The warning signs are everywhere. We are stumbling toward an energy crisis that is likely to be far more severe and long-lasting than the upheavals of the 1970s. And no, this isn’t about Russia or Ukraine. This is about the perilous state of the U.S. electricity grid.
If action isn’t taken soon to address the unraveling reliability of the grid, the United States will face the specter of rolling blackouts, factory shutdowns, loss of jobs and soaring electricity bills. Our organization CASE recently released a policy brief highlighting just how dire the situation is.
Events In recent years show how serious the situation is. According To the Wall Street Journal, outages have gone from fewer than two dozen major disruptions in 2000 to more than 180 in 2020. The catastrophic blackouts that gripped Texas for a week in February of last year should have been eye-opening. Now, warnings from regulators, grid operators and utilities suggest far worse is coming.
There’s no getting around it. The nation’s electricity transmission system is growing increasingly undependable. Aging infrastructure, severe weather, and the rapid pivot away from baseload power to intermittent solar and wind are all contributing. Supply chain problems and local opposition to building new power lines and siting renewable projects are also turning into increasingly tall hurdles. Expectations of increased demand driven by electric vehicles are only compounding the challenge.
The energy transition is happening but the question we must ask is how do we responsibly manage it? It’s becoming apparent that the transition to renewables is vastly more difficult and complicated than some believed. Those who want to shut down every coal and natural gas plant ignore that fossil fuels supply 60% of America’s electricity. There’s growing alarm the America’s haphazard approach to the energy transition is taking apart the existing grid and the reliable generating capacity that long underpinned it far faster than we’re adding reliable alternatives.
Coal plants, in particular, are being pushed aside when it’s becoming painfully clear the optionality, fuel security and reliability they offer the grid is still very much needed. If we continue as we are – ditching the well-operating power plants that hold the grid together during severe heat and biting winter cold –we’re only going to exacerbate this crisis of our own making.
The affordability of our power supply also hangs in the balance. Last year, a 17% surge in coal-fired electricity helped shield consumers from rising natural gas prices. As we continue to disassemble the coal fleet, with another 100 gigawatts of coal capacity expected to close by 2030, we’re robbing the grid of an important price shock absorber for when natural gas prices rise. With global demand for gas rising, U.S. exports soaring and the Russian invasion of Ukraine throwing volatility into global energy markets, dismantling fuel optionality is short-sighted and reckless.
Europe’s decision to race away from coal and close much of its nuclear power capacity before having reliable alternatives in place, has left it at the mercy of Russian natural gas imports and soaring global gas prices. Energy security – now more so than since the energy crises of the 1970s – requires careful attention.
The singular, haphazard focus of climate-driven energy policy requires an abrupt rethink.
There remains an opportunity for an energy policy reset – both at the state and federal levels – to tackle this reliability and affordability crisis head on. First, we must recognize the need for dispatchable fuel diversity and fuel security. That must also include a commitment to increasing capacity reserve margins in electricity markets instead of letting them continue to shrink. As we grapple with the complexities of the energy transition and the challenges posed by integrating renewable power and building transmission infrastructure, we need a reliability and affordability insurance policy. The insurance we can provide is recognizing the value of the generating capacity we already have and the importance of dispatchable fuel diversity.
Responsibly navigating the road ahead means building on the shoulders of our existing baseload capacity, not taking it apart.
Why is it that we are ruled by the dumbest on the planet? As I have previously stated, there is NO threat that “systematic climate change” is going to change our lives one iota, much less ruin the planet. It is a sham, and Dear Reader, if you don’t understand “what’s up” after witnessing the government’s Covid 19 fear campaign, you get a free membership into the “Docile Non-Thinking Sheep Society.” Baa.
Virtually everything government officials and their foot soldiers told us about Covid turned out to be a lie.
Notice, I did not use, the more diplomatic term “untrue.”They knew they were spreading misinformation and doing everything in their power to cancel anyone exposing their deception.Masks don’t work, but they do deprive one of needed oxygen and cause children to develop speech issues. Prophylactics that could have saved over 500,000 lives were banned and disparaged as “dangerous.” The “Know It Alls” put Covid patients in nursing homes, tens of thousands of non-sick then died. They said you won’t get the virus if you have the vaccine, and that the vaccine would prevent the virus from spreading. “The vaccines are perfectly safe,” evidence is mounting that the CDC and our government elites knew this to be untrue. Millions were prevented from seeing their doctors, visits that would have detected serious illnesses like cancer and heart problems. Thousands died needlessly. Our so called “experts” response to every issue was 180 degrees from what it should have been. “Awake, dear heart, awake. Thou hast slept well. Awake.” As Americans awake from their hypnotic slumber and the Covid “tempest” passes, we should never forget what our government did to us.
Had officials in the federal government done absolutely nothing to combat Covid, many less people would have died.
Instead they purposefully spread fear, and in doing so, it gave them the power to transfer trillions of dollars of wealth to favored constituencies depriving the private sector and market forces to determine the most efficacious uses of these resources. These people shut down millions of businesses and forbid people from going to work or in some areas leaving their homes just to walk down the street. It was likely the stupidest decision in mankind’s history.
These are the same “authorities” lecturing you on “climate change.” Why would you believe anything they say?
Before the advent of fossil fuels, man existed in a Hobbesian world where life was “solitary, brutish, nasty and short.” Slavery and servitude was the norm. The amount of time that has elapsed since Col. Drake drilled the first oil well in 1859 is only 163 years. This represents less than .000543 % of modern man’s existence on earth. In other words, for 99.999467 % of man’s history, man did not harness petroleum products and life absolutely sucked.
