Energy Realism from Next US Dept. Head

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Last year Chris Wright dished out climate and energy realism in an interview on CNBC Squawk Box hosted by Andrew Ross Sorkin.  Now he is to be appointed Secretary of Energy in the coming Trump administration.  Here are his candid and unvarnished views from inside the energy industry.

For those who prefer reading below is a transcript lightly edited from the closed captions in italics with my bolds and added images. AS refers to Sorkin’s questions and CW to responses from Wright.

AS: President Biden conceded last week that the U.S is going to be needing oil and gas for as he says at least the next decade as the country transitions to Renewables. But our next guest says that we are not in the midst of an energy transition and claims the so-called climate crisis is overblown. Last month he railed against what he called an alarmist move away from fossil fuels in a video on LinkedIn. The Microsoft owned company removed the post citing misinformation, only put it back up days later.

So let’s talk right now to Chris Wright–Chairman and CEO of Liberty Energy, North America’s second largest fracking company Chris good morning to you.

Reaction to the State of the Union

AS: Let’s start with your reaction after watching the State of the Union. President Biden makes the statement twice actually. The first time he says we’re going to need fossil fuels for a while. Later he follows up with: We’re going to need it for something like a decade or so. There was laughter in the chamber, certainly from the GOP, but it very well might have been both sides of the aisle at that point.

CW: Yeah, likely it was. Of course it’s great to see an acknowledgment the world run on oil and gas and we need that. But to throw out a decade, it’s just an absurd time frame. We’re not going to meaningfully change the demand for oil and gas one way or the other in the next decade. And I think politicizing energy and opposing infrastructure is standing in the way of Today’s Energy System before we’ve built a new Energy System. There’s just no upside in that.

Realistic timeline for energy

AS: When you think about the timeline, what do you think is a realistic timeline to the degree you think there is one.

CW: It’s multiple, as we’ll talk about that. The Energy Information Administration is our government agency that projects forward demands for varied energy sources, They have in 2050 roughly flat demand for oil and gas as what we have today; maybe it rises a little bit the next decade or two, maybe it comes down a little bit in the next decade or two after that. Maybe that’s true, but I think you’ll see no meaningful change of our hydrocarbon system in the next three decades. I’m all for investing in new energy sources: nuclear has a great future if we could regulatorily issue a permit. We haven’t issued a new permit for a nuclear plant in 50 years.

There’s great new things we can bring; but standing in the way
of what runs the world today just isn’t productive.

Nuclear energy

AS: I’m a big fan but it’s quite unpopular talking about nuclear energy. Usually when I say something on the air it causes some kind of strange firestorm. Do you think there’s any realistic chance we have nuclear energy in the United States in the next decade?

CW: I think probably not in the next decade. Nuclear will have a Renaissance right now, but it more likely starts overseas where there’s a less onerous and less fear-driven regulatory system. I think we’ll see small modular reactors come. What’s great about nuclear is they bring not just electricity which is the only place wind and solar can play. Electricity is less than a quarter of global energy. Process heat that you need for manufacturing is just critical, and nuclear could bring process heat as well as electricity. Today it’s just fossil fuels that bring processed Heat.

SEC disclosure

Rough Seas for Captains of Industry

AS: Chris, I wanted to ask you two big big other questions. One regards the SEC pushing for more disclosure for companies around ESG and and in particular their plans around climate and energy. It
may get softened a bit, in part because of the comments that have come back to them. What is your sense of what the SEC was proposing and where you think they’re going to land?

CW:  Well what they proposed is totally nuts. And I wrote a long comment letter on it. A lot of public company CEOs won’t do that, But it’s just making an enormously complicated expensive reporting thing so people can sue us because they think we didn’t quite properly estimate our scope three emissions. Those are emissions from the products we produce when someone else burns them on the other side of the world or on the other side of the country. No one can really account for that.

Why are they doing that? They’re doing it so this Administration can signal they’re against fuels. Again that’s just unproductive.

