Month: January 2024

Delusions of Davos and Dubai

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Edward Ring dispells the smoke and mirrors surrounding renewables in his American Greatness article The Delusions of Davos and Dubai – Part Two: Can Wind & Solar Energy Expand 50-100 Times? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Procuring 90+ percent of global energy from wind and solar energy is a fool’s errand.

In the most recent “Conference of the Parties,” otherwise known as the United Nations extravaganza that convenes every few years for world leaders to discuss the climate crisis, several goals were publicly proclaimed. Notable were the goals to triple production of renewable energy by 2030 and triple production of nuclear energy by 2050. Against the backdrop of current global energy production by fuel type, and as quantified in Part One, against a goal of increasing total energy production from 600 exajoules in 2022 to at least 1,000 exajoules by 2050, where does COP 28’s goals put the world’s energy economy? How much will production of renewable energy have to increase?

To answer this question, it is necessary to recognize and account for the fact that most renewable energy takes the form of electricity, generated through wind, solar, or geothermal sources. And when measuring how much the base of renewables installed so far will contribute to the target of 1,000 exajoules of energy production per year in order to realize—best-case scenario—800 exajoules of energy services, the data reported in the Statistical Review of Global Energy is profoundly misleading.

[ Ring is referring to the fanciful projections compared to realities reported in the 2022 consumption statistics from Energy Institute. For example, from that report

The graph shows that global Primary Energy (PE) consumption from all sources has grown continuously over nearly 6 decades. Since 1965  oil, gas and coal (FF, sometimes termed “Thermal”) averaged 88% of PE consumed, ranging from 93% in 1965 to 82% in 2022.  Note that in 2020, PE dropped 21 EJ (4%) below 2019 consumption, then increased 31 EJ in 2021.  WFFC for 2020 dropped 24 EJ (5%), then in 2021 gained back 26 EJ to slightly exceed 2019 WFFC consumption. For the 58 year period, the net changes were:

Oil        194%
Gas      525%
Coal     178%
WFFC  239%
PE        287%]

If we’re setting a goal of 1,000 exajoules of ultimate world energy production and assuming 80 percent of that 1,000 exajoules of energy input shall be realized as end-user energy services, then we have to examine how much usable energy wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear are actually being generated today. That means we need to know how much electricity they actually generate and send into the grid. An imputed, grossed-up number is not helpful.

It must be again emphasized that it is an extraordinary assumption to project an 80 percent retention of energy from input into the grid to actual end use. For example, we might assume that from the generating plant, 5 percent was lost in transmission, another 5 percent lost from charging and subsequently discharging the electricity to and from utility-scale storage batteries, another 5 percent in the charge/discharge cycle through an onboard battery in an EV, and another 5 percent converting that electricity into traction from the electric motor. Those are extraordinarily optimistic numbers, using a best-case example.

The point here is 1,000 exajoules represents the absolute minimum to which global energy production must grow in the next 25 years if every person on earth is to have access to enough energy to enable prosperity and security. How do we get there? Let’s take the experts at their word and assume that use of coal, oil, and gas will be completely eliminated by 2050.

On the chart below, the assumptions governing the future mix of fuels worldwide adhere to the resolutions just made at the recent Conference of the Parties. That is, nuclear energy will be tripled, and use of oil, natural gas, and coal will be eliminated. To take some of the pressure off of the required expansion of solar and wind energy, for this analysis, the sacrilegious assumption is made to double hydroelectric capacity, double geothermal production, and double biofuel production. It won’t matter much. Here goes:

There’s a lot to chew on in these data, but it’s worth the effort. Because the facts they present are immutable and carry with them significant implications for global energy policy. The first column of data shows how much fuel was burned or generated worldwide in 2022—the raw fuel inputs, which total 604 exajoules.

The second column of data shows the number of energy services that reached end-users in 2022 in the form of heating, cooling, traction, light, communications, etc. It is clear that for thermal sources of energy, the lower numbers reflect the currently estimated degree of conversion efficiency worldwide, about 40 percent. But for non-thermal sources of energy (appended to the right with “gen,” signifying generated energy), these numbers are based on terawatt-hour reports featured in individual sections of the Statistical Review dedicated to those sources of energy. Converted from terawatt-hours to exajoules, these are the actual amounts of electricity that went into transmission lines around the world to be consumed by end users.

The third column of data calculates a hypothetical 2050 global fuel mix based on the agreed COP 28 targets. As seen in column 4 “multiple,” nuclear energy is tripled in accordance with COP 28. Also, in accordance with COP 28, use of coal, oil, and gas is eliminated. Not agreed to at COP 28, but to help reach the 1,000 exajoule target, production of geothermal and biofuel energy are both doubled. That leaves the remainder of the needed power to be provided (in this example) equally by wind and solar. It is reasonable to assume, based on everything they’re saying in Dubai and Davos, that this is the model. This is the logical realization of what they’re calling for.

These calculations yield an overwhelming reality check.
Yet what assumption is incorrect?

The target of 1,000 exajoules is almost certainly too low. Nuclear power is tripled, and hydropower and biofuel are both doubled. None of that is easy; in the case of biofuel, it could be an environmental catastrophe. But even if those other non-thermal sources of energy were to increase two to three times, without coal, oil, and gas, a stupefying expansion of wind and solar would be required. “Tripling” these renewables doesn’t even get us into the ballpark.

To deliver 1,000 exajoules of power to the world by 2050, for every wind turbine we have today, expect to see more than 60 of them. For every field of photovoltaics we have today, expect to see nearly 100 more of them. Is this feasible? Because from Dubai to Davos, this is what they’re claiming we’re going to do.

Confronted with these facts, even the most enthusiastic proponents of wind and solar energy may hesitate when considering the magnitude of the task. Eliminating production of fossil fuel entirely by 2050 ought to be seen, for all practical purposes, as impossible. The uptick in mining, the land consumed, the expansion of transmission lines, the necessity for a staggering quantity of electricity storage assets to balance these intermittent sources, the vulnerability of wind and solar farms to weather events including deep freezes, tornadoes, and hail, and the stupefying task of doing it all over again every 20-30 years as the wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and storage batteries reach the end of their useful lives—all of this suggests procuring 90+ percent of global energy from wind and solar energy is a fool’s errand.

