Month: December 2024

Global Warming Big Lie–Skip the Distractions

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The notion that CO2 from human activities causes global warming has multiple flaws, many of which have been dissected and rebutted here and elsewhere.  But The Big Lie is to fundamentally misrepresent how Earth’s climate system works. Richard Lindzen explains in the above interview with Jordan Peterson.  For those who prefer reading I provide a transcript from the closed captions in italics with my bolds and added images.

JP: When you started to object to the narrative, back say in ‘92, To what narrative were you objecting and on what grounds were you objecting?

RL: You’re touching on something that took me a while to understand. You know Goebbels famously said: If you tell a big enough lie and repeat it often enough, it’ll become the truth. there’s been a lot of that in this. But there are aspects of establishing the narrative, that is, what makes something the truth that I hadn’t appreciated.

So the narrative was the climate is determined by a greenhouse effect
and adding CO2 to it increases warming. And moreover besides CO2
the natural greenhouse substances–water vapor, clouds, upper level clouds–
will amplify whatever man does.

Now that immediately goes against Le Chatelier’s principle which says: If you perturb a system and it is capable internally of counteracting that, it will. And our system is so capable.

So that was a little bit odd. You began wondering, where did these feedbacks come from? Immediately people including myself started looking into the feedbacks, and seeing whether there were any negative ones, and how did it all work?

But underlying it, and this is what I learned: if you want to get a narrative established, the crucial thing is to pepper it with errors, questionable things. So that the critics will seize on those and not question the basic narrative.

The basic narrative was that climate is controlled by the greenhouse effect. In point of fact the earth’s climate system has many regions, but two distinctly different regions. There are the tropics roughly minus 30 to plus 30 degrees latitude, and the extra Tropics outside of plus or minus 30 degrees.

They have very different dynamics, and this is the crucial thing for the Earth by the way. And this is a technicality and much harder to convey than saying that greenhouse gases are a blanket or that 97 percent of scientists agree.

This is actually a technical issue. The Earth rotates. Now people are aware that we have day and night, but there is something called the Coriolis effect. When you’re on a rotating system it gives rise to the appearance of forces that change the winds relative to the rotation. So at the pole the rotation vector is perpendicular to the surface, while at the equator it’s parallel to the surface: it’s zero.

And this gives you phenomenally different Dynamics. So where you don’t have a vertical component to the rotation, vector motions do what they do in the laboratory in small scales. If you have a temperature difference, it acts to wipe it out.

Figure 11. Most sunlight is absorbed in the tropics, and some of the heat energy is carried by air currents to the polar regions to be released back into space as thermal radiation. Along with energy, angular momentum — imparted to the air from the rotating Earth’s surface near the equator — is transported to higher northern and southern latitudes, where it is reabsorbed by the Earth’s surface. The Hadley circulation near the equator is largely driven by buoyant forces on warm, solar-heated air, but for mid latitudes the “Coriolis force” due to the rotation of the earth leads to transport of energy and angular momentum through slanted “baroclinic eddies.” Among other consequences of the conservation of angular momentum are the easterly trade winds near the equator and the westerly winds at mid latitudes.

And so if you look at the tropics the temperatures at any surface are relatively flat: they don’t vary much with latitude. On the other hand you go to the mid Latitudes, in the extra Tropics the temperature varies a lot between the tropics and the pole. We know that about how temperatures are cold at high Latitudes. And if you look at changes in climate in the Earth’s history, what they show is a Tropics that stays relatively constant, and what changes is the temperature difference between the tropics and the pole.

During the Ice Age it was about 60 degrees Centigrade, today it’s about 40.  During 50 million years ago something called the eocene the difference was about 20. So that’s all a function of what’s going on outside the tropics. Within the tropics the greenhouse effect is significant but what determines the temperature change between the tropics and the pole has very little to do with the greenhouse effect.

It is a dynamic phenomenon based on the fact that a temperature difference with latitude generates instabilities. These instabilities take the form of the cyclonic and anticyclonic patterns that you see on the weather map. You can see the tropics are very different from even a casual look at a weather map.
The systems that bring us weather travel from west to east at latitudes outside the tropics. Within the tropics they travel from east to west. The prevailing winds are opposite in the two sections.

Sometimes people say that changes due to the greenhouse effect are amplified at the poles. That is not true: there’s no physical basis for that Statement. All they do is determine the starting point for where the temperature changes in mid-latitudes and that’s determined mainly by Hydrodynamics.

Okay that’s complicated to explain to someone and yet it’s the basis for those claims of seemingly large significance of these small numbers. You know they’re saying if Global mean temperature goes up one and a half degrees it’s the end. That’s based on it getting much bigger at high latitudes and determining that. But all one and a half degrees at the equator would do or in the greenhouse part of the Earth is change the temperature everywhere by one and a half degrees, which for most of us is less than the temperature change between breakfast and lunch.

See Also

Arctic “Amplification” Not What You Think

About Meridional Cooling and Climate Change

How To Fix US Energy After Biden Broke It

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The Energy Bad Boys provide a road map at their blog 7 Quick Energy Takeaways from the 2024 Election.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

How a Donald Trump second term could reshape energy policy

Donald Trump’s comeback victory in the presidential election, which included carrying all seven swing states and winning the popular vote, along with Republican majorities in the Senate and potentially the House of Representatives, means big changes are coming to our nation’s energy policies.

Here are 7 quick takeaways for what might change in the next administration.

1. Regulatory Rollback

The incoming Trump administration will take concrete steps to repeal or scale back the regulatory overreach emblematic of the Biden-Harris administration’s energy and environmental policy.

Some of the regulations that could see a repeal or rework under the Trump administration include the tailpipe emission standards (which were effectively an electric vehicle mandate), the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), and of course, the rules on carbon dioxide emissions on power plants. 

The D.C. Circuit Court is set to hear arguments on the Clean Power Plan 2.0—which we determined would leave millions of Americans in the dark—in the coming months.

Capacity shortfall events – or blackouts – in Southwest Power Pool (SPP) when we modeled EPA’s proposal for carbon mandates, stemming from the agency’s use of 80% or higher capacity values for solar energy.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to stay the rules at this time, so the outcome of the case will likely impact the Trump administration’s strategy in addressing these rules. They may opt to do a scaled-down version of the rules, similar to when they replaced the Clean Power Plan 1.0 with the Affordable Clean Energy rule. Time will tell.

