Month: June 2023

Now Can We Stop the Blame Game?

Posted on by Ron Clutz

See Also Virtue Signaling Is a Vicious Circle

One key to understanding much of the bewildering behavior we see around us is to recognize the power and popularity of “virtue signaling.” Keeping virtue signaling in mind will help you understand a lot of behavior that otherwise makes no sense.

What, for example, is the point of removing Confederate statues or attempting to disown the country’s Founding Fathers because some were slave owners? It makes sense if your objective is to be sanctimonious. You make yourself feel better by looking down your nose at Thomas Jefferson.

Virtue signaling is the modern version of what St. Augustine in the 5th century referred to as “outward signs of inward grace.” A major difference, however, is the kind of grace he referred to actually meant something.

A precondition to needing to virtue signal is guilt. Virtue signaling is one of the left’s package deals that typically involve two steps. Firstly, make people who have done nothing wrong feel guilty. Then, offer them ways to assuage that guilt. It’s little more than a con game but it has worked amazingly well for social revolutionaries.

It always helps to keep in mind that everything is relative. In order to feel superior, you need something to feel superior to. Virtuous relative to what? In order to feel holier than thou you need a thou.

Does virtue signaling accomplish anything outside of the individual? Anything tangible, significant? Any activity as widespread and long-lasting as virtue signaling has to have payoffs. The payoffs for virtue signaling are inner, not outer, directed.

An irony is that the need to virtue signal is an insecurity about your own virtue. An observation a psychologist friend likes to make is, “The bigger the front, the bigger the back.” Or as Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, “The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.” Virtue signaling is motivated more by insecurities than virtue.

 

 

 

Insurers Playing the Climate Card

Posted on by Ron Clutz

You’re probably seeing headlines like this one from The Hill Insurers pull back as US climate catastrophes intensify.   H/T Mark Krebs.  As usual, the Climate Card is a coverup for others who really are to blame for losses.  The linked article starts to look under the carpet, and I will dig deeper in this post.

Firstly, they label weather events as climate castastrophes in order to blame them on everyone else.  

From The Hill:

This month Farmers Insurance announced that it will no longer write new property insurance policies in Florida, citing “catastrophe costs … at historically high levels.” AIG also recently stopped issuing policies along the Sunshine State’s hurricane-vulnerable coastline.

State Farm, meanwhile, said in May, that it would impose a moratorium on new policies in California due to “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure.”

Mark Friedlander, director of corporate communications at the Insurance Information Institute, said that dozens of firms have reduced their presence in Louisiana, including 50 that have stopped writing new policies in the state’s hurricane-prone parishes.

Then in the article details, there are other factors causing claims, including bad governance

He noted that while Farmers made headlines, it’s the 15th insurer to stop writing new policies in Florida in the last 18 months. Although most of those companies have not pulled out of the state outright, he added, three have.

“Insurers are in many ways the first movers” in response to trends like extreme weather and natural disasters, Keys said. “They have a significant amount of money at stake, so they’re very exposed to the downside.”

Florida is in a unique position, Friedlander said, because of a combination of high fraud rates and widespread litigation, which both compound the cost of insurance on top of the climate risks. A state law enacted this year creates a backstop for property insurance in hopes of alleviating some costs, but it’s not yet clear how effectively it will counteract those factors, which have been building for years.

“The difference is in California and Louisiana, [insurance costs are] primarily climate-driven,” he said. “They don’t have the manmade factors we have here in Florida.”

“There isn’t an equivalent for wildfires in California, so the risks in California are borne much more directly. [Note:  Refers to California wildfires, which are uniquely a problem in that woke state which refuses to apply forestry management best practices.]

Insurance Industry Intends to Leverage Climate Fear

“The industry’s taking the approach now of what’s called predict and prevent, meaning being proactive to address climate risk and make sure insurance coverage reflects that and make sure homes and business take preventative action,” Friedlander told The Hill.

Keys also noted that the decisions don’t mean the insurers will never write policies or operate in the state again. Rather, he said, they should be understood as a way for insurers to negotiate, both on what they can charge in premiums and what factors they can weigh.

“It’s not that [insurers] don’t want to do business in your state, it’s that [they]
don’t want to do business at the current premiums [they] can charge.” 

Soaring School Insurance Costs Show How This Works

From Education Week Schools’ Insurance Costs Are Soaring—And Climate Change Isn’t the Only Reason.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

School districts are just like homeowners, renters, drivers, and small businesses—they need insurance, even as it’s become prohibitively expensive.

The 900-student Davis district in southern Oklahoma spent $61,000, or roughly $68 per student, on liability insurance for the 2019-20 school year. Last school year, the cost for the same coverage was $150,000, or $167 per student.  Next school year, it’ll be $261,000, or $290 per student. That’s a 328 percent jump just in two years.

Why is the cost of insurance rising so precipitously? Several factors provide clues.

For one, climate change is causing more frequent natural disasters that affect school district operations and require insurance companies to pay out. And it’s not only districts in hard-hit areas that see higher premiums as a result.

Districts’ coverage costs are increasingly determined by what’s happening nationally, not just in their own communities, said Kelli Hanson, executive director of the Schools Insurance Group, which provides insurance to schools in California.

“The more hurricanes we have in Florida, we’re impacted. The more flooding in the Midwest, we’re impacted,” Hanson said.  [Cashing in on Climate?]

Meanwhile, new laws allowing more lawsuits over sexual abuse are putting school districts in an unflattering legal spotlight—while also contributing to higher insurance premiums because of the added legal liability. In California, for instance, a new law passed in 2019 dramatically extends the statute of limitations for plaintiffs to sue over child sexual abuse, including in schools.

The growing frequency of cybercrimes is another factor putting districts at risk. The Shanksville-Stonycreek district in southwestern Pennsylvania saw cybersecurity insurance costs triple after a hacker got access to some of the district’s files in 2019, said Sidney Clark, the district’s business manager and board secretary.

And some districts have adopted controversial policies that are alienating their providers altogether. In Iowa, at least two districts nearly lost insurance coverage recently after they announced that they would be allowing teachers to carry guns on campus. After consulting with other providers who also wouldn’t commit to coverage, both districts have since nixed the policy.

In Oklahoma, one of two main providers of school property and casualty insurance shut down during the pandemic. As a result, Moring said, he has no choice but to sign up with the Oklahoma School Insurance Group (OSIG), no matter what its coverage plan looks like.

In turn, OSIG has struggled to keep rates down for the hundreds of districts in its membership, said Rick Thomas, a retired superintendent who has served as OSIG’s executive director for the last school year.