In just .000543% of modern man’s existence, life on earth has improved 1,000 fold. An absolute miracle and an impossibly without the oil and gas industry. Americans should erect giant statues of oil rigs in every town square with inscriptions of adulation venerating the industry’s accomplishments and the benefits it has provided humanity. Yet, the absolute stupidest people in the world want to eliminate this fuel source. Unfortunately, moronic people are pretty good at getting elected to office. Dementia Joe and the witless AOC, both stupid on steroids, are now in control of our energy policy. Joe whose family got rich whoring themselves to foreign oil and gas companies, set out to destroy the American oil and gas business on his first day in office. The chickens are coming home to roost as the global consequences of nitwits interfering in these market forces are now apparent. America was energy independent and a net exporter of oil and gas immediately before Brandon’s inauguration. The less energy America produces, the less supply on the world market and the greater the costs. In 2020, the average price of oil was $39.68/barrel. It peaked over the weekend at $130/barrel. In Slow Joe’s State of the Union address, he mentioned that the way to beat inflation is to “Buy American.” That is a ridiculous understanding of economics, as the exact opposite is true, robust worldwide trade reduces prices. But if Joe wants America to buy American, why destroy the American energy sector? It is all being done at the altar of the false god of “Climate Change.” That is how the high priests and apostles of Climate Change think.
Industrial policy where government directs resources to decide winners and losers is always a disaster. It is a “grim” fairy tale. Look at the accomplishments and incredible efficiencies of the oil and gas industry and the combustible engine. Before Sleepy was inaugurated, I could buy a gallon of gas for less than a bottle of water. This gallon of energy was pulled out of the ground as crude oil thousands of miles away, then shipped to a refinery where it was turned into gas, then shipped to the Texaco station 5 blocks from my house. This one unit of energy could power my 5,000 lb. German car, with a carload of occupants and luggage to the next town 25 miles away for less than $2. There are over 150,000 easily accessible and well-located fueling stations around the country and likely an equal amount of repair shops. If my car needs a new fuel pump, I can purchase it online and have it delivered to me the next day. I used to own several gas stations. If a dropped my prices $.05/gallon, every other gas station within 20 miles would follow my lead. There is no industry more competitive and efficient than the oil and gas industry, nor one that provides so much convenience to the consumer, not to mention benefits enjoyed by the entire world. Yet, the “Apostles of Doom” want to destroy it. This entire energy infrastructure was built solely by market forces. There were no pointy-head Harvard grads in the Commerce Department deciding how to extract oil from the ground or where to place gas stations. No government industrial policy made this happen. Zilch, Nada, Zero. It is an amazing testimony to the wonders of capitalism.
Yet, despite the wonderous efficiency of the oil and gas industry, we have stupid people (many are Harvard grads), who ignore the miraculous phenomenon that is right smack in front of their eyes. Why we want to worship the Golden Calf, not the God that delivered us from bondage! The simple-minded charlatans of Climate Change want to wave their magic wand and eliminate this entire industry. Untethered to reality, they think if they click their ruby slippers three times and utter “Renewable Energy” then this new industry magically appears. These are the same dolts who force taxpayers to pay subsidies to Iowa farmers to grow corn for ethanol, a fuel source that reduces gas mileage and damages engines. Brilliant. Only pompous, soft handed, sneering government elitists and their sycophants would think growing food for cars instead of people is a good idea. The “Dolts” know better than the trillions upon trillions of decisions of people voting with their own money who like the current system. It is stupid beyond words, so to achieve their objectives, they must do the Covid 19 Tango and spread lies, fear and deception and then mandate acceptance of their remedy against your will. If one calls them out on their fear tactics that person becomes an enemy of the state. How stupid was it to shut down practically every business in the country during Covid? Astoundingly stupid. How stupid is it to promote electric vehicles stating they reduce our reliance on fossil fuels when all the energy to charge the batteries comes from fossil fuels?
Let me tell you what our national energy policy should be in two words: Do Nothing.
I assume one day; the oil and gas industry might fade away. It might be 50 years or 1,000 years from now. When it does fade away, it will be because market forces allocate resources to new technologies that have not yet been invented or perfected. Maybe it is electric, fusion or nuclear, but it could just as easily be that some West Virginia hillbilly (no offense to hillbillies) invents the new technology by tinkering around in his basement. Having the government misallocate resources through mandated industrial policies just keeps capital out of the hands of the most talented and productive and retards growth and innovation.
So if you are a member of the Docile Non-Thinking Sheep Society, take a deep breath. Now exhale. You just exhaled carbon. It is a natural substance. Without it all life on earth ceases to exist. The planet is not going to implode. Take a chill pill. Get a life. Trade in your girly-man Prius and buy a Hummer.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg (Reuters)
Western media has stirred up a puritanical revulsion against carbon-based energy, resulting in calls for prohibition of fossil fuels. Leaders in western democracies responded with regulations and constraints punishing companies either producing energy or operating supply infrastructure. This empowers market dominance by sovereign energy nations, some of whom are autocratic, and one of whom just invaded Ukraine.
‘As the West fell into a hypnotic trance … worshiping a teenager named Greta, Vladimir Putin made his moves,’ Michael Shellenberger wrote
In a Tuesday Substack post headlined, “The West’s Green Delusions Empowered Putin,” Shellenberger argued Putin understood economics better than his western counterparts, citing the latter’s incapability of understanding the realities of energy production, and questioned how countries like Germany allowed themselves to become so dependent on an authoritarian country.
“How has Vladimir Putin … managed to launch an unprovoked full-scale assault on Ukraine?” Shellenberger wrote. “There is a deep psychological, political and almost civilizational answer to that question: He wants Ukraine to be part of Russia more than the West wants it to be free.”
“Missing from that explanation, though, is a story about material reality and basic economics—two things that Putin seems to understand far better than his counterparts in the free world and especially in Europe,” he added.
Shellenberger pointed to the differences in energy production and consumption between other European countries and Russia, noting that Europe consumed more energy than it produced, while Russia produced more than it consumed.
“The reason Europe didn’t have a muscular deterrent threat to prevent Russian aggression—and in fact prevented the U.S. from getting allies to do more—is that it needs Putin’s oil and gas,” he wrote.
Shellenberger argued that the focus on “Green ideology” made European countries “incapable of understanding the hard realities of energy production,” and that their moves away from natural gas and nuclear energy gave Putin command over Europe’s energy supply.