What we know now is this: the Biden Administration’s goal
of imposing carbon dioxide limits on existing
natural gas plants is dead in the water.

2. A Re-emphasis on Federalism

The repeal or reworking of several of the electricity-sector mandates imposed by the Biden-Harris administration will mean states have more say in their energy affairs.

This is both a blessing and a curse, as blue states pursue aggressive renewable buildouts, and utilities in red states attempt to boost their corporate profits by “green plating” their grids. Utilities do this by enacting internal carbon-free goals that are similar to policies in blue states, hoping it goes unchecked by regulators and lawmakers.

Xcel Energy’s profits in Minnesota have been skyrocketing since the state’s first renewable energy mandate, signed into law in 2007.

Policymakers in moderate and conservative states need to understand that the utilities pursuing wind and solar in their resource portfolios are not working in the interest of their constituents, and appropriate market signals are desperately needed through reforms that value reliability and affordability.

This is why we are seeing a groundswell of interest in our “Only Pay for What You Get Act,” where utility companies would only be allowed to charge their customers for the reliable portion of a power plant that will bolster grid reliability while keeping costs as low as possible.

This shows the difference between profits earned by utility companies under normal regulation and what profits would be under Only Pay legislation.

Please feel free to reach out to us if you are interested in learning more about how Always On Energy Research can help policymakers in your state understand the stakes of getting their energy policy correct, and offer forward-looking solutions to the challenges we’ll all face in the coming years.

3. Repeal the IRA?

As we noted in our piece, Grassley v. The Grid, subsidies paid to wind and solar operations are no longer harmless feel-good incentives for alternative energy. Today, these subsidies are actively undermining the reliability of our nation’s electric grid.

IRA subsidies paid to wind and solar developers are used as an excuse by utility companies to justify closing down reliable coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants while pretending that their plans to replace them with wind, solar, and battery storage facilities are better for consumers.

As Travis Fisher has noted at his Substack, he estimates that the IRA will cost more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years and between $2 trillion and $4 trillion by 2050. These massive subsidies are so lucrative that companies are pursuing projects that only make sense if the subsidies exist, irrespective of whether they make any sense for customers. This is a recipe for enormous malinvestment of taxpayer dollars.

Repealing the investment tax credits and production tax credits for wind and solar facilities will be an indispensable part of reversing this trend and restoring rational market signals to the electricity sector.

4. Keystone Pipeline

During his appearance on the Joe Rogan Podcast, President Trump said he liked Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ideas on a lot of things, but we were relieved the President said he would need to keep him away from environmental policy decisions because he was hostile to “the black gold.”

Always On Energy Research’s oil and gas analyst, Trevor Lewis, notes that beginning day one, the Trump administration can take several steps to ensure America’s economy will have enough oil and gas to fuel decades of growth.

Restarting construction on the Keystone XL pipeline should be at the top of the list of priorities, which would bring job opportunities and economic activity to countless small towns from North Dakota to Kansas while simultaneously bolstering America’s energy security.

While America has vastly improved its energy independence from the rest of the world, our nation is still importing several million barrels of heavy sour crude from OPEC and other foreign nations. Restarting Keystone will allow American refineries to friend-source crude from Alberta and would, as an added benefit, reduce SO2 emissions from tanker ships, which negatively impact air quality and contribute to ocean acidification.

5. Drill Baby Drill

For domestic production, Trump’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will reverse the Biden Administration’s disastrous drilling policies.

In the first two years of the Biden Administration, total leases offered declined by 70 percent. By 2023, Biden’s BLM leased 95 percent fewer acres than Trump in 2019. Trump’s BLM can reverse this trend and award prime oil-rich lands to eager drillers in Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado. Offering these leases will replenish acreage inventories and reverse the 20-year decline in active acres, and the royalties paid on federal lands will be distributed through BLM’s oil and gas revenue splitting program with state governments and local communities.

Trump will also likely reverse the Biden Administration’s pause on permitting new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities and appoint commissioners to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that will approve the construction of new natural gas pipelines.

6.  Solar and Wind on Federal Lands

In 2023, the Biden Administration’s Department of Interior (DOI) gave renewable energy developers a sweetheart deal slashing the annual lease rate for wind and solar on federal lands by 80 percent. Months later, Biden’s BLM announced the Western Solar plan which will bridle 31 million acres of Federal lands – most of which in Western States thousands of miles from Washington D.C. – with 25 gigawatts of solar power.

Unless reversed by the Trump Administration’s BLM, the Western Solar Plan will erect inefficient solar panels over pristine western landscapes while damaging fragile ecosystems in the process. Worse still, communities would not be compensated for the damages done by these solar developers because, unlike oil and gas leases, BLM does not share the revenues paid by wind and solar lease rents or bonus payments on the Federal lands with local communities.

The revenues communities receive from royalties strengthen local budgets, create jobs, and support the care and maintenance of the local environment, which wind and solar currently don’t contribute to. Trump’s BLM will have an opportunity to end Biden’s free ride for wind and solar developers. President Trump can advocate for western lands and their inhabitants by leveling the playing field by ensuring renewable energy developers pay rates equivalent to those paid by oil and gas producers.

7. Halting Offshore Wind

The Biden Administration has pledged to install 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030. To meet this target, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) offered 10 offshore wind leases and scheduled auctions for 12 more leases through 2028.

Offshore wind energy is one of the most expensive energy sources on the grid—even before accounting for the hidden costs of maintaining reliability with intermittent electricity generation.

Additionally, offshore wind has been the center of ongoing environmental controversies, from killing whales to the breakdown of blades in the middle of the ocean, only to washup onshore

To prevent another Vineyard wind disaster, in addition to saving consumers from expensive and unreliable energy, Trump should direct the BOEM to terminate the 12 scheduled leases. As for the 10 auctioned leases, Trump could (and should) rescind these leases from offshore developers, in a similar move to Biden rescinding Alaskan oil and gas leases.

French Fishermen Join U.S. Fishermen in Fighting Offshore Wind – IER

Conclusion

Biden Bad, Trump Good.