LinkedIn censorship

AS: Your LinkedIn post went down tell me what happened. People talk about censorship all the time, who should be the Arbiter of Truth and all of that.

CW: Yeah it was crazy. I made a sort of an amateur video just talking about energy climate transition with just some basic data so you can get background on it. And it was taken down as misinformation. I hit the appeal the decision button, and they came back and said it violated their spams and scams policy.   I posted it again it’s taken down again from misinformation. Then upon appeal they said sorry, on further review it didn’t violate their policy. That’s probably not LinkedIn but people complaining because I’m not talking the climate alarmist narrative. For LinkedIn to go along and take that down is just a symbol of where we are today, unfortunately.

Oil and Gas Industry Productivity

AS: When we finally hit Peak production again, we haven’t yet since 2019. So there’s a lot of finger pointing on why that is. I mean fracking had its own problems when there was a slow period. When we try to reopen from a pandemic we can’t get the workers that we need for the you know for the whole oil and gas industry. But add in ESG and add in President Biden’s pitch: Read my lips, I will end the fossil fuel industry.” How much do you think ESG and that type of of rhetoric scared away producers? Is ESG a positive or negative for society?

AS: I think from an investor movement it’s a negative. Of course we should care about the environment and the societies we operate in. And of course company and government should be aligned with the owners of businesses, that’s a very real point. The other point is of course that’s what businesses do in a free Society. If you’re not a great member of society, if people don’t believe they’re part of something bigger than just getting a paycheck, you’re going to have trouble getting workers.

So the idea is right but it’s really become sort of a top-down thing: if you’re admitting greenhouse gas emissions you’re bad, if you’re reducing them or shrinking your business there you’re good. And then of course a top-down check box list to decide if we’re socially virtuous or not. These are bad ideas. Investors should care about ESG but it shouldn’t be like a third party imposing a scorecard to tell me who’s virtuous and who’s not.

On the on the margin it has indeed reduced Capital to our industry which absolutely raises the cost of capital on the margin. We produce less oil and gas because of it and the main impact of that is higher oil and gas prices.

 

 

 

 

Washington State Votes Against “Electrify Everything”

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Gas stoves are the thin edge of the wedge.

 

Update November 18, 2024

From the Olympian: WA natural gas measure I-2066 set to pass.

The sponsors of Initiative-2066, the Washington ballot measure that aims to expand access to natural gas in the state, have declared victory as votes have continued to trickle in from last week’s election. Early results showed the ballot measure holding a slim lead, which has slowly grown in the days since the election. As of Monday, Nov. 11, there are 51.64% of votes counted in favor of the measure, compared to 48.36% against it, according to the Secretary of State’s office. With approximately 274,171 votes left to be counted, I-2066 leads by a 112,203 vote margin. In order for the measure to fail, over 70% of the remaining votes would need to go against the initiative, leaving it all-but-guaranteed of a victory.

No on I-2066 has conceded the race, although it’s exploring possible legal challenges to the measure. The campaign claims that I-2066 is misleading, since it implies that Washington has a natural gas ban in place when it doesn’t. Additionally, the campaign said it’s looking into the possibility that the measure violates a section of the state constitution that asserts that “no bill shall embrace more than one subject.”

Results won’t be official until they’re certified by Washington’s 39 counties on Nov. 26 in and are sent to the Secretary of State, who has to certify them by Dec. 5.

Background Post

Megan K. Jacobson explains the fight and what’s at stake at msn A Washington State Revolt Against the Gas-Stove Grabbers.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Environmentalists have waged a campaign against natural gas, but users of this efficient, low-emission fuel are fighting back. A wide range of industry groups are backing Washington state’s Initiative 2066 to protect the right to choose natural gas.