“As the West fell into a hypnotic trance about healing its relationship with nature, averting climate apocalypse and worshiping a teenager named Greta, Vladimir Putin made his moves,” he wrote, referencing teen climate change activist Greta Thunberg and noting that Putin expanded nuclear energy and oil production in Russia while western countries obsessed over “carbon footprints.”
Shellenberger specifically used Germany shutting down its nuclear energy production as an example and cited figures showing 47% of the natural gas consumed by the European Union in 2021 being exported from Russia.
“The result has been the worst global energy crisis since 1973, driving prices for electricity and gasoline higher around the world. It is a crisis, fundamentally, of inadequate supply. But the scarcity is entirely manufactured,” he wrote.
“Europeans—led by figures like Greta Thunberg and European Green Party leaders, and supported by Americans like John Kerry—believed that a healthy relationship with the Earth requires making energy scarce,” he added. “In service to green ideology, they made the perfect the enemy of the good—and of Ukraine.”
The controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany was halted following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last week, something the Biden administration avoided pressing at the request of Germany despite shutting down construction of the planned Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the U.S. immediately after taking office.
In order to counter Russia’s continued dominance over energy markets, Shellenberger implored Biden to have Germany halt any future shutdowns of nuclear reactors and to have the ones previously shut down turned back on, called on Canada and the U.S. to expand their energy production for increased export to Europe, and argued the U.S. needed to expand the construction of nuclear plants rather than shutting them down.
“Putin’s relentless focus on energy reality has left him in a stronger position than he should ever have been allowed to find himself. It’s not too late for the rest of the West to save the world from tyrannical regimes that have been empowered by our own energy superstitions,” he wrote.
And also, about the miniscule contribution of wind and solar to energize the world today:
Many observations are possible by studying these exhibits. For example, some activists insist that passenger air travel is dangerously warming the planet, and ordinary people should stay home, with flights restricted to essential trips by global elites. A glance at the transportation statistics on slide #2 shows Aviation is only 4% of fossil fuel consumption (12% of 34% FF used for transportation). And aviation includes cargo transport, so passenger travel is a fraction of that.
The bulk of FF transport consumption is Road, meaning cars and trucks, which is why some are demanding electric vehicles be the only means of mobility. Yet a look at slide #6 shows that presently only 10% of electricity comes from Wind, Solar and waste fuels. Furthermore, for all of the investment in wind and solar power, slide #7 shows that so called “green energy”` supplies only 2% of the world’s energy needs.
There’s renewed interest in this interchange between William Happer and David Karoly conducted by The Best Schools in their Civil Global Warming Dialogue. Excerpts below are from William Happer’s Major Statement, which is no longer available. Instead, there is an extensive William Happer Interview on Global Warming from September 7, 2021. The David Karoly Interview is available from Andy May’s website.
William Happer’s Major Statement at the Best Schools Global Warming Dialogue is CO₂ will be a major benefit to the Earth.
Some people claim that increased levels of atmospheric CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming, flooding from rising oceans, spreading tropical diseases, ocean acidification, and other horrors. But these frightening scenarios have almost no basis in genuine science. This Statement reviews facts that have persuaded me that more CO2 will be a major benefit to the Earth.
Discussions of climate today almost always involve fossil fuels. Some people claim that fossil fuels are inherently evil. Quite the contrary, the use of fossil fuels to power modern society gives the average person a standard of living that only the wealthiest could enjoy a few centuries ago. But fossil fuels must be extracted responsibly, minimizing environmental damage from mining and drilling operations, and with due consideration of costs and benefits. Similarly, fossil fuels must be burned responsibly, deploying cost-effective technologies that minimize emissions of real pollutants such as fly ash, carbon monoxide, oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, heavy metals, volatile organic compounds, etc.
Extremists have conflated these genuine environmental concerns with the emission of CO2, which cannot be economically removed from exhaust gases. Calling CO2 a “pollutant” that must be eliminated, with even more zeal than real pollutants, is Orwellian Newspeak.[3] “Buying insurance” against potential climate disasters by forcibly curtailing the use of fossil fuels is like buying “protection” from the mafia. There is nothing to insure against, except the threats of an increasingly totalitarian coalition of politicians, government bureaucrats, crony capitalists, thuggish nongovernmental organizations like Greenpeace, etc.
Figure 1. The ratio, RCO2, of past atmospheric CO2 concentrations to average values (about 300 ppm) of the past few million years, This particular proxy record comes from analyzing the fraction of the rare stable isotope 13C to the dominant isotope 12C in carbonate sediments and paleosols. Other proxies give qualitatively similar results.[
Life on Earth does better with more CO2. CO2 levels are increasing
Fig. 1 summarizes the most important theme of this discussion. It is not true that releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere is a dangerous, unprecedented experiment. The Earth has already “experimented” with much higher CO2 levels than we have today or that can be produced by the combustion of all economically recoverable fossil fuels.
Radiative cooling of the Earth and The Role of Water and Clouds
Without sunlight and only internal heat to keep warm, the Earth’s absolute surface temperature T would be very cold indeed. A first estimate can be made with the celebrated Stefan-Boltzmann formula
J= εσT^4 [Equation 1 ]
where J is the thermal radiation flux per unit of surface area, and the Stefan-Boltzmann constant (originally determined from experimental measurements) has the value σ = 5.67 × 10-8 W/(m2K4). If we use this equation to calculate how warm the surface would have to be to radiate the same thermal energy as the mean solar flux, Js = F/4 = 340 W/m2, we find Ts = 278 K or 5 C, a bit colder than the average temperature (287 K or 14 C) of the Earth’s surface,[19] but “in the ball park.”
Figure 5. The temperature profile of the Earth’s atmosphere.[20] This illustration is for mid-latitudes, like Princeton, NJ, at 40.4o N, where the tropopause is usually at an altitude of about 11 km. The tropopause is closer to 17 km near the equator, and as low as 9 km near the north and south poles.