After 4 years of one of the worst presidencies for reliable and affordable energy, the Trump administration has the opportunity to unleash energy dominance by ensuring a level playing field for all energy resources, ending the subsidies and handouts to renewable and battery developers, repealing egregious regulations aimed at prematurely retiring coal and natural gas plants, and promoting an energy dominant policy which will help end Bidenomic’s policy of energy inflation.

 

 

 

Biden EPA Falsely Touts First Climate Change Arrest

Posted on by Ron Clutz

NY Post reports Biden admin brought unprecedented climate change prosecution against man for ‘smuggling greenhouse gases’ by transporting refrigerants.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The Biden administration boasted in an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report released Thursday about the unprecedented prosecution of a California man for “smuggling greenhouse gases” across the border from Mexico and selling them online.

Michael Hart, 58, was arrested in March and pleaded guilty in September to charges related to transporting refrigerants into the US to peddle on Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp and other online vendors between June and December 2022.

Biden’s EPA touted the crackdown on Hart, the first-ever person charged for climate change-related bootlegging of refrigerants — namely, hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HFCs) — without the agency’s approval, in its report.

When charging the San Diego resident earlier this year, US Attorney Tara McGrath vowed “it will not be the last” case of its kind.

After some investigation it appears this “victory” in the fight
against climate change is a lot of puffery with very little substance,
and worse more overreach by the EPA.

Background

The Montreal Protocol, ratified in 1987, forced the industrialized world to switch from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) on the theory that CFCs break down the ozone layer.

Both the formation and depletion of the ozone layer depend on ultraviolet light from the Sun. The theory was that UV splits chlorine atoms from the CFCs. The CFCs sat around all winter, moving into position, waiting … and then just as the Sun returned, the chlorine radicals chewed up the ozone as it was being formed, producing a brief downward spike in ozone at the start of the Antarctic summer. This is the famous ozone hole.

The actual measurements look very peculiar, which means there’s more going on than just a simple chain of free-radical reactions. But NASA and the climatologists were confident that the mystery was solved. As with the AGW debate, most agree that it could theoretically happen; the debate is over how big the effect is and how important it is.

Four popular HFCs in use today as refrigerants are R-410a, R-407c, R-143a, and R-134a. The average GWP of the HFCs currently in use, weighted by usage, is about 1600. Enviros are claiming that eliminating these so-called high-GWP HFCs will prevent up to 0.5°C of warming by 2100. Due to the huge variability in the predictions of the various models, this could be anywhere from 8 to 100% of what the models predict. What is remarkable is that absolutely nobody seems to have noticed any of this until the patents ran out.

Global total HFC emissions (GtCO2eq.yr-1; left panel) and radiative forcing (right panel) from the V-2015 baseline scenarios developed in Velders et al. (2015) and the updated scenarios derived here (current policy Kigali independent (K-I) and KA-202. Figure: Velders et al., Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2015

From  Chemical Sciences Laboratory

As substitutes for ozone-depleting substances, the emissions of HFCs have increased substantially over the past two decades as a result of the phaseout of ozone-depleting substances under the Montreal Protocol. Due to the growing climate impact of HFCs, the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol has scheduled a phase-down of their future production and consumption. The results show that total CO2 equivalent global HFC emissions derived from NOAA observations continue to increase through 2019, but are about 20% lower than previously projected for 2017-2019, mainly because of the lower global emissions of HFC-143a, which is one of the longer-lived HFCs in use today. Current policies reduce projected emissions in 2050 from 4.0-5.3 GtCO2eq.yr-1 in the absence of controls to 1.9-3.6 GtCO2eq.yr-1, and the added provisions of the Kigali Amendment reduce the projected emissions further to 0.9-1.0 GtCO2eq.yr-1. Without any controls, HFC emissions are projected to contribute 0.28-0.44 °C to global surface warming by 2100, compared to a contribution of about 0.04 °C by 2100 with Kigali Amendment controls.

Comment: 

The HFC emissions in the left panel are on a scale of 1 to 5 GtCO2eq.yr-1. So HFCs are estimated to have a GHG effect in single digits compared to CO2 emissions which in 2022 were ~37 Gt.  On the right panel, the warming effect is estimated to range between 0.05 and 0.25 W per m^2.  Putting this into context, The energy budget of our climate system involves the absorption and reemission of about 200 watts per square meter. Doubling CO2 involves a 2% perturbation to this budget. HFCs are an order of magnitude less, taking IPCC estimates at face value.  But there’s more.

Why would HFCs and CFCs cause global warming?

Most articles merely say that HFCs cause global warming because they possess a high GWP. This is a circular argument, because GWP simply means global warming potential.

The real explanation is that they absorb thermal (mid-)infrared radiation at wavelengths that don’t overlap with carbon dioxide. The infrared spectra of HFC-125 and HFC-143a have three bands in the mid-infrared which have little overlap with carbon dioxide (CO2):

But look at the spectrum of absorption by H2O and other IR-active gases:

The absorption spikes by HFCs at  7 to 8 μm are already covered by the higher concentrations of H2O.  There’s little radiation for HFCs to absorb, so the Global Warming Potential is hypothetical.

Footnote: 

A major clarification in 2017 came from the DC Court of Appeals ordering EPA (and thus the Executive Branch Bureaucracy) to defer to Congress regarding regulation of substances claimed to cause climate change.  While the issue and arguments are somewhat obscure, the clarity of the ruling was welcome.  Basically, the EPA under Obama attempted to use ozone-depleting authority to regulate HFCs, claiming them as greenhouse gases.  The judges decided that was a stretch too far.

However a 2020 law passed by Congress prohibits importation of HFCs without allowances issued by the EPA. The law is part of a global phaseout designed to slow climate change.

Biden’s EPA Goes Rogue on HFCs

 

 

False Premises for Hague Climate Reparations Hearing

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Public hearings at the International Court of Justice in The Hague on the request for an advisory opinion on the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change, December 2024 (Photo: International Court of Justice)

After one week of the hearing at International Court of Justice (ICJ) the thrust of the event is clear.  It is an attempt to redistribute wealth from nations who developed and prospered from basing their societies on hydrocarbons to other nations who have not done so as successfully.  The “victims” claim compensation because burning hydrocarbons caused global warming which will raise sea levels and flood island nations.  This is called “Climate Justice.”