Over the last three years, Thomas said, OSIG has raised from $14 million to $30 million the amount of money it pays out to districts directly before seeking reimbursement from re-insurers—external companies that charge higher premiums.

School districts aren’t entirely powerless to stop insurance costs from swelling. In many cases, providers want to see that districts are proactively preparing for the unlikeliest scenarios.

Schools with safety plans with details on how they’ll deal with wildfires—what they’re doing to keep shrubbery away from buildings, how they’ll evacuate if necessary, for instance—are more likely to receive favorable insurance coverage, Hanson said.

Background from Previous Post Banking on Climate Alarm

The media are again amping up claims of bad weather to be feared from “climate change.” It is Whack-A-Mole time again, so here is a complete debunking of such media reports, compiled to refute a particularly bad speech by Mark Carney Governor of the Bank of England. H/T Friends of Science

Fact Checking Mark Carney’s Climate Claims is a useful reference document written by Steven Kopits of Princeton Energy Advisors. A few examples below show his systematic dismantling of the alarmist narrative by referencing publically available sources, many of them on government or corporate sites.

Temperatures Rising


We do have long-time series data for Central England, extending back to 1772. To the extent this measurement is reliable and can be extrapolated to hemispheric averages, it shows a step-up of about 1 deg Celsius from 1980 to 2005, which supports Governor Carney’s assertions. On other hand, it also shows a drop of 0.5 deg Celsius from 2005 to the present—which does not.

Sea Levels

As with just about every other metric the Governor mentions, we have data. Sea level is measured by tide gauges, and also by satellites. Satellite measurements suggest that sea level has been rising steadily by roughly 3 mm / year, which equates to about 1 foot per century.

Weather-related Insurance Losses

SOURCE: MUNICH RE NATCAT SERVICE

Hurricanes account for 75% of catastrophic losses, with typhoons representing an additional 8%. Thus, hurricanes and typhoons represent $6 of every $7 paid out in ‘top ten’ catastrophic weather-related insurance claims.

And this in turn tells us a great deal about the nature of insurance. Where do insured hurricane losses occur? Principally in the United States. Where do insured typhoon losses occur? Principally in Japan and Taiwan. Why these places? Because all of these are wealthy countries. Hurricane and typhoon losses will be greater where there is, first, a concentration of physical assets, and second, where those assets are valuable. In other words, in the advanced countries exposed to hurricanes and typhoons.

In this, no country is more exposed than the United States. Of overall losses due to top ten catastrophic weather events, nearly 2/3 occurred in the United States alone.

Insured Weather-related Losses

SOURCE: MUNICH RE NATCAT SERVICE

Indeed, if we restrict this to insured losses (including floods and tornadoes), the US accounts for 84% by itself.  Thus, if we are speaking of insured weather-related losses, as a practical matter we are speaking of hurricane damage in the US.  The rest is largely incidental.  For example, Superstorm Sandy caused more insured losses in one event than the cumulative and collective top ten catastrophic, weather-related losses from Europe, China, and Japan since 1980.  And Sandy was only the second worst insurance event in recent times. 

Now, why are US losses so great? Is it due to the number or strength of storms making landfall in the United States?

GLOBAL HURRICANE FREQUENCY SOURCE: RYAN MAUE

In fact, there is no such pattern discernible in the data. Indeed, the last few years have seen fewer than average hurricanes globally, with a recovery to up-cycle numbers in the last year or so.

Rather, reinsurance data hints at the source of losses: higher payouts for assets in harm’s way. 

INSURED LOSSES AS A PERCENT OF OVERALL LOSSES, TOP TEN LISTS, 1980-2014 SOURCE: MUNICH RE NATCAT SERVICE

Further, more and more expensive assets are exposed to hurricanes in particular.  In the US, for example, ever more people are living on the coasts, and beach front property has become prized and expensive.  One need only look out the window on a flight approaching Miami International Airport to be appalled at the sheer concertation of high-end housing built just above sea level on islands dotting Florida’s Atlantic Coast.   How long until a hurricane wipes a good number of these off their foundations?  And what kind of insurance losses will that involve?

Indeed, an examination of catastrophic losses suggests a decisive role for government policy.  Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed New Orleans in 2005, represents alone more than one-quarter of all insured top ten losses globally since 1980.  In just one event. 

The article goes on to deal with other claims regarding Floods, Droughts, Tornadoes, and Wildfires before reaching this conclusion.

Summing Up

In his speech to London’s insurance community, Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, asserted a series of claims about climate change. Some of these are widely accepted. The climate does change. The world has warmed. Atmospheric CO2 has increased, half of the increment due to human activities.

Beyond this, there is no consensus, and indeed, the available data in many cases directly refutes the Governor’s more extreme assertions. There is no consensus that humans are the primary drivers of climate change. As we can see, sea levels, for example, were rising well before the 1950s date Carney gives as the start of modern anthropogenic warming.

Importantly, the increase in losses since the 1980s is more likely to reflect expanded insurance coverage, increasing payouts as a percent of losses incurred, and an increased number of assets with higher values placed in harm’s way. Losses increases have not occurred due to increases in hurricane, tornado, flooding, drought or fire frequency or strength, at least not in the United States, which represents the lion’s share of insurance claims. In many cases, either frequency or intensity of weather-related events has actually declined. Sea level rise has not accelerated, not as measured by either satellites or tide gauges. Sea level has been rising for well over 100 years, and continues on that pace.

Like so many other economists, Governor Carney seems to operate under the assumption that current CO2 levels are just on the edge of some catastrophic acceleration. For some reason, 320 ppm of atmospheric CO2 is safe, but 540 ppm is not, because there is some precipice—an inflection point or boundary—between here and there. The limit is not 1,000 ppm, or 5,000 ppm, or 42,448 ppm, but right here, right now. A little more CO2, a trace more of a harmless trace gas, and we are doomed.

The climate is complex and the future uncertain. It is possible the worst fears may prove correct. Nevertheless, such an assertion is not supported by the historical data, not for US droughts, floods, tornados, hurricanes or fires. But it does show up. In politics. If sea levels were 20 cm higher in New York and this contributed to the damage from Superstorm Sandy, well, any middling analyst could have predicted the rise back in 1940, just as we can predict today that sea levels will be one foot higher a century hence. The failure was not of CO2 emissions, but squarely a failure of governance. And that goes doubly so for the fate of New Orleans. If Governor Carney wanted to make a constructive proposal, he should have called for Lloyds to create macro audits of risk zones and censure or refuse to insure jurisdictions where governance is not up to par. If insurers had refused to insure New Orleans unless the levees were sound, they could have saved themselves $30 bn in payouts and probably twice that in losses.