These estimates can be refined by taking into account the Earth’s atmosphere. In the Interview we already discussed the representative temperature profile, Fig. 5. The famous “blue marble” photograph of the Earth,[21] reproduced in Fig. 6, is also very instructive. Much of the Earth is covered with clouds, which reflect about 30% of sunlight back into space, thereby preventing its absorption and conversion to heat. Rayleigh scattering (which gives the blue color of the daytime sky) also deflects shorter-wavelength sunlight back to space and prevents heating.
Today, whole-Earth images analogous to Fig. 6 are continuously recorded by geostationary satellites, orbiting at the same angular velocity as the Earth, and therefore hovering over nearly the same spot on the equator at an altitude of about 35,800 km.[23] In addition to visible images, which can only be recorded in daytime, the geostationary satellites record images of the thermal radiation emitted both day and night.
Figure 7. Radiation with wavelengths close to the 10.7 µ (1µ = 10-6m), as observed with a geostationary satellite over the western hemisphere of the Earth.[23] This is radiation in the infrared window of Fig. 4, where the surface can radiate directly to space from cloud-free regions.
Fig. 7 shows radiation with wavelengths close to 10.7 µ in the “infrared window” of the absorption spectrum shown in Fig. 4, where there is little absorption from either the main greenhouse gas, H2O, or from less-important CO2.Darker tones in Fig. 7 indicate more intense radiation. The cold “white” cloud tops emit much less radiation than the surface, which is “visible” at cloud-free regions of the Earth. This is the opposite from Fig. 6, where maximum reflected sunlight is coming from the white cloud tops, and much less reflection from the land and ocean, where much of the solar radiation is absorbed and converted to heat.
As one can surmise from Fig. 6 and Fig. 7, clouds are one of the most potent factors that control the surface temperature of the earth. Their effects are comparable to those of the greenhouse gases, H2O and CO2, but it is much harder to model the effects of clouds. Clouds tend to cool the Earth by scattering visible and near-visible solar radiation back to space before the radiation can be absorbed and converted to heat. But clouds also prevent the warm surface from radiating directly to space. Instead, the radiation comes from the cloud tops that are normally cooler than the surface. Low-cloud tops are not much cooler than the surface, so low clouds are net coolers. In Fig. 7, a large area of low clouds can be seen off the coast of Chile. They are only slightly cooler than the surrounding waters of the Pacific Ocean in cloud-free areas.
Figure 8. Spectrally resolved, vertical upwelling thermal radiation I from the Earth, the jagged lines, as observed by a satellite.[28] The smooth, dashed lines are theoretical Planck brightnesses, B, for various temperatures. The vertical units are 1 c.g.s = 1 erg/(s cm2 sr cm-1) = 1 mW/(m2 sr cm-1).
Except at the South Pole, the data of Fig. 8 show that the observed thermal radiation from the Earth is less intense than Planck radiation from the surface would be without greenhouse gases. Although the surface radiation is completely blocked in the bands of the greenhouse gases, as one would expect from Fig. 4, radiation from H2O and CO2 molecules at higher, colder altitudes can escape to space. At the “emission altitude,” which depends on frequency ν, there are not enough greenhouse molecules left overhead to block the escape of radiation. The thermal emission cross section of CO2 molecules at band center is so large that the few molecules in the relatively warm upper stratosphere (see Fig. 5) produce the sharp spikes in the center of the bands of Fig. 8. The flat bottoms of the CO2 bands of Fig 8 are emission from the nearly isothermal lower stratosphere (see Fig. 5) which has a temperature close to 220 K over most of the Earth.
It is hard for H2O molecules to reach cold, higher altitudes, since the molecules condense onto snowflakes or rain drops in clouds. So the H2O emissions to space come from the relatively warm and humid troposphere, and they are only moderately less intense than the Planck brightness of the surface. CO2 molecules radiate to space from the relatively dry and cold lower stratosphere. So for most latitudes, the CO2 band observed from space has much less intensity than the Planck brightness of the surface.
Concentrations of H2O vapor can be quite different at different locations on Earth. A good example is the bottom panel of Fig. 8, the thermal radiation from the Antarctic ice sheet, where almost no H2O emission can be seen. There, most of the water vapor has been frozen onto the ice cap, at a temperature of around 190 K. Near both the north and south poles there is a dramatic wintertime inversion[30] of the normal temperature profile of Fig. 5. The ice surface becomes much colder than most of the troposphere and lower stratosphere.
Cloud tops in the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) can reach the tropopause and can be almost as cold as the Antarctic ice sheet. The spectral distribution of cloud-top radiation from the ITCZ looks very similar to cloud-free radiation from the Antarctic ice, shown on the bottom panel of Fig. 8.
Convection
Radiation, which we have discussed above, is an important part of the energy transfer budget of the earth, but not the only part. More solar energy is absorbed in the tropics, near the equator, where the sun beats down nearly vertically at noon, than at the poles where the noontime sun is low on the horizon, even at midsummer, and where there is no sunlight at all in the winter. As a result, more visible and near infrared solar radiation (“short-wave radiation” or SWR) is absorbed in the tropics than is radiated back to space as thermal radiation (“long-wave radiation” or LWR). The opposite situation prevails near the poles, where thermal radiation releases more energy to space than is received by sunlight. Energy is conserved because the excess solar energy from the tropics is carried to the poles by warm air currents, and to a lesser extent, by warm ocean currents. The basic physics is sketched in Fig. 11.[35]
Figure 11. Most sunlight is absorbed in the tropics, and some of the heat energy is carried by air currents to the polar regions to be released back into space as thermal radiation. Along with energy, angular momentum — imparted to the air from the rotating Earth’s surface near the equator — is transported to higher northern and southern latitudes, where it is reabsorbed by the Earth’s surface. The Hadley circulation near the equator is largely driven by buoyant forces on warm, solar-heated air, but for mid latitudes the “Coriolis force” due to the rotation of the earth leads to transport of energy and angular momentum through slanted “baroclinic eddies.” Among other consequences of the conservation of angular momentum are the easterly trade winds near the equator and the westerly winds at mid latitudes.
Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity
If increasing CO2 causes very large warming, harm can indeed be done. But most studies suggest that warmings of up to 2 K will be good for the planet,[38] extending growing seasons, cutting winter heating bills, etc. We will denote temperature differences in Kelvin (K) since they are exactly the same as differences in Celsius (C). A temperature change of 1 K = 1 C is equal to a change of 1.8 Fahrenheit (F).
If a 50% increase of CO2 were to increase the temperature by 3.4 K, as in Arrhenius’s original estimate mentioned above, the doubling sensitivity would be S = 3.4 K/log2(1.5) = 5.8 K. Ten years later, on page 53 of his popular book, Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe,[40] Arrhenius again states the logarithmic law of warming, with a slightly smaller climate sensitivity, S = 4 K.
Convection of the atmosphere, water vapor, and clouds all interact in a complicated way with the change of CO2 to give the numerical value of the doubling sensitivity S of Eq. (21). Remarkably, Arrhenius somehow guessed the logarithmic dependence on CO2 concentration before Planck’s discovery of how thermal radiation really works.
More than a century after Arrhenius, and after the expenditure of many tens of billions of dollars on climate science, the official value of S still differs little from the guess that Arrhenius made in 1912: S = 4 K.
Could it be that the climate establishment does not want to work itself out of a job?
Overestimate of Sensitivity
Contrary to the predictions of most climate models, there has been very little warming of the Earth’s surface over the last two decades. The discrepancy between models and observations issummarized by Fyfe, Gillett, and Zwiers, as shown in the Fyfe Fig.1 above.
At this writing, more than 50 mechanisms have been proposed to explain the discrepancy of Fyfe Fig.1. These range from aerosol cooling to heat absorption by the ocean. Some of the more popular excuses for the discrepancy have been summarized by Fyfe, et al. But the most straightforward explanation for the discrepancy between observations and models is that the doubling sensitivity, which most models assume to be close to the “most likely” IPCC value, S = 3 K, is much too large.
If one assumes negligible feedback, where other properties of the atmosphere change little in response to additions of CO2, the doubling efficiency can be estimated to be about S = 1 K, for example, as we discussed in connection with Eq. (19). The much larger doubling sensitivities claimed by the IPCC, which look increasingly dubious with each passing year, are due to “positive feedbacks.” A favorite positive feedback is the assumption that water vapor will be lofted to higher, colder altitudes by the addition of more CO2, thereby increasing the effective opacity of the vapor. Changes in cloudiness can also provide either positive feedback which increases S or negative feedback which decreases S. The simplest interpretation of the discrepancy of Fig. 13 and Fig. 14 is that the net feedback is small and possibly even negative. Recent work by Harde indicates a doubling sensitivity of S = 0.6 K.[46]
Figure 17. The analysis of satellite observations by Dr. Randall J. Donohohue and co-workers[53] shows a clear greening of the earth from the modest increase of CO2 concentrations from about 340 ppm to 400 ppm from the year 1982 to 2010. The greening is most pronounced in arid areas where increased CO2 levels diminish the water requirement of plants.
Benefits of CO2
More CO2 in the atmosphere will be good for life on planet earth. Few realize that the world has been in a CO2 famine for millions of years — a long time for us, but a passing moment in geological history. Over the past 550 million years since the Cambrian, when abundant fossils first appeared in the sedimentary record, CO2 levels have averaged many thousands of parts per million (ppm), not today’s few hundred ppm, which is not that far above the minimum level, around 150 ppm, when many plants die of CO2 starvation.
All green plants grow faster with more atmospheric CO2. It is found that the growth rate is approximately proportional to the square root of the CO2 concentrations, so the increase in CO2 concentrations from about 300 ppm to 400 ppm over the past century should have increased growth rates by a factor of about √(4/3) = 1.15, or 15%. Most crop yields have increased by much more than 15% over the past century. Better crop varieties, better use of fertilizer, better water management, etc., have all contributed. But the fact remains that a substantial part of the increase is due to more atmospheric CO2.
But the nutritional value of additional CO2 is only part of its benefit to plants. Of equal or greater importance, more CO2 in the atmosphere makes plants more drought-resistant. Plant leaves are perforated by stomata, little holes in the gas-tight surface skin that allow CO2 molecules to diffuse from the outside atmosphere into the moist interior of the leaf where they are photosynthesized into carbohydrates.
In the course of evolution, land plants have developed finely tuned feedback mechanisms that allow them to grow leaves with more stomata in air that is poor in CO2, like today, or with fewer stomata for air that is richer in CO2, as has been the case over most of the geological history of land plants.[51] If the amount of CO2 doubles in the atmosphere, plants reduce the number of stomata in newly grown leaves by about a factor of two. With half as many stomata to leak water vapor, plants need about half as much water. Satellite observations like those of Fig. 17 from R.J. Donohue, et al.,[52] have shown a very pronounced “greening” of the Earth as plants have responded to the modest increase of CO2 from about 340 ppm to 400 ppm during the satellite era. More greening and greater agricultural yields can be expected as CO2 concentrations increase further.
Climate Science
Droughts, floods, heat waves, cold snaps, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, and other weather- and climate-related events will complicate our life on Earth, no matter how many laws governments pass to “stop climate change.” But if we understand these phenomena, and are able to predict them, they will be much less damaging to human society. So I strongly support high-quality research on climate and related fields like oceanography, geology, solar physics, etc. Especially important are good measurement programs like the various satellite measurements of atmospheric temperature[59] or the Argo[60] system of floating buoys that is revolutionizing our understanding of ocean currents, temperature, salinity, and other important properties.
But too much “climate research” money is pouring into very questionable efforts, like mitigation of the made-up horrors mentioned above. It reminds me of Gresham’s Law: “Bad money drives out good.”[61] The torrent of money showered on scientists willing to provide rationales, however shoddy, for the war on fossil fuels, and cockamamie mitigation schemes for non-existent problems, has left insufficient funding for honest climate science.