The parties, including presumably the judges, take this premise without question, so the whole proceeding is based on PR without scientific foundation.

Recently green campaigners were warning that small Pacific islands would drown as sea levels rose. In 2019 United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres flew all the way to Tuvalu, in the South Pacific, for a Time magazine cover shot. Wearing a suit, he stood up to his thighs in the water behind the headline “Our Sinking Planet.” The accompanying article warned the island—and others like it—would be struck “off the map entirely” by rising sea levels.

Earlier this year, the New York Times finally shared what it called “surprising” climate news: Almost all atoll islands are stable or increasing in size. In fact, scientific literature has documented this for more than a decade. While rising sea levels do erode land, additional sand from old coral is washed up on low-lying shores. Extensive studies have long shown this accretion is stronger than climate-caused erosion, meaning the land area of Tuvalu and many other small islands is increasing.

These appeals were made previously by the Maldives and Fiji, who co-hosted the Madrid COP.  But stubborn facts undermine the credibility of the premise.

It is a widely accepted climate view—based on wild speculations from some op/ed writers and partisan politicians–is that average sea levels are increasing dangerously and rationalize an immediate governmental response. But as we shall demonstrate below, this perspective is simply not accurate.

There is a wide scientific consensus (based on satellite laser altimeter readings since 1993) that the rate of increase in overall sea levels has been approximately .12 inches per year.

To put that increase in perspective, the average sea level nine years from now (in 2029) is likely to be approximately one inch higher than it is now (2020). One inch is roughly the distance from the tip of your finger to the first knuckle. Even by the turn of the next century (in 2100), average ocean levels (at that rate of increase) should be only a foot or so higher than they are at present.

 

None of this sounds particularly alarming for the general society and little of it can justify any draconian regulations or costly infrastructure investments. The exception might be for very low- lying ocean communities or for properties (nuclear power plants) that, if flooded, would present a wide-ranging risk to the general population. But even here there is no reason for immediate panic. Since ocean levels are rising in small, discrete marginal increments, private and public decision makers would have reasonable amounts of time to prepare, adjust and invest (in flood abatement measures, etc.) if required.

But are sea levels actually rising at all? Empirical evidence of any substantial increases taken from land-based measurements has been ambiguous. This suggests to some scientists that laser and tidal-based measurements of ocean levels over time have not been particularly accurate.

For example, Professor Niles-Axel Morner (Stockholm University) is infamous in climate circles for arguing–based on his actual study of sea levels in the Fiji Islands–that “there are no traces of any present rise in sea levels; on the contrary, full stability.” And while Morner’s views are controversial, he has at least supplied peer reviewed empirical evidence to substantiate his nihilist position on the sea-level increase hypothesis.

The world has many important societal problems and only a limited amount of resources to address them. What we don’t need are overly dramatic climate-change claims that are unsubstantiated and arrive attached to expensive public policies that, if enacted, would fundamentally alter the foundations of our economic system.

See Also:

Fear Not For Fiji

Islands Adapting to Change: Tuvalu

 

Climate Lawfare Goes International

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Activists hope the opinion from the ICJ’s judges will have far-reaching legal consequences in the fight against climate change Image: Peter Dejong/AP Photo/picture alliance

DW reports on hearings underway at ICJ International Court of Justice in the Hague.  Overview of the proceedings in italics with my bolds. Vanuatu urges ICJ to recognise climate change harms

The outcome of the landmark case could lead to the
establishment of legal framework for holding countries
accountable in the fight against climate change.

Vanuatu, was the first of over 100 countries and organizations to present its views in the two-week proceedings seeking an advisory opinion from the World Court.

Handful of countries responsible for climate crisis World Court told

They demand that the failure to address climate change be declared a violation of international law. Arnold Kiel Loughman, attorney- general of the Vanuatu archipelago nation said that states have obligations to act with due diligence, to prevent significant harm to the environment, to reduce emissions, and to provide support to countries like his.

Aside from small island states and numerous Western and developing countries, the court will also hear from the world’s top two emitters of greenhouse gases, China and the United States. [More on those statements later on]

While activists are hopeful the outcome of the hearings will have far-reaching legal implications for violators, others are skeptical given that the UN’s highest court might take even years to implement.

Any decision will be non-binding because the court has no concrete means to enforce its rulings.

The hearings will continue until December 13. The court’s opinion is expected to be delivered in 2025.

Public hearings at the International Court of Justice in The Hague on the request for an advisory opinion on the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change, December 2024 (Photo: International Court of Justice)

Climate Home provides perspectives from the countries prospering from hydrocarbon energy in their article Big emitters accused of hiding behind climate treaties in international hearing.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The US, Saudi Arabia and others have pushed back against a global bid
to clarify states’ legal obligations to tackle climate change.

At a landmark legal hearing in The Hague this week, wealthy countries that are big emitters of planet-heating gases have used the Paris Agreement and other existing treaties on climate change to avoid additional pressure to step up their action to tackle global warming.

Their statements at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) sparked strong criticism from top climate diplomats and advocates who argue that international accords do not place limits on state accountability over climate change.

The two-week hearing is the culmination of years of campaigning by a group of law students from Pacific nations and diplomacy led by the island state of Vanuatu.

Their efforts resulted in a UN General Assembly resolution last year calling on the ICJ to provide an advisory opinion on the legal obligations of states to address climate change and the legal consequences if they fail to do so.

The ICJ says its advisory opinions are not binding. But experts stress that they clarify, rather than create, new law and will be referred to as authoritative documents in future climate litigation and during international climate negotiations.

In total, 98 states are giving oral submissions to the court, alongside a handful of institutions including the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Four days into the hearing, a clear divide is emerging between wealthy nations that are historically high emitters and vulnerable nations on the frontlines of climate change that have contributed little to planetary heating.

The event has seen powerful fossil-fuel producing countries – from the United States to Russia – resist what they regard as an attempt to force them to do more to rein in emissions and provide reparations to those suffering because of their carbon pollution.

