Ron Clutz

Climate Policies Fail in Fact and in Theory

Posted on August 23, 2024 by Ron Clutz

A recent international analysis of 1500 climate policies around the world concluded that 63 or 4% of them were successful in reducing emissions. The paper is Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades published at Science.org. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Abstract

Meeting the Paris Agreement’s climate targets necessitates better knowledge about which climate policies work in reducing emissions at the necessary scale. We provide a global, systematic ex post evaluation to identify policy combinations that have led to large emission reductions out of 1500 climate policies implemented between 1998 and 2022 across 41 countries from six continents. Our approachintegrates a comprehensive climate policy database with a machine learning–based extension ofthe common difference-in-differences approach. We identified 63 successful policy interventions with total emission reductions between 0.6 billion and 1.8 billion metric tonnes CO2 . Our insights on effective but rarely studied policy combinations highlight the important role of price-based instruments in well-designed policy mixes and the policy efforts necessary for closing the emissions gap.

Context

(1). Although the [Paris] agreement seeks to limit global average temperature increase to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C,” its success critically hinges on the implementation of effective climate policies at the national level. However, scenarios from global integrated assessment models suggest that the aggregated mitigation efforts communicated through nationally determined contributions (NDCs) fall short of the required emission reductions.

(2)The United Nations (UN) estimates quantify a median emission gap of 23 billion metric tonnes(Gt) carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) by 2030

(3). The persistence of this emissions gap is not only caused by an ambition gap but also a gap in the outcomes that adopted policies achieve in terms of emission reductions.

(4). This raises the fundamental question as to which types of policy measures are successfully causing meaningful emission reductions. Despite more than two decades of experience with thousands of diverse climate policy measures gained around the world, there is consensus in neither science nor policy on this question.

The exhibit above shows the scope and complexity of the analysis. But the bottom line is that 96% of the effort and trillions of $$$ were spent to no avail. It is estimated that on the order of 1.2 Billion tonnes of CO2 were prevented over the last 20 years, with an additional 23 Billion tonnes to be erased by 2030.

Any enterprise with that performance would be liquidated.
That is an epic failure in fact.

And recommending mixing of policies including subsidies and regulations along with pricing goes against economic theory and fails in practice. Ross McKitrick explains the dangers of making climate policies willy-nilly in his Financial Post article Economists’ letter misses the point about the carbon tax revolt. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Yes, the carbon tax works great in a ‘first-best’ world where it’s the
only carbon policy. In the real world, carbon policies are piled high.

An open letter is circulating online among my economist colleagues aiming to promote sound thinking on carbon taxes. It makes some valid points and will probably get waved around in the House of Commons before long. But it’s conspicuously selective in its focus, to the point of ignoring the main problems with Canadian climate policy as a whole.

EV charging sign Electric-vehicle mandates and subsidies are among the mountain of climate policies that have been piled on top of Canada’s carbon tax. PHOTO BY JOSHUA A. BICKEL/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

There’s a massive pile of boulders blocking the road to efficient policy, including:

- clean fuel regulations,
- the oil-and-gas-sector emissions cap,
- the electricity sector coal phase-out,
- strict energy efficiency rules for new and existing buildings,
- new performance mandates for natural gas-fired generation plants,
- the regulatory blockade against liquified natural gas export facilities,
- new motor vehicle fuel economy standards,
- caps on fertilizer use on farms,
- provincial ethanol production subsidies,
- electric vehicle mandates and subsidies,
- provincial renewable electricity mandates,
- grid-scale battery storage experiments,
- the Green Infrastructure Fund,
- carbon capture and underground storage mandates,
- subsidies for electric buses and emergency vehicles in Canadian cities,
- new aviation and rail sector emission limits,
  and many more.

Not one of these occasioned a letter of protest from Canadian economists.

Beside that mountain of boulders there’s a twig labelled “overstated objections to carbon pricing.” At the sight of it, hundreds of economists have rushed forward to sweep it off the road. What a help!

To my well-meaning colleagues I say: the pile of regulatory boulders
long ago made the economic case for carbon pricing irrelevant.

Layering a carbon tax on top of current and planned command-and-control regulations does not yield an efficient outcome, it just raises the overall cost to consumers. Which is why I can’t get excited about and certainly won’t sign the carbon-pricing letter. That’s not where the heavy lifting is needed.

My colleagues object to exaggerated claims about the cost of carbon taxes. Fair enough. But far worse are exaggerated claims about both the benefits of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and the economic opportunities associated with the so-called “energy transition.” Exaggeration about the benefits of emission reduction is traceable to poor-quality academic research, such as continued use of climate models known to have large, persistent warming biases and of the RCP8.5 emissions scenario, long since shown in the academic literature to be grossly exaggerated.

But a lot of it is simply groundless rhetoric. Climate activists, politicians and journalists have spent years blaming Canadians’ fossil fuel use for every bad weather event that comes along and shutting down rational debate with polemical cudgels such as “climate emergency” declarations. Again, none of this occasioned a cautionary letter from economists.

There’s another big issue on which the letter was silent. Suppose we did clear all the regulatory boulders along with the carbon-pricing-costs-too-much twig. How high should the carbon tax be? A few of the letter’s signatories are former students of mine so I expect they remember the formula for an optimal emissions tax in the presence of an existing tax system. If not, they can take their copy of Economic Analysis of Environmental Policy by Prof. McKitrick off the shelf, blow off the thick layer of dust and look it up. Or they can consult any of the half-dozen or so journal articles published since the 1970s that derive it. But I suspect most of the other signatories have never seen the formula and don’t even know it exists.

To be technical for a moment, the optimal carbon tax rate varies inversely with the marginal cost of the overall tax system. The higher the tax burden — and with our heavy reliance on income taxes our burden is high — the costlier it is at the margin to provide any public good, including emissions reductions. Economists call this a “second-best problem”: inefficiencies in one place, like the tax system, cause inefficiencies in other policy areas, yielding in this case a higher optimal level of emissions and a lower optimal carbon tax rate.

Based on reasonable estimates of the social cost of carbon and the marginal costs of our tax system, our carbon price is already high enough. In fact, it may well be too high. I say this as one of the only Canadian economists who has published on all aspects of the question. Believing in mainstream climate science and economics, as I do, does not oblige you to dismiss public complaints that the carbon tax is too costly.

Which raises my final point: the age of mass academic letter-writing has long since passed. Academia has become too politically one-sided. Universities don’t get to spend years filling their ranks with staff drawn from one side of the political spectrum and then expect to be viewed as neutral arbiters of public policy issues. The more signatories there are on a letter like this, the less impact it will have. People nowadays will make up their own minds, thank you very much, and a well-argued essay by an individual willing to stand alone may even carry more weight.

Online conversations today are about rising living costs, stagnant real wages and deindustrialization. Even if carbon pricing isn’t the main cause of all this, climate policy is playing a growing role and people can be excused for lumping it all together. The public would welcome insight from economists about how to deal with these challenges. A mass letter enthusing about carbon taxes doesn’t provide it.

Postscript: All the Pain for No Gain is Unnecessary

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Climate Meltdown

Posted on August 22, 2024 by Ron Clutz

This video compiles interviews conducted by investigative journalist Alex Newman, with astrophysicists, atmospheric physicists, geophysicists, climate scientists, meteorologists, and other leading experts from around the world. Together they share a simple message: the “climate change” movement is not about “saving the environment.” It is about control.

Below is a lightly edited transcript in italics with my bolds and added images. AN refers to Alex Newman talking, Other initials refer to interviewees.

Climate Meltdown

The climate narrative is the pretext for reorganizing all of human society based on principles of manufactured scarcity and international tyrannical control. Governments, big corporations and even religious leaders are all marching In lockstep. And yet it’s all based on lies as the scientists you’re about to meet will demonstrate.

As the US moves away from fossil fuels and embraces green energy, enemy countries like China have nearly 1,000 more operational coal powerered plants worldwide as of July 2023. In the graph you can see the CCP is marching forward with coal and fossil fuels as the US moves towards green energy making us weak, vulnerable and pathetic when it comes to energy.

Manufacturing is man-made global warming, a threat to humanity according to left-wing Progressive politicians, influencers and businesses. But their solution to climate change is always the expansion of the size and scope of government at the loss of individual and personal sovereignty, and the taking of the American taxpayer dollars to spend endless amounts on fruitless idiotic climate plans and agendas that lower efficiency and raise the cost of energy.

For example Kamala Harris endlessly talks about why climate change is one of the biggest threats to humanity.