Summary
The Earth is in no danger from increasing levels of CO2. More CO2 will be a major benefit to the biosphere and to humanity. Some of the reasons are:
As shown in Fig. 1, much higher CO2 levels than today’s prevailed over most last 550 million years of higher life forms on Earth. Geological history shows that the biosphere does better with more CO2.
As shown in Fig. 13 and Fig. 14, observations over the past two decades show that the warming predicted by climate models has been greatly exaggerated. The temperature increase for doubling CO2 levels appears to be close to the feedback-free doubling sensitivity of S =1 K, and much less than the “most likely” value S = 3 K promoted by the IPCC and assumed in most climate models.
As shown in Fig. 12, if CO2 emissions continue at levels comparable to those today, centuries will be needed for the added CO2 to warm the Earth’s surface by 2 K, generally considered to be a safe and even beneficial amount.
Over the past tens of millions of years, the Earth has been in a CO2 famine with respect to the optimal levels for plants, the levels that have prevailed over most of the geological history of land plants. There was probably CO2 starvation of some plants during the coldest periods of recent ice ages. As shown in Fig. 15–17, more atmospheric CO2 will substantially increase plant growth rates and drought resistance.
There is no reason to limit the use of fossil fuels because they release CO2 to the atmosphere. However, fossil fuels do need to be mined, transported, and burned with cost-effective controls of real environmental problems — for example, fly ash, oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, volatile organic compounds, groundwater contamination, etc.
Sometime in the future, perhaps by the year 2050 when most of the original climate crusaders will have passed away, historians will write learned papers on how it was possible for a seemingly enlightened civilization of the early 21st century to demonize CO2, much as the most “Godly” members of society executed unfortunate “witches” in earlier centuries.
Dr. William Happer Background: Co-Founder and current Director of the CO2 Coalition, Dr. William Happer, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics at Princeton University, is a specialist in modern optics, optical and radiofrequency spectroscopy of atoms and molecules, radiation propagation in the atmosphere, and spin-polarized atoms and nuclei.
From September 2018 to September 2019, Dr. Happer served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director of Emerging Technologies on the National Security Council.
He has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in 1966, an Alexander von Humboldt Award in 1976, the 1997 Broida Prize and the 1999 Davisson-Germer Prize of the American Physical Society, and the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award in 2000.
Footnote on History of Debates on Global Warming/Climate Change see:
For a brief moment, Congress seemed united. Then came everything else
“We oppose authoritarianism!” our pundits all cry, before tuning in to watch the American president thunder like a god in front of a room full of clapping animatronic courtiers.
Yes, it is State of the Union season here in America, our most North Korean of political traditions. And while hating on the annual address has become so commonplace as to be almost trite, it’s still difficult not to seethe at the entire imperial spectacle. Remember when Congressman Joe Wilson dared to interrupt a SOTU by shouting “You lie!” after Barack Obama lied about his health reform plan? Wilson was promptly hauled off to a CIA black site, while cable news mandarins shrieked about the end of decorum, civility, life as we knew it.
Still, the State of the Union has admittedly gotten better in recent years. From Wilson’s blasphemy to Nancy Pelosi tearing up Donald Trump’s speech, the possibility of democracy breaking out at one of these things has improved. And so this year we dared to dream. Would Congressman Paul Gosar lunge anime-style towards the podium? Would a Blazing Saddles-style food fight break out over the child tax credit?
Actually, this State of the Union began by looking like it might be even more unified than all the others put together. Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, all came together to stand under a single flag — not ours but Ukraine’s. The beginning of Biden’s speech was less State of the Union than State of the Western World, as he lashed out at Vladimir Putin’s inhuman aggression with the most strident rhetoric any president had applied to a dictator since George W. Bush had a go at Saddam Hussein.
The ghost of 2003 was present and accounted for. “When dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos,” Biden declared. Elsewhere, he referred to the “battle of democracies and autocracies,” exactly the sort of sweeping binary we became accustomed to under Bush 43. Biden did make clear that he wouldn’t send American forces to fight and die in Ukraine, but his rhetoric was still strikingly hawkish.
And it worked: lawmakers clapped and cheered and waved Ukrainian flags.
Then, just as the House chamber was bursting with bonhomie, just as it seemed like even the stone-faced Supreme Court justices might spring up and start ululating Eastern European war chants, a needle scratched against a record. It was on to Biden’s domestic agenda, and the usual fault lines of American politics cracked back open. The American Rescue Plan Act was praised without ever acknowledging the inflation it fed. More electric car charging stations were promised in spite of the strains they’ll create on the power grid. Tax credits were pledged to help weatherize homes even though Barack Obama was supposed to have gotten that done a decade ago.
Biden’s Democratic Party is a self-perpetuating machine: massive amounts of money are spent on problems that don’t get solved which justifies the spending of massive amounts of more money.
So it went Tuesday evening. And in true imperial fashion, no one was allowed to point this out, argue back. (I’m not counting the funeral-home “opposition response,” which can never be won, only survived. And for what it’s worth, I think Governor Kim Reynolds did survive, painting Biden as a 1970s redux and giving airtime to simmering parent anger over education.)
That’s not to say Biden’s speech was entirely devoid of fresh ideas. His plan to fight inflation by strengthening manufacturing seems like a red herring from the real problem of government spending, but it was still interesting. His Made in America agenda occasionally sounds a bit Trumpy. His promise to fund the police was evidence that Democrats are at least trying to move on from their colic phase of 2020. And we shouldn’t sell short that heartfelt support for the people of Ukraine. If Americans can’t agree on much, they can at least agree on this: a nation should never invade another sovereign nation. Period. Fin. Tie it with a bow.
It’s a fine principle and one we’d come to take for granted. Still, it wasn’t enough to save the rest of the hour-long king’s speech. Biden’s presidency is broken, yes, but so is the format of the ritual he partook in. And given that some members of Congress are probably still standing in the House chamber applauding, I doubt it’s going to be fixed anytime soon.
As reported previously, Arctic ice extents are solid in most seas, but continue to fluctuate at the margins. Notably in 2022, ice extents broke the 15M km2 threshold on Feb. 28, whereas the 16-year average falls short of that even in March. It also exceeds the 2021 annual March maximum by 175k km2.
