Author: Ron Clutz

Arctic Shipping Update: NSR Flash Freezing

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The previous post below sounded the alarm about ice halting Arctic shipping early.  Now the two choke points are blocked nine days later. Chukchi sea (left) is blocking entrance to Bering sea.  Laptev (right) is blocking traffic into European Barents and Kara seas.

Ice-strengthened supramax Kumpula (Arc 4) on the NSR being escorted by nuclear icebreaker Vaygach. (Source: Courtesy of ESL Shipping)

The report comes from Malte Humpert at gCaptain  Early Winter Ice Halts Arctic Shipping Traffic Weeks Ahead of Schedule.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The summer shipping window on Russia’s Northern Sea Route is coming to a rapid close weeks ahead of schedule. A number of vessels and convoys are rushing to complete their transits before the route shuts down in the next three weeks.

Source: Northern Sea Route Information Office

Unlike the last couple of summers when Russia’s Arctic coastal waterways were fully clear of sea ice, residual winter ice persisted in the eastern section this year. This has resulted in the early onset of ice formation especially in the Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi Seas.

NSRIO: Ice is still present in the eastern sector of the NSR preventing free passage of ships without ice class. The nuclear icebreaker Sibir has been operating in the East Siberian and Chukchi Seas since the end of June together with the nuclear icebreaker Vaygach, which has been in the area since mid-July. In several areas of the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas heavy ice conditions are still observed, which directly affects the admission of low ice class vessels to these areas. The western part of the NSR is mostly ice-free. Above is a map of ice conditions as of August 7, 2024.

Russia’s Northern Sea Route Administration announced that vessels with no ice class will have to vacate the waterway by October 15, around 2-3 weeks ahead of schedule. For vessels with light and medium ice classifications the navigation season will end on October 20 and October 31 respectively.

The last permitted start of convoys heading east will be October 10, leaving just one more week for vessels to begin their Arctic transit.

This year’s early shutdown comes three years after narrowly avoiding a major incident three years ago. In October 2021 Russian authorities reacted too late to begin closing down the NSR as winter sea ice drifted into the main shipping channel and trapped two dozen vessels for more than a month. A 30 centimeter or one foot thick ice layer had formed by the end of October across hundreds of miles of Arctic Ocean.
 
Several icebreakers, including the powerful nuclear vessel Yamal, rushed to the scene from Murmansk over 3,000 nautical miles away to help free the stranded vessels. Over the course of more than 6 weeks several icebreakers worked to break the vessels free and escort them to safety out of the eastern section of the Northern Sea Route. The situation did not fully resolve until the end of December when the last vessels were freed.

Vessels stuck in thick winter sea ice in November 2021 awaiting rescue. (Source: Rosatomflot)

Currently a number of container ships, oil tankers, bulk carriers
and LNG tankers are passing through the route.

In the Far East two LNG carriers and two oil tankers, including the Suezmax tanker Sai Baba, are currently passing through the waters adjacent to the Bering Strait. They are staying clear of multi-year ice around Wrangel Island which has persisted and troubled shipping all summer. A nuclear icebreaker had remained on standby for much of the summer keeping the shipping lane open.

Select container ships, crude oil tankers, and bulk and LNG carriers currently on the NSR. (Source: Shipatlas)

Further west along the route, the first-ever conventional Panamax container ship in the Arctic is about halfway through its transit. The vessel had originally intended to also conduct its return voyage via the Arctic, but will now likely have to return to Asia via the Suez Canal or South Africa route.

A massive Capesize bulk carrier without any ice class, Dodo, is also rushing to complete its eastbound voyage to Caofeidian, China.

Here’s ice activity in last week in the NSR from Chukchi Sea in the east (left side), and threatening in Laptev Sea (right).

White Guys, it’s not personal. It’s Western Civilization They Hate.

Posted on by Ron Clutz

White privilege gave us Western civilization, the middle class,
and the nuclear family—you’re welcome! This book is dedicated
to the very fine people that made it all happen.

I just became aware of A.J. Rice from this American Greatness article Rice: Woke initiatives were ‘one uppercut to the face after another’ for Gen Z.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

A J Rice said Gen Z is a generation that struggles with human connection because of the mass social justice movements they grew up with. He made the comments on a recent episode of The Greatness Conversation.

“You had one uppercut to the face after another here for Gen Z where, first, it’s the Me Too movement, males are told to take it down a notch, toxic masculinity,” Rice said on a recent episode of The Greatness Conversation. “You might be a predator, you might be a rapist. And then, and then all of a sudden, George Floyd dies. You’re now a racist. All of your history stinks.”

“And then when that’s all over, they’re going to drop on you that there are 72 genders and Gary and Tim and Bill are coming into the women’s locker room and the girl’s bathroom,” Rice said. “So, you know, if you wonder why Gen Z has a hard time being authentically human.”

Rice joined the podcast to discuss his new book, “The White Privilege Album,” the use of comedy to talk about progressive “wokeness,” and the future of what society looks like for younger generations.

Who’s A. J. Rice? More from American Spectator A.J. Rice’s White Privilege Album Is a Vaccine for the Woke Mind Virus. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Rice exposes what actual white privilege looks like
and why you don’t have it.

You already know this, but we live in deeply stuffy, oppressive times. You can get canceled for saying the wrong thing, not saying the right thing, or even looking at someone in a way they don’t like. Don’t believe me? Go to the gym and glance for more than three seconds at that 20-something girl in the bralette and bike shorts; woe betide you if you’re not in better shape than she is.

One minute you’re on top of the world — the next minute, you’re canceled and your whole world is turned upside down. It would be no small thing to just say forget all this and say and do whatever you want without fear. A younger Mel Brooks or Woody Allen might relish taking the fight to wokeness, but few others around would.