By 2030, Washington is supposed to reduce carbon emissions to 45% below 1990 levels—one of its many overlapping climate goals. The state’s most recent energy plan declares that the cheapest route to meeting Olympia’s climate targets is to switch many uses of oil and gas to electric sources. Last year the Building Code Council amended the state energy code to make it prohibitively costly to install gas appliances in new buildings. In March the Legislature passed a law allowing the state’s largest natural-gas and electricity utility, Puget Sound Energy, to pass the costs of going green onto consumers and mandating the utility files a plan “to achieve all cost-effective electrification of end uses currently served by natural gas.”

To the Washington Hospitality Association and the Building
Industry Association of Washington, Initiative 2066’s cosponsors,
this sounded like an economic wrecking ball.

Anthony Anton, CEO of the hospitality association, says 84% of the restaurateurs he represents rely on natural gas. Remodeling to go electric is a “massive cost at a time where operators just can’t afford it,” he says. Some say the quality of their product would suffer, as some cooking methods, such as stir-frying, are difficult to perform on lower-heat electrical stoves. Most of the association’s members are very small businesses with substantial debt from Covid lockdowns.

The building association worries the new energy code will raise the state’s already high housing costs, locking out potential buyers. The code requires that new buildings meet a certain environmental “score.” Without the points from an electric heat pump, a builder will have to make up the difference with other green measures that run between $15,000 and $20,000 in a single-family home. “Every time they raise the price $1,000, it prices out another 500 Washington families,” says Greg Lane, the association’s executive vice president.

Dozens of varied industry groups support Initiative 2066. Each has its own reasons. The Washington Denturist Association worries about the expense of switching from propane- or gas-based equipment and a lack of reliable power. Most members are small businesses and it’s a good path for immigrant dentists whose credentials don’t carry over to the U.S.

The Washington State Tree Fruit Association (of which my paternal grandfather’s company, Apple King, is a member) is concerned about rising costs of refrigeration to keep produce fresh. A sudden power outage could be catastrophic for the state’s apple industry. Trade regulations for its top two export markets require that fruit be constantly refrigerated at a specific temperature for as long as 90 days.

The state’s cheapest energy plan would almost double electricity demand in Washington by 2050, putting an unprecedented strain on the grid. The only real option is to increase wind and solar generation, since the state’s plentiful hydroelectric capacity can’t do more without potentially threatening salmon. Wind and solar tend to falter in Washington in the winter, when energy demand peaks.

Consumers would also suffer in Washington’s green utopia. Everything from a haircut to a ballgame would become more expensive as the price of electricity rises. Climate advocates argue that Washingtonians will recoup their costs over time thanks to efficiency gains. But a 2021 report from Home Innovation Labs estimates that recovering the cost of a heat-pump installation could take 47 to 49 years. It’s worse for existing gas customers. The Building Industry Association of Washington estimates that switching from natural gas to electricity in a single-family home would cost as much as $70,000. Heat pumps also tend to fail in the sort of frigid weather that hits rural Washington in winter.

Proponents of electrification insist that technology will improve over time. But if they’re really confident that green energy will be the best option for consumers and businesses, then Initiative 2066 is no threat. Washington voters should ask why climate advocates still see it as one.

Trump WH Focuses Energy Governance

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Yesterday I posted on Repurposing US Energy Agencies. Today comes the news of Trump announcements consolidating energy governance in a WH National Energy Council chaired by the newly appointed Secretary of the Interior, ND Governor Doug Burgum.  While there is not yet much detail on how this will function, some reports suggest the organizing logic of this approach. This article is from the North Dakota Monitor Trump names North Dakota Gov. Burgum to combined Interior, energy role.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum will serve as Interior secretary and chairman of the newly formed National Energy Council, President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday.

The new council will consist of all departments and agencies involved in the permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation of “ALL forms of American Energy,” Trump said in the announcement.

“This Council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation,” Trump wrote.

Burgum, who is completing his second term as governor, has railed against what he sees as government overreach and bureaucracy under the Biden administration, especially on energy policy. He frequently calls for industry innovation rather than more regulation. Burgum said at an energy industry conference in Bismarck in May:

“We have to turn this around, not just for this industry, not just for North Dakota, but for national security, for peace in the world,”

Trump also said in his statement that his administration will “undo the damage done by the Democrats to our Nation’s Electrical Grid, by dramatically increasing baseload power.”  In addition, Trump said Burgum will have a seat on the National Security Council.

