbet’s blue-plate-green-plate thought experiment which is a simple and trivial scenario that can help you understand fundamental concepts before moving on to the vastly more complex real world.
The Earth is heated on the lit side and cools all around 24/7. The average heated model is Fourier and even Pierrehumbert says is no good.
396 is a BB calculation out of thin air. Surface cannot radiate as BB.
160 arrives at the surface, 160 is all that can leave.
396 is 236 more that arrived at the surface, 54 more than from the sun violating LoT 1.
63 appears twice but one was dropped down a boot or up a sleeve.
160-17-890=1st 63
396-333= 2nd 63
The 396/333/63 is trash.
“Each layer in the diagram has a balanced budget consistent with the 1LOT.”
In your dreams!!
It was not determined via a trivial SB-law calculation if that’s what you meant. Read [Trenberth et al. 2009] for details on how this value was actually determined.
This statement violates the 1LOT because it ignores the other inputs.
Patently False. Simple arithmetic tells us it is 121 W.m-2 LESS than what arrived at the surface.
It is literally elementary age mathematics.
A little time capsule, if I may … (text encoded with basic Enigma encoder)
zqzco mznsa msrkr jzgkm wdyha wjrix jazvd vifjn jdqbi yyuvz smocu jvmfq ntsxp jbiur wlysk
jpgew klcbr eynzx wpjna ikeqq wtvuu zidpf sihzk ykmsy anfcd jpfbt nndkp zbfmx apnru mlzwm pcdmu twear psazj oelap cmovl fdfvk gwcue xxuqi qeksx akwej frryp nlgqh zcmzl rbbwk gfnxk gzrpq wqihf mavug tjcsn fvfen ifmnl gjstq cuzhp dxkgv eaidi kwfqf rlsun blnhr cewzj njizf fwbwu yqnaz sdrvs mpafl wphxd lldde mlzdq rjjin vucmt gfnuu xsafy vjyui hymba mzby
The disparity between the monthly anomalies posted by the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN) and ClimDiv appears to be increasing.
Last month, February 2026, saw the biggest discrepancy between the two values in their joint period of record (since Jan 2005), with USCRN fully 0.63F (0.35C) warmer than ClimDiv. Long-term, the two data sets diverge at a rate of +0.14F (+0.08C) per decade; but over the past five-years that rate of divergence has increased to +0.46F (+0.26C) per decade.
The rate of warming in USCRN (Jan 2006 – Feb 2026) is now +0.89F (+0.50C) per decade, versus +0.75F (+0.42C) per decade in ClimDiv.
WUWT describes USCRN as:
Given that the ‘properly sited‘ USCRN is warming appreciably faster than the adjusted ClimDiv and that the disparity between the two appears to be increasing, especially over the past five-years, shouldn’t consideration now be given to finding out why it is that the NOAA adjustment process for ClimDiv appears to be artificially cooling it?
OMG.. Yes, the adjustments in Climdiv are done to match USCRN..
THEY ARE NOT REAL.
Any difference is purely because of the adjustment methodology being refined.
When will you wake up to that fact. !!
OK, where’s the evidence for this claim, please? (Remembering that opinion is not evidence.)
He has no evidence. Any more than he has for his fairy tale “El Nino done it,” claim.
Story Tip – Oh noes, the sea doesn’t rise equally everywhere and CNN feels that is a problem:
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/04/climate/sea-level-higher-flooding-hazards
Truth be told, how was this not common knowledge?
I think that what they are trying to say is that “were it not for …” the oceans would be higher than what they are. The bottom line is that tide gauges reflect the net increases, which is the practical concern. Satellite proxies give the theorists something to play with to keep them amused.
Naomi Seibt update.
Come to the United States and speak freely, Naomi.
The German government would hate that.
Trump will support her free speech.
Free speech:
My family ran me off FaceBook.
I deleted my LinkedIn account after the “fact checkers” suspended my account for three weeks. CDC was not a valid source.
YouTube (Google) straight out told me they terminated my account for my Covid 19 and climate comments & my appeal was rejected.