The digital gulag awaits us all, it seems. A hunger for thus imprisoning one’s fellow man is what the woke mind virus instills in its victims.

Into this climate of fear and loathing comes a writer, an entrepreneur, a madcap thinker with the sand to call the entire woke-industrial complex “zombies” and then follow that up with a book that quotes from Blazing Saddles on its opening page.

You remember Blazing Saddles, don’t you? It’s one of the funniest and most controversial movies ever made, a cultural sacrament for Generation X if ever there was one. It uses racism to mock racism, stupidity to rip stupidity, and comedy to take a sledgehammer to anyone who takes themselves too seriously — and in ways and from angles that make it an impossible movie to get produced today.

But back to the book. Its title is — mischievously —The White Privilege Album, and it’s A.J. Rice’s newest exploration of the insanity of our times.

The Worst of Times and the Worse of Times

According to Rice, we live in the worst of times, and, well, also the worse of times. Sure, we have all the technology we’ll probably ever need and the whole world’s knowledge at our fingertips at any given moment. You can explore the finest works of art, delve into the achievements of the Maya, study the miraculous founding of America — anything you want.

But millions merely use all this technology and knowledge we’re privileged to have to attack America relentlessly every hour of the day. We pay for public schools through our taxes, and those schools are filled with woke activists masquerading as teachers, indoctrinating our kids with ESG, DEI, and transgenderist trash and telling them that every generation before them was hopelessly racist and evil.

Well, only if they were white. Everyone else gets a free pass even if their ancestors owned slaves, committed genocide, or did other terrible things. Only white people need apply for the re-education camps Hillary Clinton wants, and only white people would be subject to the censorship regime that the entire Democratic Party so openly wants.

There’s your white privilege, Rice says. You’ll be subject to the whims of woke wackos and their digital shock troops. Your leaders will be cast as villains. You’ll be lied to, hoaxed, and perhaps doxxed and canceled. And you’ll like it or they’ll call you a racist and cancel you again.

Rice Exposes Hoaxes and Lies as the Foundation of the Left

As Rice documents and exposes in this extremely well-researched and written book, the major movements of our time are based on hoaxes, lies, smears, and bullying. Wokeness incorporates all of that — it’s a hoax against America and Western values, based on lies and half-truths taken out of context, aimed at smearing and undermining our history and culture, and weaponizes organized bullying to intimidate the weak-minded into submission.

Likewise, Joe Biden’s very reason for running for president was, according to him, based on the Trump “very fine people” quote — which was torn out of context and twisted into a hoax in which he is said to have praised neo-Nazis.Spoiler: He didn’t. Biden lied. A lot.

These hoaxes and lies are the foundation of the entire left now, Rice writes. Chapter by chapter, Rice takes on and tears apart the woke NBA, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Marxist racism, Barack Obama’s stealth wokeness, Ibrahim X. Kendi’s lucrative race-hustling grift, and so much more. Along the way, you will see actual white privilege, in the form of a ne’er-do-well crackhead who suspiciously stays out of jail no matter what while black and brown offenders end up in prison for years on similar offenses. You’ll also learn why Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben were really fired. In fact, you’ll get 12 months of “white privilege” in this amazing book.

But The White Privilege Album isn’t just about mowing down woke zombies. There’s plenty of that, but it’s also about lifting up heroes who deserve it and rebuilding the sense that America is great and good and always has been. A.J. Rice delivers the triumphs amid the seemingly overwhelming evil, through chapter after chapter that you won’t be able to put down.

Rice: The left hates Western civilization, the middle class, children

“Here’s the takeaway,” he said. “I’m abducting their language and using it against them.”

It started with so-called “white privilege,” he said.

“When you hear these terms, ‘white privilege,’ ‘intersectionality,’ or ‘check your privilege,’ or these constructs of white privilege, when you hear the left, do that what they’re really talking about is three things,” he said.

“One, Western civilization, and I mean Greco-Roman Judeo-Christian civilization, which has to go, they want it to go away,” the author said. “That’s why it’s not just about tearing down statues. It’s everything from Columbus to Winston Churchill — it has to go.”

The second thing is the middle class, Rice said. “The left cultural Marxists and economic Marxists have been trying to destroy the middle class for 100 years,” he said.

“They know to do that because they want a peasant class because Marxism has never thrived,” he said. “Not in Venezuela, not North Korea, none of these places when there’s been a healthy middle class — so middle class has to go.”

The third thing is children, he said.  “I believe happy people have more children; of course, more children mean more global warming, so the third thing that they have to destroy is the nuclear family,” he said.

“We know they have to destroy it because Black Lives Matter told us that they wanted to destroy it on their website.”

Rice: America is a multi-ethnic country

Rice said he is trying to untangle Americans from the labels that the left uses to confuse us.

“Let me just say, we are not a multicultural country,” he said.

“We are a multi-ethnic country, and the middle class and Western civilization in the nuclear family are colorblind,” he said.

“They’re not white, black, or anything else, and if you want to come here and you do it legally, you can come here and participate in this great experiment,” Rice said.

“As long as the cultural Marxists don’t destroy it.”

Arctic Ice In Perspective 2024

Posted on by Ron Clutz

With Arctic ice melting season winding down, warmists again stoked fears about ice disappearing in the North. In fact, the pattern of Arctic ice seen in historical perspective is not alarming. People are over-thinking and over-analyzing Arctic Ice extents, and getting wrapped around the axle (or should I say axis).  So let’s keep it simple and we can all readily understand what is happening up North.

I have noticed at some other blogs people complain about my monthly Arctic ice updates focusing on extents starting in 2007. This post will show why that time period is entirely reasonable as a subject for analysis. I will use the ever popular NOAA dataset derived from satellite passive microwave sensors.  It sometimes understates the ice extents, but everyone refers to it and it is complete from 1981 to present.  Here’s what NOAA reports (in M km2):

We are frequently told that only the March maximums and the September minimums matter, since the other months are only transitional between the two.  So the graph above shows the mean ice extent, averaging the two months March and September.  The data comes from Sea Ice Index (SII).