The $18 billion Department of the Interior manages federal natural and cultural resources, with about 70,000 employees.

The department includes 11 agencies: the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation & Enforcement, and the bureaus of Indian Affairs, Indian Education, Land Management, Ocean Energy Management, Reclamation, Safety & Environmental Enforcement, and Trust Funds Administration.

“Serving as Interior Secretary is an opportunity to redefine and improve upon the federal government’s relationship with tribal nations, landowners, mineral developers, outdoor enthusiasts and others, with a focus on maximizing the responsible use of our natural resources with environmental stewardship for the benefit of the American people,” Burgum said.

North Dakota is the nation’s third largest oil producing state, with some of the production coming from federal lands on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. North Dakota also has large amounts of coal, wind energy and biofuel production.

When asked Tuesday about the potential for an “energy czar” position, Burgum told North Dakota reporters that the nation needs a more coordinated approach to energy policy.  He said an “energy czar” would be able to do more than a lone Cabinet secretary because other agencies, such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Environmental Protection Agency and Bureau of Land Management, among others, all affect the nation’s energy policies.

U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., acknowledged that some environmentalists will not be happy with the direction the Trump administration’s policies on federal lands. Cramer said having Burgum in that role should ease some concerns.

“Doug’s a good conservationist,” Cramer said. “It’s not a ‘Drill, baby, drill’ attitude, it’s a, ‘Utilize the resources of the federal government for the benefit of the country and its people,’” Cramer told the North Dakota Monitor. “He delivers the message beautifully and I think he can go a long ways in sort of calming people down.”

An article at Politico explores how this structure might function Interior nominee Burgum to head new National Energy Council.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Burgum, a self-made multimillionaire, had been wary of taking on a role of “energy czar,” according to people familiar with his thinking, and instead had sought a position that came with formal power. This role atop the new council will combine the authority of the cabinet position with the broad reach across the top other agencies.

David Goldwyn, chair of the energy advisory group at the Atlantic Council think tank and a former State Department official in the Obama administration, said combining the two roles for Burgum showed how much influence he would have in the administration, but it could also could stretch him across the broad energy portfolio.

The energy council could be a more institutionalized version of initiatives by earlier White Houses to create an all-of-government approach to coordinating policy, but it could also lead to tension between Burgum and other department heads.

“Anytime you establish a policy coordination body at the White House, there will be natural tension with principles in agencies,” Rapidan’s McNally said. “It’s like herding cats a little bit, but it should minimize tensions so you either get to consensus or tee up pros and cons for the president to make a decision.”

The dual role idea won plaudits from North Dakota GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer, a Burgum ally, who said he had been wary of limiting him to a czar position.  “But when you have a council made up of confirmed people and one of those confirmed people heads it, … it’s a brilliant idea,” Cramer said. “There is a synergy you gain by organizing it this way that you don’t get if you have a bunch of silos.”

Trump has made clear that a focus of his second administration would be to complete permitting reform that has struggled to gain bipartisan traction in Congress during the Biden administration. Fossil fuel companies and renewable energy companies alike have complained that critical infrastructure they need to get fuel and electricity to market takes too long to win federal approval.

 

Repurposing US Energy Agencies

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Mark Krebs writes at Master Resource DOE Efficiency Standards: Consumer Time? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

“The Deep State is cancer-like in nature. Like cancer, it must be rooted out before it metastasizes—as it would have if subject to another four years of a Harris (Obama 4.0?) Administration.”

“It’s time to go big. Scrap DOE and part-out whatever missions are worth saving.  And whatever missions are deemed worth saving should be saved only with thorough scrutiny of zero-based budgeting.”

Our March 2017 post, DOE’s EERE: Reform Ideas for Secretary Perry, stated that while “a trace of consumer focus still exists,” the department’s heavy bias was towards society-wide electrification under the guise of “Net Zero”.