“Well let me start by saying this climate change is the single greatest threat facing our world today. That’s why I am committed to passing a Green New Deal creating clean jobs and finally putting an end to fracking once and for all.”

“I’ve heard young leaders talk with me about a a term they’ve coined called climate anxiety. Which is fear of the future and the unknown. And whether it makes sense for you to even think about having children; whether it makes sense for you aspiring to buy a home. Because what will this climate be. But because people voted we have been able to put in place over a trillion dollars in investment in our country around things like climate resilience and adaptation, around focusing on issues like Environmental justice.”

But there’s another side to the story that is not often told. There are many scientists and experts that you will hear from in this video who claim that climatism or climate alarmism is nothing but a facade to increase the size and scope of government and to take away individual and personal sovereignty. And going from National sovereignty to giving power to entities like the United Nations, while taking billions of dollars from the American taxpayer. Investigative journalist Alex Newman has interviewed Senators, scientists and many more people on this very subject. In the following few interviews you’re about to see you’re going to hear the other side of the story, which Academia, Media and Hollywood have silenced, cancelled and destroyed. Please watch and share, and get this information out to your friends, neighbor, Pastor, co-workers and more.

Alex first caught up with Patrick Moore who’s one of the early founders of Greenpeace. That’s a non-governmental environmental organization (NGO) founded in Canada in the 1970s. Moore says in a shocking interview that the green new deal policies is a recipe for mass suicide. Check it out.

AN: There’s a lot of talk now in the United States about this green new deal. I don’t know if you’ve had an opportunity to look at that, butwhat are your thoughts. Is this a good idea or are we in trouble or what’s the plan?

PML Well it’s a recipe for mass suicide. It’s just quite amazing that someone that is in government, actually elected to the government of the United States of America would propose that we eliminate all fossil fuels in 12 years. If we did that on a global level it would result in the decimation of the human population from some 7 billion down to who knows how few people. It would basically begin a process of cannibalization amongst the human species because the food could not be delivered to the stores in the middle of the cities anymore. How would this even work is just one point.

What bothers me the most is this: If you eliminated fossil fuels, every tree in the world would be cut for fuel. There’s no other source of heating and cooking once you eliminate fossil fuels. You can use animal dung if there were any animals left. But the animals would all die too, because first off they would all get eaten. Any that survived would be have to go wild because there’d be nobody left to look after them.

I mean it’s the most ridiculous scenario I’ve ever heard. People recognize when something is preposterous and I think that’s the best word for it. Well the best term for it is actually Mass Suicide. But why would anyone vote for something that was going to result in the death of nearly all humans on Earth.

AN: We’re here at the Heartland institute’s climate conference in Orlando. I’m with Dr William Happer who is a professor of physics emeritus at Princeton University. For a time he served as adviser on climate issues to Donald Trump. Dr. Happer thank you so much for joining us today. Now one of the things you’re going to be addressing at this event is carbon taxes. Let’s start with your thoughts on that: Does the world need carbon taxes?

WH: No, of course the world doesn’t need a carbon tax. They’re talking about a CO2 tax and CO2 is actually good for the world. So people ought to be encouraged to make more of it.

AN: So why why do you think they’re pushing this idea of a CO2 tax if CO2 is good for the world?

WH: Well it’s a combination of people who’ve been badly misinformed; people who need to feel virtuous. They don’t believe in anything anymore so now they’ve got something to believe in, to save the planet. And then there’s the opportunists who are making a good living out of frightening everybody and sucking money out of the common man to push idiotic Energy Solutions on them. That makes everyone poorer and provides less reliable energy, less affordable energy. So there’s nothing good about it. It’s more of the same evil fanaticism that’s plagued mankind since we began.

AN: This conversation is with Dr. Richard Lindzen who is an American atmospheric physicist who is well known for his great work at Harvard and also at MIT. He talks about how scientists and the science institutionally has become hungry for power and politics, and how true science and true discovery has been trampled underfoot. How do you get more scientists to speak out because as you know the scientists who are saying that this is wrong are in a very small minority. How do you get other members of the scientific Community to come out and say something if if they know, or if they don’t know how do you get them to understand?

RL: Well I don’t know the answer answer to that. Because starting in the early ’90s, a young scientist could neither get promoted, published or funded if he said or did that. So if you wanted to get active scientists to go along it’s asking them to commit professional suicide. On the positive side there are a lot of modeling efforts that are showing it’s not a problem. But whether they can say that out loud is another story.

AN: Right before started this interview you were talking to Lord Monckton, who we just interviewed a moment ago. And you mentioned something I thought was hilarious. You said that science is the only thing that you could add a “the” in front of it, and it becomes the opposite. What did you mean by that?

RL: Well “the science” contradicts the whole notion of science, which is a mode of inquiry. “The science” is a mode of authority. Those are two very different things.

AN: So how did science go so awry? Any thoughts on this process: How did we get to where we are now in terms of the scientific Community?

RL: I think the vast majority of the public has no idea what science is and that certainly includes the political class. So as politicians, they know that people don’t give them a lot of authority. They see that people quote and trust sciencists, and so they think science is a source of authority that they would like to co-opt. But in doing so they show they have no idea what science is.

AN: We are standing here by the Baltic Sea in Stockholm with Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner who is the retired head of the Paleo geophysics department and geodynamics department at Stockholm University. Also he was a sea level reviewer for the UNIPCC United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change back in 2000. Dr. Mörner thank you so much for being with us. Please tell us about this whole sea level issue. I just came from the COP 24 in Poland where over and over again we heard that our cities are going to be flooded. I’m from Miami and they say my city’s going to be flooded. Are we all doomed from sea levels changing?

NAM: Absolutely not. I mean there is no big rapid sea level rise going on today and there will not be. On the contrary if anything happens it’s sea will go down a little bit. But also there is nothing which is called Global sea level. it is different in different parts of the of the world.

In this interview Alex talks with Dr willly Soon who spent time as a researcher at the solar and Stellar physics division of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for astrophysics and is arguably maybe the best astrophysicist on the planet. Soon in this interview talks about the intergovernmental panel on climate change which is an outfit of the United Nations and how IPCC data on climate science is built.

AN: So you guys just published three papers in well established peer-reviewed journals. Before we get into the reaction of the papers, give us an overview what did you guys find and how does that differ from say the narrative that the media and the United Nations are promoting.

WS: We are Scientists so we we set out to seek the truth and nothing but the truth. So it’s been puzzling to everyone, I would say every scientist on this topic wonders what are the best thermometer data to use if you want to study temperature change. And then if you want to study what is causing the climate to change, you want to know what are the best solar activity estimates.

So it turns out that IPCC has been wrong and biased for 30 years, that’s the kindest word I can use. And they’ve been in some sense hoodwinking everyone.

AN: There was a poll released several months ago by AP-NORC Center for public affairs research. They found that less than half of Americans even believe that human activity is causing climate change. About a third are willing to pay even a single additional Dollar on their electric bill each month to deal with climate change With the very real Prospect of Trump coming back to the White House in 2024, how is the US government planning to make credible commitments on funding and on these other issues that you guys are talking about.

Senator Coons who chairs that committee: That was part of why I spoke to both the structure of the Inflation Reduction Act which has directed tens of billions of dollars already to construction projects in predominantly red States or politically conservative States. And to the way that we’ve been able to get out of my subcommittee and pass through the full committee an additional billion and a half dollars in investment in combating climate change predominantly in the global South with an overwhelming bipartisan margin.

So am I suggesting that were the former president to be our next president everything would be fine?
Not at all. But I’m saying there is a broad enough and deep enough support for continuing Investments to combat climate change and for the inflation reduction act, and bipartisan infrastructure law in particular, that we will continue we’ll continue to move forward regardless.

AN: A lot of this environmental question I think depends on a very flawed fundamental presupposition. It depends on the idea that carbon dioxide is pollution. And after interviewing hundreds of scientists including many who’ve worked for the UNIPCC, many of the leading scientists in the world, I would argue that the notion that CO2 is pollution is absolutely Preposterous. We exhale about two pounds of it every single day. The the proportion of greenhouse gases made up of human CO2 emissions is a fraction of a fraction of 1%. The idea that those are going to destroy the planet or change the temperature of the earth is frankly in my opinion totally ludicrous. But from a totalitarian perspective if you can convince people that CO2 is pollution, there’s no human activity that doesn’t result in CO2 emissions. That includes living, includes dying, turning on a light switch.