If I were adding this to the Ice House of Mirrors, the name would be The X-Ray Ice Mirror, because it looks into the structure of the time series.   For even more clarity and simplicity, here is the table:

NOAA NH Annual Average Ice Extents (in M km2).  Sea Ice Index v3.0 (here)

Year Average Change Rate of Change
1981 11.385    
1997 11.077 -0.308 -0.019 per year
2007 9.405 -1.672 -0.167 per year
2024 9.626  +0.221 +0.013 per year

The satellites involve rocket science, but this does not.  There was a small loss of ice extent over the first 16 years, then a dramatic downturn for 10 years, 9 times the rate as before. That was followed by the current 17-year plateau with a slight gain comparable to the beginning loss.  All the fuss is over that middle period, and we know what caused it.  A lot of multi-year ice was flushed out through the Fram Strait, leaving behind more easily melted younger ice. The effects from that natural occurrence bottomed out in 2007.

Kwok et al say this about the Variability of Fram Strait ice flux:

The average winter area flux over the 18-year record (1978–1996) is 670,000 km2, ;7% of the area of the Arctic Ocean. The winter area flux ranges from a minimum of 450,000 km2 in 1984 to a maximum of 906,000 km2 in 1995. . .The average winter volume flux over the winters of October 1990 through May 1995 is 1745 km3 ranging from a low of 1375 km3 in the 1990 flux to a high of 2791 km3 in 1994.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261010602/download

Conclusion:

Some complain it is too soon to say Arctic Ice is recovering, or that 2007 is a true change point.  The same people were quick to jump on a declining period after 1996 as evidence of a “Death Spiral.”

Footnote:

No one knows what will happen to Arctic ice.

Except maybe the polar bears.

And they are not talking.

Except, of course, to the admen from Coca-Cola

 

Bureaucrats Against Democracy

Posted on by Ron Clutz

David Blackmon provides the background in his Daily Caller article Bureaucrats Worry Democracy Will Get In The Way Of Their Climate Agenda.  As the above image suggests some of those in power have not shied away from acting in defiance of democratic norms. By imposing climate policies and regulations they have diminished the livelihoods and freedoms of the public they supposedly serve. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

I have frequently written over the last several years that the agenda of the climate-alarm lobby in the western world is not consistent with the maintenance of democratic forms of government.

Governments maintained by free elections, the free flow of communications and other democratic institutions are not able to engage in the kinds of long-term central planning exercises required to force a transition from one form of energy and transportation systems to completely different ones.

Why? Because once the negative impacts of vastly higher prices for all forms of energy begin to impact the masses, the masses in such democratic societies are going to rebel, first at the ballot box and if that is not allowed by the elites to work, then by more aggressive means.

This is not a problem for authoritarian or totalitarian forms of government, like those in Saudi Arabia, China and Russia, where long-term central planning projects invoking government control of the means of production is a long-ingrained way of life. If the people revolt, then the crackdowns are bound to come.

This societal dynamic is a simple reality of life that the pushers of the climate alarm narrative and forced energy transition in western societies have been loath to admit. But, in recent days, two key figures who have pushed the climate alarm narrative in both the United States and Canada have agreed with my thesis in public remarks.

In so doing, they are uttering the quiet part about
the real agenda of climate alarmism out loud.

Last week, former Obama Secretary of State and Biden climate czar John Kerry made remarks about the “problem” posed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that should make every American’s skin crawl. Speaking about the inability of the federal government to stamp out what it believes to be misinformation on big social media platforms, Kerry said: “Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence,” adding, “I think democracies are, are very challenged right now and have not proven they can move fast enough or big enough to deal with the challenges that we are facing.”

Never mind that the U.S. government has long been the most focused purveyor of disinformation and misinformation in our society, Kerry wants to stop the free flow of information on the Internet.

The most obvious targets are Elon Musk and X, which is essentially the only big social media platform that does not willingly submit to the government’s demands for censoring speech.

Kerry’s desired solution is for Democrats to “win the ground, win the right to govern by hopefully having, you know, winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to, to, implement change.” The change desired by Kerry and Vice President Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats is to obtain enough power in Congress and the presidency to revoke the Senate filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, enact the economically ruinous Green New Deal, and do it all before the public has any opportunity to rebel.

Not to be outdone by Kerry, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland of Canada, who is a longtime member of the board of trustees of the World Economic Forum, was quoted Monday as saying: “Our shrinking glaciers, and our warming oceans, are asking us wordlessly but emphatically, if democratic societies can rise to the existential challenge of climate change.”

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the central governments of both Canada and the United States have moved in increasingly authoritarian directions under their current leadership, both of which have used the climate-alarm narrative as justification. This move was widely predicted once the utility of the COVID-19 pandemic to rationalize government censorship and restrictions of individual liberties began to fade in 2021.

Two sides of the same coin.

Frustrated by their perceived need to move even faster to restrict freedoms and destroy democratic levers of public response to their actions, these zealots are now discarding their soft talking points in favor of more aggressive messaging.

This new willingness to say the quiet part out loud
should truly alarm anyone who values their freedoms.

Alarmists Attack IPCC Not Linking Disasters to CO2

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Chris Morrison reports on the flap over Climate Crisis™ media tactics in his Daily Sceptic article Climate Activists Frustrated by IPCC’s Refusal to Link Extreme Weather With Carbon Emissions.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Last June, the state-reliant BBC reported that human-caused climate change had made U.S. and Mexico heatwaves “35 times more likely”. Nothing out of the ordinary here in mainstream media with everyone from climate comedy turn ‘Jim’ Dale to UN chief Antonio ‘Boiling’ Guterres making these types of bizarre attributions. But for those who closely follow climate science and the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “such headlines can be difficult to make sense of”, observes the distinguished science writer Roger Pielke. In a hard-hitting attack on the pseudo-scientific industry of weather attribution, he states:

“neither the IPCC nor the underlying scientific literature comes anywhere close to making such strong and“ certain claims of attribution”.