The Key to Energy IQ

Posted on by Ron Clutz

This brief video provides a key concept in order to think rationally about calls to change society’s energy platform.  Below is a transcript from the closed captions along with some of the video images and others added.

We know what the future of American energy will look like. Solar panels, drawing limitless energy from the sun. Wind turbines harnessing the bounty of nature to power our homes and businesses.  A nation effortlessly meeting all of its energy needs with minimal impact on the environment. We have the motivation, we have the technology. There’s only one problem: the physics.

The history of America is, in many ways, the history of energy. The steam power that revolutionized travel and the shipping of goods. The coal that fueled the railroads and the industrial revolution. The petroleum that helped birth the age of the automobile. And now, if we only have the will, a new era of renewable energy.

Except … it’s a little more complicated than that. It’s not really a matter of will, at least not primarily. There are powerful scientific and economic constraints on where we get our power from. An energy source has to be reliable; you have to know that the lights will go on when you flip the switch. An energy source needs to be affordable–because when energy is expensive…everything else gets more expensive too. And, if you want something to be society’s dominant energy source, it needs to be scalable, able to provide enough power for a whole nation.

Those are all incredibly important considerations, which is one of the reasons it’s so weird that one of the most important concepts we have for judging them … is a thing that most people have never heard of. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the exciting world of…power density.

Look, no one said scientists were gonna be great at branding. Put simply, power density is just how much stuff it takes to get your energy; how much land or other physical resources. And we measure it by how many watts you can get per square meter, or liter, or kilogram – which, if you’re like us…probably means nothing to you.

So let’s put this in tangible terms. Just about the worst energy source America has by the standards of power density are biofuels, things like corn-based ethanol. Biofuels only provide less than 3% of America’s energy needs–and yet, because of the amount of corn that has to be grown to produce it … they require more land than every other energy source in the country combined. Lots of resources going in, not much energy coming out–which means they’re never going to be able to be a serious fuel source.

Now, that’s an extreme example, but once you start to see the world in these terms, you start to realize why our choice of energy sources isn’t arbitrary. Coal, for example, is still America’s second largest source of electricity, despite the fact that it’s the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive way to produce it. Why do we still use so much of it? Well, because it’s significantly more affordable…in part because it’s way less resource-intensive.

An energy source like offshore wind, for example, is so dependent on materials like copper and zinc that it would require six times as many mineral resources to produce the same amount of power as coal. And by the way, getting all those minerals out of the ground…itself requires lots and lots of energy.

Now, the good news is that America has actually been cutting way down on its use of coal in recent years, thanks largely to technological breakthroughs that brought us cheap natural gas as a replacement. And because natural gas emits way less carbon than coal, that reduced our carbon emissions from electricity generation by more than 30%.

In fact, the government reports that switching over to natural gas did more than twice as much to cut carbon emissions as renewables did in recent years. Why did natural gas progress so much faster than renewables? It wasn’t an accident.

Energy is a little like money: You’ve gotta spend it to make it. To get usable natural gas, for example, you’ve first gotta drill a well, process and transport the gas, build a power plant, and generate the electricity. But the question is how much energy are you getting back for your investment? With natural gas, you get about 30 times as much power out of the system as you put into creating it.  By contrast, with something like solar power, you only get about 3 1/2 times as much power back.

Replacing the now closed Indian Point nuclear power plant would require covering all of Albany County NY with wind mills.

Hard to fuel an entire country that way. And everywhere you look, you see similarly eye-popping numbers. To replace the energy produced by just one oil well in the Permian Basin of Texas–and there are thousands of those–you’d need to build 10 windmills, each about 330 feet high. To meet just 10% of the country’s electricity needs, you’d have to build a wind farm the size of the state of New Hampshire. To get the same amount of power produced by one typical nuclear reactor, you’d need over three million solar panels, none of which means, by the way, that we shouldn’t be using renewables as a part of our energy future.

But it does mean that the dream of using only renewables is going to remain a dream,
at least given the constraints of current technology. We simply don’t know how
to do it while still providing the amount of energy that everyday life requires.

No energy source is ever going to painlessly solve all our problems. It’s always a compromise – which is why it’s so important for us to focus on the best outcomes that are achievable, because otherwise, New Hampshire’s gonna look like this.

Addendum from Michael J. Kelly

Energy return on investment (EROI)

The debate over decarbonization has focussed on technical feasibility and economics. There is one emerging measure that comes closely back to the engineering and the thermodynamics of energy production. The energy return on (energy) investment is a measure of the useful energy produced by a particular power plant divided by the energy needed to build, operate, maintain, and decommission the plant. This is a concept that owes its origin to animal ecology: a cheetah must get more energy from consuming his prey than expended on catching it, otherwise it will die. If the animal is to breed and nurture the next generation then the ratio of energy obtained from energy expended has to be higher, depending on the details of energy expenditure on these other activities. Weißbach et al. have analysed the EROI for a number of forms of energy production and their principal conclusion is that nuclear, hydro-, and gas- and coal-fired power stations have an EROI that is much greater than wind, solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power in a desert or cultivated biomass: see Fig. 2.

In human terms, with an EROI of 1, we can mine fuel and look at it—we have no energy left over. To get a society that can feed itself and provide a basic educational system we need an EROI of our base-load fuel to be in excess of 5, and for a society with international travel and high culture we need EROI greater than 10. The new renewable energies do not reach this last level when the extra energy costs of overcoming intermittency are added in. In energy terms the current generation of renewable energy technologies alone will not enable a civilized modern society to continue!

On Energy Transitions

Real Science Guy: Climate Crisis Imaginary

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Daniel W. Nebert writes at American Thinker Today’s ‘Climate Crisis’ Is a Fairy Tale.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

For the past 35 years, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned us that emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, predominantly carbon dioxide (CO2), are causing dangerous global warming. This myth is blindly accepted — even by many of my science colleagues who know virtually nothing about climate. As a scientist, my purpose here is to help expose this fairy tale.