If we submit to the idea that CO2 is pollution, then every single aspect of your life comes under the regulatory control of the people who claim to be saving us from pollution. When they do these Environmental Studies they say your CO2 footprint will be smaller if you eat bugs or you do this or that, or you drive an electric car. That doesn’t show anything about whether that’s going to benefit the environment or not.

In fact CO2 has actually been very beneficial for the environment. In interviewing Trump’s climate adviser Dr William Happer, physics professor at Princeton University, he said the Earth is starving for more CO2. And since we’ve had a little bit of an increase in atmospheric CO2 over the last 100 years or so plants have gotten much Greener, agricultural yields have improved.

II think we need to also talk about the fundamental presupposition here: Is CO2 really pollution? if it’s not then all these alleged environmental benefits are completely fictional.

The Short Lives of Wind Turbines

Posted on August 21, 2024 by Ron Clutz

In a recent short video (below) John Burgess summarizes why wind farms become unviable long before promoters promised. He explains that after about 15 years wind farms are uneconomic to keep going. Also the far more reliable older smaller under 2 MW turbines have a longer life. All based on the work of one professor – Gordon Hughes.who did some brilliant work on wind farm costs some three years ago. For those preferring to read, I provide a transcript lightly edited from closed captions in italics with my bolds, key exhibits and added images.

Paul Burgess Basics 2 The Lifespan of Wind Turbines

This video is on the lifespan of wind turbines. In this video and quite a few others actually, I’m going to be relying on the work of Professor Gordon Hughes and a document you should all read is this one The link to Hughes’ study is in the title in red below. That video was produced three years ago but had very few views less than a thousand. My job is to bring these stories to the public and his work is extremely valuable, so this video is based on that.

Wind Power Economics – Rhetoric and Reality

Here we go the lifespan of turbines. Shock Horror. Wind turbines gradually wear out and they do it faster than you think. As I have explained, the load factor for a wind farm is the percentage of the actual electricity you get out of it in the real world compared to a purely theoretical maximum, the maximum being every second of the Year it blows perfectly and everything you get 100%. What percentage of that do we actually get, that’s the load factor.

Typically for onshore wind farms in the UK Island Etc it’s 26 to 30%, in that sort of range. The bigger ones, the higher ones may get into the low30s. So that’s the load Factor but that doesn’t stay the same. It actually deteriorates. These things wear out as they go, and they actually deteriorate at quite a rate, around about 3% per year. And so what matters with load factors– no excuses. If it has to be stopped for maintenance that reduces a load Factor, because it’s a real world measurement of what you produce.

Now Denmark kept really good records of their turbines. And here is a diagram that explains a few things about them. The results are quite remarkable. This graph looks complicated, but it’s a graph to show basically the failure rate over time for wind turbines. And it’s constructed from a large number of wind turbines in Denmark. On this vertical axis is how much of the energy is lost, which affects the load factors. We start off with almost zero so nothing is lost. We’re getting the expected performance, and that seems to be the case here for almost two years. But as you go up that axis and you go to the very top, there’s nothing left at all, There’s no energy output.

Now there are four colors of Curves, The higher two are for offshore, showing Old Generation and New Generation offshore. The lower two are for onshore, again Old Generation and New Generation. The new generation have higher turbine values and this comprises turbines up to 8 megawatts. They’re much worse than the older generation; they deteriorate much faster, and you can see that from the curves. Reading a curve is quite amazing. Let’s look at what point you’ve lost 60% of the energy coming out the wind farm. For Offshore New Generation the answer there is just 60 months or 5 years.

So 60% of those offshore modern turbines have failed within 5 years. Obviously they have to repair them all the time and therefore there’s a big rising cost to all this. But looking quickly at what we get from onshore modern ones which is the orange curve here. Let’s check when 20% of the turbines are failed, that’s one out of five turbines, and that is at about 68 months or about 5 to six years.

You can expect failures so these things they had to be repaired, which puts the costs up. So what are the running costs of these turbines? This graph of one axis shows how many thousands of pounds per megawatt of installed capacity you actually pay out per year. And the bottom scale is the length of time, how much those costs rise over time. And as you can see the lower line is the older generation and the Top Line the newer generation, such as they are putting into the Isle of Man

So let’s take Isle of Man as an example. They’re going to install 20 megawatts worth, so let’s look at the running cost and these are in 2018 prices, so the costs have risen since then. You can see taking the Isle of Man modern turbines we start off at £74,000 a year per megawatt, and we end at about £100,000 a year after 12 years per megawatt of installed capacity. So we start off with 74 times in this case for 20 megawatts for the Isle of Man which is 1.48 million a year and we end up at a neat 2 million a year in running costs. And that keeps rising.

This basically shows that after about 15 years
it’s no longer worth maintaining the wind Farm.

Offshore wind of course is much more expensive starting off at around about £200,000 a year and ending up at £400,000 a year per megawatt, three to four times the price of onshore.

I am aware that that raises lots of questions and they will be answered in following videos. Why is it if it’s about 15 years that you’ve had some forms carry on Beyond? And so on. The whole thing seems to me to be a Ponzi scheme, it really does. And that will be explained in following videos.

US Climate Election Amid Collapsing Net Zero Support

Posted on August 20, 2024 by Ron Clutz

Friends of Science published US Climate Election Squares Off as Net Zero Falters Despite NATO Climate Activism. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

As media outlets frame the upcoming US election as a showdown on climate, Net Zero projects falter in Europe and US Inflation Reduction Act projects stall, says Friends of Science Society. Ironically, NATO has made climate front and centre in their spring 2024 report and seems more focused on battling climate disinformation instead of wartime defense of NATO partners.

CALGARY, Alberta, Aug. 19, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — As the US “Climate Election” looms, the Financial Times reported on Aug. 11, 2024, that delays have hit 40% of Biden’s major Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) projects, many of them climate related, says Friends of Science. Reportedly, some $84 bn of the $400 bn IRA projects, are stalling out over lack of market demand or election uncertainty as climate hawks and energy security champions square off.

According to journos at Covering Climate Now, the US Democrat’s VP Kamala Harris/Governor Tim Walz ticket is positioned as climate-friendly. Reuters perspective of Feb. 2024 was that a win for Republican Donald Trump would undo much of the Biden admin’s climate policy.

In a recent Fraser Institute report, author and economist Ross McKitrick references a Bjorn Lomborg analysis of US greenhouse gas reduction targets and their likely impact on reducing global warming: “According to Lomborg (2016) the US climate target under the Paris Treaty … [if met]…global average temperatures as of 2100 would be reduced by 0.031° C compared to if the US did nothing. Prorating this by the size of Canada’s proposed emission reduction we find the global average temperature would be reduced by 0.007° C (seven thousandths of a degree Celsius) as of 2100 compared to the case if Canada does nothing”. [From Fraser Report on Canada’s ERP (Emissions Reduction Plan)

• It is estimated that the ERP will reduce Canada’s GHG emissions by about
26.5% between 2019 and 2030, reaching approximately 57% of the government’s 2030 target, leaving a substantial gap.
• The implementation of the ERP is expected to significantly dampen economic
growth, with a projected 6.2% reduction in Canada’s economy (i.e., real GDP)
compared to the base case by 2030.
• Income per worker, adjusted for inflation, is forecasted to stagnate during the
2020s and decrease by 1.5% by 2030 compared to 2022 levels.
• The ERP costs $6,700 per worker annually by 2030, which is more than five
times the cost per worker compared to the carbon tax alone.]

The UN “People’s Climate Vote 2024” survey from June of 73,000 people in 77 countries claims that “80 per cent – or four out of five – people globally want their governments to take stronger action to tackle the climate crisis.”

Friends of Science Society notes that the UN survey questions on pages 19 and 20, conflate extreme weather with climate and only ask for emotional responses, rather than evaluating empirical evidence. Climate change is measured over 30, 50, 100-year and millennial cycles; it is not evidenced by a spate of extreme weather events. [See also The Art of Rigging Climate Polls]

In Canada, the Globe and Mail published an op-ed by pollster Nik Nanos on Aug. 10, 2024, which showed a waning public interest in the Net Zero transition. “As more and more Canadians feel crushed by the rising cost of things such as housing, groceries and energy, interest in greening their lives is weakening…. the percentage of Canadians who are confident that we will reach our net-zero goal is a paltry 2 per cent.”