Pielke argues that the extreme position of attributing individual bad weather events is “roughly aligned” with the far Left. “Climate science is not, or at least should not serve as a proxy for political tribes,” he cautions. But of course it is. The Net Zero fantasy is a collectivist national and supra-national agenda that increasingly relies on demonising bad weather. With global temperatures rising at most only 0.1°C a decade, laughter can only be general and side-splitting when IPCC boss Jim Skea claims that British summers will be 6°C hotter in less than 50 years. Two extended temperature pauses since 2000 have not helped the cause of global boiling. In addition there are increasing doubts about the reliability of temperature recordings by many meteorological organisations that seem unable to properly account for massive urban heat corruptions.

The big problem for ‘far Left’ climate extremists is that event attribution is a form, in Pielke’s words, of “tactical science”. Such science serves legal and political ends and is not always subject to peer review. As the BBC and other media outlets can attest, the work is “generally promoted via press release”. It has been developed in response to the failure of the IPCC to detect and attribute most types of extreme weather including drought, flooding, storms and wildfires to human involvement, notes Pielke. Worse, the IPCC can find little sign of human involvement going forward to 2100.

Scientists cannot answer directly whether particular events are
caused by climate change since extremes occur naturally.

Meanwhile the IPCC is somewhat dismissive about weather attribution, or as Pielke terms it, “weather attribution alchemy”. It notes: “The usefulness or applicability of available extreme event attribution methods for assessing climate-related risks remains subject to debate.” The IPCC is a biased body full of climate alarmists, but its inability to attribute single events to humans is obviously highly irritating and somewhat inconvenient for activists and their media counterparts.

Dr. Friederike Otto speaking with reporter at Oxford.

Dr. Friederike Otto runs World Weather Attribution (WWA) out of Imperial College London and is a frequent presence on the BBC. WWA is behind many of the immediate attributions of bad weather to human causes and its motives are clear. As Dr. Otto has noted: “Unlike every other branch of climate science or science in general, event attribution was actually originally suggested with the courts in mind.” Otto is clear that the main function of such studies, part-funded by Net Zero-supporting billionaires and heavily pushed by aligned mainstream media, is to support lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. She explains this strategy in detail in the interview, ‘From Extreme Event Attribution to Climate Litigation‘.

The inability of the IPCC to attribute bad weather to humans has been viewed by climate advocates as “politically problematic”, continues Pielke. He notes the work of climate activists Elizabeth Lloyd and Naomi Oreskes who are worried that the lack of attribution “conveys the impression that we just do not know, which feeds into uncertainty, doubt or incompleteness, and the general tendency of humans to discount threats that are not imminent”.

Perish the thought that there should be uncertainty, doubt
or incompleteness in the settled world of climate science.

It is of course different from all other branches of science in that all its opinions are right and consequently there is no need for the unhelpful process of constant inquiry and experiment. It need hardly be added that no doubt exists at the BBC, where former Radio 4 Today Editor Sarah Sands wrote the foreword to a WWA guide for journalists. Recalling when the late Nigel Lawson suggested there had been no increase in extreme weather, Sands noted: “I wish we had this guide for journalists to help us mount a more effective challenge to his claim.” These days, Sands enthused, attribution studies have given us “significant insight into the horsemen of the climate apocalypse”.

For her part, Otto is keen to crack down on the heretics. She was at the forefront of the recent notorious retraction of a paper in a Springer Nature journal that stated there was no evidence that the climate was breaking down. Written by four Italian scientists and led by Professor Gianluca Alimonti, they argued that a climate emergency was not supported by the data. Otto, who had previously worked in the Oxford School of Geography for 10 years, claimed the scientists were not writing in good faith. “If the journal cares about science they should withdraw it loudly and publicly saying it should never have been published,” she demanded.

A recent scientific study has confirmed that natural and climate-related disasters are declining during the 21st century. Getty Images/iStcokphoto

Declining Weather Disasters Prove Doomsters Wrong (Alimonti et al.)

Benny Peiser makes the case in his NY Post article Despite climate-change hysterics, weather disasters have decreased.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

A recent scientific study has confirmed what climate realists have been highlighting for some time: Natural and climate-related disasters have been declining rather than increasing during the 21st century.

In a paper published this year in one of the world’s leading journals on environmental hazards, Italian scientists Gianluca Alimonti and Luigi Mariani analyzed the number and temporal trends of natural disasters reported since 1900.

A 2015 study by 22 scientists from around the world found that cold kills over 17 times more people than heat. Thus the planet’s recent modest warming has been saving millions of lives.

Based on the best available data, the two scientists concluded the 21st century has seen “a decreasing trend [of natural disasters] to 2022” which is “characterized by a significant decline in number of events.”

The researchers emphasized that their conclusion “sits in marked contradiction to earlier analyses by UN bodies which predict an increasing number of natural disasters and impacts in concert with global warming.”

“Our analyses strongly refute this assertion,” they wrote.

For years, international agencies such as the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Meteorological Organization and the International Red Cross have claimed that climate-related disasters are escalating.

Floods lead a near doubling of disaster events from 1980 to 1999 compared to 2000 to 2019, according to a report by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

“Weather disasters are striking the world four to five times more often and causing seven times more damage than in the 1970s,” the WMO reported in 2021.

Disaster and weather officials affiliated with the UN claim this dramatic rise is due to global warming: The changing climate, they say, is making weather disasters stronger and more frequent.

Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States.