On Wednesday, the United States – which does not fully recognise the authority of the ICJ – told the court that sufficient legal frameworks are already in place to deal with climate change.

Margaret Taylor, legal adviser to the US Department of State, described global warming as the “quintessential collective action problem” which the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement are carefully designed to deal with.

Those treaties, she said, embody “the clearest, most specific and most current expression of states’ consent to be bound by international law in respect of climate change” – and should therefore be the “primary framework” for determining their obligations.

Taylor told the court, on behalf of the US, that the Paris Agreement does not provide any legal standard against which to judge the adequacy of an NDC or to determine if a country is doing its fair share in global terms. Nor do states breach the agreement if they fail to achieve their NDCs, she added.

Many countries believe that legal obligations should not be limited to existing climate agreements and have asked the ICJ to consider a wide range of written and unwritten international law, including rules on transboundary harm, due diligence and the duty to cooperate and to prevent harm.

The relevance and scope of human rights in the context of climate change has also been hotly debated. States particularly disagree over the applicability of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. This was acknowledged by the UN General Assembly in a 2022 resolution but has proved difficult to implement.

Mamadou Hébié, associate professor of international law at Leiden University, representing Burkina Faso at the ICJ, said the Paris Agreement does not create any exemption or derogation from the rest of international law.

Zachary Phillips, counsel for Antigua and Barbuda, said compliance with the Paris Agreement is “necessary but may not be sufficient” to comply with unwritten ‘customary’ international law, including the obligation to prevent harm.

Several of the world’s biggest economies – among those most reliant on fossil fuels – have contended this week, however, that they have no obligations beyond the Paris pact and the UNFCCC. Australia, for example, said these are “central instruments” for global cooperation while China appealed to the court to avoid “fragmenting” international climate law.

Wiebke Rückert, Germany’s director for public international law, said the Paris Agreement strikes a “careful balance” between legal and non-legal commitments and warned that attempts to change that could “seriously” endanger the willingness of states to participate in political processes.

Ghaida Bajbaa, from Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry, said the UNFCCC provides “no basis whatsoever” for the court to authorise limits to fossil fuel extraction and consumption.

This was echoed by Maksim Musikhin, director of the legal department of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who said the transition away from fossil fuels – agreed at COP28 in Dubai last year – is not a legal obligation but rather a political appeal.

Ashfaq Khalfan, climate justice director for Oxfam America, said it was “absurd” for the Biden administration to make arguments against clearer legal obligations on climate change given the upcoming presidency of Donald Trump, who has vowed to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement for a second time when he takes office.

The ICJ hearing continues until December 13 in The Hague, with other big greenhouse gas emitters such as the UK still to speak.

 

 

Movement for Sensible Climate Policy

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Many of us are blogging to draw attention to knowledge and information dismissed or suppressed by legacy and social media as “misinformation”, simply because the thoughts and ideas are rational and reasonable rather than alarmist. Tom Harris reminded me in his recent comment that we have many many colleagues speaking out in the public square sharing our concerns.  So let this post introduce a valuable resource in this fight for reasonable climate understandings and policies, namely CANADIANS FOR  SENSIBLE CLIMATE POLICY Join the Movement for Responsible and Sensible Climate Policy.

The home page summarizes why this mission is important and what is at stake and the path forward.

Climate Activism is BIG business

The Green Budget Coalition in 2024 is made up of 21 of the leading Canadian environmental activist organizations publicly lobbying for $287 billion in government spending on their causes.

That is 62% of the total federal tax revenue.

According to public data, in Canada alone these organizations control billions in funds, raise and spend millions on PR campaigns and employ hundreds of staff to achieve these objectives. Globally, the climate activism industry controls trillions of dollars and has armies of advocates. This politicisation of public policy impacts every Canadian.

Even when done with the best intentions, power without oversight isn’t peace, order or good government. To advocate for the best policy, we encourage a range of views, even the controversial ones. We dare to question, to be wrong and to explore all sides of complex issues.

What matters is adopting sober, reasonable and sensible policy in the interests of all Canadians.

Our Concerns

Strange Math

Carbon dioxide gets a lot of attention compared to the many other environmental concerns. Every bad weather event gets assigned to it. The main player in the greenhouse effect remains water and clouds. A changing climate may be unpredictable but that does not mean abnormal.

With prosperity comes costs which must be balanced against the benefits. Strange does not mean unexplainable. Proclamations of doom and crisis are always suspicious.

Odd incentives

Big Oil, corporate interests, corrupt politicians, conspiracy theorists, corporate PR firms and paid skeptics. These are all boogeymen for why, despite general popularity and political backing, there remains a dire crisis with minimal progress.

What if the crisis is exactly because the incentives are designed to perpetuate a cycle? What if the problem isn’t bad intentions or ethics but a social mission over funded to irreverence which needs to be called out as ineffective?

Motivated Reasoning

Motivated reasoning is choosing only the good parts of a story while ignoring the rest because it is what we want to believe. It is quite common in everyday life. When it comes to climate change, calm, pragmatic discussions are rare with many complex and passionate explanations and perspectives.

Those complex explanations may well be accurate, but any analysis of climate change must acknowledge the issue has emotional and personal implications for many Canadians.

Outsourced Problems

When speaking unpopular opinions, one’s intelligence, integrity and ethics will almost always come under fire. When speaking popular opinions rarely is there such scrutiny. It’s human to deeply care for our environment. Why don’t we see the mass implementation of responsible governance, moderation & sustainability? Why so much green washing? Why are 9/10 solutions just shifting our problems into other people’s lands.

Transporting environmental destruction from Canada to Qatar, China or Nigeria is not ethical or effective. If being sustainable was easy or obvious someone would have done it long ago.

Little Accountability

Spending must be within context. Canada is estimated to produce about 2% of the worlds total CO2 emissions with our higher emissions per capita being within expectations for an oil producing nation. Alberta accounts for much of this higher status. The Federal government revenue was $447 billion. A provincial government like Ontario was $179 billion.

A hundred billion or trillion dollar public effort to reduce a rounding error in emissions isn’t just another project, it’s a significant financial commitment with long lasting implications.