Robert Lyman, retired energy economist, wrote a report on the costs of Canada’s climate policies and cited a survey published in Nature, February 2024, found that people would be willing to spend less than 1% of their income to support climate initiatives. One per cent of average Canadian income for climate change would be $431. Canadian climate measures from 2020-2030 are ~$476 billion, or $11,900 per resident of Canada; roughly $2,800 per household per year.

Canada Budget Officer’s estimate of climate policies costs and benefits

Friends of Science Society points out that survey questions should include “How much are you willing to pay for or sacrifice for climate action?” Friends of Science review of “Getting to Net Zero” forecasts decades of degrowth and poverty.

While most citizens in the NATO countries assume that NATO is most concerned with wartime defense of their nations, the 2024 “NATO Climate Change and Security Impact Assessment” seems obsessed with climate change. On page 27, they dedicate a section to “Energy Transition and Climate-related Disinformation,” claiming that Kremlin-backed actors push climate change denialism. In fact, in Germany, it was Kremlin-backed green activists who encouraged Germany’s heavy reliance on Russian oil and gas and the closure of reliable nuclear facilities, as Drieu Godefridi, author of “The Green Reich” reported in 2022.

Russia’s position on climate change seems unchanged since its 2004 position on Kyoto, forerunner to the Paris Agreement.

Russian climate models, which use a small warming factor for carbon dioxide concentration, consistently closely parallel observed temperatures, compared to Western climate models which use a higher warming response rate for carbon dioxide, and which project a ‘hothouse’ future.

Wars cannot be won on wind and solar power; ample energy security is key to a strong economy, good healthcare, jobs and national defense, says Friends of Science Society.

UAH July 2024: Little Warming from “Hot” July

Posted on August 20, 2024 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, but unrelated to steadily rising CO2.

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 receding from its peak.

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

mc_wh_gas_web20210423124932

July 2024 Global Temps Little Changed by Land Warming

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 July 2024. Posts on their reading of ocean air temps this month follows the update from HadSST4. I posted last week on SSTs using HadSST4 Oceans Warming Uptick July 2024. This month also has 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. Last February 2024, both ocean and land air temps went higher driven by SH, while NH and the Tropics cooled slightly, resulting in Global anomaly matching October 2023 peak. Then in March Ocean anomalies cooled while Land anomalies rose everywhere. After a mixed pattern in April, the May anomalies were back down led by a large drop in NH land, and a smaller ocean decline in all regions. In June all Ocean regions dropped down, as well as dips in SH and Tropical land temps. Now in July all Oceans were unchanged except for Tropical warming, while all land regions rose slightly.

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 July. 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. Note the Tropics matched the lowest value, but since have spiked sharply upward +1.7C, with the largest increases in April to July, and continuing through adding to a new high of 1.3C January to March 2024. In April and May that started dropping in all regions. June showed a sharp decline everywhere, led by the Tropics down 0.5C. The Global anomaly fell to nearly match the September 2023 value. Now in July, the Tropics rose slightly while SH, NH and the Global Anomaly were unchanged.

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 July 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 in February and March SH anomaly jumped up nearly 0.7C, and Tropics went up to a new high of 1.5C, pulling up the Global land anomaly to match 10/2023. In April SH dropped sharply back to 0.6C, Tropics cooled very slightly, but NH land jumped up to a new high of 1.5C, pulling up Global land anomaly to its new high of 1.24C.

In May that NH spike started to reverse. Despite warming in Tropics and SH, the much larger NH land mass pulled the Global land anomaly back down to the February value. In June, sharp drops in SH and Tropics land temps overcame an upward bump in NH, pulling Global land anomaly down to match last December. Now in July, all land regions rose slightly, pulling the Global land anomaly up by o.16°C. Despite this land warming, the Global land and ocean combined anomaly rose only 0.05°C.

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. After 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. Despite an uptick to 0.85 in July, it remains to be seen whether El Nino will weaken or gain strength, and it whether we are past the recent peak.

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 has not persisted prior to 2023, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995. Of course, the future has not yet been written.

The Original Sin of GHG Theory

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Ron Clutz

In reality, Water only spontaneously flows down a
pressure gradient (downhill). Energy only spontaneously flows
down an energy density gradient (from high to low).

In the domain of theology, original sin refers to Adam and Eve choosing to trust the serpent’s lies rather than natural truth placed by God in the Garden of Eden. In legal proceedings, a similar concept concerns evidence obtained under false pretences. “The fruit of a poisonous tree” refers to analyses, interpretations or conclusions that must be excluded because they started with a falsehood.

This post delves into a fraud at the root of consensus Climate Science™, illustrated by the image above showing how both water and energy flow down their respective gradients. William Happer alluded to the problem in a recent presentation: (See Happer: Cloud Radiation Matters, CO2 Not So Much)

As we shall see below, mischief is a very polite term for a math and science error that has poisoned most all thinking and discussion about changes in climate and weather. In a previous post, I summarized an important empirical experiment by Thomas Allmendinger proving that a parcel of pure CO2 and a parcel of ordinary air warm exactly the same when exposed to both SW and LW radiation. (See Experimental Proof Nil Warming from GHGs).

So we know the notion is empirically wrong, now let’s discuss how GHG theory went off the rails from the beginning. For that I provide below a synopsis of commentary by blogger Morpheus which he posted at Tallbloke’s Talkshop. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. (Title in red is link to blog)

CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, due to CO2)
is nothing more than a complex mathematical scam.

The takeaways:

1) The climatologists have conflated their purported “greenhouse effect” with the Kelvin-Helmholtz Gravitational Auto-Compression Effect (aka the lapse rate).

2) The climatologists purport the causative agent for their purported “greenhouse effect” to be “backradiation”.

3) The Kelvin-Helmholtz Gravitational Auto-Compression Effect’s causative agent is, of course, gravity.

4) “Backradiation” is physically impossible because energy cannot spontaneously flow up an energy density gradient.

5) The climatologists misuse the Stefan-Boltzmann (S-B) equation, using the idealized blackbody form of the equation upon graybody objects, which manufactures out of thin air their purported “backradiation”. It is only a mathematical artifact due to that aforementioned misuse of the S-B equation. It does not and cannot actually exist. Its existence would imply rampant violations of the fundamental physical laws.

6) Polyatomic molecules are net atmospheric radiative coolants, not “global warming” gases. Far from the ‘global warming gas’ claimed by the climatologists, water acts as a literal refrigerant (in the strict ‘refrigeration cycle’ sense) below the tropopause. CO2 is the most prevalent atmospheric radiative coolant above the tropopause and the second-most prevalent (behind water vapor) below the tropopause. Peer reviewed studies corroborating this are referenced in the paper at the end of this post.

As you can see, there are two forms of the Stefan-Boltzmann (S-B) equation… one for idealized blackbody objects, one for graybody objects.

The idealized blackbody form of the S-B equation assumes emission to 0 K and ε = 1 by the very definition of idealized blackbody objects. ( ε is the term for emissivity from 0 to 1).

Idealized Blackbody Object (assumes emission to 0 K and ε = 1 by definition):
q_bb = ε σ (T_h^4 – T_c^4) A_h
= 1 σ (T_h^4 – 0 K) 1 m^2
= σ T^4

The graybody form of the S-B equation assumes emission to > 0 K and ε < 1.

Graybody Object (assumes emission to > 0 K and ε < 1):
q_gb = ε σ (T_h^4 – T_c^4) A_h

The ‘A_h’ term is merely a multiplier, used if one is calculating for an area larger than unity [for instance: >1 m^2], which converts the result from radiant exitance (W m-2, radiant flux per unit area) to radiant flux (W).

One can see from the immediately-above equation that the Stefan-Boltzmann (S-B) equation is all about subtracting the radiation energy density of the cooler object from the radiation energy density of the warmer object.

So radiant exitance at its most simplified (and thus the S-B equation at its most simplified) is just the emissivity of the warmer object (because emissivity only applies to objects which are emitting, and only the warmer object will be emitting… the colder object will be unable to emit in the direction of the warmer object because energy cannot spontaneously flow up an energy density gradient) multiplied by the speed of light in vacua, multiplied by the energy density differential, all divided by 4.

For graybody objects, it is the radiation energy density differential between warmer object and cooler object which determines warmer object radiant exitance. Warmer objects don’t absorb radiation from cooler objects (a violation of 2LoT in the Clausius Statement sense and Stefan’s Law); the lower radiation energy density gradient between warmer and cooler objects (as compared to between warmer object and 0 K) lowers radiant exitance of the warmer object (as compared to its radiant exitance if it were emitting to 0 K). The radiation energy density differential between objects manifests a radiation energy density gradient, each surface’s radiation energy density manifesting a proportional radiation pressure.