The increased frequency of heat waves, droughts, flooding, winter storms, hurricanes, wildfires and other extreme weather events prove the negative impact of a warming world, according to various UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations.

Yet, as the actual data used by these organizations reveals, the last 20 years have in fact seen a significant decline in such events.

It turns out that climate alarmists have based their claims on a highly misleading comparison of disaster data of the late 20th and the early 21st centuries.

By their tally, the period from 1980 to 2000 saw about 4,200 natural disasters —with the number increasing sharply, to more than 8,000, during the first 20 years of this century.

This conclusion, however, is fatally flawed: It fails to take into account the huge increase in the global reporting of disasters engendered by the invention and rapid global dissemination of new communication technologies since the 1980s.

The arrival of the internet and other new communication tools has undoubtedly accelerated the reporting of disasters from all corners of the world — events that were significantly underreported in earlier decades.

As well, the number of people killed by natural and climate-related disasters has fallen steadily over the past 120 years — from 500,000 deaths per decade in the early 20th century down to less than 50,000 per decade in the last ten years.

And, contrary to claims by NGOs and government officials, climate-related disaster losses have also declined as a percentage of global GDP during the last 30 years — from about 0.25% of GDP in 1990 to less than 0.20% in 2023.

The study by Alimonti and Mariani vindicates what we at the Global Warming Policy Foundation have been pointing out for a long time: Climate-related disasters are not on the rise, despite warming temperatures.

International agencies and the news media have hyped climate disasters for far too long, while ignoring the factual downward trend.

”First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win,” as the saying goes.  UN agencies and NGOs have been misleading the public for years. It’s past time for the truth to win out.

Benny Peiser is the director of the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation.

See also

Our Weather Extremes Are Customary in History

Figure27: Annual count of EF3 and above tornadoes in the US, 1950–2021. Source: Source: NOAA/NCEI.106, 107

 

UAH September 2024: NH Land Up, SH Land Down

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 has been 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 an usual El Nino warming spike of uncertain cause, unrelated to steadily rising CO2 and now moderating.

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 near 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?

September 2024 NH Land Spike Warms More than SH Land Drops

 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 September 2024. Posts on their reading of ocean air temps this month are ahead of the update from HadSST4.  I posted last month on SSTs using NH Pulls Oceans Warmer August 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. Then in August we saw a warming leap in SH land, slight Land cooling elsewhere, a dip in Tropical Ocean temp and slightly elsewhere. Now in September a dramatic drop in SH land, overcome by a greater NH land increase. End result is an upward bump in Global anomaly.

Note:  UAH has shifted their baseline from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020 beginning with January 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 which are now posted for September.  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.

Note 2020 was warmed mainly by a spike in February in all regions, and secondarily by an October spike in NH alone. In 2021, SH and the Tropics both pulled the Global anomaly down to a new low in April. Then SH and Tropics upward spikes, along with NH warming brought Global temps to a peak in October.  That warmth was gone as November 2021 ocean temps plummeted everywhere. After an upward bump 01/2022 temps reversed and plunged downward in June.  After an upward spike in July, ocean air everywhere cooled in August and also in September.   

After sharp cooling everywhere in January 2023, all regions were into negative territory. Then there is a remarkable spiking of Tropical ocean temps from -0.4 up to + 1.3 in January 2024.  The rise was matched by other regions in 2024 January through May, before dropping lower. Now in September comes an upward bump in NH and Tropics pulling up Global anomaly.

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 September is below.

Here we have fresh evidence of the greater volatility of the Land temperatures, along with extraordinary departures by SH land.  Land temps are dominated by NH with a 2021 spike in January,  then dropping before rising in the summer to peak in October 2021. As with the ocean air temps, all that was erased in November with a sharp cooling everywhere.  After a summer 2022 NH spike, land temps dropped everywhere, and in January, further cooling in SH and Tropics offset by an uptick in NH. 

Remarkably, in 2023, SH land air anomaly shot up 2.1C, from  -0.6C in January to +1.5 in September, then dropped sharply to 0.6 in January 2024, matching the SH peak in 2016. Then through May 2024 NH and Tropical land temps spiked to new highs, before dropping down.  Now in August SH land spiked up, then reversed down in September.  NH and Tropics bumped upward, and Global land anomaly rose slightly

The Bigger Picture UAH Global Since 1980

The chart shows monthly Global anomalies starting 01/1980 to present.  The average monthly anomaly is -0.04, 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 1.05C.  The cool down started with May dropping to 0.90C, and in June a further decline to 0.80C.  The warming level rose again and has persisted through September.

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.

 

Arctic Shipping Ends Early Due to Growing Ice

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Ice-strengthened supramax Kumpula (Arc 4) on the NSR being escorted by nuclear icebreaker Vaygach. (Source: Courtesy of ESL Shipping)

The report comes from Malte Humpert at gCaptain  Early Winter Ice Halts Arctic Shipping Traffic Weeks Ahead of Schedule.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The summer shipping window on Russia’s Northern Sea Route is coming to a rapid close weeks ahead of schedule. A number of vessels and convoys are rushing to complete their transits before the route shuts down in the next three weeks.

Source: Northern Sea Route Information Office

Unlike the last couple of summers when Russia’s Arctic coastal waterways were fully clear of sea ice, residual winter ice persisted in the eastern section this year. This has resulted in the early onset of ice formation especially in the Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi Seas.

NSRIO: Ice is still present in the eastern sector of the NSR preventing free passage of ships without ice class. The nuclear icebreaker Sibir has been operating in the East Siberian and Chukchi Seas since the end of June together with the nuclear icebreaker Vaygach, which has been in the area since mid-July. In several areas of the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas heavy ice conditions are still observed, which directly affects the admission of low ice class vessels to these areas. The western part of the NSR is mostly ice-free. Above is a map of ice conditions as of August 7, 2024.