As an analyst, I find Mr. Carney’s speech is truly dismaying. For the Governor of the Bank to claim that climate change is leading to rapidly rising insurance claims is, at best, a critical failure of analysis. As discussed above, insurance claims are a function of a number of factors, including the type and country of the weather event, as well as the extent of insurance coverage and payout ratios. A hurricane in the US may see one hundred times the payouts of a major flood in India. Payouts will rise as a function of nominal GDP, as both inflation and the value and concentration of assets will play a crucial role in overall losses. The specific path of a storm can also be decisive for global averages. It goes without saying that a storm which strikes in Philadelphia, marches up the New Jersey coast, slams into the Manhattan and turns towards New Haven is going to cost a bundle. That same storm hitting, say, rural Mississippi would cause a fraction of the monetary damages. And this matters, because Superstorm Sandy caused more insured damages than all the leading weather events in Europe, Japan, and China combined. Single events can move long-term global averages.

If the Bank missed this, it is not because the necessary data is hard to find. Information on weather-related events is readily and publicly accessible on the internet. Almost every graph I use above relating to hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts comes from the US government itself. Apparently, the Bank of England could not be bothered to consult the underlying climate data before making hyperbolic claims. Thus, at best, the Bank was careless with data analysis.

A worse interpretation of events suggests that Mr. Carney was willing to blindly accept the conventional wisdom, the ‘consensus of scientists’ regarding global warming, without any will or curiosity to dig deeper and form a personal view. One can only hope that monetary policy in the UK is not informed by such superficiality or passivity.

The very worst interpretation is that Mr. Carney is in fact aware of the source data, but chose to make hysterical claims to promote a personal political agenda. I cannot imagine a more ill-considered idea. For those of us who consider central bank independence sacred, the appearance of a national bank taking sides in a highly charged political debate—and doing so with scant regard for the underlying data—will establish the Bank of England as partisan and the political opponent of conservative politicians. Given that Janet Yellen, the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank, hails from Berkeley, a hot bed of climate activism, should the Republican Party consider the Fed also its opponent? If so, I can assure you, the Republicans will find some support to ‘audit’ the institution.

At the end of the day, political neutrality is a pre-condition for central bank independence. If a political party deems the central bank to be an opponent, then it will take measures to gain political control over the bank, with the result that monetary policy itself may become politicized. If the Bank nevertheless feels compelled to champion a particular side in a political debate, its analysis must be water-tight and its communication, impartial. That Governor Carny violated both dictums is simply stunning and a huge blow to the prestige of the Bank of England. It was a very bad call indeed.

More anti-alarmist information at Climate Whack-A-Mole

Yes, We Will Avoid a Climate Catastrophe.

Posted on by Ron Clutz

At Quora someone posed this  question:  Will we avoid a climate catastrophe just in time (please be positive I need some hope)?

Paul Noel ,Former Research Scientist 6 Level 2 UAH (2008–2014) wrote this response.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

I have researched this issue in depth. As a good scientist I have gone deeply and gotten the facts. I have gotten:

  • the Satellite data on the global profiles,
  • the weather data.
  • the storm data and disaster data
  • the polar ice data.
  • the historical data.

I have looked in deeply on this issue. I have studied the physics too! I have studied the history too! I have studied the archeology and even the paleo geology and even the ice core data.

This isn’t easy to get because lots of people are producing lies on the topic. So I have worked very hard to get down to the facts. Then the job becomes one which is very hard. If I just tell you the answers I got , it is a case of if you believe me or not. If I tell you the science data it is likely to get way in over your understanding and that is back to if you believe me or not. This is a job of explaining to you very carefully what the data is using things you can see and understand.

So taking this from the top there are 2 ways I can go.
One way is to go into the advocates of the topic that are so scaring you deeply
and the other is to go into the science.

The explanation of the science is pretty easy and such but explaining to you the motives of people and their actions and methods is much harder. But I am going to start with the people.

Why are they scaring you about the climate?

Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer.

This is what this is all about. There is no other motive. You may dispense with your worries here if you are worried for the world environment. But I will now switch to the facts and reality on the ground. Remember this alone should pretty much put an end to your worries. You are facing a very large deliberate well funded and most professionally constructed set of lies and propaganda designed to get you scared like you are. This is 5th generational warfare. It is not anything you are used to thinking about. That is why it is effective.

What are the climate facts on the ground?

The fact on the ground are that if the changes you are supposing to see are real they should be obvious. They should be something you can see, feel, hear and touch. That is where we are going right now!

If the world is warming up the paleo-climate data says that the polar regions warm first. That is what you are being told about arctic ice melting and sea level raise. If you go to the Denmark Polar Portal on the web you can get the data.

Greenland Ice Sheet is not Melting Away

Because these people have to comply with the IPCC they put in all kinds of disclaimers trying to keep you scared of melt down etc.. The reality is we are solidly into the melt season and the ice is not melting down more than usual.

Arctic Sea Ice Is Not Going Away

The polar ice is at normal levels. I can go on and on here but the reality is that there is no emergency.

Global Warming is Not Accumulating

The data from UAH which is technical showed from January 1995 to January 2023 the global temperature did not increase at all.  And from 2016 actually went down (-0.7C) . That isn’t some melting or Global Warming or some Climate Catastrophe. It just is not.

CO2 Is Rising But Far Below Its Optimum

Is CO2 rising it sure is and it isn’t even to the maximum level that occurred in the last maximum in the last interglacial period of earth. CO2 is not 1% it is 0.042%. The earth has thrived with maximum life at 1% CO2 there are no melt down periods.

Is the climate variable, You bet it is. We have seen in the last 2000 years it go up and down in temperature and we are actually near the bottom of that period. The reality is that we have been up to 10C warmer and guess what that time mankind did his very best. We don’t thrive on cold.

Warming Has Been Beneficial and More Would be a Good Thing

Now let’s look at the trends and in a way you never imagined. I have looked into this matter because Alabama where I live has a cute lovely vacation town called Orange Beach. I highly recommend Orange Beach for a vacation it is beautiful. Orange Beach was named in 1898 when the US Post Office (Now the USPS) opened a new post office there. The unincorporated town’s principal business was raising oranges commercially. Alabama used to raise oranges up to about Evergreen Alabama or almost to Montgomery Alabama the state capitol.

 Production of Oranges Limited by Freezing Temperatures in SE US

No commercial orange production exists in Alabama at this time. The reason is simple. The growing season in Orange Beach Alabama went from 365 days a year to 268 days a year. The orange trees froze out. Now they have new varieties that can grow in the colder weather but even they are severely limited in Alabama. The orange trees have frozen out almost to Orlando Florida now.