I quit X and SubStack fed up with the unrestrained bots and trolls.
MSN’s algorithm blocks comments at random & without appeal.
Years ago USA Today & Disqus placed a permanent ban on my E-mail address.
I sense that AOL has labeled my Email as spam so anything I send goes straight into the recipient’s spam folder where they never see it.
I’m back to snail mail trusting that USPS does not intercept and trash it.
So much for free speech.
What sort of person, let alone a president, writes words like this, when a long serving public servant and war hero dies?
“Robert Mueller just died, good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
Sometimes the truth needs to be spoken, even if some are offended by the truth.
No sometimes you just need to STFU and not offend people when a person who has served their country dies. Especially when you are a draft dodger.
You would also probably hate everyone who was part of the lies, conspiracies and worse that worked to put you in jail and otherwise do you harm.
Well be specific… what lies?
Crossfire hurricane, the Russian collusion hoax, pee tape, and numerous other tales. Much of that was initiated by the Obama administration and Hillary campaign, Fusion GPS.
All of the work Mueller did was verified and resulted in a number of Trumps team being prosecuted. Shall I list them and what they did? I’m happy to.
As for the other stuff… that had nothing to do with Mueller who after all was doing a job he was asked to do. And let’s be clear, Robert Mueller was a Republican who served under both administrations. You don’t get to do that without being highly respected (I’m going to go out on a limb here and Say Hegseth and Bondi won’t be in the next government).
And Mueller was a decorated war veteran. The draft dodger Trump isn’t worthy of shining his shoes.
U.S. Democrats are extremely dangerous to the United States and to other nations of the world.
Consider that Democrats are so stupid/reckless that they almost put nuclear weapons in the hands of religious fanatics with a death wish.
Had Kamala Harris been elected instead of Trump, the Mad Mullahs of Iran would now have enough enriched uranium for dozens of nuclear weapons.
If Kamala had been elected, there would have been no efforts to reign in the Mad Mullahs. There would have been no bunker-buster American bombs destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities, so the Iranians would have been enriching all this time.
And now we know the Mad Mullahs had missiles capable of reaching just about all of Europe.
So, if Kamala were elected, today, the Mad Mullahs would be in a position to blackmail every nation in the region including all of Europe with nuclear weapons. I wonder if the Mad Mullahs would make an example of a country or two, just to show the rest they are serious and can do what they threaten? I bet they would not mind killing a few million people to show they mean business.
Aren’t you glad Trump took all that trouble away from you? You should be if you have any sense.
Stupid people can cause us a lot of problems.
Don’t vote for stupid/dangerous people. Which means don’t vote for Democrats. They are detrimental to everything real Americans hold dear. They are Poison to the body politic. They are nothing but trouble. Just look at what they are doing today: Resist! Undermine! Lie and Distort! That’s the Democrats for you.
I’m just at a loss for words Tom that you would write about Democrat lies, when Tom you have a president who campaigned on no more wars in the Middle East….. then storms off to start a war in his first year…. in the Middle East. Is that not a lie or Olympic proportions? Does that make you angry? Do you not feel betrayed? And Tom you are the one who celebrates low fuel prices. How are they now where you live?
Are you saying that someone should always support what they first said, that their first utterance is sacrosanct, and they should never utter another word on the topic?
“When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do, sir?” ― John Maynard Keynes
When intelligence provides reasons to believe that the Iranians have at least a half-ton of U-235 enriched to 60%, with the next step being weapons grade, I would say that not taking action to protect the world from a nuclear exchange would be a dereliction of duty. I can’t believe that you would be upset because someone with the power to do something to prevent imminent radioactive fallout around the world didn’t stubbornly refuse to break his word. Your priorities are misguided.
Trump did not campaign on “no more wars in the Middle East”. Trump never made such a statement.
The Republican Isolationists and Nervous Nellie’s claim that is Trump’s intent, but all that is, is wishful thinking on their part. They see what they want to see, not what is really there.