Russia’s Northern Sea Route Administration announced that vessels with no ice class will have to vacate the waterway by October 15, around 2-3 weeks ahead of schedule. For vessels with light and medium ice classifications the navigation season will end on October 20 and October 31 respectively.

The last permitted start of convoys heading east will be October 10, leaving just one more week for vessels to begin their Arctic transit.

This year’s early shutdown comes three years after narrowly avoiding a major incident three years ago. In October 2021 Russian authorities reacted too late to begin closing down the NSR as winter sea ice drifted into the main shipping channel and trapped two dozen vessels for more than a month. A 30 centimeter or one foot thick ice layer had formed by the end of October across hundreds of miles of Arctic Ocean.
 
Several icebreakers, including the powerful nuclear vessel Yamal, rushed to the scene from Murmansk over 3,000 nautical miles away to help free the stranded vessels. Over the course of more than 6 weeks several icebreakers worked to break the vessels free and escort them to safety out of the eastern section of the Northern Sea Route. The situation did not fully resolve until the end of December when the last vessels were freed.

Vessels stuck in thick winter sea ice in November 2021 awaiting rescue. (Source: Rosatomflot)

Currently a number of container ships, oil tankers, bulk carriers
and LNG tankers are passing through the route.

In the Far East two LNG carriers and two oil tankers, including the Suezmax tanker Sai Baba, are currently passing through the waters adjacent to the Bering Strait. They are staying clear of multi-year ice around Wrangel Island which has persisted and troubled shipping all summer. A nuclear icebreaker had remained on standby for much of the summer keeping the shipping lane open.

Select container ships, crude oil tankers, and bulk and LNG carriers currently on the NSR. (Source: Shipatlas)

Further west along the route, the first-ever conventional Panamax container ship in the Arctic is about halfway through its transit. The vessel had originally intended to also conduct its return voyage via the Arctic, but will now likely have to return to Asia via the Suez Canal or South Africa route.

A massive Capesize bulk carrier without any ice class, Dodo, is also rushing to complete its eastbound voyage to Caofeidian, China.

Here’s ice activity in last week in the NSR from Chukchi Sea in the east (left side), and threatening in Laptev Sea (right).

Dearth of Green Jobs in UK

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Chris Morrison provides the analysis in his Daily Sceptic article ONS Reveals the Pitiful Number of New Green Jobs Being Created in the U.K. Economy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The problem with the green U.K. economy, and its associated destruction of the hydrocarbon environment, is that there are very few jobs being created. The few remaining ‘workers’ in the ruling Labour party are starting to rumble all the luxury boondoggles that are set to further decimate well-paid jobs in their communities. The figures compiled by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), trying to estimate the actual number of green jobs, are always a highly creative hoot, and the latest batch are no exception. Many jobs identified are simply displacement activity, with one repair or maintenance occupation taking over from another. Around 6% of the total are to be found in ‘environmental charities’, an interesting way to describe elite billionaire political funding to push the Net Zero fantasy. Such is the seeming desperation to rustle up a green job, the ONS even includes repairing home appliances, controlling forest fires and separating hydrogen by carbon dioxide-producing electrolysis.

The latest ‘estimates’ from the ONS cover 2021 and 2022, and they are said to show an increase in both years. But as the graph below reveals, the rises are pitiful over a decade, and the 2022 estimate of 639,000 is less than 2% of jobs in the economy as a whole.

As can be seen, environmental charities employ 40,000 people, almost as many as the 47,000 that work in renewable energy. But the charities figure does not include all those make-work jobs in environmental consultancy and education or what is described as in-house environmental activities. If all the displacement, invented or re-badged jobs in repair, electric vehicles, waste disposal, water treatment, energy efficiency, Net Zero promotion, teaching and the ubiquitous bureaucracy are rightly ignored, it is unlikely that more than 150,000 new jobs have been created.

Fairly small pickings, it might be thought, from all the cash sprayed at subsidy-hunting chancers over at least two decades. Even worse, any new jobs are easily offset by the occupations being destroyed in steel making, refining hydrocarbons, coal mining and oil and gas exploration. Fracking for gas would transform a number of deprived areas in the U.K. at little environmental cost, as it has done in the U.S. Energy security would likely be achieved, and the tax take would be considerable. But fracking is anathema to the major political parties in the U.K., except the emerging Reform party.Last week saw some real push back on the madness of Net Zero and the so-called green economy. The boss of GMB, the third largest trade union in the country, told the annual Labour party conference that its plans to decarbonise the energy network by 2030 will cost up to one million jobs, decimate working communities and push up bills for the poorest. According to Smith, Government’s plans for Net Zero were “bonkers” and “fundamentally dishonest”. In a week when it was revealed that British consumers, both industrial and private, had some of the highest electricity prices in the developed world, he charged that current energy policy amounted to virtue signalling by politicians. He accused them of exporting jobs and importing virtue because the jobs were being created abroad rather than in the U.K.

Meanwhile, a recent paper published in Science came to a damning conclusion that will not surprise sceptics, namely that 96% of climate policies over the last 25 years, ultimately designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, have been a waste of money. “That’s where green spin has got us,” writes George Monbiot, although these days the Guardian’s extremist-in-chief seems to have given up on all life enhancing processes that run the risk of disturbing anything on the planet. “Finally, 15 years and a trillion dollars too late, George Monbiot says what sceptics have been saying all along,” observes the sceptical journalist Jo Nova. “Nearly every single carbon reduction scheme is a useless make-work machination that creates the illusion that the government is doing something,” she says.