The global warming story is not a benign fantasy. It is seriously damaging Western economies. In January 2021, the White House ridiculously declared that “climate change is the most serious existential threat to humanity.” From there, America went from energy independence back to energy dependence. Another consequence has been the appearance of numerous companies whose goal is to “sequester CO2” as well as “sequester carbon” from our atmosphere. However, this so-called “solution” is scientifically impossible. Life on Earth is based on carbon! CO2 is plant food, not a pollutant!

Generations have been brainwashed for decades into believing this imaginary “climate crisis,” from kindergarten through college, and in mainstream media and social media. Indoctrinated young teachers feel comfortable teaching this misinformation to students. Dishonest climate scientists feel justified in spreading disinformation because they need governmental support for salaries and research.

The evidence contradicting the climate apocalypse is vast.

Some comes from analysis of Greenland and Antarctica ice, in which air trapped at various depths reveals CO2 levels of past climate. Proxy records from marine sediment, dust (from erosion, wind-blown deposition of sediments), and ice cores provide a record of past sea levels, ice volume, seawater temperature, and global atmospheric temperatures.

From his seminal work while a prisoner of war during WWI, Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovitch explained how climate is influenced by variations in the Earth’s asymmetric orbit, axial tilt, and rotational wobble — each going through cycles lasting as long as 120,000 years.

It is widely recognized that Glacial Periods of about 95,000 years, interspersed with Interglacial Periods of approximately 25,000 years, correspond with Milankovitch Cycles. Multiple incursions of glaciers occurred during the Pleistocene, an epoch lasting from about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago, when Earth’s last Glacial Period ended. Around 24,000 years ago, present-day Lake Erie was covered with ice a mile thick.

Within each Interglacial Period, there’ve been warming periods, or “Mini-Summers.” For example, within the current Holocene Interglacial, there have been warmer periods known as the Minoan (1500–1200 B.C.), Roman (250 B.C.–A.D. 400), and Medieval (A.D. 900–1300). Our Modern Warming Period began with the waning of the Little Ice Age (1300–1850). Today’s Mini-Summer is colder so far than all previous Mini-Summers of the last 8,500 years.

How did CO2 get blamed for global warming? French physicist Joseph Fourier (1820s) proposed that energy from sunlight must be balanced by energy radiated back into space. Irish physicist John Tyndall (1850s) performed laboratory experiments on “greenhouse gases” (GHGs), including water vapor; he proposed that CO2 elicited an important effect on temperature. However, it’s impossible to do appropriate experiments — unless the roof of your laboratory is at least six miles high. Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius (1896) proposed that “warming is proportional to the logarithm of CO2 concentration.” Columbia University geochemist Wallace Broecker (1975) and Columbia University adjunct professor James Hansen (1981) wrote oft-cited articles in Science magazine, both overstating the perils of CO2 causing dangerous global warming — without providing scientific proof.

Most of Earth’s energy comes from the sun. Absorption of sunlight causes molecules of objects or surfaces to vibrate faster, increasing their temperature. This energy is then re-radiated by land and oceans as longwave, infrared radiation (heat). Princeton University physicist Will Happer defines a GHG as that which absorbs negligible incoming sunlight but captures a substantial fraction of thermal radiation as it is re-radiated from Earth’s surface and atmospheric GHGs back into space.

The gases of nitrogen, oxygen and argon — constituting 78%, 21%, and 0.93%, respectively, of the atmosphere — show negligible absorption of thermal radiation and therefore are not GHGs. Important GHGs include water (as high as 7% in humid tropics and as little as 1% in frigid climates), CO2 (0.042%, or 420 parts per million [ppm] by volume), methane (0.00017%), and nitrous oxide (0.0000334%, or 334 ppm). Water vapor (clouds) has at least a hundred times greater warming effect on Earth’s temperature than all other GHGs combined.

As atmospheric CO2 increases, its GHG effect decreases: CO2’s warming effect is 1.5°C between zero and 20 ppm, 0.3°C between 20 and 40 ppm, and 0.15°C between 40 and 60 ppm. Every doubling of atmospheric CO2 from today’s levels decreases radiation back into space by a mere 1%. For most of the past 800,000 years, Earth’s atmospheric CO2 has ranged between about 180 ppm and 320 ppm; below 150 ppm, Earth’s plants could not exist, and all life would be extinguished.

Today’s global atmospheric CO2 levels are ~420 ppm. Even at these levels, plants are “partially CO2-starved.” In fact, standard procedures for commercial greenhouse growers include elevating CO2 to 800­–1200 ppm; this enhances growth and crop yield ~20–50%. As shown by satellite since 1978, increased atmospheric CO2 has helped “green” the Earth by more than 15 percent, substantially enhancing crop production.

Spatial pattern of trends in Gross Primary Production (1982- 2015). Source: Sun et al. 2018.

If global atmospheric CO2 was ~280 ppm in 1750, and it’s ~420 ppm today, what’s the source of this 140-ppm increase? Scientists estimate that human-associated industrial emissions might have contributed 135 ppm — with “natural causes” accounting for the remaining 5 ppm.

But did processes throughout earth’s history stop
when humans began burning hydrocarbons?

In Earth’s history, the highest levels of atmospheric CO2 (6,000–9,000 ppm) occurred about 550–450 million years ago, which caused plant life to flourish. CO2 levels in older nuclear submarines routinely operated at 7,000 ppm, whereas newer subs keep CO2 in the 2,000- to 5,000-ppm range. Meanwhile, ice core data over the last 800,000 years show no correlation between global warming or cooling cycles and atmospheric CO2 levels.

CO2 in our lungs reaches 40,000–50,000 ppm, which induces us to take our next breath. Each human exhales about 2.3 pounds of CO2 per day, which means Earth’s 8 billion people produce daily 18.4 billion pounds of CO2. But humans represent only 1/40 of all CO2-excreting life on Earth. Multiplying 18.4 billion pounds by 40 gives us 736 billion pounds of CO2 per day. This approximates the overall CO2 excreted by the total animal and fungal biomass on the planet.