Orange beach would be right next to North Florida along the Gulf of Mexico. Literally Florida is just across the Perdido River from Orange Beach.

The Gulf Stream Makes Climate Change in the North Atlantic

The reality is the climate from 1898 to the present has gotten colder in the USA. This is significant to the whole earth for a very important reason.

You see the heat from the whole earth gets aimed directly at Alabama! We cool down so is the rest of the world. The whole circulation for the whole earth focuses on the Gulf of Mexico and Alabama.

This by the way is why Greenland has so much ice. You see it is the warm water from the Gulf Stream that generates the steam that freezes and comes down as snow. You have to make the steam to make the ice.

Sea Level Depends on Land Buoyancy, not CO2

Now on to sea level rise. First of all if you believe that the sea level is rising and such it is only reported to be rising in the order of the thickness of 2 US 5 Cent coins per year. So if you believe it is happening it is no emergency and no real problem. It isn’t worthy of losing sleep over. The stories of melting sea ice are silly. First of all even if they melt they will have absolutely no effect on the sea level because they are floating. But there is another thing these people don’t tell you about.

The sea level is not the product of the amount of water in the ocean. It is in fact the product of a large sum of buoyancy issues and the gravity of the earth. The continents are where they are because they have less gravity than the other areas. The seafloor is a zone of higher gravity. Because the continents are floating that means that their level above the sea is determined by the laws of buoyancy. If Greenland were to melt off, the resulting reality would cause the area to buoy up because it would weigh less. At the same time the water added to the oceans would simply sink the sea floor deeper.

Continents Can Sink to Form New Seas

But to illustrate this you must learn about the Great Rift Valley of Africa. That valley is a place where the base continental rocks have spread apart. The land is sinking there and has already sunk to form the Red Sea! A new ocean is forming in Africa. This is what has sunk the continental shelves of the continents. The edge of the continents tinned out and lost the thick granite below that floats on the magma and they sunk. So sea level is not in any way related to ice melting. Sea level is related to this continental buoyancy issue. So nothing in their story not melting ice nor rising seas is happening. But I will show you this in pictures because we have these now.

Many Coastlines Show Water Receding Rather than Rising

Tell me if you see any sea level rise in the past 246 years now. (None!)

[Since we are looking in New England:]

This is just about due south of London–Pevensey Castle.

It was started construction in about 203 AD. It was built right on the sea on a coastal island. Such a fort only has value as far as an archer can shoot an arrow. It guarded the entrance to Pevensey Bay. The bay doesn’t exist it is nearly 30 meters above sea level now. Lots of people just refuse to see them. The fort itself is 110 feet above sea level and 5/8 mile from the sea.

If it isn’t clear yet that you have been hoaxed into a panic I don’t know what I can do. I have shown you that it got colder not warmer. That the ice is not melting. That the seas are not rising. Shall I go on?

CO2 Is Plant Food not a Pollutant

How about the real truth of CO2 and what it is doing on our earth. Look at these pictures carefully they tell the truth beyond any possible doubt.

C3 photosynthesis plants are growing 800% better than they were. Our C4 plants are doing 650% better.

The whole earth is growing better and the forests are growing because of CO2. Sorry this isn’t a “doom and gloom” story here.

Wild fires are down too!

The fact is that in 1960 the world was running out of food because our plants and farms were at their limits. Today we are run over with food and 45% of our crop land has been turned back to the forests. We are not at the limits. This has led to an explosion of wildlife too!

Life is Thriving Not Facing Extinction

There literally is no mass extinction going on. We are in the largest bloom of life on earth that has been seen in the past 10,000 years.

The human race is on the edge of unlimited energy, unlimited food, unlimited technology and we are sitting here in terror of some imaginary doom and gloom hating the very system that is feeding mankind and building him up.

Everything is quite literally the opposite of what you are told!

In Sum;

The only catastrophe would be ill-advised climate policies willfully destroying
our energy platform and economic supply processes out of irrational CO2 hysteria.

 

Carbon Capture Boondoggle

Posted on by Ron Clutz

John M. Contino explains in his American Thinker article The Contradictions of Carbon Capture.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

In May, 2022, the Biden Administration announced a $3.5 billion program to capture carbon pollution from the air, and the money has been flowing copiously. A quick search on LinkedIn for companies engaged in Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) projects will reveal dozens of companies, most of which are U.S.-based. They are well-staffed and generously funded with millions of up-front taxpayer dollars. [Note the bogus reference to plant food CO2 as carbon pollution.]

Summit Carbon Solutions does have its share of proponents — among them ethanol producers, heads of Chambers of Commerce, and politicians of all stripes from state and local governments. It’s one thing to dangle large sums of other people’s money to induce cooperation, but landowners are apparently being bludgeoned into submission with eminent domain.

The CCUS projects in the Midwestern faming states are all predicated on the continued, if not expanded, production of ethanol, because ethanol facilities present localized concentrations of CO2 that can be harnessed and disposed of more efficiently than merely sucking carbon dioxide out of the ambient atmosphere.

A Reuters article from March, 2022 reports that

The government estimates that ethanol is between 20% and 40% less carbon intensive than gasoline. But a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that ethanol is likely at least 24% more carbon intensive than gasoline, largely due to the emissions generated from growing huge quantities of corn [emphasis added].

The production of ethanol results in a net loss of energy: “Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion to ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make 1 gallon of ethanol…[which] has an energy value of only 77,000 BTU.”

And let us not give short shrift to Power Density. In his 2010 book Power Hungry. The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future, energy expert Robert Bryce compares the amount of the energy produced by various sources in terms of horsepower per acre, or wattage per square meter. An average U.S. Natural Gas Well, for example, produces 287.5 hp/acre. An Oil Stripper Well (producing 10 bbls/day) produces 148.5 hp/acre. Corn Ethanol comes in at a pathetic 0.25 hp/acre (pg. 86).

An Occam’s Razor approach to solving this problem would be
to shut down all the country’s ethanol production and
to not generate all that carbon dioxide in the first place.

Granted, the ethanol industry enjoys wide bipartisan support. But that doesn’t make it rational, or good for the country. Farmers receive substantial revenues by diverting an average of 40% of total corn yields to the production of ethanol. Why not just give that money to the farmers in exchange for them allowing 40% of their corn acreage to lie fallow? We might ask, facetiously, if we really needed all that extra corn to eat or export, why would our government prefer we burn it in our gas tanks?