Note the much higher extent this year: 160k km2 greater than the average, and 342k km2 more than 2021. Somehow SII (Sea Ice Index) lost 200k km2 in the last 3 days.
The table below shows ice extents in the seas comprising the Arctic, comparing 2022 day 059 with the same day average over the last 16 years and with 2021.
Region
2022059
Day 59 Average
2022-Ave.
2021059
2022-2021
(0) Northern_Hemisphere
15048826
14889681
159145
14706367
342459
(1) Beaufort_Sea
1070776
1070283
493
1070689
87
(2) Chukchi_Sea
966006
965332
674
966006
0
(3) East_Siberian_Sea
1087137
1087104
34
1087120
17
(4) Laptev_Sea
897827
897836
-10
897827
0
(5) Kara_Sea
927636
926141
1495
935006
-7370
(6) Barents_Sea
742200
624652
117548
743724
-1524
(7) Greenland_Sea
623943
610430
13513
607006
16937
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence
1807904
1499912
307991
1286025
521879
(9) Canadian_Archipelago
854685
853241
1444
854597
88
(10) Hudson_Bay
1260903
1260384
519
1260471
432
(11) Central_Arctic
3247959
3211583
36376
3191259
56699
(12) Bering_Sea
649668
664978
-15310
605478
44189
(13) Baltic_Sea
62334
100387
-38053
100347
-38013
(14) Sea_of_Okhotsk
824154
1074030
-249876
1080692
-256538
The table shows that 2022 ice extent exceeds 2021 by 342k km2 at this date. Surpluses are sizeable in Baffin and Barents, more than offsetting an Okhotsk deficit.
Polar Bear on Ice in Baffin Bay Between Baffin Island and Greenland
The next two weeks will be interesting. The average year in the last sixteen gained about 100k km2 from now to mid March. But the variability ranged from 2015 losing 300K while some other years gained 400k km2. And since 2016, only 2020 broke the 15M km2 ceiling. What will the ice do this year?
The media output currently befits the bard’s description “full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.” Resonating with me is an article by Terry Paulding at American Thinker It’s Ukraine gaslighting time! Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
They’re all scrambling, visibly uncomfortable, all the pundits coming on all the talk shows on cable news, contradicting one another and stepping on one another’s narrative. The hosts have become so used to having a storyline to parrot that they can’t stand it. They’re practically begging to be told the “right” tack to take! But Ukraine/Russia isn’t following a path that anybody predicted.
Biden and his administration are no help at all, given he’s the one who practically invited Russia to come on in, then got upset about it. It’s not clearwhetherwe’re heading into WW3, watching a mild skirmish that will end soon, whetherPutin has lost his marbles or is being crafty and smart, or helping “free” some break-away sections of the country. It’s not clear whetherZelensky is an installed puppet (apparently by the WEF) or the brave patriot he’s currently appearing to be, ready to stand and fight for his country.
The various retired U.S. military generals and other “experts” making the talk show rounds aren’t helping. One lays out the scenario that restricting Russia from the SWIFT banking system will break Putin. Another demands we set up a no-fly zone. Yet another says it’s all historical — that the whole thing started before the year 1000, and we just don’t understand. Another says since Ukraine was in bed with Hitler in WW2, it’s still a hotbed of Nazi sentiment, and Putin is just weeding that out at long last.
We’re told that some of the border provinces are “more Russian than Ukrainian.” We see that the populace is arming itself, picking up guns from local police stations, and there may be a guerrilla war to come. We watch in horror as a tank tramples a car, then we learn — maybe — that it was not a deliberate action. We are also told that the Russian soldiers really don’t want to kill civilians, then we see the bombed-out apartment building. We learn that Russia captured an airfield…but maybe the Ukrainians took it back.
Then someone mentions that when asked to give up their nukes years ago, it’s possible Ukraine hid some at Chernobyl. After all, what better place to keep them? Then we learn that Russia took over that site, and now there is a massive upsurge in detected radiation from it. Um…about that — what’s going on?
Image: Ukraine street scene. YouTube screen grab.
We don’t know what it all means, but it makes us all profoundly uncomfortable. Do we have sympathy for the underdog Ukrainians, when we also know they have a pretty crooked society (think Hunter Biden and Burisma)? Or do we have a little sympathy for Putin, who, after all, has been a relatively mild autocrat in Russia for many years? Or do we heed the rumors that he’s losing it mentally as Biden is?
Then there’s Biden, who has exhibited so profound a lack of leadership that he even bragged intelligence to the Chinese — who turned around and shared it with Putin. Biden has clearly got no idea of a path forward. First, he agreed to Nord Stream, then he did an about-face. He stripped us of the ability to take care of our own energy needs and has been buying from Russia. Therefore, he’s monetarily supporting Russia in its foray against Ukraine, all the while impoverishing the U.S. — not to mention he appears to want to defend Ukraine’s borders but couldn’t care less about our own.
Am I confused? Heck, yeah. Who wouldn’t be? I long for the clarity of someone like Ric Grenell and the strength and knowledge (yes, knowledge) of how to proceed that I’d get from Donald Trump (we wouldn’t be watching war, of course, if he was in charge).
I long for a country that gets its head out of its nether regions, puts the current administration on administrative leave (without pay), and brings back some sanity. I know that will never happen, sadly.
I can read a hundred different stories online. Can, if I want, attend a passionate rally of Ukrainian-Americans in San Francisco, and yell and scream my protest. I know I can go to RT News and get its propaganda. Really, what’s most interesting there is that the comments aren’t censored at all, unlike here in the repressive USA. Not that there’s any unanimity of opinion there, either, but it does make one think.
In the meantime, the story has conveniently supplanted obsessing over COVID. Too bad it won’t supplant inflation, albeit the escalating price at the gas pump will now be conveniently blamed on this war. That’s one storyline, at least, that the leftist cable stations can all agree to push on us as if it were true.