The climatologists use: q = σ T^4… on graybody objects, and sometimes slap ε<1 onto that,
when they should be using: q = ε σ (T_h^4 – T_c^4)

This has the effect of artificially inflating radiant exitance of all calculated-upon objects.

Essentially, the climatologists are treating real-world graybody objects as though they are idealized blackbody objects… with emission to 0 K and emissivity of 1 (sometimes… other times they slap emissivity onto the idealized blackbody form of the S-B equation while still assuming emission to 0 K… which is still a misuse of the S-B equation, for graybody objects).

This essentially isolates each object into its own system so it cannot interact with other objects via the ambient EM field, which grossly inflates radiant exitance of all objects, necessitating that the climatologists carry these incorrect values through their calculation and cancel them on the back end (to get their equation to balance) by subtracting a wholly-fictive ‘cooler to warmer’ energy flow from the real (but far too high because it was calculated for emission to 0 K) ‘warmer to cooler’ energy flow.

That wholly-fictive ‘cooler to warmer’ energy flow is otherwise known as ‘backradiation’... it is nothing more than a mathematical artifact due to that aforementioned misuse of the S-B equation.

As I show here and in the below-linked paper, the correct usage of the S-B equation for graybody objects is via subtracting cooler object energy density from warmer object energy density to arrive at the energy density gradient, which determines radiant exitance of the warmer object.

So we’re talking about the same concept as water only spontaneously flowing down a pressure gradient (ie: downhill) when we talk of energy (of any form) only spontaneously flowing down an energy density gradient. Energy density is pressure, an energy density gradient is a pressure gradient… for energy.

It’s a bit more complicated for gases because they can convert that energy density to a change in volume (1 J m-3 = 1 Pa), for constant-pressure processes, which means the unconstrained volume of a gas will change such that its energy density (in J m-3) will tend toward being equal to pressure (in Pa). This is the underlying mechanism for convection. It should also have clued the climatologists in to the fact that it is solar insolation and atmospheric pressure which ‘sets’ temperature, not any ‘global warming’ gases.

Since a warmer object will have higher radiation energy density at all wavelengths than a cooler object (because remember, temperature is a measure of radiation energy density, equal to the fourth root of radiation energy density divided by Stefan’s Constant):

… ‘backradiation’ can do nothing to warm the surface because energy cannot spontaneously radiatively flow from lower to higher radiation energy density, and thus CAGW is nothing more than a complex mathematical scam perpetrated to obtain multiple billions of dollars in funding for trough-grubbing line-toeing ‘scientists’ and by perfidious politicians.

“But how does that make CAGW a scam?”, some may ask… well, because we’re being lied to, based upon an unscientific premise.

The climatologists have misused the Stefan-Boltzmann (S-B) equation (and the fundamental physical laws), and in the process, have practically flipped reality on its head… polyatomics (CO2, H2O, etc.) are not “global warming gases”, they are net atmospheric radiative coolants (radiative emission to space being the only way that Earth can shed energy); monoatomics (Ar) are not inert gases that have no effect upon climate, they are the actual “greenhouse gases” (because they cannot emit IR, and thus cannot shed energy to space… they dilute the radiative coolant gases); homonuclear diatomics (N2, O2) are somewhere in between… they can radiatively emit IR (and thus shed energy from the system known as ‘Earth’), but only under certain conditions (collisional perturbation of their net-zero electric dipole, which is why homonuclear diatomic vibrational mode quantum states are meta-stable and relatively long-lived. Collisions happen exponentially less frequently as altitude increases), and thus are “greenhouse gases” like the monoatomics, just not to the same extent.

We live, at the planet’s surface, in what can be analogized to the evaporator section of a world-sized AC unit, with polyatomics being net atmospheric radiative coolants (a higher concentration of them increases thermodynamic coupling between heat source (surface) and sink (space)), and with monoatomics and homonuclear diatomics playing the same role as non-condensable gases would play in an AC unit… diluting the polyatomic radiative gases which transit the majority of the energy, thus reducing the efficiency at which energy is transited from surface to upper atmosphere, then radiatively emitted to space.

Think about it this way… we all know the air warms up during the daytime as the planet’s surface absorbs energy from the sun. Conduction of that energy when air contacts the planet’s surface is the major reason air warms up.

How does that ~99% of the atmosphere (N2, O2, Ar) cool down? It cannot effectively radiatively emit.

Convection moves energy around in the atmosphere, but it cannot shed energy to space. Conduction depends upon thermal contact with other matter and since space is essentially a vacuum, conduction cannot shed energy to space… this leaves only radiative emission. The only way our planet can shed energy is via radiative emission to space. Fully ~76.2% of all surface energy is removed via convection, advection and evaporation. The surface only radiatively emits ~23.8% of all surface energy to space. That ~76.2% must be emitted to space by the atmosphere.

ERBE Earth Radiation Budget Experiment

Thus, common sense dictates that the thermal energy of the constituents of the atmosphere which cannot effectively radiatively emit (N2, O2, Ar) must be transferred to the so-called ‘greenhouse gases’ (CO2 being a lesser contributor below the tropopause and the largest contributor above the tropopause, water vapor being the main contributor below the tropopause) which can radiatively emit and thus shed that energy to space. Peer-reviewed studies corroborating this are referenced in the linked file below.

So, far from being ‘greenhouse gases’ which ‘trap heat’ in the atmosphere, those polyatomic radiative gases actually shed energy from the atmosphere to space. They are net atmospheric radiative coolants.

In short, in an atmosphere sufficiently dense such that collisional energy transfer can significantly occur, all polyatomic radiative molecules play the part of atmospheric radiative coolants at and above the temperature at which the combined translational mode energy of two colliding particles (atoms or molecules) exceeds the lowest excited vibrational mode quantum state energy of the radiative molecule. Below this temperature, they act to warm the atmosphere via thermalization (the mechanism the climate alarmists claim happens all the time), but if that occurs below the tropopause, the net result is an increase of Convective Available Potential Energy, which increases convection, which is a net cooling process. It is a gradation… as temperature increases, so too does the population of vibrationally excited polyatomics, and thus increases radiative emission. For CO2, that ‘transition temperature’ (the temperature at which the molecule transitions from being ‘net warmant’ to ‘net coolant’ and vice versa) is ~288 K.

The climatologists only told people half the story (thermalization by CO2 via vibrational mode to translation mode (v-t) collisional energy transfer processes). They didn’t tell anyone about the inverse (translational mode to vibrational mode (t-v) collisional energy transfer processes, (then that energy being radiatively emitted to space)), which is a cooling process. That didn’t fit their doomsaying narrative, so they left it out.

In other words, the climatologists only told people about the warming part (thermalization), not the cooling part. In order to hew to the fundamental physical laws, one must consider energy flow both to and from the CO2 molecule.

This doesn’t just apply to CO2, however. It applies to all atmospheric polyatomic molecules. In fact, far from the ‘global warming gas’ claimed by the climatologists, water acts as a literal refrigerant (in the strict ‘refrigeration cycle’ sense) below the tropopause:

That’s why, after all, the humid adiabatic lapse rate (~3.5 to ~6.5 K km-1) is lower than the dry adiabatic lapse rate (~9.81 K km-1).

You will note that the dry adiabatic lapse rate is due to the monoatomics and homonuclear diatomics... we’ve removed in this case the predominant polyatomic which reduces lapse rate.

Remember that an actual greenhouse works by hindering convection of energy out of the greenhouse.

In an atmosphere consisting of solely monoatomics and homonuclear diatomics (ie: no polyatomic radiative molecules), the atoms / molecules could pick up energy via conduction by contacting the surface, just as the polyatomics do; they could convect just as the polyatomics do… but once in the upper atmosphere, they could not as effectively radiatively emit that energy, the upper atmosphere would warm, lending less buoyancy to convecting air, thus hindering convection… and that’s how an actual greenhouse works, by hindering convection.

For homonuclear diatomics, there would be some collisional perturbation of their net-zero electric dipole and thus some emission in the atmosphere, but by and large the atmosphere could not effectively emit (especially at higher altitudes, because the probability of collision decreases exponentially with altitude).

Thus the surface would have to radiatively emit that energy (which is currently ~76.2% of all energy removed from the surface via radiation, convection and evaporation) instead… and a higher surface radiant exitance implies a higher surface temperature.