Daily emissions from worldwide industry in 2020 were estimated to be 16 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents. If one metric ton is 2,200 pounds, then “total industrial emissions” amount to 35,200,000,000 (35.2 billion) pounds of CO2 per day. This means that the entire animal and fungal biomass (736 billion pounds) puts out more than 20 times as much CO2 as all industrial emissions (35.2 billion pounds)!

Can any clear-thinking person comprehend the facts above and still create a company with idiotic plans to “sequester CO2” or “sequester carbon”? Scientifically, “net zero” and “carbon footprint” are meaningless terms. There is no “climate crisis.”

If you try to find these facts on the web, good luck! Out of every 10 hits on any climate topic, you’ll be lucky to find one or two sites with truthful scientific data.

The door of a nearby classroom displays a poster of Abraham Lincoln with the caption: “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.” It is advice that our 16th president surely would have offered — had he lived to see the rise of this global warming quasi-religion.

Daniel W. Nebert is professor emeritus in Gene-Environment Interactions at the University of Cincinnati. He thanks Professor Will Happer (one of the CO2 Coalition directors) for valuable discussions.

See Also

Ian Plimer Asks, “What Climate Crisis?”

Climatists Deniers of Reality

 

 

 

Business Transitioning Away from DEI Back to ROI

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

A sign of the times

Resourceful Finance Pro reported a pivot away from DEI by Price WaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Big 4 accounting firm pulls plug on DEI quotas.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The second-largest accounting firm in the U.S. decided to revamp its hiring policies rather than face class-action lawsuits or an investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This is just the latest example of a private-sector company adjusting in response to the Supreme Court ruling against Harvard University last year.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), one of the vaunted Big 4 accounting firms, is eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) targets for its internship and scholarship programs. The company will also drop a commitment to earmark at least 40% of its procurement budget toward minority-owned suppliers.

America First Legal (AFL) sent a cease-and-desist letter to PwC in recent weeks warning of future litigation against it unless it ended its racial quotas. AFL described PwC as “one of the worst offenders when it comes to implementing racially discriminatory practices.”

Changes at PwC will include “ending race-based eligibility criteria for a student internship program and for scholarships to help candidates prepare for professional accounting exams, two initiatives that were designed to increase the diversity of the firm’s employee base,” according to the Financial Times. PwC reported it hired 3,500 people in fiscal year (FY) 2023, of whom “56% were racially/ethnically diverse.”

The percentage of white new hires at PwC dropped from 58% in FY 2021 to 51% in 2023. Many students say the costs of going to college and sitting for the certified public accountant exam are too high, leading to an exodus from the profession.

CNN Worried about Business Losing Faith

DEI efforts are under siege. Here’s what experts say is at stake.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

When the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police set off a wave of racial unrest across the country in 2020, corporate America responded swiftly with renewed and public commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

Major companies created new DEI positions or expanded teams dedicated to DEI and the phrase became a buzzword across the business landscape. Many corporate leaders pledged to hire more people of color, removed branding perceived to be racist and invested in historically Black colleges.  At the time, the efforts were largely met with public support, amid a so-called “racial reckoning” that laid bare a slew of systemic inequities in American society, including the workplace.

But nearly four years later, the very public ousting of Harvard’s first Black woman president earlier this week has led to a new firestorm of debate about DEI efforts in corporate America and beyond.

While Claudine Gay’s resignation from Harvard was linked to a plagiarism scandal and ongoing controversy over a congressional hearing on antisemitism last month, her departure inspired some critics to take aim at what they perceive as a broader failing of DEI efforts.

Among the most vocal of these critics pushing back against DEI is billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who in the wake of Gay’s departure posted a 4,000-word opus on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that blasted DEI as “inherently a racist and illegal movement in its implementation even if it purports to work on behalf of the so-called oppressed.”

Ackman’s lengthy thesis was later retweeted by billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who now owns the social media platform.

“DEI is just another word for racism. Shame on anyone who uses it,” Musk wrote in his post sharing Ackman’s screed on Wednesday. In a follow-up post, the world’s wealthiest person doubled down, adding,

“DEI, because it discriminates on the basis of race, gender and
many other factors, is not merely immoral, it is also illegal.”

A pendulum swing

After a DEI hiring spree that began in late 2020, data suggests some businesses are now in fact reversing course on their efforts.

The most recent data on hiring from the job site Indeed shared with CNN Friday illustrates a pendulum swing in postings for DEI-related roles on the site.

After a more than 29% uptick in job postings with DEI in the title or description between November 2020 and November 2021, the data shows a more than 23% decline in the amount of job postings with “DEI” in the title or description between November 2022 and November 2023.

The Tide is Turning Away from Woke Activism in Business

An analysis from Intellectual Takeout A Turning Tide: Nearly 300 Corporations Lost Their Perfect Woke Ranking in 2023.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The Corporate Equality Index (CEI) is America’s premiere benchmarking tool used to measure companies’ adherence to LBGT orthodoxy.  An initiative of the misleadingly named Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the CEI has recently published its 2023 report—and the news is less-than-glittery for hundreds of corporations that have lost their perfect score since 2022.

In 2022, the number of companies to achieve a perfect score was 842.
In 2023, only 545 made the cut: a drop of 297 businesses in just 12 months.

Incredibly, among the companies to lose the prized badge were also those to suffer the most self-inflicted damage through 2023 woke overreach. These companies included Target and Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch, which slid 5 and 30 points respectively on CEI’s 100-point scale.

If you ever wanted proof that no amount of pandering will ever please our culture’s self-appointed moral overlords, here it is.  CVS, United Airlines, BP, and Hewlett Packard all likewise lost their perfect scores in 2023 for failing to provide enough LGBT training, incentives, or “outreach.”

In fact, over half of the brands that had been ranked on the index previously
achieved a lower score in 2023—and among them were 85 Fortune 500 companies.