The Crowded Road to Kyiv
Land mines don’t seem to be a factor on the ground in Ukraine, but the media landscape is full of them, planted by legacy broadcasters. Victor Davis Hanson puts up some warning signs in his American Greatness article The Crowded Road to Kyiv Some examples in italics with my bolds.
One of the oddest commentaries about the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the boilerplate reaction that “borders can’t change in modern Europe” or “this does not happen in the 21st century.”
But why in the world should the 21st century be exempt from the pathologies of the past 20 centuries? Are we smarter than the Romans? More innovative than the Florentines? Do we have more savvy leaders than Lincoln or Churchill? Are they more mellifluous than Demosthenes? Does anyone now remember that some 130,000 were slaughtered just 30 years ago in the former Yugoslavia, as NATO planes bombed Belgrade and nuclear America and Russia almost squared off?
Has globalization, the “rules-based order,” the Davos reset elite, the “international community” so improved the very way humans think that they have rendered obsolete the now ossified ancient idea of deterrence?
Will the Kardashians and Beyoncé tweet our pathway to global peace?
So, to the degree Putin believes in a cost-to-benefit analysis that any envisioned invasion will prove profitable, he will invade anywhere he feels the odds favor his agenda. And when he does not—if America or NATO offers a deterrent, if oil is plentiful and cheap, and if Western leaders are sober and strong rather than loud and weak—he will not so gamble. It’s really that simple. Feed Putin a hand, and he will gobble a torso.
Still, the Russians may, we hope, have a hard time of it in Ukraine—if for no other reason than the country is larger than Iraq in both size and population. It has lots of supply conduits across the borders with four NATO countries that can finally begin pouring in weaponry. An invader that cannot stop resupply from third-party neighbors can rarely subdue its target.
So if in a week Putin cannot shock and awe the elite or decapitate the government, he will have a hard time subduing the population. Time is not on his side. Sanctions are worthless in the short term but eventually they can bite.
A couple of questions for Joe Biden: Before he took office, was the United States begging Russia to sell it more oil? After he took office, why was it?
Why did Biden blow-up energy independence? Could not tomorrow Biden reverse course, greenlight the Keystone pipeline, reverse his mindless opposition to the EastMed pipeline that would help allies Cyprus, Greece, and Israel to help other allies in southern Europe, and throw open new federal leasing to supply exports of liquid natural gas to Europe?
What is moral, and what amoral: alienating Bernie Sanders and the squad or keeping our allies and ourselves safe from foreign attack? What is so ethical about following the green advice of billionaires like global jet-setter John Kerry at the expense of the middling classes who cannot afford to drive their cars or warm their living rooms?
All this and more have eroded the global fear of the U.S. military. We have all but destroyed American trust in our own armed forces (only 45 percent of the Americans poll great confidence in the military). The woke threat is in addition to spiraling pensions and social justice overhead that make the defense budget lean on actual defense readiness. Enemies did not erode our military’sonce feared deterrence, our own top military and civilian leadership did. Time is short, enemies numerous. Can we find any brave soul who will restore the military?
But we also are mired in $30 trillion in debt.We print $2 trillion a year in mockery of inflation. Our major cities are crime-ridden and the streets medieval with the homeless and sidewalk sewers. Race relations are the worst in memory.
We have no southern border. Nearly 50 million residents were not born in our country—and this challenge at a time when we have given up on assimilation and integration. The woke virus has warped racial and ethnic relations and is destroying the idea of meritocracy. We are in the hold of a Jacobin madness, in a top-down elite race to perdition. To praise America’s past is a thought crime. The ignorant, who have no idea of the date when the Civil War began, nonetheless lecture to the nodding that 1619 not 1776 was America’s real foundational date.
So what is NATO? In truth, 25 or so of the 30 nation members are defenseless. They rely on the United States to protect them from enemies in their own backyard. Only the NATO nuclear monopolies of Britain and France offer a deterrent umbrella over both NATO and the EU—on the quiet assurance that a far bigger nuclear American umbrella covers all of them.
We should simply ask those who will meet their promised military commitments to stay, and the others to go quietly in peace and follow the Swiss model. Why are there any U.S. combat troops in Germany? Are they there to protect the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russian attack? To reward Germany for spending less than two percent on defense?
For five years Americans were obsessed not just with Putin, but the left-wing myth that Russians were under all our beds—the tattooed, gap-toothed cruddy villains of Hollywood movies, the supposed Satanic colluders of the Steele dossier, the nefarious bankers who stealthily communicated at night with the White House. So we voluntarily gave up the old Russian triangulation card when we once played dictatorial China off against dictatorial Russia. The Kissingerian principle dictated that neither of the two should ever become closer to one another than either is to us. We gave all that up and instead hung on every word for two years of Bob Mueller, James Comey, and the lunatics at CNN.
Meanwhile, China birthed, and hid the origins of, a virus that destroyed the U.S. economy and undermined our entire culture. Thousands of Chinese are here mostly to aid in expropriating U.S. technical expertise. Add in the Uighurs and the now vanquished Tibet, and China outdoes even Putin in its human rights atrocities. If Ukraine falls, Taiwan will be the third nation that the West “lost” during the Biden Administration.
“As the West fell into a hypnotic trance about healing its relationship with nature, averting climate apocalypse and worshiping a teenager named Greta, Vladimir Putin made his moves,” he wrote, referencing teen climate change activist Greta Thunberg and noting that Putin expanded nuclear energy and oil production in Russia while western countries obsessed over “carbon footprints.”
Then, just as the House chamber was bursting with bonhomie, just as it seemed like even the stone-faced Supreme Court justices might spring up and start ululating Eastern European war chants, a needle scratched against a record. It was on to Biden’s domestic agenda, and the usual fault lines of American politics cracked back open. The American Rescue Plan Act was praised without ever acknowledging the inflation it fed. More electric car charging stations were promised in spite of the strains they’ll create on the power grid. Tax credits were pledged to help weatherize homes even though Barack Obama was supposed to have gotten that done a decade ago.
Science Matters 