On the contrary, in our actual atmosphere, as temperature increases, (t-v) (translational mode -to- vibrational mode) collisional energy transfer processes increase and thus spectral emission increases only because CO2 is a net atmospheric radiative coolant (transferring translational mode energy to vibrational mode energy, then radiatively emitting it). So they are attempting to claim that CO2 is a “global warming gas” and simultaneously a net atmospheric radiative coolant, a contradiction… which is why their claims make no sense upon close examination.

In fact, removing CO2 would increase upper atmosphere temperature (due to fewer emitters in the upper atmosphere), which would set the starting point of the lapse rate higher, which translates down through the lapse rate to a warmer surface. That doesn’t occur with Ar, because it is a monoatomic, has no vibrational mode quantum states and thus cannot emit (nor absorb) IR in any case, and thus it only dilutes the radiative polyatomics, reducing the efficiency by which energy is transited from surface to space.

Because we don’t live in a ‘greenhouse’ as the climatologists claim… we live in what can be analogized to a world-sized AC unit… the surface is akin to the AC unit’s evaporator section (ie: the heat source); the atmosphere is akin to the AC unit’s working fluid; space is akin to the AC unit’s condenser section (ie: the heat sink); convection is akin to the AC unit’s compressor (ie: the motive force to move the working fluid).

These concepts used to be common knowledge. Somewhere along the way, the concepts got skewed to fit a particular narrative. Eventually, the concepts described herein will be common knowledge again, whereupon CAGW and its offshoots will be dumped on the midden heap of bad scientific ideas.

Mid August 2024 Normal Arctic Ice Melt in Progress

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Ron Clutz

The graph above shows Mid July to Mid August daily ice extents for 2024 compared to 18 year averages, and some years of note.

The black line shows on average Arctic ice extents during this period decline 2.4M km2 down to 5.8M Km2 by day 229. 2024 tracked somewhat lower than the 18-year average in late July, then in August drew near to average before slipping into deficit the last 5 days. In the end, 2024 is presently close to 2023 and 2007, ~200k km2 below the 18 year MASIE average.

Remarkably, SII is showing much larger deficits to average than MASIE does. This period began with SII having a gap of 400k km2 less ice extent than MASIE, then increased that deficit as high as 700k km2, before reporting a gap of 537k km2 on day 229, a difference of half a Wadham. The effect will be for SII to report much lower monthly averages for ice extents during July and August, prior to the annual minimum occurring in September.

Why is this important? All the claims of global climate emergency depend on dangerously higher temperatures, lower sea ice, and rising sea levels. The lack of additional warming prior to 2023 El Nino is documented in a post UAH June 2024: Oceans Lead Cool Down.

The lack of acceleration in sea levels along coastlines has been discussed also. See Observed vs. Imagined Sea Levels 2023 Update.

Also, a longer term perspective is informative:

post-glacial_sea_level The table below shows the distribution of Sea Ice on day 229 across the Arctic Regions, on average, this year and 2007. At this point in the year, Bering and Okhotsk seas are open water and thus dropped from the table.

Region	2024229	Day 229 Ave	2024-Ave.	2007229	2024-2007
(0) Northern_Hemisphere	5623262	5828731	-205469	5673531	-50270
(1) Beaufort_Sea	591190	698788	-107598	767181	-175991
(2) Chukchi_Sea	554701	425156	129544	253092	301609
(3) East_Siberian_Sea	641562	535416	106146	154536	487026
(4) Laptev_Sea	268971	240911	28059	284910	-15939
(5) Kara_Sea	14414	96702	-82288	201203	-186789
(6) Barents_Sea	0	21833	-21833	17229	-17229
(7) Greenland_Sea	120478	216573	-96095	310070	-189591
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence	46366	53298	-6932	75105	-28739
(9) Canadian_Archipelago	319281	399712	-80431	382407	-63126
(10) Hudson_Bay	33319	58874	-25555	89354	-56034
(11) Central_Arctic	3031923	3080445	-48523	3137188.82	-105266

The overall deficit to average is 205k km2, (3.5%). The major deficits are in Beaufort, Kara, Greenland Sea and CAA (Canadian Archipelago), partly offset by surpluses in Chukchi and East Siberian.

For more on the differences between MASIE and SII see this post:

Support MASIE Arctic Ice Dataset

bathymetric_map_arctic_ocean

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

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This Summer Celebrate Our Warm Climate

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Ron Clutz

Legacy and social media keep up a constant drumbeat of warnings about a degree or two of planetary warming without any historical context for considering the significance of the alternative. A poem of Robert Frost comes to mind as some applicable wisdom:

The diagram at the top shows how grateful we should be for living in today’s climate instead of a glacial icehouse. (H/T Raymond Inauen) For most of its history Earth has been frozen rather than the mostly green place it is today. And the reference is to the extent of the North American ice sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM).

For further context consider that geologists refer to our time as a “Severe Icehouse World”, among the various conditions in earth’s history, as diagramed by paleo climatologist Christopher Scotese. Referring to the Global Mean Temperatures, it appears after many decades, we are slowly rising to “Icehouse World”, which would seem to be a good thing.

Instead of fear mongering over a bit of warming, we should celebrate our good fortune, and do our best for humanity and the biosphere. Matthew Ridley takes it from there in a previous post. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Background from previous post The Goodness of Global Warming

LAI refers to Leaf Area Index.

As noted in other posts here, warming comes and goes and a cooling period may now be ensuing. See No Global Warming, Chilly January Land and Sea. Matt Ridley provides a concise and clear argument to celebrate any warming that comes to our world in his Spiked article Why global warming is good for us. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Climate change is creating a greener, safer planet.

Global warming is real. It is also – so far – mostly beneficial. This startling fact is kept from the public by a determined effort on the part of alarmists and their media allies who are determined to use the language of crisis and emergency. The goal of Net Zero emissions in the UK by 2050 is controversial enough as a policy because of the pain it is causing. But what if that pain is all to prevent something that is not doing net harm?

The biggest benefit of emissions is global greening, the increase year after year of green vegetation on the land surface of the planet. Forests grow more thickly, grasslands more richly and scrub more rapidly. This has been measured using satellites and on-the-ground recording of plant-growth rates. It is happening in all habitats, from tundra to rainforest. In the four decades since 1982, as Bjorn Lomborg points out, NASA data show that global greening has added 618,000 square kilometres of extra green leaves each year, equivalent to three Great Britains. You read that right: every year there’s more greenery on the planet to the extent of three Britains. I bet Greta Thunberg did not tell you that.

The cause of this greening? Although tree planting, natural reforestation, slightly longer growing seasons and a bit more rain all contribute, the big cause is something else. All studies agree that by far the largest contributor to global greening – responsible for roughly half the effect – is the extra carbon dioxide in the air. In 40 years, the proportion of the atmosphere that is CO2 has gone from 0.034 per cent to 0.041 per cent. That may seem a small change but, with more ‘food’ in the air, plants don’t need to lose as much water through their pores (‘stomata’) to acquire a given amount of carbon. So dry areas, like the Sahel region of Africa, are seeing some of the biggest improvements in greenery. Since this is one of the poorest places on the planet, it is good news that there is more food for people, goats and wildlife.

But because good news is no news, green pressure groups and environmental correspondents in the media prefer to ignore global greening. Astonishingly, it merited no mentions on the BBC’s recent Green Planet series, despite the name. Or, if it is mentioned, the media point to studies suggesting greening may soon cease. These studies are based on questionable models, not data (because data show the effect continuing at the same pace). On the very few occasions when the BBC has mentioned global greening it is always accompanied by a health warning in case any viewer might glimpse a silver lining to climate change – for example, ‘extra foliage helps slow climate change, but researchers warn this will be offset by rising temperatures’.

Another bit of good news is on deaths. We’re against them, right? A recent study shows that rising temperatures have resulted in half a million fewer deaths in Britain over the past two decades. That is because cold weather kills about ’20 times as many people as hot weather’, according to the study, which analyses ‘over 74million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries’. This is especially true in a temperate place like Britain, where summer days are rarely hot enough to kill. So global warming and the unrelated phenomenon of urban warming relative to rural areas, caused by the retention of heat by buildings plus energy use, are both preventing premature deaths on a huge scale.