Think of the savings:

♦  CO2 that would not be generated by growing and harvesting all that corn;
♦  water that would not be drained from our aquifers for irrigation; 
♦  salination of our topsoil that would be abated by not applying unnecessary nitrogen fertilizers; and
♦  most obviously, the absence of the need to capture and bury carbon from ethanol plants.

An advantage of ethanol is that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy reports that a 2021 Argonne Labs study “found that U.S. corn ethanol has 44%–52% lower GHG emissions than gasoline.” Let’s say ethanol reduces GHG by 50%. So, a tankful of gasoline with 10% ethanol yields a net GHG reduction of only 5% (50% of 10%).

Another advantage of ethanol is jobs in rural areas. The National Corn Growers Association reported that “[I]n 2019, the U.S. ethanol industry helped support nearly 349,000 direct and indirect jobs.”

Even if those advantages were sufficient to maintain or expand the ethanol industry, it sounds almost farcical to ask:

♦  “what is the cost-benefit analysis of spending billions of dollars to capture and sequester the CO2 from those corn fermentation processes, and

♦  to what extent would all that CCUS actually benefit the planet?”

When a John Kerry or a Greta Thunberg utters Climate Change Disaster words to the effect of “the sky is falling, we’re all going to die!” they would have us believe that it’s trivial to worry about boring quantitative cost-benefit ratios and returns on investment when the entire planet is facing an imminent, existential threat.

The hyperbolic language of the climate change crowd has been wearing thin ever since Al Gore’s dire predictions from 2006 have inconveniently not materialized. It’s up to us to make the left realize they’ve overplayed their hand: they cannot ride roughshod over property rights whenever it suits them, just as they cannot force us to drink Bud Light if we don’t wish to do so.

 

 

 

 

2024 Election Will Be a Computing Contest

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Jay Valentine explains how the election game will play out in his American Thinker article How to Out-Compute the Left.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

In 2024 Republicans cannot “out-fraud” the left, cannot “out-ballot-harvest” them, cannot “out-lawfare” them, cannot “out-media” them, cannot “out–contribution mule” them, cannot “out–Justice Department” them…but sure as hell can out-compute them — and that may do it.

The left owns the election apparatus — voting equipment, ballot-manufacturing, vagrant habitats, election commissions, media intimidation of judges not to look at election fraud and driving out any lawyer who raises a valid case.

Electioneering, by both sides, currently runs 1970s technology.  Leftists make good use of obsolete relational tech; Republicans, not so much.

In 2024, there is an opportunity to out-compute the left. Here’s what it may look like.

Ninety percent of current election fraud comes in two buckets:
♦   election commissions jacking with voter rolls like Arizona and Wisconsin and
♦   mail-in ballots collected and illegally voted like everywhere.

Neither fraud bucket is thwarted by organizational solutions —
both can be stopped with real-time compute power.

Let’s define the terrain.  Twenty twenty-four election will be won or lost in six swing states.  In each swing state, 2024 will be won or lost based on fraud turnout in two or three counties.

The leader of the free world, the end of the Deep State, for many the future of America as they have known it depends on about 17 counties. Remember — two types of fraud — voter commissions and phantom ballots.

The problem comes into focus.

Let’s start with fraudulent election commissions — at the state and county levels.

Sketchy election commissions know they can modify voter rolls when mail-in ballots go out by

 ♦  changing ZIP codes (Arizona),
♦  adding a fake street (Florida),
♦  putting hidden characters in voter IDs (Wisconsin),
♦  creating an inventory of nice unvoted mail-in ballots gathered by the U.S. Postal Service (Illinois and Wisconsin) given to leftists — for a fee.

Current relational technology is blind because of database latency.

In one Republican state, our team found 41,000 voters changed from inactive status to active, voted, then changed back. In Arizona, 107,000 changes, plus 22,000 new voters added in one county alone — days before the 2022 election.

Real-time changes all the rules — it just needs to be applied before the election, not as a data autopsy afterward (Arizona).

In 2024, in 17 counties, let’s do real-time voter registration analysis beginning six months before the election.  Download daily, weekly, or monthly copies of voter rolls. Compare every voter roll with every other, showing every change. Were large numbers of addresses changed? Were thousands of new voters added 90 days before early voting from ineligible addresses (Houston)?

Ineligible? Who determines?  Good question, dear reader.

With relational technology, someone must knock on the door and ask if Phineas lives there. When told, “No, never heard of him,” the canvasser fills out an affidavit, goes to the judge. Nothing happens.

With real-time super-compute, our pal Phineas’s address is cross-tabbed with the county property tax records. They show 11 people registered in his 823-square-foot house, and the county health department says “no-no” to more than four people per 500 square feet. Seven fake voters just got busted.

The voter integrity types will tell you nothing can be done; we hear that all the time. But you are not dealing with their SQL limitations. Real-time gives you choices because you see this fraud before the election — before votes are cast.

Sit down with the county registrar. Pull out your tablet showing that on her voter list, there’s a phantom nest.  You are not saying it. The tax records — government dox — say it.  Look her in the eye and say, “Phyllis, we both know these addresses are ineligible. Your health department says so. We are taking this list to the sheriff. If people here are mailed a ballot, we will report you for a criminal violation.”  Sound harsh? It does. It also works.

Chat with the team in Wisconsin who almost single-handedly shut down 40% of the phantom vote in 2022 — helping a U.S. Senate squeaky win. They showed the phantoms, identified with real-time Fractal technology, to registrars — with a smile.

When you have better technology than the government,
the government hesitates.

This one step, alone, will reduce leftist fraud by 30 to 40%. It is unrecoverable. Leftists need fraudulent voter roll changes to impact their numbers — if they miss these quotas, there is no way to make them up.

Shut down election commission fraud, via real-time visibility, and you just cut election fraud in 17 counties 30–40%. In Arizona, Kari Lake would now be governor.

We’re not done.

Now for the phantoms.

There are several kinds of phantoms.

One type signs a voter registration application at the leftist church, the homeless shelter, the gas station and never votes. She may be dead in a tent on an Austin street. Who knows? Leftists do not care; they have a forever voter.

Another phantom is a not-too-interested person who registered, lives in a house, but does not vote because it is useless, an effort or a distraction. She is the “I don’t care” voter. Leftists have a ballot and voter for her.

There are phantom ballot, not people, collection points.

A large urban apartment building has a mail room, where hundreds of mail-in ballots collect because nobody cares to open them. There is no check inside.