As we can see, the ONS survey is full of these make-work schemes providing jobs that can only exist by rigging free markets and providing eye-watering subsidies from consumers and taxpayers. As the more concerned trade unionists can see, much of the cost of these fantasy ventures falls on the poorest members of society forced to pay higher prices for many of the basic essentials of life. In addition, as we have observed, most green schemes make mugs of the wider investing public, with the RENIXX, a stock capitalisation global index of the 30 largest renewable industrial companies, showing near zero growth since it was started in 2006. None of this matters, of course, to the Mad Miliband and his weird wonks at the U.K. Department of Energy, who are ramping up ideological plans to hose cash at daft ideas like carbon capture, battery energy storage and hydrogen production.

Not only is CO2 Capture and Storage wildly impractical, its aim is to deprive the biosphere of plant food.

But all is not lost on the jobs front – opportunities must be taken when they occur. Earlier this year, Gary Smith was able to point to some new employment clearing away the animal casualties of wind farm blades. “It’s usually a man in a rowing boat, sweeping up the dead birds,” he observed.

Footnote Q & A:

Q:  What is the difference between Golf and Government?

A:  In Government you can always improve your lie.

–Anonymous Source

Resources

Climate Policies Fail in Fact and in Theory

Investors Beware Green Equipment Companies

Green Deal Cuts EU Emissions, Doubles Them Elsewhere

Climatists’ War on Meat updated

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Tyler Durden reports at Zerohedge Meat Substitutes Still A Tiny Sliver Of US Meat Market.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Over the past few years, plant-based meat substitutes have come closer and closer to mimicking the real thing, with brands like Beyond Meat having even sussed out how to create fake meat that “bleeds”.

But, as Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, after an initial boom, the company has rapidly come down from its peaks.

There are several reasons for the hype having died down, one of which being that many consumers decided to move away from buying the often more expensive items amid the cost of living crisis.

Another reason cited is that plant-based meats have become a part of the U.S.’s culture war, labeled as a symbol of left-wing politics and a binary to “real” meat.

According to data from Statista’s Market Insights, plant-based meat substitutes accounted for a mere sliver of the U.S. meat market last year.

Not counting insect-based meat alternatives or cultured, i.e. lab-grown meat, meat substitute sales amounted to $1.4 billion in 2023, while sales of fresh and processed meat added up to almost $124 billion.

Outlook

  • Revenue in the Meat market amounts to US$131.60bn in 2024. The market is expected to grow annually by 4.22% (CAGR 2024-2029).
  • In global comparison, most revenue is generated in China (US$273bn in 2024).
  • In relation to total population figures, per person revenues of US$385.00 are generated in 2024.
  • In the Meat market, volume is expected to amount to 12.10bn kg by 2029. The Meat market is expected to show a volume growth of 1.9% in 2025.
  • The average volume per person in the Meat market is expected to amount to 32.4kg in 2024.

What’s Next?

Background Post: Coming Soon: Menu Climate Warnings

Baylen Linnekin writes at Reason Public Health Researchers Float Idea of Climate-Change Warnings on Menu Items.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Warning diners that red meat is bad for the environment is yet another attempt
to socially engineer food choices.

A study released last week suggests that fast-food menus that feature labels urging diners not to order red meat off those same menus due to the “climate impact” of those food items can help convince customers to swap out red meat for what the researchers argue are more climate-friendly foods—from fruits and vegetables to poultry and seafood. The study, published in Jama Network Open and led by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, concludes that “climate impact menu labels may be an effective strategy to promote more sustainable restaurant food choices and that labels highlighting high-climate impact items may be most effective.”

The study’s data comes from more than 5,000 Americans who took part in a nationwide online survey last year. Study participants were instructed to “imagine they were in a restaurant and about to order dinner” from an accurately priced sample menu containing a variety of choices, including hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, plant-based burgers, and salads.

The study asked participants to “order” different foods after viewing one of three types of sample menus online. Outside of a control group, the study presented web users with choices that either disparaged the sustainability of red-meat dishes or touted the sustainability of dishes not containing red meat. Based on the results, which showed people who were more likely to avoid red meat if it had a red warning label and more likely to order other menu items if they featured a green health halo, the authors conclude that “climate impact menu labels [a]re effective” and “that labeling red meat items with negatively framed, red high-climate impact labels was more effective at increasing sustainable selections than labeling non-red meat items with positively framed, green low-climate impact labels.”

The study has spurred some news outlets to suggest governments around the world
may—or should—operationalize its findings.

“Policymakers have been debating how to get people to make less carbon-heavy food choices,” the Guardian recounted in a recent report on the study, “In April, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report urged world leaders, especially those in developed countries, to support a transition to sustainable, healthy, low-emissions diets.”

“Unfortunately, consumers have been resistant to change and many wish to continue eating meat,” a Phys.org report on the study laments.

Worse still, though the study itself does not suggest that it should be used to form the basis of any government policies, its lead author, Prof. Julia Wolfson of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told CNN last week that “legislation or regulation may be necessary” to force restaurants to add climate warnings to their menus.

Let’s pump the brakes—for a couple of reasons.

Data from the study itself and, more generally, on the effectiveness of government-mandated menu labeling suggests the authors may wish to dial down their perception of the effectiveness of the labels they tested. For example, after completing their respective orders, the survey asked participants if they “notice[d] any labels” on the menu. As the study data reveal, only around 4 out of every 10 participants even noticed any climate-related labeling. While that’s a low percentage, in the real world—in an actual fast-food restaurant setting rather than in an online survey—the percentage would likely be far lower. That’s because, as I’ve explained time and again, study after study has shown that few people pay attention to mandated menu labels (except to choose which food or foods to order), and even fewer use that information.

The premise of the study itself also may rest on shaky ground.

Some critics have pushed back against the notion that some chicken or seafood is more sustainable than all red meat. As the Guardian report on the study notes, “intensively produced chicken has been found to be damaging for the environment, as has some farmed and trawled fish.” Others disagree with the very notion that red meat is an inherently unsustainable food. While it’s become popular in recent years to argue that eating less red meat is better for the environment, that argument has received a good amount of pushback, with critics charging that swapping out meat for plants could be inefficient and ineffective, harm human health, and have unintended consequences for the developing world.