Boomers

Your generation has enjoyed a splendid life because of the sacrifices made by your parents during and after WW2. Post war, jobs were easy to find, economies expanded throughout the developed world and Boomers “Never-had-it-so-good.” In retirement your lifestyle was far better than any previous generation enjoyed.

Now, you have a choice, you can either watch economic hardship unfold while passing on huge debts to the next generations or speak up and blow the whistle on the biggest waste of capital the world has ever seen.

Non-Boomers

You are inheritors of a huge debt by the leadership of today. Do you want to spend your life in bad economic times? Do you want your children to live through the same hardships as you stand to inherit? How much time have you invested in thinking about what the Net Zero at 2050 policies cost? Can humans in fact control climate? Is the financial sector pushing that agenda biased? Are the alternative energy jobs long-term or busy-work?

Decide for yourself. Make your thoughts known.

Course Correction

Cost-Benefit Accounting

Alberta and Saskatchewan’s embrace of lower-regulation, pro-petroleum and chemical development is a source of concern to many Canadians. Yet, this comes with benefits to those same groups including massive subsidies to public spending, foreign investment, increased buying power and lowered cost of living in all provinces.

A sensible climate policy transcends politicisation, it works for those who are pro-petroleum or anti-petroleum, left or right wing, those who see increased carbon as beneficial or those seeking net-zero. Sober energy policy improves lives by balancing concerns and offering pragmatic decisions which achieve universal objectives.

Open Discussion

The journalists spread the word and the activists too, the science becomes “settled” and 97% of climate scientists agree. Your life could get a little easier, just don’t listen to skeptics, realists, opponents, the scientists not surveyed, friends, brothers, sisters, cousins, or uncles. An agency will sort the details and inform you of the correct and proper truth.

Never, a sensible climate policy comes from open inquiry, where facts and data are the observations in agreement and the debate is about the meaning and impacts of that data. Experts will breakdown confusion, answer questions and offer clarity.

Prioritize the Everyday Canadian

Climate change policies and activism have a track record of growing budgets, increased powers, and increased access to new technologies and insights. Show us the benefits. Show us the increases in quality of life. Show the practical applications and decreased risks and dangers.

A sensible climate policy is measurable, and though perhaps driven by fear and concern, increased attention and effort means more tangible results.

Maximize Well-being

In cost-benefit analysis, choices are made between conflicting values. Energy and climate policy can be framed as altruists against economics. It can be framed as common good against special interests. It can be framed as differing scientific views.

A sensible climate policy will be driven by maximizing well-being and benefit to society.

Ensure Accountability

Climate policy is often ignored except by special interests. The tale of energy companies against the activists is contradicted by the funding patterns which see energy companies actively funding, hiring and promoting climate change activists. In the energy business “green energy” is just another opportunity.

A sensible climate policy must have checks and balances. Lobbying can benefit everyone in a marketplace of ideas but as a monopoly, everyday Canadians will never be served.

Global Big Chill UAH November 2024

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The post below updates the UAH record of air temperatures over land and ocean. Each month and year exposes again the growing disconnect between the real world and the Zero Carbon zealots.  It is as though the anti-hydrocarbon band wagon hopes to drown out the data contradicting their justification for the Great Energy Transition.  Yes, there was warming from an El Nino buildup coincidental with North Atlantic warming, but no basis to blame it on CO2.  

As an overview consider how recent rapid cooling  completely overcame the warming from the last 3 El Ninos (1998, 2010 and 2016).  The UAH record shows that the effects of the last one were gone as of April 2021, again in November 2021, and in February and June 2022  At year end 2022 and continuing into 2023 global temp anomaly matched or went lower than average since 1995, an ENSO neutral year. (UAH baseline is now 1991-2020). Now we have had an usual El Nino warming spike of uncertain cause, unrelated to steadily rising CO2 and now dropping rapidly.

For reference I added an overlay of CO2 annual concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa.  While temperatures fluctuated up and down ending flat, CO2 went up steadily by ~60 ppm, a 15% increase.

Furthermore, going back to previous warmings prior to the satellite record shows that the entire rise of 0.8C since 1947 is due to oceanic, not human activity.

gmt-warming-events

The animation is an update of a previous analysis from Dr. Murry Salby.  These graphs use Hadcrut4 and include the 2016 El Nino warming event.  The exhibit shows since 1947 GMT warmed by 0.8 C, from 13.9 to 14.7, as estimated by Hadcrut4.  This resulted from three natural warming events involving ocean cycles. The most recent rise 2013-16 lifted temperatures by 0.2C.  Previously the 1997-98 El Nino produced a plateau increase of 0.4C.  Before that, a rise from 1977-81 added 0.2C to start the warming since 1947.

Importantly, the theory of human-caused global warming asserts that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere changes the baseline and causes systemic warming in our climate.  On the contrary, all of the warming since 1947 was episodic, coming from three brief events associated with oceanic cycles. And now in 2024 we have seen an amazing episode with a temperature spike driven by ocean air warming in all regions, along with rising NH land temperatures, now oscillating below its peak.

Chris Schoeneveld has produced a similar graph to the animation above, with a temperature series combining HadCRUT4 and UAH6. H/T WUWT

image-8

 

mc_wh_gas_web20210423124932

See Also Worst Threat: Greenhouse Gas or Quiet Sun?

November 2024 Global Big Chill Led by SH and Tropics banner-blog

With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea.  While you heard a lot about 2020-21 temperatures matching 2016 as the highest ever, that spin ignores how fast the cooling set in.  The UAH data analyzed below shows that warming from the last El Nino had fully dissipated with chilly temperatures in all regions. After a warming blip in 2022, land and ocean temps dropped again with 2023 starting below the mean since 1995.  Spring and Summer 2023 saw a series of warmings, continuing into October, followed by cooling. 

UAH has updated their TLT (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for November 2024. Due to one satellite drifting more than can be corrected, the dataset has been recalibrated and retitled as version 6.1 Graphs here contain this updated 6.1 data.  Posts on their reading of ocean air temps this month are ahead of the update from HadSST4.  I posted last month on SSTs Ocean Cools Further October 2024. These posts have a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years.