President of the 1792 Exchange (an organization opposing left-wing bias in corporate America) Paul Fitzpatrick was optimistic about the 2023 CEI results, as reported by The Washington Stand:

It’s good to see 300 fewer companies bending the knee to this controversial, activist organization. But public companies cannot fulfill their duty to their shareholders while allowing HRC to dictate their operations, messaging, policy engagement, and charitable giving. HRC’s annually escalating manipulation and extortion must be rejected. It’s time for businesses to get back to business.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hot Climate Models Not Fit For Policymaking

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Roy Spencer has published a study at Heritage Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Summary

Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy. In the United States during summer, the observed warming is much weaker than that produced by all 36 climate models surveyed here. While the cause of this relatively benign warming could theoretically be entirely due to humanity’s production of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning, this claim cannot be demonstrated through science. At least some of the measured warming could be natural. Contrary to media reports and environmental organizations’ press releases, global warming offers no justification for carbon-based regulation.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
  1. The observed rate of global warming over the past 50 years has been weaker than that predicted by almost all computerized climate models.
  2. Climate models that guide energy policy do not even conserve energy, a necessary condition for any physically based model of the climate system.
  3. Public policy should be based on climate observations—which are rather unremarkable—rather than climate models that exaggerate climate impacts.

For the purposes of guiding public policy and for adaptation to any climate change that occurs, it is necessary to understand the claims of global warming science as promoted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  When it comes to increases in global average temperature since the 1970s, three questions are pertinent:

  1. Is recent warming of the climate system materially attributable to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, as is usually claimed?
  2. Is the rate of observed warming close to what computer climate models—used to guide public policy—show?
  3. Has the observed rate of warming been sufficient to justify alarm and extensive regulation of CO2 emissions?

While the climate system has warmed somewhat over the past five decades,
the popular perception of a “climate crisis” and resulting calls for economically
significant regulation of CO2 emissions is not supported by science.

Discussion Points

Temperature Change Is Caused by an Imbalance Between Energy Gain and Energy Loss.

Recent Warming of the Climate System Corresponds to a Tiny Energy Imbalance.

Climate Models Assume Energy Balance, but Have Difficulty Achieving It.

Global Warming Theory Says Direct Warming from a Doubling of CO2 Is Only 1.2°C.

Climate Models Produce Too Much Warming.

Climate models are not only used to predict future changes (forecasting), but also to explain past changes (hindcasting). Depending on where temperatures are measured (at the Earth’s surface, in the deep atmosphere, or in the deep ocean), it is generally true that climate models have a history of producing more warming than has been observed in recent decades.

This disparity is not true of all the models, as two models (both Russian) produce warming rates close to what has been observed, but those models are not the ones used to promote the climate crisis narrative. Instead, those producing the greatest amount of climate change usually make their way into, for example, the U.S. National Climate Assessment,  the congressionally mandated evaluation of what global climate models project for climate in the United States.

The best demonstration of the tendency of climate models to overpredict warming is a direct comparison between models and observations for global average surface air temperature, shown in Chart 1.

In this plot, the average of five different observation-based datasets (blue) are compared to the average of 36 climate models taking part in the sixth IPCC Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). The models have produced, on average, 43 percent faster warming than has been observed from 1979 to 2022. This is the period of the most rapid increase in global temperatures and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and also corresponds to the period for which satellite observations exist (described below). This discrepancy between models and observations is seldom mentioned despite that fact that it is, roughly speaking, the average of the models (or even the most extreme models) that is used to promote policy changes in the U.S. and abroad.

Summertime Warming in the United States

While global averages produce the most robust indicator of “global” warming, regional effects are often of more concern to national and regional governments and their citizens. For example, in the United States large increases in summertime heat could affect human health and agricultural crop productivity. But as Chart 2 shows, surface air temperatures during the growing season (June, July, and August) over the 12-state Corn Belt for the past 50 years reveal a large discrepancy between climate models and observations, with all 36 models producing warming rates well above what has been observed and the most extreme model producing seven times too much warming.  

The fact that global food production has increased faster than population growth in the past 60 years suggests that any negative impacts due to climate change have been small. In fact, “global greening” has been documented to be occurring in response to more atmospheric CO2, which enhances both natural plant growth and agricultural productivity, leading to significant agricultural benefits.

These discrepancies between models and observations are never mentioned when climate researchers promote climate models for energy policy decision-making. Instead, they exploit exaggerated model forecasts of climate change to concoct exaggerated claims of a climate crisis.

Global Warming of the Lower Atmosphere

While near-surface air temperatures are clearly important to human activity, the warming experienced over the low atmosphere (approximately the lowest 10 kilometers of the “troposphere,” where the Earth’s weather occurs) is also of interest, especially given the satellite observations of this layer extending back to 1979.

Satellites provide the only source of geographically complete coverage of the Earth, except very close to the North and South Poles.

Chart 3 shows a comparison of the temperature of this layer as produced by 38 climate models (red) and how the same layer has been observed to warm in three radiosonde (weather balloon) datasets (green), three global reanalysis datasets (which use satellites, weather balloons, and aircraft data; black), and three satellite datasets (blue).

Conclusion

Climate models produce too much warming when compared to observations over the past fifty years or so, which is the period of most rapid warming and increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The discrepancy ranges from over 40 percent for global surface air temperature, about 50 percent for global lower atmospheric temperatures, and even a factor of two to three for the United States in the summertime. This discrepancy is never mentioned when those same models are used as the basis for policy decisions.

Also not mentioned when discussing climate models is their reliance on the assumption that there are no natural sources of long-term climate change. The models must be “tuned” to produce no climate change, and then a human influence is added in the form of a very small, roughly 1 percent change in the global energy balance. While the resulting model warming is claimed to prove that humans are responsible, clearly this is circular reasoning. It does not necessarily mean that the claim is wrong—only that it is based on faith in assumptions about the natural climate system that cannot be shown to be true from observations.

Finally, possible chaotic internal variations will always lead to uncertainty in both global warming projections and explanation of past changes. Given these uncertainties, policymakers should proceed cautiously and not allow themselves to be influenced by exaggerated claims based on demonstrably faulty climate models.

Roy W. Spencer, PhD, is Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

 

 

‘Charities’ Spend Millions on Climate Change Lawfare

Posted on by Ron Clutz

In his article at The Hill Robert Stilson answers the question Why are ‘charities’ funneling millions into climate change lawfare? Excerpts in italiics with my bolds and added images.