As the junk mail gets tossed, ballots accumulate. They aren’t collected by Ronna’s Kiwanis Club Republican county chairman — he’s on the golf course. They are collected by a vagrant, paid $25 for each mail-in ballot in that trash can. They get voted while Ronna is ballot-harvesting in densely Republican churches.

Real-time compute makes this a game two can play.

With the Undeliverable Ballot Database, it can be determined where almost every ballot collects. Skip Ronna; send a kid to that mail room and have him pick up those ballots, and give them to the sheriff — noting they were in the garbage!

Do you think this just might be more effective than Republican ballot-harvesting at evangelical churches who are going to vote anyway?

Leftists made huge, 40-year investments in corrupting voter commissions,
getting their team on board, building phantom armies
they could vote when needed.

Unfortunately for them, their fraud is dependent on 1970s relational database — its limitations, its latency, its clumsy use by Republicans.

Real-time changes the outcomes.

Every address in every county, certainly in 17, can be profiled in excruciating detail — square feet, year built, number of baths, bedrooms. Voter roll changes can be seen the moment they are augmented by helpful leftist voter commissions.

Challenges happen now — before the election — publicly — not months afterward, when nobody cares.

In 2024, the goal is not to stop voter fraud. Stopping fraud will take years.

Super-compute can reduce fraud by 40% or more — and that is more than enough to stop leftists who are stuck on relational technology.

The most significant confrontation on North American soil since Gettysburg will happen in 2024. Super-compute can determine who has the high ground.

Comment:  It is a contemporary twist on a well known election truth:

Sabine’s Video Myopic on GHG Climate Role

Posted on by Ron Clutz

E.M. Smith explains Curing Radiation Myopia Regarding Climate

E.M. Smith provides an helpful critique of a recent incomplete theory of earth’s climate functioning in his Chiefio blog post So Close–Missing Convection and Homeostasis. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.  The reference is to a video by Sabine Hossenfelder you can view below in the post.

It is Soooo easy to get things just a little bit off and miss reality. Especially in complex systems and even more so when folks raking in $Millions are interested in misleading for profit. Sigh.

Sabine Hosenfelder does a wonderful series of videos ‘explaining’ all sorts of interesting things in and about actual science and how the universe works. She is quite smart and generally “knows her stuff”. But… It looks like she has gotten trapped into the Radiative Model of Globull Warming.

The whole mythology of Global Warming depends on having you NOT think about anything but radiative processes and physics. To trap you into the Radiative Model. But the Earth is more complex than that. Much more complex. Then there’s the fact that you DO have some essential Radiative Physics to deal with, so the bait is there.   However…

It is absolutely essential to pay attention to convection in the lower atmosphere
and to the “feedback loops” or homeostasis in the system.

The system acts to restore its original state. There is NO “runaway greenhouse” or we would have never evolved into being since the early earth had astoundingly high levels of CO2 and we would have baked to death before getting out of our slime beds as microbes.

Figure 16. The geological history of CO2 level and temperature proxy for the past 400 million years. CO2 levels now are ~ 400ppm. Source: Davis, W. J. (2017).

OK, I’ll show you her video. It is quite good even with the “swing and a miss” at the end. She does 3 levels of The Greenhouse Gas Mythology so you can see the process evolving from grammar school to high school to college level of mythology. But then she doesn’t quite make it to Post-Doc Reality.

Where’s she wrong? (Well, not really wrong, but lacking…)

I see 2 major issues. First off, she talks about the “lower atmosphere warming”. Well, yes and no. It doesn’t “warm” in the sense of getting hotter, but it does speed up convection to move the added heat flow.

In English “heating” has 2 different meanings. Increasing temperature.
Increasing heat flow at a temperature.

We see this in “warm up the TV dinner in the microwave” meaning to heat it up from frozen to edible; and in the part where the frozen dinner is defrosting at a constant temperature as it absorbs heat but turns it into the heat of fusion of water. So you can “warm it up” by melting at a constant temperature of frozen water (but adding a LOT of thermal energy – “heat”) then later as increasing temperature once the ice is melted. It is very important to keep in mind that there are 2 kinds of “heating”. NOT just “increasing temperature”.

In the lower atmosphere, the CO2 window / Infrared Window is already firmly slammed shut. Sabine “gets that”. Yay! One BIG point for her! No amount of “greenhouse gas” is going to shut that IR window any more. As she points out, you get about 20 meters of transmission and then it is back to molecular vibrations (aka “heat”).

So what’s an atmosphere to do? It has heat to move! Well, it convects. It evaporates water.

Those 2 things dominate by orders of magnitude any sort of Radiative Model Physics. Yes, you have radiation of light bringing energy in, but then it goes into the ocean and into the dirt and the plants and even warms your skin on a sunny day. And it sits there. It does NOT re-radiate to any significant degree. Once “warmed” by absorption, heat trying to leave as IR hits a slammed shut window.

The hydrological cycle. Estimates of the observed main water reservoirs (black numbers in 10^3 km3 ) and the flow of moisture through the system (red numbers, in 10^3 km3 yr À1 ). Adjusted from Trenberth et al. [2007a] for the period 2002-2008 as in Trenberth et al. [2011].

So what does happen? Look around, what do you see? Clouds. Rain. Snow. (sleet hail fog etc. etc.)

Our planet is a Water Planet. It moves that energy (vibrations of atoms, NOT radiation) by having water evaporate into the atmosphere. (Yes, there are a few very dry deserts where you get some radiative effects and can get quite cold at night via radiation through very dry air, but our planet is 70% or so oceans, so those areas are minor side bars on the dominant processes). This water vapor makes the IR window even more closed (less distance to absorption). It isn’t CO2 that matters, it is the global water vapor.

What happens next?

Well, water holds a LOT of heat (vibration of atoms and NOT “temperature”) as the heat of vaporization. About 540 calories per gram (compared to 80 for melting “heat of fusion” and 1 for specific heat of a gram of water). Compare those numbers again. 1 for a gram of water. 80 for melting a gram of ice. 540 for evaporating a gram of water. It’s dramatically the case that evaporation of water matters a lot more than melting ice, and both of them make “warming water” look like an irrelevant thing.

Warming water is 1/80 as important as melting ice, and it is 1/540 th as important as evaporation of the surface of the water. Warming air is another order of magnitude less important to heat content.

So to have clue, one MUST look at the evaporation of water from the oceans as everything else is in the small change.

Look at any photo of the Earth from space. The Blue Marble covered in clouds. Water and clouds. The product of evaporation, convection, and condensation. Physical flows carrying all that heat (“vibration of atoms” and NOT temperature, remember). IF you add more heat energy, you can speed up the flows, but it will not cause a huge increase in temperature (and mostly none at all). It is mass flow that changes. The number of vibrating molecules at a temperature, not the temperature of each.