Whatever trace of consumer focus may be remaining within DOE is not worth salvaging. In fact, eliminating the pipe dream of an all-electric society would likely save US citizens $18 to 29 trillion in capital costs alone. Other analysts have estimated far higher cost inflation, while others conclude that total electrification cannot be accomplished at any cost.

Real Reform Opportunity

The incoming Administration can and should do far more than just trim back the overgrown greenery; it should serve the legitimate interests of the American citizenry and American prosperity. However. details in our previous recommendations (EERE Reform: Brouillette’s Turn (‘deep decarbonization’ threat still alive)), are worth reviewing by the incoming Trump Administration if for no other reason than to document historical mistakes and avoid them going forward. Regardless, our old recommendations are no longer sufficiently ambitious in terms of best serving the American public and drastically reducing the National Debt’s deadly inflation.

But how should we move forward for “deep reform” versus the meager results from before? After all, the incoming Trump 2.0 Administration much better understands the depth and breadth of the Deep State and its joined-at-the-hip “Uniparty” cohorts. The options range from modest “reform” to scrapping DOE and parting out its truly vital missions to other Federal agencies or private sector competition.

Given we the people hold the House, and lead the Senate, this is a unique opportunity that must be exploited to the full extent feasible. After all, the world has fundamentally changed since DOE was formed to address certain issues: low supplies and scarcity, coupled with cartel behavior by foreign actors. Today we have robust supplies that mainly just need regulatory relief.

Deep State Foe

Clausewitz was all about winning. If Trump is too (he is), rearranging DOE’s “deck chairs” is just a short step across a large chasm. The Deep State cancer would likely just go into a four-year remission only to return with a vengeance with a return of another Democrat Administration down the road someday.

Ultimately, the choice comes down to serving the Deep State/Uniparty or serving the legitimate best interests of “we the people.” There is no “live and let live” middle ground as the present Biden (mis)Administration has abundantly demonstrated in words and deeds. Nor is there sufficient funding for “all electric” or even “all the above” energy policies.

Appliances Just the Thin Edge of the Wedge

We can’t afford the self-indulgence of environmental virtue signaling.  We need only to pursue energy policies that objectively and comprehensively focus on economic least-cost planning (and bidding) so we can avoid the looming reality of economic collapse. And yes, there is still room for objective energy efficiency; if it is market-based (as opposed to “big brother” dictates to throw money at an illusionary problem). There is even room for least-cost environmental progress. As RFK Jr. knows, soil regeneration is one of these.

It is imperative that the Trump 2.0 Administration achieve and demonstrate tangible and substantial results for energy consumers as soon as possible. Immediate actions should include clawing back the tragic Inflation Reduction Act, an all-you-can eat funding buffet for a myriad of parasitic “clean energy” zealots. These zealots have already received enough (unwitting taxpayer) IRA funding to plague “we the people” for decades to come.

The most efficient tactic (but not necessarily easiest) would be to simply eliminate DOE departments that oversee such funding. And along with that, repeal equally corrupted legislation that authorized DOE’s regulatory mission creep, such as the obsolete Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 (EPCA) and self-serving, loophole riddled revisions thereof.

In short and in closing, DOE is not worth trying to salvage, because its cancer culture is immune to modest political reforms and intervention. Thus, like a junk car, part out what can be safely and economically salvaged and eliminate the rest. Assuming control of the House and Senate, this is, for the first time, entirely doable; given the will to persevere. So let’s declare victory over the gas lines of the 1970s and move on to overcoming House and Senate resistance for dramatically reducing the economic threatening cholesterol of excessive spending.

