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A place for discussion.
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August 30, 2026 2:11 am
Some talking points that need continuous exposure. Additions to the list are encouraged:
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Surface area of Pacific atolls is increasing, sea level rise is not a threat.
Polar bears don’t need the sea ice, it’s the seals that need the ice.
Methane is not 82.5 times more powerful at “trapping heat” than CO2.
Tide gauges show acceleration of sea level rise to be nearly zero.
If the Himalayan glaciers melt away, the rivers will still flow.
Corals live in the tropics. Warm water does not cause bleaching.
Poor forest managment results in larger fires when they occur.
Carbon dioxide makes world greener and warmer with more rain.
There isn’t a down side to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
Sequestering carbon dioxide accomplishes absolutely nothing.
Climate scientists rewrite historical data continuously.
Geoengineering schemes are entirely without merit.
Climategate November 2009.
Thanks, I’ll fix that.
On edit, DONE, I expect I’ll post that list again with any additions. I have it saved in my files as “One Liners” and as such is pretty much the opposite of academic papers filled with mathematical equations and long lists of references. Both are useful and probably necessary to slay the Climate Cult Dragon.
I just turned 82 and hope that recent revelations will be instrumental in achieving the end of the nightmare before I drop dead.
Oh yeah, thanks for reading through my liist.
August 30, 2026 2:16 am
Let’s revisit this graduate-level course material from the University of Washington about the kinetic energy cycle within the general circulation of the atmosphere. Please take the time to read the whole first page.
https://a.atmos.uw.edu/academics/classes/2010Q2/545/545_Ch_1.pdf
Key quotes:
“Motions driven either directly or indirectly by horizontal heating gradients in a stably stratified atmosphere account for more than 98% of the atmospheric kinetic energy.”
“Motions driven by convective instability account for the remainder of the atmospheric kinetic energy.”
Notice that it is “horizontal heating gradients,” not “temperature” gradients. This means that the minor improvement in the IR absorbing power of the atmosphere from rising concentrations of CO2 helps the atmosphere generate kinetic energy more responsively as the pulses of sunshine pass across the surface from east to west (as viewed from the fixed surface.)
And the slightly improved IR coupling of the surface to the lower atmosphere should also promote the onset of convection involved in the formation of cumulus clouds and other responses.
So what? These concepts demonstrate that the computation of a static radiative “warming” tendency for rising concentrations of CO2 does not mean that sensible heat gain on land and in the oceans must be expected as a result. The motion changes everything about where that energy ends up.
NO ONE KNOWS that emissions of CO2 operate as a “forcing” to which amplifying “feedbacks” must be expected to arise. The static framing of the question of climate system response has been a misdirection all along. The stepped-static radiative transfer components of the models don’t resolve that limitation either.
Thank you for your patience in these matters.
Your LINK doesn’t work
Corrected link.
https://a.atmos.uw.edu/academics/classes/2010Q2/545/545_Ch_1.pdf
Dear Dr D Dibbell,
Thanks for the challenging reading assignment.
I skimmed the whole thing, and then read carefully (3X) that first page, with mark-up tools.
(Wondering all-the-while who was the author (lecturer) that compiled this, and how to access the illustrations cited within.)
A question for you, from the world of observational meteorology, its eventful record-of-change over the recent (4+) decades. There’s the vexing question of better ‘metrics’ (maths: ‘measure theory’). Changes in ‘zonal potential energy gradients’, latitudinal & altitudinal, attendant effects on the so-called General Circulation, or air currents (windspeeds, KE) in all 3D.
He’s a bit hard to read, because of the Socratic Method (dialogue) unclear demarcation, but JB* seems to be drawing similar conclusions to yours from the same observational pool, using temporal (annual) averages at each grid-point (in 3D),rather than the minute-by-minute illustrations you prefer.
Or how do you see it?
Same track (by different methods); parallel tracks; or orthogonal (cross purposes)?
https://www.cfact.org/2026/08/27/temperature-is-a-deceptive-metric/
Thank you for your reply. See here for the source of that link to the pdf, and the list of related material which includes the illustrations. The instructor is Professor (Emeritus) John. M. (Mike) Wallace.
https://a.atmos.uw.edu/academics/classes/2010Q2/545/
About the link to Joe Bastardi’s CFact post, thank you for that. I follow him on X with great respect for his insights and commentary. I see no conflict with what I’ve been posting about using hourly values from ERA5 and hourly images from GOES. Parallel tracks against the unwarranted alarm.
P.S. I’m not a Dr. ! 🙂
Thanks, Honorary-Dr DD, perhaps I’ve confused you with a ~ Chemical Engineer PhD ~ from the upstate-NY (Albany – Troy – Schenectady) region,* who writes as tho’ he’d suffered / survived a PhD program somewhere.
— RLW
P.S. Besides your own, I’ve long found inspiration at WUWT by posts authored by (2) personages I’d refer to collectively as Will-Will (or Will^2) and more recently the commentary of (2) others, Phil-Phil (Phil^2). They { Will^2 & Phil^2 } & you will know who they are.
The clue provided in January ( 2025 ) by Will(#1)-Eschenbach’s empirical constant (invariant) ~ 1.6524, or rather its 4th root (~ 17/15, 1.133…), seems to serve as a better foundation than just about any other recent discovery.
I’ve previously pointed out, in these pages, that this ‘magic ratio’ is compatible with (303 K / 267 K), i.e. the ‘steam-point’ critical temperature for sustained organized convection in the tropical equatorial zones (+30 Celsius serving as the fixed upper bound for the SST in the freely circulating ocean), to the ‘frost-point’ (-6 Celsius) at 5-km (16,000′), as the ceiling of those active zones.