So, no, Trump did not lie. Trump has always said, for decades, that the religious fanatics in Iran cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Trump discovered that the Mad Mullahs were within a matter of weeks of having enough material for 11 nuclear weapons, and Trump decided there was no time to waste and proceeded to stop this threat to the U.S. and the world.
Fuel prices are up about a dollar a gallon around here. A very small price to pay to keep nuclear weapons away from religious fanatics with a death wish. And it is only temporary, as prices will come down when the war winds down.
Trump says he is negotiating with Iranian officials now. The U.S. stock market was up 1,000 points the last time I looked.
Just a couple of things President Trump: Don’t destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure. The new leaders of Iran and the people will need that infrastructure; and don’t make a deal that leaves religious fanatics in charge in Iran.
It should be noted that about 5,000 U.S. Marines are headed for Iran, and there are reports that the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division is also headed that way.
So it’s not over yet. But it is only a matter of time.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/F1ol4x8daDs
Yep he did say he would not start a war in the Middle East and he also said that kamal Harris would….
“I’ve read it many times that World War III will begin in the Middle East. That’s not going to happen… We’re not going to have a World War III if we’re smart“.
“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into”
“We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with”
“We had no wars. They said, he will start a war. I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
Talking about Obama … “Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective.”
“We’ve spent $8 trillion in the Middle East, and we’re not fixing our roads in this country? How stupid. How stupid is it? And we’re not fixing our highways, our tunnels, our bridges, our hospitals, even.”
Then he said this…
“They know Kamala and her warmonger Cabinet will invade the Middle East, get millions of Muslims killed and start World War III.”
I think Tom, on the basis of all this, the American voters could assume Trump was saying he was not going to go to war in the Middle East……
Then when asked if he would deploy troops to the Middle East he said….“No, I’m not putting troops anywhere. “
Seems he lied here to.
“Trump says he is negotiating with Iranian officials now.”
But that’s a lie Tom. Iran have said they will not negotiate at this time and that Trump is backing down. Do I trust what Iran says… no. But I don’t Trust Trump to tell the truth either. He is a monumental many times over Internationally disgraced liar.
“So it’s not over yet. But it is only a matter of time.”
Hmmm that’s what they said about Vietnam
Is that what your Iranian connections told you?
You don’t have to be Einstein’ cousin to know Trump lies all the time. Recent lies =
Kristi Noem did get permission from Trump to run her add campaign.
Iran is not in talks with the US to end the war.
So you are inclined to believe the Mad Mullahs as opposed to believing Trump.
I guess I’m not surprised as Trump does seem to have driven you over the edge.
You have a knee-jerk response to anything Trump. There is no arguing you out of your bias. I guess you are stuck there.
We’ll see what the future holds. One will be correct and one will be wrong. I know who I’m picking. It’s not you. 🙂
“So you are inclined to believe the Mad Mullahs as opposed to believing Trump.”
Trump lies daily. The Iranians have their backs to the wall. Of course they will lie. Soooo…. Fact is I don’t believe either of them and for good reason.
We shall see.
And I see Trump has TACOed again. Frankly the master strategist has backed himself into a corner here. Iran for all its military weakness holds the cards (as Trump would say) with the strait. I think from here, Trump is going to “claim victory” then scuttle off and hope petrol prices come down before the midterms. If they don’t he is in serious trouble. Meanwhile the new regime in Iran will be more militant and hatred fuelled. This is looking like a complete and utter “ballsup” the likes of which the US has never seen. And all because Bibi convinced him to go into a war he promised he would not fight, by stroking his ego.
Your bias makes you incapable of seeing the situation clearly.
You are not alone. There are millions of leftists with the same kind of flawed view of reality. But lots of fools thinking the same way doesn’t mean any of them have it right.
I’m sure glad I don’t live in the world you live in. It must be very stressful trying to deal with all the loony, Leftwing conspiracy theories.
Divorced from reality and you don’t know it.
Lots of people in this world are divorced from reality. I think that is why the world is in the sorry state it is now in.
But a guy like Trump can get most of the world back on the right track. That’s what he is doing right now. Democrats want to fight him every step of the way.