Sometimes air temps over land diverge from ocean air changes. In July 2024 all oceans were unchanged except for Tropical warming, while all land regions rose slightly. In August we saw a warming leap in SH land, slight Land cooling elsewhere, a dip in Tropical Ocean temp and slightly elsewhere.  September showed a dramatic drop in SH land, overcome by a greater NH land increase. In October, ocean and land temps in both NH and Tropics dropped, pulling the global anomaly down. Now in November there was cooling everywhere, except only NH land temps.

Note:  UAH has shifted their baseline from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020 beginning with January 2021.   v6.1 data was recalibrated also starting with 2021. In the charts below, the trends and fluctuations remain the same but the anomaly values changed with the baseline reference shift.

Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system.  Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy.  Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements.  In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates.  Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST.  Thus cooling oceans portend cooling land air temperatures to follow.  He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months.  This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

After a change in priorities, updates are now exclusive to HadSST4.  For comparison we can also look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6.1 which are now posted for October.  The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above. Recently there was a change in UAH processing of satellite drift corrections, including dropping one platform which can no longer be corrected. The graphs below are taken from the revised and current dataset.

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI).  The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean air temps since January 2015.

In 2021-22, SH and NH showed spikes up and down while the Tropics cooled dramatically, with some ups and downs, but hitting a new low in January 2023. At that point all regions were more or less in negative territory. 

After sharp cooling everywhere in January 2023, there was a remarkable spiking of Tropical ocean temps from -0.5C up to + 1.2C in January 2024.  The rise was matched by other regions in 2024, such that the Global anomaly peaked at 0.95C in May, Since then the Tropics and the Global anomaly have cooled down to 0.5C, as well as SH dropping down to 0.4C in November.

Land Air Temperatures Tracking in Seesaw Pattern

We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly.  The land temperature records at surface stations sample air temps at 2 meters above ground.  UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps.  The graph updated for November is below.

 

Here we have fresh evidence of the greater volatility of the Land temperatures, along with extraordinary departures by SH land.  The seesaw pattern in Land temps is similar to ocean temps 2021-22, except that SH is the outlier, hitting bottom in January 2023. Then exceptionally SH goes from -0.6C up to 1.4C in September 2023 and 1.8C in  August 2024, with a large drop in between.  Now in November, SH and the Tropics have pulled the Global Land anomaly further down despite a bump in NH land temps.

The Bigger Picture UAH Global Since 1980

The chart shows monthly Global Land and Ocean anomalies starting 01/1980 to present.  The average monthly anomaly is -0.03, for this period of more than four decades.  The graph shows the 1998 El Nino after which the mean resumed, and again after the smaller 2010 event. The 2016 El Nino matched 1998 peak and in addition NH after effects lasted longer, followed by the NH warming 2019-20.   An upward bump in 2021 was reversed with temps having returned close to the mean as of 2/2022.  March and April brought warmer Global temps, later reversed

With the sharp drops in Nov., Dec. and January 2023 temps, there was no increase over 1980. Then in 2023 the buildup to the October/November peak exceeded the sharp April peak of the El Nino 1998 event. It also surpassed the February peak in 2016. In 2024 March and April took the Global anomaly to a new peak of 0.94C.  The cool down started with May dropping to 0.9C, and in June a further decline to 0.8C.  October went down to 0.7C and now in November dropped to 0.6C

The graph reminds of another chart showing the abrupt ejection of humid air from Hunga Tonga eruption.

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  Clearly NH and Global land temps have been dropping in a seesaw pattern, nearly 1C lower than the 2016 peak.  Since the ocean has 1000 times the heat capacity as the atmosphere, that cooling is a significant driving force.  TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST4, but are now showing the same pattern. Despite the three El Ninos, their warming had not persisted prior to 2023, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.

 

CO2 Not a Threat, But Greatly Benefits

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Beware false and misleading Cartoons.

First, a plain language scientific explanation is in this article: THE BENEFITS OF CO2 – PART 2: CO2 does not cause global warming.  By Teri Ciccone.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

THE BENEFITS OF CO2 – PART 2: CO2 does not cause global warming

Abstract: Climate alarmists, the press/media, and politicians say we must achieve net zero CO2 by 2050 to avoid catastrophic global warming. In reality, all humanity and all life on Earth benefit from the increased atmospheric CO2 and the slight temperature increase. In Part 1, we presented scientific arguments to show how increased CO2 and warmer temperatures benefit humanity and all life on Earth. In Part 2, we discuss why a growing number of independent scientists and engineers argue that CO2 does not cause any measurable global warming. Part 3 will present how and why increased CO2 does not cause extreme climate/weather conditions. in the concluding Part 4 we present recommendations for policymakers.