Even if I were to accept arguments that eating less meat is better for the environment, the choice to eat meat (or not) ultimately is and should be an individual’s to make. So it’s not “unfortunate” that consumers “wish to continue eating meat,” as Phys.org posits. And that wish isn’t a cry for government intervention, as Wolfson, the study’s lead author, argues. Rather, it’s a cry for freedom of choice.

If some restaurants competing in the marketplace care to attempt to skew their customers’ choices away from meat and towards vegetarian and/or vegan foods, by all means, they should do so. But the jury is out on whether that would improve the sustainability of those restaurants. What’s more, any restaurant that wants to make such a change should do so on its own accord, without the government’s prompting, backing, or mandate.

Elites’ Energy Fantasies Abound

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Stephen Barrett reports on ruminations from technically challenged overlords in his Spectator Australia article by way of John Ray’s blog The chattering climate class and their war on coal. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The Climate Chattering Class is now telling each other:
No Such Thing as Baseload Electrical Power.

Electricity is slippery stuff, in that it can be difficult to properly grasp what it is or how to quantify it.  We can blame the school system. Teachers who were taught social politics at University must somehow teach mathematics and physics.

There is a reason for everything in the world and that reason usually comes down to physics until politics gets mixed in. This is a problem. In politics, the same big lie can be repeated many times, as loudly as possible, until people accept it as truth or give up trying to argue the toss.


Readers will be familiar with the nameplate rating on wind farms and solar plants. It lists the rated output under ideal circumstances, measured in watts. If a heater has 1,000W we all understand it is telling us the output at one instant in time. Consumption is a different thing and is measured in watts/hour. Reversing this, we can understand we are seeing a generator’s nameplate watts as the size of the generator and watt hours as how much it provides.

An interesting idea making its way around the energy conversation
at present is that there is no such thing as baseload energy.

The lie is perpetrated by the political system which is, at present, intending to destroy the concept (and existence) of baseload energy. Baseload is created by heavy generators that operate all day, every day, and are typically cheap. The disadvantage of this structure is that baseload plants usually take time to reach full production. Then, they need to run for extended periods of time to be economically viable. Coal and nuclear are the only two types feasible for most of the Australian market.

Gas and diesel plants can provide electricity but they are expensive when operated in this way. Peaking power is where gas comes to the fore. It can be fired up quickly and make electricity rapidly. This is ideal for peaks when people come home from their day and want heating or cooling and to cook. Gas can cover this surge very happily. Diesel is lovely stuff and great in remote locations where there is no access to the grid or if the grid fails. It might not be pretty, but it delivers when needed.

In the whole clean grid argument, those words should be enshrined…
‘When it is needed.’

Coal, nuclear, gas, and diesel will deliver when needed. Reliability has been ignored by the chattering classes who have created the current disaster of high prices and brownouts that continue to destroy various industries.

Perhaps that is the whole point of ‘renewable’ energy.  I put that in quotes because the best figures I can find are that they only return seven-tenths of the power used to build them.

Every wind tower is a hallmark to coal-fired power being able to carry inefficient freeloaders. Freeloaders because renewable technologies can never produce energy when it is needed, only when it wishes.Solar and wind dump themselves on the energy market, making it impossible for reliable supplies to remain economic. If they had to obey the same bidding rules, they would never survive.

Let’s compare the costs of wind, solar, and nuclear. To do this we can look at the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm, Topaz Solar Farm, and Barakah Nuclear Power Plant.

We can skittle the first anti-nuclear claim about taking too long to build. Barakah was completed within eight years. The global average for modern nuclear plant construction (globally) is between seven and eight years. Sadly in Australia we have a less than helpful public service that thrives on inefficiency that might drag out this timeline.

The nameplate ratings on these plants were 845MW for Shepherds Flat, 550MW for Topaz and 5,600MW for Barakah. Nuclear can appear expensive if you compare build cost against the nameplate rating but not markedly. Shepherds Flat cost $2 billion, Topaz $2.5 billion, and Barakah $24.4 billion. Comparing build cost to nameplate rating, Shepherds Flat Wind cost 42 cents/MW, Topaz Solar 22 cents/MW, and Barakah Nuclear 23 cents/MW.

Looking at the size per dollar, nuclear is almost as good as solar and better than wind. The issue already demonstrated is not size as much as provision. That nameplate value is giving you one second of use. One second later, you are going to need that much again. This means the Watt/Hrs is crucial.

This is where wind and solar fail massively. The watts produced are not as important as the Watt Hours provided to the market. Assuming a generous 25-year life span for Shepherds Flat, 30 years for Topaz, and a mean-spirited 60 years for Barakah (when it is likely to still be running 100 years after it started), I calculated the GWh per annum compared to the Build Price over the life of the project. That is Build Price divided by annual GWh times lifespan.

Shepherds Flat was $40,000, Topaz $75,000 and Barakah $9,300.

On this measure, nuclear is significantly cheaper, but the price of firming wind and solar is not added to their totals. So that you can have power on those hot still days of summer when the wind doesn’t blow or the cold nights of winter when the sun is not shining you will need either nuclear or coal to provide you with the electricity you need.

We can discuss batteries some other time, but the new super battery has been coming about as long as perpetual motion and flying cars. Lithium ion batteries are old tech that has been developed to a point of maturity where there is little left to squeeze out of them and without mountains we are not going to get enough pumped hydro no matter how economically bad that model is.

If I magically had the power I would build more coal-fired stations, only because nuclear will need time to be made legal and that cannot be predicted. Nuclear however beats wind and solar to bits as far as costs and output and reliability are concerned.