Lefties can whine and cry but Trump has three more years to continue making America Great Again.
Trump is exceeding all expectations. His detractors can’t stand his success. Too bad, so sad.
“Lefties can whine and cry but Trump has three more years to continue making America Great Again.”
Not if he loses bigly in the mid terms. You and I know he will be in serious trouble if he can’t turn this fuel price thing around. Americans don’t like wars and they don’t like inflation.
And you are right, we live in different worlds. I see Trump as a corrupt self serving con man. You see him as some sort of saviour. I say mine is reality and you say your is. The good news is in a free world we both get to have an opinion. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Democrats?
US has a 250 year history of war.
Department of war is the reality of it.
Indian wars 1620 to 1900
War of Independence April 19, 1775 to Sept 3, 1783
War with East coast tribes, French & Spanish
Barbary piracy wars
War of 1812 – 1815
War w Mexico – 4/1846 to 2/1848
Plains Indians 1800 to 1900
Civil war 4/12/1861 to 5/26/1865
Spanish American war 4/21/1898 to 8/13/1898
Banana wars 1898 to 1934
WW I 7/28/1914 to 11/11/1918
WW II 9/1/1939 to 9/2/1945
Korea 6/25/1950 to 7/27/1953
Iran, CIA coup 1953
Bay of Pigs April 1961
Grenada 11/25/1983
Vietnam 1950 to 1973
Noriega 1989
Somalia 1990s – TBD
Persian Gulf war 8/2/1990 to 1991
Afghanistan 9/11/2001 to 2021
Venezuela
Iran
Crisis or Hoax
Jules de Waart
Page 173
“Without that greenhouse effect, Earth would have been about thirty-three degrees Celsius colder.”
Origin: 288 K w – 255 K wo = 33 C
Just flat wrong.
No GHE means no GHGs – all of them – not just no CO2 (no vegetation) but no CH4 and no water vapor.
No water vapor means no clouds, snow, ice, for that matter water/oceans, no 30% albedo and a naked, barren Earth bakes in the 250 F solar wind becoming much like the Moon, 400 K lit side, 100 K dark.
I do not need a hundred reasons why GHE is no good, one is sufficient.
However, here are two more.
The ubiquitous GHE power flux balances don’t plus violate GAAP and LoT 1 & 2.
The kinetic heat transfer properties of the contiguous atmospheric molecules render a black body surface model impossible.
Crisis or Hoax
Jules de Waart
Page 196
IPCC AR the 1st
The Executive Summary concluded this:
“We are certain of the following”:
“There is a natural greenhouse effect that already keeps the Earth warmer than it would be otherwise.”
Just
Flat
Wrong
!!!!
The albedo created by GHG water vapor keeps the Earth cooler than it would be otherwise.
Crisis or Hoax
Jules de Waart
Page 205, Figure 22
Solar model
1,368 W/m^2 discular ISR
Divide by 4 to average over spherical ToA (dumb)
342 W/m^2
Diminished by 31.3% albedo (no consensus on this)
342*.687=235 W/m^2
-67 absorbed in atmosphere (not really)
168 net/net arrives at the surface
168 arrives = 168 leaves, LoT 1
168 – 24 sensible – 78 latent = 1st 66 LWIR by difference.
Balance is closed!!
So, where is this 1st 66? Up someone’s sleeve, down a boot top?
Calculated model
Assumes S-B BB 15 C, 288 K, surface used to fill denominator of emissivity ratio, 66/390=0.169.
390 – 324=2nd 66 LWIR.
Duplicate 66’s violate GAAP.
390 out of thin air is 48 more than arrived from Sun, 222 more than arrived at surface violating LoT 1.
324 “back” cold to hot wo work violates LoT 2.
Not that it matters.
The duplicate 390/324/66 model can be erased, the solar balance is still complete and the BB surface, “back” radiation, GHE, CAGW issues all go “poof” like the Titan submersible.
Rot is in regulated professions:
Practice Advisor I (Climate Change & Sustainable Initiatives) – Engineers and Geoscientists BC – Career Page
A junior position.