Figure 8: Warming in the tropical troposphere according to the CMIP6 models.
Trends 1979–2014 (except the rightmost model, which is to 2007), for 20°N–20°S, 300–200 hPa. Source John Christy

Summer temperatures in the US are changing at half the rate of winter temperatures and daytimes are warming 20 per cent slower than nighttimes. A similar pattern is seen in most countries. Tropical nations are mostly experiencing very slow, almost undetectable daytime warming (outside cities), while Arctic nations are seeing quite rapid change, especially in winter and at night. Alarmists love to talk about polar amplification of average climate change, but they usually omit its inevitable flip side: that tropical temperatures (where most poor people live) are changing more slowly than the average.

My Mind is Made Up, Don’t Confuse Me with the Facts. H/T Bjorn Lomborg, WUWT

But are we not told to expect more volatile weather as a result of climate change? It is certainly assumed that we should. Yet there’s no evidence to suggest weather volatility is increasing and no good theory to suggest it will. The decreasing temperature differential between the tropics and the Arctic may actually diminish the volatility of weather a little.

Indeed, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) repeatedly confirms, there is no clear pattern of storms growing in either frequency or ferocity, droughts are decreasing slightly and floods are getting worse only where land-use changes (like deforestation or building houses on flood plains) create a problem. Globally, deaths from droughts, floods and storms are down by about 98 per cent over the past 100 years – not because weather is less dangerous but because shelter, transport and communication (which are mostly the products of the fossil-fuel economy) have dramatically improved people’s ability to survive such natural disasters.

The effect of today’s warming (and greening) on farming is, on average, positive: crops can be grown farther north and for longer seasons and rainfall is slightly heavier in dry regions. We are feeding over seven billion people today much more easily than we fed three billion in the 1960s, and from a similar acreage of farmland. Global cereal production is on course to break its record this year, for the sixth time in 10 years.

Nature, too, will do generally better in a warming world. There are more species in warmer climates, so more new birds and insects are arriving to breed in southern England than are disappearing from northern Scotland. Warmer means wetter, too: 9,000 years ago, when the climate was warmer than today, the Sahara was green. Alarmists like to imply that concern about climate change goes hand in hand with concern about nature generally. But this is belied by the evidence. Climate policies often harm wildlife: biofuels compete for land with agriculture, eroding the benefits of improved agricultural productivity and increasing pressure on wild land; wind farms kill birds and bats; and the reckless planting of alien sitka spruce trees turns diverse moorland into dark monoculture.

Meanwhile, real environmental issues are ignored or neglected because of the obsession with climate. With the help of local volunteers I have been fighting to protect the red squirrel in Northumberland for years. The government does literally nothing to help us, while it pours money into grants for studying the most far-fetched and minuscule possible climate-change impacts. Invasive alien species are the main cause of species extinction worldwide (like grey squirrels driving the red to the margins), whereas climate change has yet to be shown to have caused a single species to die out altogether anywhere.

Source: Phanerozoic_Biodiversity.png Author: SVG version by Albert Mestre

Of course, climate change does and will bring problems as well as benefits. Rapid sea-level rise could be catastrophic. But whereas the sea level shot up between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago, rising by about 60 metres in two millennia, or roughly three metres per century, today the change is nine times slower: three millimetres a year, or a foot per century, and with not much sign of acceleration. Countries like the Netherlands and Vietnam show that it is possible to gain land from the sea even in a world where sea levels are rising. The land area of the planet is actually increasing, not shrinking, thanks to siltation and reclamation.

Environmentalists don’t get donations or invitations to appear on the telly if they say moderate things. To stand up and pronounce that ‘climate change is real and needs to be tackled, but it’s not happening very fast and other environmental issues are more urgent’ would be about as popular as an MP in Oliver Cromwell’s parliament declaring, ‘The evidence for God is looking a bit weak, and I’m not so very sure that fornication really is a sin’. And I speak as someone who has made several speeches on climate in parliament.

No wonder we don’t hear about the good news on climate change.

Oceans Warming Uptick July 2024

Posted on August 15, 2024 by Ron Clutz

The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
Major El Ninos have been the dominant climate feature in recent years.

HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source. Previously I used HadSST3 for these reports, but Hadley Centre has made HadSST4 the priority, and v.3 will no longer be updated. HadSST4 is the same as v.3, except that the older data from ship water intake was re-estimated to be generally lower temperatures than shown in v.3. The effect is that v.4 has lower average anomalies for the baseline period 1961-1990, thereby showing higher current anomalies than v.3. This analysis concerns more recent time periods and depends on very similar differentials as those from v.3 despite higher absolute anomaly values in v.4. More on what distinguishes HadSST3 and 4 from other SST products at the end. The user guide for HadSST4 is here.

The Current Context

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST4 starting in 2015 through July 2024. A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016, followed by rising temperatures in 2023 and 2024.

Note that in 2015-2016 the Tropics and SH peaked in between two summer NH spikes. That pattern repeated in 2019-2020 with a lesser Tropics peak and SH bump, but with higher NH spikes. By end of 2020, cooler SSTs in all regions took the Global anomaly well below the mean for this period.

Then in 2022, another strong NH summer spike peaked in August, but this time both the Tropic and SH were countervailing, resulting in only slight Global warming, later receding to the mean. Oct./Nov. temps dropped in NH and the Tropics took the Global anomaly below the average for this period. After an uptick in December, temps in January 2023 dropped everywhere, strongest in NH, with the Global anomaly further below the mean since 2015.

Then came El Nino as shown by the upward spike in the Tropics since January 2023, the anomaly nearly tripling from 0.38C to 1.09C. In September 2023, all regions rose, especially NH up from 0.70C to 1.41C, pulling up the global anomaly to a new high for this period. By December, NH cooled to 1.1C and the Global anomaly down to 0.94C from its peak of 1.10C, despite slight warming in SH and Tropics.

In January 2024 both Tropics and SH rose, resulting in Global Anomaly going higher. Since then Tropics have cooled from a peak of 1.29C down to 0.84C. SH also dropped down from 0.89C to 0.65C. NH lost ~0.4C as of March 2024, but has risen 0.2C over April to June. Despite that upward NH bump, the Global SST anomaly cooled further. Now in July there was a warming uptick in all regions, bringing the global anomaly up to match January 2024. The NH anomaly is now matching July 2023. The next months will reveal the strength of 2024 NH warming spike, which could rise to the 2023 level or recede.

Comment:

The climatists have seized on this unusual warming as proof their Zero Carbon agenda is needed, without addressing how impossible it would be for CO2 warming the air to raise ocean temperatures. It is the ocean that warms the air, not the other way around. Recently Steven Koonin had this to say about the phonomenon confirmed in the graph above:

El Nino is a phenomenon in the climate system that happens once every four or five years. Heat builds up in the equatorial Pacific to the west of Indonesia and so on. Then when enough of it builds up it surges across the Pacific and changes the currents and the winds. As it surges toward South America it was discovered and named in the 19th century It iswell understood at this point that the phenomenon has nothing to do with CO2.

Now people talk about changes in that phenomena as a result of CO2 but it’s there in the climate system already and when it happens it influences weather all over the world. We feel it when it gets rainier in Southern California for example. So for the last 3 years we have been in the opposite of an El Nino, a La Nina, part of the reason people think the West Coast has been in drought.

It has now shifted in the last months to an El Nino condition that warms the globe and is thought to contribute to this Spike we have seen. But there are other contributions as well. One of the most surprising ones is that back in January of 2022 an enormous underwater volcano went off in Tonga and it put up a lot of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. It increased the upper atmosphere of water vapor by about 10 percent, and that’s a warming effect, and it may be that is contributing to why the spike is so high.

A longer view of SSTs

To enlarge, open image in new tab.

The graph above is noisy, but the density is needed to see the seasonal patterns in the oceanic fluctuations. Previous posts focused on the rise and fall of the last El Nino starting in 2015. This post adds a longer view, encompassing the significant 1998 El Nino and since. The color schemes are retained for Global, Tropics, NH and SH anomalies. Despite the longer time frame, I have kept the monthly data (rather than yearly averages) because of interesting shifts between January and July. 1995 is a reasonable (ENSO neutral) starting point prior to the first El Nino.

The sharp Tropical rise peaking in 1998 is dominant in the record, starting Jan. ’97 to pull up SSTs uniformly before returning to the same level Jan. ’99. There were strong cool periods before and after the 1998 El Nino event. Then SSTs in all regions returned to the mean in 2001-2.

SSTS fluctuate around the mean until 2007, when another, smaller ENSO event occurs. There is cooling 2007-8, a lower peak warming in 2009-10, following by cooling in 2011-12. Again SSTs are average 2013-14.