In the end, a lot of mass flow happens, lofting all that water vapor with all that heat of vaporization way up toward the Stratosphere. This is why we have a troposphere, a tropopause (where it runs out of steam… literally…) and a stratosphere.

What happens when it gets to the stratosphere boundary? Well, along the way that water vapor turns into water liquid very tiny drops (clouds) and eventually condenses to big drops of water (rain) and some of it even freezes (hail, snow, etc.). Now think about that for a minute. That’s 540 calories per gram of heat (molecular vibration NOT temperature, remember) being “dumped” way up high in the top of the troposphere as it condenses, and another 80 / gram if if freezes. 620 total. That’s just huge.

This is WHY we have a globe covered with rain, snow, hail, etc. etc. THAT is all that heat moving. NOT any IR Radiation from the surface. Let that sink in a minute. Fix it in your mind. WATER and ICE and Water Vapor are what moves the heat, not radiation. We ski on it, swim in it, have it water our crops and flood the land. That’s huge and it is ALL evidence of heat flows via heat of vaporization and fusion of water.

It is all those giga-tons of water cycling to snow, ice and rain, then falling back to be lofted again as evaporation in the next cycle. That’s what moves the heat to the stratosphere where CO2 then radiates it to space (after all, radiation toward the surface hits that closed IR window and stops.) At most, more CO2 can let the Stratosphere radiate (and “cool”) better. It can not make the Troposphere any less convective and non-radiative.

Then any more energy “trapped” at the surface would just run the mass transport water cycle faster. It would not increase the temperature.

More molecules would move, but at a limit on temperature. Homeostasis wins. We can see this already in the Sub-Tropics. As the seasons move to fall and winter, water flows slow dramatically. I have to water my Florida lawn and garden. As the seasons move to spring and summer, the mass flow picks up dramatically. Eventually reaching hurricane size. Dumping up to FEET of condensed water (that all started as warm water vapor evaporating from the ocean). It is presently headed for about 72 F today (and no rain). At the peak of hurricane season, we get to about 84 or 85 F ocean surface temperature as the water vapor cycle is running full blast and we get “frog strangler” levels of rain. That’s the difference. Slow water cycle or fast.

IF (and it is only an “if”, not a when) you could manage to increase the heat at the surface of the planet in, say, Alaska: At most you would get a bit more rain in summer, a bit more snow in winter, and MAYBE only a slight possible, of one or two days that are rain which could have been snow or sleet.

Then there’s the fact that natural cycles swamp all of that CO2 fantasy anyway. The Sun, as just one example, had a large change of IR / UV levels with both the Great Pacific Climate Shift (about 1975) and then back again in about 2000. Planetary tilt, wobble, eccentricity of the orbit and more put us in ice ages (as we ARE right now, but in an “interglacial” in this ice age… a nice period of warmth that WILL end) and pulls us out of them. Glacials and interglacials come and go on various cycles (100,000 years, 40,000 years, and 12,000 year interglacials – ours ending now, but slowly). The simple fact is that Nature Dominates, and we are just not relevant. To think we are is hubris of the highest order.

See Also  Bill Gray: H20 is Climate Control Knob, not CO2

Figure 9: Two contrasting views of the effects of how the continuous intensification of deep cumulus convection would act to alter radiation flux to space. The top (bottom) diagram represents a net increase (decrease) in radiation to space

Footnote

There are two main reasons why investigators are skeptical of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) alarm. This post intends to be an antidote to myopic and lop-sided understandings of our climate system.

  1. CO2 Alarm is Myopic: Claiming CO2 causes dangerous global warming is too simplistic. CO2 is but one factor among many other forces and processes interacting to make weather and climate.

Myopia is a failure of perception by focusing on one near thing to the exclusion of the other realities present, thus missing the big picture. For example: “Not seeing the forest for the trees.”  AKA “tunnel vision.”

2. CO2 Alarm is Lopsided: CO2 forcing is too small to have the overblown effect claimed for it. Other factors are orders of magnitude larger than the potential of CO2 to influence the climate system.

Lopsided

Lop-sided refers to a failure in judging values, whereby someone lacking in sense of proportion, places great weight on a factor which actually has a minor influence compared to other forces. For example: “Making a mountain out of a mole hill.”

Lab Meat: A Pharma Product with Huge Carbon Footprint

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Tyler Durden reports at zerohedge Lab-Grown Meat Gets Green Light On US Menus. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The World Economic Forum’s dietary blueprint for the masses is becoming a reality as lab-grown meat, bugs, and plant-based foods are quickly being adopted under the guise of solving ‘climate change.’ The latest move by elites and governments to reset the global food supply chain is US regulators approving the sale of meat cultivated from Chicken cells. This makes the US the second country worldwide, besides Singapore, to approve the sale of lab-grown fake meat.

The Agriculture Department approved Upside Foods and Good Meat to begin selling “cell-cultivated” or “cultured” chicken meat from labs in supermarkets and restaurants.

“Today’s watershed moment for the burgeoning cultivated meat, poultry and seafood sector, and for the global food industry,” Good Meat said in a statement.

Researchers conducted a life-cycle assessment of the energy needed and greenhouse gases emitted in all stages of production and compared that with beef. One of the current challenges with lab-grown meat is the use of highly refined or purified growth media, the ingredients needed to help animal cells multiply. Currently, this method is similar to the biotechnology used to make pharmaceuticals. This sets up a critical question for cultured meat production: Is it a pharmaceutical product or a food product? -UC Davis

“If companies are having to purify growth media to pharmaceutical levels, it uses more resources, which then increases global warming potential,” according to lead author and doctoral graduate Derrick Risner, of the US Davis Department of Food Science and Technology. “If this product continues to be produced using the “pharma” approach, it’s going to be worse for the environment and more expensive than conventional beef production.”

Cultured Beef Burger grown from stem cells of cattle made by Professor Mark Post of Netherland’s Maastricht University.

The scientists considered the ‘global warming potential’ to be the carbon dioxide equivalents emitted for each kilogram of meat produced – and found that the global warming potential (GWP) of lab-based meat using these purified media is up to 25 times greater than the average for retail beef.

The study is Environmental impacts of cultured meat: A cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment  Derrick Risner et al. (UC Davis) 2023.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Abstract

Interest in animal cell-based meat (ACBM) or cultured meat as a viable environmentally conscious replacement for livestock production has been increasing, however a life cycle assessment for the current production methods of ACBM has not been conducted.