This would point toward two (2) other underlying constants ( unique ‘adiabatic invariants‘) namely the Entropies (per H2O molecule)— respectively of the convective (H2O,air) updraft and its surrounding downdraft — within each unit cell.
As characteristic values of the primary heat (steam-frost) engine, located within the tropical lower troposphere, they specify the (distant) work-output, of the myriad cells, driving the broader (global) circulation.
In this frame, the recent rapid ‘climate change’ (aka ‘warming’ / re-humidification) of the skies is largely a matter of increasing the number (areal coverage) of these unitary primary-engine cells.
Or, in one word, Expanding-the-Tropics, mostly latitudinally (poleward). Not an original notion, in any sense. But a necessary one, given the perpetual penchant of the Cli-Sci-Cognoscenti for ‘runaway ‘ / infrared-catastrophic warming.
Quite Enough Done (for one pre-dawn hour)
*My own youth (mostly wasted) included (4) long winters in the nearby Finger-Lakes (Ithaca) region, 1980-84 A.D.
Interesting. There are 21 mentions of “Coriolis” in this complete pdf of an older version of the course material.
https://a.atmos.uw.edu/academics/classes/2010Q2/545/545_Old_Complete_Notes_L3.pdf
August 30, 2026 2:32 am
Oil and Gas Sunday!
In Appalachia, fracking is not the job creator the industry claims
The counties’ growth in per-capita income also has lagged behind the national average, even as their nominal gross domestic product nearly doubled, increasing their share of the country’s GDP by 6%. Basically, comparatively high economic output from the counties did not produce higher-than-average incomes for their residents.
“Despite immense economic growth as measured by GDP, Frackalachia is in a position of actually having lost jobs since the beginning of the natural-gas boom,” O’Leary said. In his view, the numbers contradict pro-industry pitches for more oil and gas development.
Cost to clean up orphan wells in Alberta reaches all-time high
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/bakx-owa-seqouia-alberta-orphan-wells-1.7620267
The number of orphan wells in need of cleanup nearly doubled over the last year to reach 3,388 compared to 1,719 the previous year.
In Alberta, any unsold wells, pipelines and facilities following the bankruptcy of an oil and gas company are declared orphans and become the responsibilities of the Orphan Well Association (OWA) to decommission and remediate.
Factcheck: Nine false or misleading myths about North Sea oil and gas
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-nine-false-or-misleading-myths-about-north-sea-oil-and-gas
FALSE: ‘Reopening the North Sea would lower bills’
MISLEADING: ‘Energy from the North Sea generates a lot less CO2’
FALSE: ‘Britain is a resource-rich nation that has chosen dependency’
FALSE: North Sea is ‘best way to protect us from volatility and provide energy security’
MISLEADING: ‘The head honchos of the green lobby say we should drill’
FALSE: ‘The UK is the only country in the world banning new oil and gas licenses’
MISLEADING: ‘With new North Sea licences would come thousands of jobs’
MISLEADING: North Sea drilling ‘would secure a rush of revenue into the Treasury’
FALSE: Ed Miliband is an ‘anti-North Sea’ climate change ‘fanatic’
FALSE: ‘We share the same basin with Norway…there is not a geological difference.”
“fracking is not the job creator the industry claims”
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Hmmm. That means the industry has figured out a way to lower the cost, and I should enjoy lower prices for their product, and the labor force will be freed up to produce other goods and services.
News story ….
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/08/major-win-trump-obama-appointed-alaska-judge-tosses/
“environMENTAL groups” lose again …
😉
The Carbon Brief is, at best, unreliable when it comes to evaluating British energy supplies. It was they who, in 2022, claimed that offshore wind was nine times cheaper than electricity from gas.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-why-expensive-gas-not-net-zero-is-keeping-uk-electricity-prices-so-high
Carbon Brief compared short-term very high electricity prices with a very low long-term auction price for offshore. So low that there were no takers.
Another myth they perpetuate is that there is a global gas price. I stated Aug 26 (using figures from tradingeconomics)
The current Louisiana Henry Hub natural gas price is around $2.80 per MMBtu. At current exchange rates this in ~20.5 GBp/thm. The same site gives the current British natural gas price at 159.45 GBp/thm, nearly 8 times more. Back in 2019 it was ~65% greater.
August 30, 2026 6:32 am
Here in the UK, there are two new oil fields awaiting final government sign-off for years. The latest scare story (to be published in Nature) uses grossly exaggerated carbon damage costs. It is no surprise to regular readers that The Guardian did an article on it. They stated
The climate damage caused by developing the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields under consideration by the UK government would destroy their economic benefits many times over, according to an analysis.
It estimates the economic damage caused by the carbon pollution from the oil and gas produced would be between £119bn and £336bn in the coming decades, compared with the £28.7bn in value to the UK estimated by Adura…
These are quite minor fields, containing enough oil to supply global demand for 3-4 days. Venezuela, by comparison, could meet global demand for ~9 years. The cost equates to climate damage costs of $770 to $2176 a tonne. Using those same costs, 2024 global GHG emissions of 57.7 GtCO2e produced damage costs of $44,429 to $125,555 billion. That is around 40-110% of global GDP. Clearly, the author does not understand costs.
https://manicbeancounter.com/2026/08/27/idiotic-climate-cost-claims-for-rosebank-jackdaw/
August 30, 2026 7:08 am
Has anyone seen any indication that the climate hysterics conglomerate has acknowledged IPCC’s demotion of SSP5-8.5 to completely implausible nonsense? I see nearly daily new alarmist articles claiming that climate change is meeting IPCC projections from decades ago that were derived from RCP-8.5 and subsequent extreme scenarios. You’d think that at least some of the “other sides” more rational members would be trying to dial down the stupid in their propaganda screeds. Maybe I’ve just missed it.