Now a different pattern appears. The Tropics cooled sharply to Jan 11, then rise steadily for 4 years to Jan 15, at which point the most recent major El Nino takes off. But this time in contrast to ’97-’99, the Northern Hemisphere produces peaks every summer pulling up the Global average. In fact, these NH peaks appear every July starting in 2003, growing stronger to produce 3 massive highs in 2014, 15 and 16. NH July 2017 was only slightly lower, and a fifth NH peak still lower in Sept. 2018.

The highest summer NH peaks came in 2019 and 2020, only this time the Tropics and SH were offsetting rather adding to the warming. (Note: these are high anomalies on top of the highest absolute temps in the NH.) Since 2014 SH has played a moderating role, offsetting the NH warming pulses. After September 2020 temps dropped off down until February 2021. In 2021-22 there were again summer NH spikes, but in 2022 moderated first by cooling Tropics and SH SSTs, then in October to January 2023 by deeper cooling in NH and Tropics.

Then in 2023 the Tropics flipped from below to well above average, while NH produced a summer peak extending into September higher than any previous year. Despite El Nino driving the Tropics January 2024 anomaly higher than 1998 and 2016 peaks, following months cooled in all regions, and the Tropics continued cooling in April, May and June along with SH dropping, suggesting that the peak might be reached, though now in July NH warming has again pulled the global anomaly higher.

What to make of all this? The patterns suggest that in addition to El Ninos in the Pacific driving the Tropic SSTs, something else is going on in the NH. The obvious culprit is the North Atlantic, since I have seen this sort of pulsing before. After reading some papers by David Dilley, I confirmed his observation of Atlantic pulses into the Arctic every 8 to 10 years.

Contemporary AMO Observations

Through January 2023 I depended on the Kaplan AMO Index (not smoothed, not detrended) for N. Atlantic observations. But it is no longer being updated, and NOAA says they don’t know its future. So I find that ERSSTv5 AMO dataset has current data. It differs from Kaplan, which reported average absolute temps measured in N. Atlantic. “ERSST5 AMO follows Trenberth and Shea (2006) proposal to use the NA region EQ-60°N, 0°-80°W and subtract the global rise of SST 60°S-60°N to obtain a measure of the internal variability, arguing that the effect of external forcing on the North Atlantic should be similar to the effect on the other oceans.” So the values represent sst anomaly differences between the N. Atlantic and the Global ocean.

The chart above confirms what Kaplan also showed. As August is the hottest month for the N. Atlantic, its variability, high and low, drives the annual results for this basin. Note also the peaks in 2010, lows after 2014, and a rise in 2021. Now in 2023 the peak was holding at 1.4C before declining. An annual chart below is informative:

Note the difference between blue/green years, beige/brown, and purple/red years. 2010, 2021, 2022 all peaked strongly in August or September. 1998 and 2007 were mildly warm. 2016 and 2018 were matching or cooler than the global average. 2023 started out slightly warm, then rose steadily to an extraordinary peak in July. August to October were only slightly lower, but by December cooled by ~0.4C.

Now in 2024 the AMO anomaly started higher than any previous year, then leveled off for two months declining slightly into April. Remarkably, May shows an upward leap putting this on a higher track than 2023, and rising slightly higher in June. In July 2024 the anomaly declined and is now lower than the peak reached in 2023.

The pattern suggests the ocean may be demonstrating a stairstep pattern like that we have also seen in HadCRUT4.

The purple line is the average anomaly 1980-1996 inclusive, value 0.18. The orange line the average 1980-202404, value 0.39, also for the period 1997-2012. The red line is 2013-202404, value 0.66. As noted above, these rising stages are driven by the combined warming in the Tropics and NH, including both Pacific and Atlantic basins.

Curiosity: Solar Coincidence?

The news about our current solar cycle 25 is that the solar activity is hitting peak numbers now and higher than expected 1-2 years in the future. As livescience put it: Solar maximum could hit us harder and sooner than we thought. How dangerous will the sun’s chaotic peak be? Some charts from spaceweatherlive look familar to these sea surface temperature charts.

Summary

The oceans are driving the warming this century. SSTs took a step up with the 1998 El Nino and have stayed there with help from the North Atlantic, and more recently the Pacific northern “Blob.” The ocean surfaces are releasing a lot of energy, warming the air, but eventually will have a cooling effect. The decline after 1937 was rapid by comparison, so one wonders: How long can the oceans keep this up? And is the sun adding forcing to this process?

Space weather impacts the ionosphere in this animation. Credits: NASA/GSFC/CIL/Krystofer Kim

Footnote: Why Rely on HadSST4

HadSST is distinguished from other SST products because HadCRU (Hadley Climatic Research Unit) does not engage in SST interpolation, i.e. infilling estimated anomalies into grid cells lacking sufficient sampling in a given month. From reading the documentation and from queries to Met Office, this is their procedure.

HadSST4 imports data from gridcells containing ocean, excluding land cells. From past records, they have calculated daily and monthly average readings for each grid cell for the period 1961 to 1990. Those temperatures form the baseline from which anomalies are calculated.

In a given month, each gridcell with sufficient sampling is averaged for the month and then the baseline value for that cell and that month is subtracted, resulting in the monthly anomaly for that cell. All cells with monthly anomalies are averaged to produce global, hemispheric and tropical anomalies for the month, based on the cells in those locations. For example, Tropics averages include ocean grid cells lying between latitudes 20N and 20S.

Gridcells lacking sufficient sampling that month are left out of the averaging, and the uncertainty from such missing data is estimated. IMO that is more reasonable than inventing data to infill. And it seems that the Global Drifter Array displayed in the top image is providing more uniform coverage of the oceans than in the past.

uss-pearl-harbor-deploys-global-drifter-buoys-in-pacific-ocean

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

July 2024 the Hottest Ever? Not So Fast!

Posted on August 13, 2024 by Ron Clutz

For sure you’ve seen the headlines declaring 2024 likely to be the Hottest year ever. If you’re like me, your response is: That’s not the way it’s going down where I live. Fortunately there is a website that allows anyone to check their personal experience with the weather station data nearby. weatherspark.com provides data summaries for you to judge what’s going on in weather history where you live. In my case a modern weather station is a few miles away July 2024 Weather History at Montréal–Mirabel International Airport The story about July 2024 is evident below in charts and graphs from this site. There’s a map that allows you to find your locale.

First, consider above the norms for July from the period 1980 to 2016.

Then, there’s July 2024 compared to the normal observations.

The graph shows July had some warm days, some cool days and overall was pretty normal. But since climate is more than temperature, consider cloudiness.

Woah! Most of the month was cloudy, which in summer means blocking the warming sun from hitting the surface. And with all those clouds, let’s look at precipitation:

So, there were sixteen days when it rained, including five days of thunderstorms with heavy rainfall. Given what we know about the hydrology cycles, that means a lot of heat removed upward from the surface.

So the implications for July temperatures in my locale.

There you have it before your eyes. Mostly warm days for the
peak summer month, with exactly one brief hot afternoon.
Otherwise comfortable and cool, and a couple of hot
afternoons in first week of August.

Summary:

Claims of hottest this or that month or year are based on averages of averages of temperatures, which in principle is an intrinsic quality and distinctive to a locale. The claim involves selecting some places and time periods where warming appears, while ignoring other places where it has been cooling.

Remember: They want you to panic. Before doing so, check out what the data says in your neck of the woods. For example, NOAA declared that “July 2024 was the warmest ever recorded for the globe.”

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Science Matters

Reading between the lines, and underneath the hype.

Author: Ron Clutz

Climate Policies Fail in Fact and in Theory

Abstract

Context

Postscript: All the Pain for No Gain is Unnecessary

Climate Meltdown

Climate Meltdown

The Short Lives of Wind Turbines

Paul Burgess Basics 2 The Lifespan of Wind Turbines

Wind Power Economics – Rhetoric and Reality

See Also

US Climate Election Amid Collapsing Net Zero Support

UAH July 2024: Little Warming from “Hot” July

July 2024 Global Temps Little Changed by Land Warming

The Bigger Picture UAH Global Since 1980

The Original Sin of GHG Theory

The takeaways:

Mid August 2024 Normal Arctic Ice Melt in Progress

This Summer Celebrate Our Warm Climate

Background from previous post The Goodness of Global Warming

Oceans Warming Uptick July 2024

The Current Context

Contemporary AMO Observations

See Also:

Curiosity: Solar Coincidence?

July 2024 the Hottest Ever? Not So Fast!