Introduction: In this study, we set out facts and scientific principles consistent with established laws of physics, chemistry, and thermodynamics to state that greenhouse gases (GHGs) and the greenhouse effect (GHE) do not measurably warm the Earth. The concept that it does is at best a 100-year-old myth. The absorption and re-emission of longwave infrared radiation from the Earth’s surface does not cause any measurable warming of the Earth.It also raises the particular concern that the UN IPCC and NASA/NOAA do not address all of the sources of heat that warm the Earth. Nor consider the many natural forces and cycles that cause weather and climate variations that operate at the Astronomical, Endo-Earth, and Bio-Earth levels. Their well-published and promoted Earth Energy Budget needs serious revisions or to be discarded. Two main concepts describe atmospheric physics and thermodynamics, and each plays a vital role in understanding how the Sun warms the Earth and how the Earth cools. The first is the Radiative Transfer Concept (RTC) and the second is the Heat Transport Concept (HTC). They are both important and both need to be studied to fully understand our weather and climate systems. RTC needs an understanding of quantum physics, radiation, photons, absorption/emissions, etc. HTC needs an understanding of the more mundane science of atmospheric thermodynamics, convection, latent heat, conduction, evaporation-condensation, air and ocean circulations, etc.
Radiation Transfer Concept-RTC. The Sun provides most of the energyneeded to warm the Earth to a comfortable and sustainable level for all life. Solar radiation (photons) readily crosses the vacuum of space and arrives at Earth’s Top Of Atmosphere (TOA) at the speed of light. We see a simplified conceptual model of this radiation in Figure 1, showing the wavelength/ frequency, amplitude, and direction of propagation. These electromagnetic energy rays are emitted over a broad set of vibrational frequencies, spanning 20 orders of magnitude, called the spectrum. This radiant energy arrives at TOA at 1,366 W/m 2 with an average of 340 Watts per square meter (W/m 2 ) when averaged over the spherical world.About 30% of the 340 W/m 2 is reflected to space leaving 240 W/m 2 for the Earth. There one-third is absorbed by the atmosphere and two-thirds by the surface (oceans + lands). The high-energy UV radiation warms the air mostly by photodissociation and photoionization. In this process, the solar radian electromagnetic energy is converted to kinetic energy, and then to physical heat through collisions with air molecules. At the surface, about 67% warms and then cools by local physical heat processes like conduction, convection, and latent heat and 33% by radiation. Most of this radiation exits directly to space through an “atmospheric window” at frequencies that are not absorbable by GHGs. It’s estimated that only about 0.09 W of the solar energy absorbed by the surface is radiated through CO2 the non-water vapor greenhouse gasses (GHGs), a trivially small amount.
In essence, the IPCC claims that these greenhouse gasses already contribute about 33 degrees C of temperature to the average global temperature, and it will continue to increase with increased quantities of human-made CO2 /GHGs. In Summary, the IPCC claim is based on three false assumptions:
1) When a photon’s electromagnetic energy is absorbed by CO2 it warms the CO2 molecule with physical heat. This heat is then shared with other air molecules and the atmosphere warms. The energized CO2 molecule will then re-emit a comparable photon, and the process is repeated hundreds/thousands of times before its heat/energy finally exits into space.
2) Half of all the re-emitted photons go upward as described in 1). But half are radiated downward and are re-absorbed by the surface and warm it.
3) The Sun provides Earth with only enough energy to give the planet an average global temperature of -18°C. But measurements tell us that the average global temperature is about 15°C, therefore they claim that CO2 and the GHE provide the missing 33°C heat.
Together these concepts allegedly warm the Earth by first converting the photon’s Electromagnetic Energy (EMI) into physical heat, and secondly, this process delays the release of the original photon energy into space allowing heat to accumulate and delaying its exit to space. The details of their false science and the errors in their explanation are provided in this article Revised Why all the fuss with CO2 and the Greenhouse effect
Heat Transport Concept, or HTC is the second step towards what happens to the EMI energy of these photons as they approach the surface. Some will be reflected to space, for example, in Antarctica, nearly 100% is reflected to space by the ice and snow. Some will be scattered in the atmosphere and cause no measurable warming of anything. Most of these photons are visible light and Infrared and are not readily absorbed by the air. Nearly all of these photons are absorbed by the surface, the dense solid matter and liquid part, and warms it. This process of photon absorption by the surface and warming is called thermalization and we now discuss the Heat Transport Concept, or HTC. In general, the atmosphere does not warm the surface because the air is normally cooler than the surface. We know this based on the established atmospheric Temperature Lapse Rates. For example, the dry air lapse rate is 9.8°C per Km of altitude. This means that the atmospheric temperature cools by 9.8°C for each kilometre of altitude up to the top of the troposphere. According to the Second Law of thermodynamics heat can only flow from a warmer object to a colder object, never the other way around. The RTC espoused by the UN IPCC violates this Second Law, thereby falsifying their point 2) above. Nitrogen, Oxygen, argon, and water vapor make up more than 99% of the atmosphere. The optical depth, or transparency of the air close to the surface is very opaque. This ensures that almost 100% of resonant Longwave Infrared Radiation (LWIR) photons emitted by the surface will be absorbed by GHGs and immediately thermalized within the first several millimetres of altitude. This means that the resonant photon will be immediately absorbed by a CO2 molecule and become energized. An energized CO2 molecule could spontaneously re-emit the absorbed photon in about half a second as described by the UN IPCC theory. In reality, however, within a millionth/billionth of a second that energised CO2 molecule will physically collide with a non-GHG molecule. The impact of the collision will heat the non-GHG molecule and de-energize the CO2 molecule. So that initial photon has disappeared, and its electromagnetic energy is changed to physical heat and is dispersed throughout the atmosphere adding a tiny bit of warmth to the air. The detailed process is described in Part 2, pages 5-6 of the paper linked above. 
Conclusion. This CO2 photon absorption and immediate collision-thermalization process dominates throughout the troposphere. This means that the CO2 resonant LWIR radiation energy radiating from the surface is saturated to extinction by an overabundance of CO2/GHG molecules. There are no resonant photons left in the troposphere for the CO2 molecule to absorb. This is readily visible in Figure 2 by the presence of the CO2 notch, the top red arrow. In the stratosphere and mesosphere where the molecules are few and far apart, we see an increase in the CO2 spontaneous re-emissions implying a reverse- thermalization and the re-emitted photons exit to space. The UN IPCC claim that CO2/GHGs is the major cause of global warming is thus falsified by the above explanation that is consistent with established laws of science, combined with the absence of any scientific test data.
This makes two powerful cases: First, we can safely abandon the goal and costs of Net Zero and Carbon Capture and Sequestration. Even in the extreme case that atmospheric CO2 doubles or quadruples there is no risk of a catastrophic, run-away global warming threat. Second, the press/media, politicians, and compromised scientists will also say that we should reduce and remove CO2 from the air just to be sure. But, there’s a fact, that there is about 50 times more CO2 dissolved in the oceans than in the air. Henry’s Law tells us nature apportions how much CO2 goes into the air and how much goes into the oceans based only on the temperature of the water’s surface. During a hot sunny day, more CO 2 flows from the oceans to the air. And in cold winters more CO 2 will flow from the air into the oceans and all water on Earth. Imagine the silliness of spending $ billions/trillions to remove CO2 from the air and then have the oceans immediately replace it.
In summary, we find out that CO2/GHG absorption of LWIR energy emitted by the surface provides a negligible amount of physical heat in the troposphere. Consequently, the GHG/GHE provides near zero of the missing heat that the IPCC attributes to the GHGs and the GHE.

Background Paper with complete discussion

Missing Link in the GHE, Greenhouse Effect, by Thomas Shula – Markus Ott,  USA – Germany
2024.  From allaboutenergy.net