Currently, ACBM products are being produced at a small scale and at an economic loss, however ACBM companies are intending to industrialize and scale-up production. This study assesses the potential environmental impact of near term ACBM production.

Updated findings from recent technoeconomic assessments (TEAs) of ACBM and a life cycle assessment of Essential 8™ were utilized to perform a life cycle assessment of near-term ACBM production. A scenario analysis was conducted utilizing the metabolic requirements examined in the TEAs of ACBM and a purification factor from the Essential 8™ life cycle assessment was utilized to account for growth medium component processing.

The results indicate that the environmental impact of near-term ACBM production
is likely to be orders of magnitude higher than median beef production
if a highly refined growth medium is utilized for ACBM production.

Figure 1 is a process flow diagram of a fed-batch ACBM production system with associated energy requirements.

Lifecycle Impact assessment (LCIA)

After all the inputs were identified and consolidated, a life cycle impact assessment was completed utilizing data and methods from the E8 LCA, OpenLCA v.1.10 software and OpenLCA LCIA v2.1.2 methods software. The tool for reduction and assessment of chemicals and other environmental impacts (TRACI) 2.1 was the LCIA methods utilized in the OpenLCA LCIA software, and these results were combined with the facility power data to determine the potential environmental impact of the production of 1 kg ACBM (wet basis).

Scenario analysis

All scenarios utilize a fed-batch system as described in the Humbird (2021) TEA. Energy estimates from the Humbird TEA are utilized in all scenarios. Growth medium components were assumed to be delivered to the animal cells as needed and the build-up of growth inhibiting metabolites such as lactate or ammonia are not accounted for unless specifically stated in the scenario. The growth medium substrates are also assumed to be supplied via fed batch to achieve the highest possible specific growth rate in the production bioreactor. The three minimum/base scenarios were defined utilizing data from the Risner et al. and Humbird TEAs then a purification factor was applied based on the results from a LCA which examined the environmental impact of fine chemical and pharmaceutical production (Wernet et al., 2010).

Each of the three base scenarios were examined independently and then
with the purification factor applied for a total of six scenarios in the assessment.

Results

The LCIA was conducted on both the base scenarios and scenarios with purified growth medium components.  The GWP for all ACBM scenarios (19.2 to 1,508 kg of CO2e per kilogram of ACBM) was greater than the minimum reported GWP for retail beef (9.6 kg of CO2e per kg of FBFMO) (Poore & Nemecek, 2018). The GWP of all purified scenarios ranged from 246 to 1,508 kg of CO2e per kilogram of ACBM which is 4 to 25 times greater than the median GWP of retail beef (∼60 kg CO2e per kg of FFBMO). Without purification of the growth medium components, the GWP of the GCR scenario is approximately 25% greater than reported median of GWP of retail beef (Poore & Nemecek, 2018).

It should be noted that the system boundary of this LCA stops at the ACBM production facility gate and does not include product losses, cold storage, transportation, and other environmental impacts associated with the retail sale of beef. Inclusion of these post-production processes would increase the GWP of ACBM products.

Figure 3 illustrates the difference in the GWP of retail beef and cradle to upstream ACBM production gate.

Discussion

Our results indicate that ACBM is likely to be more resource intensive than most meat production systems according to this analysis. In this evaluation, our primary focus has been on the resource intensity of the growth mediums. We have largely focused on the quantity of growth medium components (e.g. glucose, amino acids, vitamins, growth factors, salts, and minerals) and attempted to account for purification requirement of those components for animal cell culture. We also acknowledge that our analysis may be viewed as minimum environmental impacts due to several factors including incomplete datasets, the exclusion of energy and materials required to scale the ACBM industry and exclusion of the energy and materials needed to scale industries which would support ACBM production.

Animal cell culture is inherently different than culturing bacteria or yeast cells due to their enhanced sensitivity to environmental factors, chemical and microbial contamination. This can be illustrated by the industrial shift to single use bioreactors for monoclonal antibody production to reduce costs associated with contamination (Jacquemart et al., 2016). Animal cell growth mediums have historically utilized fetal bovine serum (FBS) which contains a variety of hormones and growth factors (Jochems et al., 2002). Serum is blood with the cells, platelets and clotting factors removed. Processing of FBS to be utilized for animal cell culture is an 18-step process that is resource intensive due to the level of refinement required for animal cell culture.

Thus, the authors believe that commercial production of an ACBM product utilizing
FBS or any other animal product to be highly unlikely given this high level of refinement.

Conclusion

Critical assessment of the environmental impact of emerging technologies is a relatively new concept, but it is highly important when changes to societal-level production systems are being proposed (Bergerson et al., 2020). Agricultural and food production systems are central to feeding a growing global population and the development of technology which enhances food production is important for societal progress. Evaluation of these potentially disruptive technologies from a systems-level perspective is essential for those seeking to transform our food system. Ideally, systems-level evaluations of proposed novel food technologies will allow policymakers to make informed decisions on the allocation of government capital. Proponents of ACBM have hailed it as an environmental solution that addresses many of the environmental impacts associated with traditional meat production.

Upon examination of this highly engineered system, ACBM production appears
to be resource intensive when examined from the cradle to production gate
perspective for the scenarios and assumptions utilized in our analyses.

Our environmental assessment is grounded in the most detailed process systems available that represent current state-of-the-art in this emerging food technology sector. Our model generally contradicts previous studies by suggesting that the environmental impact of cultured meat is likely to be higher than conventional beef systems, as opposed to more environmentally friendly. This is an important conclusion given that investment dollars have specifically been allocated to this sector with the thesis that this product will be more environmentally friendly than beef.

In sum, understanding the minimum environmental impact of near term ACBM is highly important for governments and businesses seeking to allocate capital that can generate both economic and environmental benefits (Zimberoff, 2022). We acknowledge that our findings would likely be the minimum environmental impact due to the preliminary nature of our LCA. This LCA aims to be as transparent as possible to allow the interested parties to understand our logic and why we have developed these conclusions. We also hope that our LCA will provide evidence of the need for additional critical environmental examination of new food and agriculture technologies.

Bottom Line:

“Our findings suggest that cultured meat is not inherently better for the environment than conventional beef. It’s not a panacea,” said corresponding author Edward Spang, an associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology. “It’s possible we could reduce its environmental impact in the future, but it will require significant technical advancement to simultaneously increase the performance and decrease the cost of the cell culture media.”

Even the most efficient beef production systems reviewed in the study outperform
cultured meat across all scenarios (both food and pharma), suggesting that
investments to advance more climate-friendly beef production may yield
greater reductions in emissions more quickly than investments in cultured meat.