Over the last several years, dozens of dubious climate change lawsuits have
been brought by state and local governments against the oil and gas industry.
They are bringing these cases with help from white-shoe law firms,
funded by non-profit money from Big Philanthropy.

Such attempts at “legislation through litigation” represent yet another example of the deeply regrettable tendency toward the ends-justify-the-means rationalizations common in contemporary political activism. The millions in tax-exempt philanthropic dollars apparently underwriting this lawsuit campaign also raise serious questions about the proper relationship between charity, politics and the judicial system.

Citing recently released tax filings, Fox News reported that the New Venture Fund, a registered 501(c)(3) charity and the largest constituent member of the giant left-of-center political nonprofit network managed by Arabella Advisors, had granted $2.5 million to the for-profit law firm Sher Edling in 2022. This was after it had funneled $3 million to the firm last year.

Sher Edling is best known for representing state and local governments in a slew of lawsuits against oil and gas companies, accusing them of downplaying or otherwise misrepresenting the impact that their products have on the global climate. The governmental plaintiffs (which include the states of Rhode Island and Delaware, the cities of Charleston, South Carolina and Baltimore, the county of Anne Arundel, Maryland, and others) are suing to force “Big Oil” to pay them compensation for the vast costs that these governments claim they are incurring due to climate change.

None of the plaintiffs have yet prevailed on the merits,
but the catch is they don’t necessarily need to. 

Activists hope that if just one case lands before “one judge in one state in one courtroom that sees a path to allowing these cases to go to trial,” discovery and the prospect of a jury trial could give them major leverage over the industry. The activists don’t necessarily need to win a verdict to achieve their ultimate objectives pertaining to future climate policy or legislation.

The money Sher Edling received from the New Venture Fund was apparently routed through one of the nonprofit’s countless fiscally-sponsored projects: the Collective Action Fund for Accountability, Resilience, and Adaptation. It has no website or other public profile, but grant descriptions explain that the fund’s purpose is to funnel charitable dollars to “enable cities, counties, and states hard hit by climate change to file high-impact climate damage and deception lawsuits represented by expert counsel.” This was formerly a project of a different 501(c)(3) called the Resources Legacy Fund, before switching its sponsorship to the New Venture Fund.

Notably, the Collective Action Fund has received
significant support from Big Philanthropy.

Major known funders include the MacArthur Foundation ($9 million since 2017) and the JPB Foundation ($3.3 million from 2020 to 2022, plus another $1.15 million approved for future payment), in addition to six-figure totals from the Hewlett Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

In an October 2023 letter responding to congressional inquiries, Sher Edling claimed that this philanthropic money does not underwrite specific lawsuits, but is instead used to support “the firm’s general operations in this area” — that is, climate litigation.

Because it would bypass the legislative process on a major issue of public policy, commentators have aptly labeled this whole phenomenon “legislation through litigation,” or even “lawfare.” They have raised important questions that more people should be asking. At least two overarching issues deserve particular mention.

The first concerns the nature of the lawsuits themselves. Climate change (and what should be done about it) is among the most contentious and consequential public policy issues of our time. The debate surrounding it involves major uncertainties and tradeoffs that carry with them direct personal ramifications for virtually every American. It is exactly the sort of issue that should be resolved though the political process, by voters and their elected representatives in Congress, not through a judicial process, by private lawyers and their ideologically motivated funders.

Moreover, it defies any notion of justice to hold the oil and gas industry civilly liable for producing and selling a product that is utterly essential to humanity’s survival — including these governmental plaintiffs’ own constituents. That is essentially what these lawsuits boil down to.

The second concern relates to the manner in which this litigation is evidently being at least partially financed. Big Philanthropy is routing millions of charitable dollars through a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit to a for-profit law firm, for the purpose of supporting a nationwide litigation campaign. Is there a point at which such an arrangement ceases to be “charitable,” in the sense that we collectively understand that term? If so, what should we do about that?

Government lawsuits against the oil and gas industry over the alleged impacts of climate change rest upon an entirely unjust theory of liability. They are an affront to both the civil justice system and the democratic legislative process.

That they are apparently being underwritten by giant private foundations is further evidence of just how far Big Philanthropy has moved away from what most Americans would consider “charity.”

Canada Supreme Court: Trudeau’s Use of Emergency Act “Unreasonable”, “Unconstitutional”

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Global News reports Federal Court finds Emergencies Act for ‘Freedom Convoy’ violated Charter.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The Federal Court has ruled the Trudeau government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act during the so-called “Freedom Convoy” that descended on Ottawa in 2022 violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In his ruling, Justice Richard G. Mosley said the move was “unreasonable” and outside the scope of the law. Mosley is a 21-year veteran of the Federal Court and is a respected voice on national security legal matters. He has weighed in on some of the most high-profile recent cases in Canadian intelligence, including a 2016 decision that found CSIS had been illegally storing Canadians’ communication data for more than a decade.

The case was brought forward by the Canadian Civil Liberties
Association (CCLA), the Canadian Constitution Foundation,
Canadian Frontline Nurses and a handful of individuals.

Mosley wrote, “I have concluded that the decision to issue the Proclamation does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency and intelligibility — and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration.”

“I think it’s in the interest of this government and future governments and all Canadians that the threshold to invoke the Emergencies Act remains high and that it is truly, as Justice Mosley says, a legislation of last resort,” CCLA lawyer Ewa Krajewska told Global News.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland says that Ottawa will appeal the ruling. “We respect very much Canada’s independent judiciary, however we do not agree with this decision, and respectfully we will be appealing it,” Freeland said at the cabinet retreat in Montreal.

Yes, that’s Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland calling for imposing unfathomable costs on Canadians to solve an imaginary problem (Climate Change). She also serves on WEF Board of Trustees.

‘The decision follows an application for judicial review launched by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and several other applicants in 2022 after the emergency measures were used to end the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa.  The measures controversially allowed the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters, conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest people for participating in assemblies the government deemed illegal.”

“Yes, what was happening in Coutts may have been concerning, but [Mosley] finds that the existing laws of Canada were sufficient to deal with what was happening in Coutts and elsewhere in the country, and that is what the government was not able to demonstrate,” Krajewska said.
The ruling includes a secret February 2022 memo from the Privy Council Office (PCO), the central government department that supports the prime minister, recommending Trudeau invoke emergency powers. The document, which was partially censored and marked “cabinet confidence” – some of the most sensitive information in the federal government – noted that PCO believed the “examples of evidence to date” support the conclusion that the Emergencies Act was required.  Although from the outset, PCO noted their conclusion could be challenged.
Krajewska tells Global News that the document was first produced during POEC, and the CCLA had it submitted to the court during this case.  “I think it’s very important from a democracy and transparency perspective that the government produced this document during POEC and that it’s now been appended to this decision,” Krajewska said.  “It’s important for Canadians to understand how the decision was made and what information the government had before it when it was making this decision.”

The document is a remarkable window into the advice Trudeau was getting from the public service during the crisis. Cabinet documents are very rarely released, and even the censored version contained some revelations.

For instance, it shows PCO was in active talks with the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF)
about how the military might assist in ending the protests should they be required.

The PCO memo revealed on Tuesday also notes that while Premier Doug Ford was an enthusiastic supporter of Trudeau invoking emergency powers, other premiers were more skeptical.

“A large number of other premiers expressed concern about the need to act carefully to avoid enflaming the underlying sentiment they considered to lie behind the protest, which they linked to public health measures including vaccine mandates,” the document read.  “These premiers were not seeing the local manifestations of this movement yet in their jurisdiction.”

Quebec Premier François Legault “had a strong negative reaction to the proposal, saying that he would oppose the application of federal emergency legislation in Quebec,” where the memory of Trudeau’s father invoking the War Measures Act during the FLQ crisis is still alive.

Will Trudeau Finally Pay a Political Price for His Bad Governance?  We certainly hope so.

 

Arctic Grows a Month of Ice in 3 Weeks January 2024

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Impressive Arctic ice recovery continued in January, growing a month’s worth in just three weeks, as seen in the animation below:

In three weeks of January 2024, the Arctic added nearly a full Wadham of ice (1M km2). The animation shows Hudson Bay (lower right) freezing completely.  Just above Hudson, you can see the Gulf of St. Lawrence icing over, and Baffin Bay adding ice, extending fast ice all the way to Newfoundland, now up to 64% of its annual maximum.

At the extreme and lower left, Okhotsk and Bering Seas also grow rapidly. Okhotsk grew ice extent up to 914k, 81% of its max last March.  Bering grew up to 514k km2, 68% of its max.  At the top Kara freezes over and Barents and Greenland Seas add ice to their margins.The graph below shows the January ice recovery.

Note the average January ends at 14.36 km2 while 2024 has already reached 14.33 km2, up from 13.39 km2 at the start, and presently  288k km2 above average. SII started slightly lower than MASIE and tracked quite closely since. Note that other recent years have varied below the 18-year average at month end.

The table below shows year-end ice extents in the various Arctic basins compared to the 18-year averages and some recent years.

Region 2024022 Day 22 2024-Ave. 2018022 2024-2018
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 14333601 14045488  288112  13505957 827644 
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070983 1070317  667  1070445 538 
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 966006 965999  7  965971 35 
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1087131  6  1087120 18 
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897837  8  897845 0 
 (5) Kara_Sea 932571 910022  22549  891776 40795 
 (6) Barents_Sea 712531 530554  181977  322465 390067 
 (7) Greenland_Sea 703581 601855  101726  465828 237753 
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 1050488 1239519  -189031  1330666 -280179 
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854860 853382  1479  853109 1752 
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1260903 1260695  209  1260838 66 
 (11) Central_Arctic 3230107 3203377  26730  3165195 64912 
 (12) Bering_Sea 513853 600796  -86943  343164 170689 
 (13) Baltic_Sea 93892 56072  37820  44364 49528 
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 914275 720482  193793  782100 132175 

This year’s ice extent is 288k km2 or 2.1% above average.  Only Baffin Bay and Bering have deficits to average, more than offset by surpluses elsewhere, espcially Greenland, Barents and Okhotsk seas. Many of the others are already maxed out.

 

Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring Arctic ice extents and NH snow cover.

 

Warm Is Cold and Down Is Up 2024

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Clearly climatists are worried about current cold weather, ironically triggered by the beginning of COP28 coinciding with heavv snow closing airports in Munich, for example. Add to that Buffalo Bills NFL playoff game postponed due to extreme cold. So Climate Central coordinated a PR campaign lest the believers lose faith in Global Warming.  Later below are noted the three themes that appear.

Why we still have brutal cold snaps even as the planet warms to record levels, CNN

Why extreme cold weather events still happen in a warming world, PBS

Extreme cold in a warming world: Climate instability may be disrupting polar vortex, UPI

Extreme cold and climate change: What’s the deal?  CBC explains.

What is climate? And how is it different from weather? Deutsche Welle (DW)

Why is it so cold in the UK right now – and how long will Arctic chill last? The Guardian

Extreme cold still happens in a warming world – in fact climate instability may be disrupting the polar vortex, Yahoo News

1.  Cold is Weather, Not Climate

Some of the reassurances are the familiar refrain that cold is weather, while warming is forever.

2.  CO2 Causes Extreme Weather of All Kinds

Others claim that rising CO2 causes all kinds of extreme weather, including big chills.  Actually, those stories are way out on a limb, contrary to what IPCC itself says.  Roger Pielke Jr. explains at his substack page What the IPCC Actually Says About Extreme Weather.  I promise, you’ll be utterly shocked. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Back to extreme weather — let’s take a look what IPCC AR6 says about the time of emergence for various extreme events. Here are some direct quotes related to specific phenomena:

    • An increase in heat extremes has emerged or will emerge in the coming three decades in most land regions (high confidence)
    • There is low confidence in the emergence of heavy precipitation and pluvial and river flood frequency in observations, despite trends that have been found in a few regions
    • There is low confidence in the emergence of drought frequency in observations, for any type of drought, in all regions.
    • Observed mean surface wind speed trends are present in many areas, but the emergence of these trends from the interannual natural variability and their attribution to human-induced climate change remains of low confidence due to various factors such as changes in the type and exposure of recording instruments, and their relation to climate change is not established. . . The same limitation also holds for wind extremes (severe storms, tropical cyclones, sand and dust storms).

The IPCC helpfully provides a summary table for a range of extremes, indicating for various phenomena whether emergence has been achieved with medium or high confidence at three points in time:

to date (today), i.e., specifically when IPCC AR6 was completed in 2021,
by 2050 under RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5, and
by 2100 under RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5.

Those three dates are displayed as the 3 right-most column in the table below.

A white entry in the table means that emergence has not yet been or is not in the future expected to be achieved. The blue and orange entries represent the emergence of respectively increasing and decreasing signals at various levels of confidence.

Take a moment and look at the table carefully. Look especially at all those white cells.

Clearly, with the exception perhaps of only extreme heat,
the IPCC is badly out of step with today’s apocalyptic zeitgeist.

Maybe that is why no one mentions what the IPCC actually says on extreme events. It may also help to explain why a recent paper that arrives at conclusions perfectly consistent with the IPCC is now being retracted with no claims of error or misconduct.

3.  CO2 Makes the Polar Vortex Unstable

The wavy polar vortex is a real phenomenon, but blaming it on us driving our SUVs is a stretch too far.  A previous post deconstructs this warmist claim.

No, CO2 Doesn’t Drive the Polar Vortex (Updated)

 

Davos Men Outflanked by Davos Disrupters

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Stuart Thomson reports at National Post Carney in the battle for the soul of Davos.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

When the World Economic Forum’s conference in Davos wrapped up
it was clear the Davos men were outflanked by the Davos disrupters

By the time the World Economic Forum’s annual conference wrapped up on Friday, it was clear this was the year the Davos men were sidelined by the Davos disrupters.

At the vanguard of these disrupters was Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, whose special address to the conference mixed dark warnings about the future of the West with optimistic celebrations of free market capitalism.

While Davos attendees gathered to hear panels about creating jobs, harnessing AI and revamping the economy to battle climate change, Milei made headlines with his warnings against “greater regulation which creates a downward spiral until we are all poor.”  In his speech, Milei warned the world against creeping towards socialism, arguing that collectivism in any form was the root cause of the West’s problems. The Argentinian president finished his speech with an enthusiastic flourish.  “Long live freedom, dammit!”

Core Theme for Davos 2024

The next day Mark Carney, the slick Canadian central banker, joined a panel on monetary policy and argued that his former colleagues deserved “very high marks” for their recent performance battling post-pandemic inflation.  To the populist right, which has been resurgent in the West and has trained its ire on Davos in recent years, Carney’s must have seemed like the more eccentric argument.

Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has boasted that he sniffed out the inflation problem in early 2022 well before the bankers and economists that Carney praised. Poilievre has also been withering in his criticism of current Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem, whom Poilievre has promised to fire if he gets the chance. And Poilievre is no fan of the World Economic Forum (WEF), or what his party refers to as “highfalutin trips” to its annual meeting, or its policies, which “do not align with those of hard-working Canadian families.”

For years, Carney has been trailed by rumours that he wants to succeed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader, which would set up a showdown with Poilievre. That would see Poilievre, among the new breed of Davos disrupters, facing off against the consummate Davos man.

And if a previous clash between the two men, at a virtual meeting of the finance committee in 2021, is any indication, it would be an ill-tempered contest. That committee meeting was a raucous affair that provoked no less than 10 points of order from other MPs. Poilievre accused Carney’s opposition to Canadian pipelines (while supporting investments in foreign pipelines in his role as as chairman of Brookfield Asset Management) as smacking of “the Davos elite at its worst.”

Although Poilievre has been accused of chasing conspiracy theories about the WEF, his criticism of Carney sounds more like the critique offered in 2004 by Samuel Huntington, the Harvard political scientist who popularized the term “Davos man.”

Poilievre describes Carney as a global elitist who sees the world as an economic playground and national loyalties as an encumbrance or, at best, an irrelevance.  While most people have strong patriotic feelings, Huntington described a Davos man that saw himself as “global citizen” and identified with the world as a whole, in contrast to most people, who describe warm patriotic feelings for their home country.

“Comprising fewer than four percent of the American people, these transnationalists have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations,” wrote Huntington.

Things have changed in the two decades since Huntington wrote his paper about the Davos men. When the London School of Economics Business Review in 2022 analyzed piles of press releases by the World Economic Forum, it found that growth and economic development were falling out of style. Words like “global,” “international” and “world” were also becoming passé. Instead, the World Economic Forum was concerned with the “Earth’s finitude and fragility” and words like “pollution” and “nature” had quadrupled.

It’s this new version of Davos that leaders like Milei want to disrupt.

The Argentinian’s libertarianism may have some overlap with Davos ideas from 20 years ago, but he’s a hostile figure at a conference where the terms “diversity,” “ethnicity,” and “equality” have increased five-fold in six years, according to the LSE Business Review analysis.

In fact, the neoliberal ideas about global trade that Huntington heard at Davos in the early 2000s would probably find some sympathy with both Milei and Poilievre, who are fans of the free market American economist Milton Friedman.  Both men have been, somewhat erroneously, compared to former U.S. president Donald Trump but, as long-time libertarians, they more closely resemble each other. Milei’s philosophy even drifts into anarcho-capitalism, a kind of concentrated libertarianism that even Friedman shied away from.

One thing Trump, Poilievre and Milei share, though, is a deep mistrust of the kind of ideas bandied about at Davos and the kind of people who traffic in them. Poilievre has vowed that if he becomes prime minister, his cabinet won’t be allowed to travel to the annual Davos conference, as ministers in the previous Conservative government did.

But given the media reaction to Milei’s performance, which evoked praise from conservative media and curiosity from the mainstream media, Poilievre might be kicking himself that he didn’t think to travel to Davos, to join in person with the new wave of Davos disrupters.

Rebuilding Trust?