Addendum 1

In the spirit of the quote above, government needs structuring to safeguard the evidence (data, research) from predetermined policy ends and tunnel vision.  One suggestion in this direction was ignored but deserves consideration.  Dexter Wright wrote at American Thinker How to Abolish the Department of Energy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

It has been said by almost every conservative candidate running for office this year that they would like to abolish the Jimmy Carter government legacy, the Department of Energy (DOE). Back in the 1970s when the Department of Energy was created the Carter Administration claimed that 20% of the nation’s energy needs would be supplied by solar energy by the year 2000. Needless to say that didn’t happen. So today we have a Department of Energy that provides energy to no one.

The question is how can we get rid of the DOE? The answer lies in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard is made up of the best parts of three different services that no longer exist; the Revenue Cutter Service, the Light House Service, and the Life Saving Service. These services were combined efficiently to create the modern Coast Guard.

Similarly, there are activities that operate within the DOE that are worthy of preserving such as the national laboratories at Los Alamos, NM; Oak Ridge, TN and Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM. These National Laboratories perform scientific tasks that are not only vital to national security but also, in some cases, are mandated by arms reductions treaties.

There are also activities within other departments and agencies that focus on science such as the National Weather Service (NWS); but for some reason, the Weather Service is stuck in the Department of Commerce (DOC). Contrary to popular belief we do need the Weather Service because all of the data that is collected and analyzed by NWS is then distributed to the media for their broadcast and dissemination.  But it is clear that the NWS does not need to be in the Department of Commerce.

Believe it or not, even the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does scientific work, it just doesn’t use the data that is collected and analyze for policy development. I’m not really sure what it does with the data other than suppress it.

The way to deal a death blow to all of these departments and agencies is to
cull out of these bureaucracies all of the useful scientific parts and place
them in a new department, the Department of Science and Technology.

This new department would eliminate the need for the EPA, the DOC and the DOE. Even agencies like NASA could be included so that there would be cabinet level representation and so that rocket scientists would not be relegated to teaching math to third world nations.  Ideally the new Department of Science and Technology would provide unbiased data for policy makers to ignore rather than the biased flawed data that they ignore now.

Addendum 2

The scope of reform goes far beyond energy agencies, since the Biden/Harris regime dictated a “whole of government” response, embedding fear of CO2 into the full slate of programs. And thereby, the enormous deficit spending covered by freshly printed money threatens the economic viability of the republic.  So the consolidating and downsizing of the whole governmental beast is required. Jeffrey Tucker of Brownstone Institute writes  A Plan to Tame Inflation.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Elon Musk summarizes: “The excess government spending is what causes inflation! ALL government spending is taxation. This is a very important concept to appreciate. It is either direct taxation, like income tax, or indirect via inflation due to increasing the money supply.”

Inflation is a wicked beast that cannot be controlled directly. On the campaign trail, Trump spoke often about how it was the throttling of the energy sector that kicked off inflation. That is only partially true in the sense that the soaring price of oil and gas grew the costs of transportation. It was also a symptom rather than a cause. Plus, the price of oil and gas is actually not high right now in real terms.

Yes, the plan of “drill baby drill” is necessary and should happen but it cannot fix the existing problem of inflation much less do much to forestall a second wave. Nor is there a viable fix in the idea of price control, even when it is masked as “anti-gouging” legislation.  There is nothing government can do to directly control prices, much less force them from going up given the deep structural problems.

There are ways to mitigate against the problem, or at least minimizing them. You can have a look at how Javier Milei did it in Argentina. He took the problem of massive hyperinflation and converted it to low inflation in a year. His is a case study. The answer is:

♦  End debt creation by dramatic spending cuts;

♦  Curb the actions of the central bank; and

♦  Inspire economic growth through deregulation and agency elimination.

First, the end of debt creation is essential. Every time Congress authorizes more spending than is in the bank, the Treasury has to float debt to make it happen. That is the statutory obligation. What that means is that Congress needs to pass a balanced budget, ideally right away.

That comes down to the commission created by Elon Musk: the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE. It is not an official department. It works as an outside advisory team. That’s excellent. They will likely push for a “Twitter-style” solution of firing 4 in 5 government workers to reduce costs directly.

That’s a start but it is not enough. There also must be sweeping elimination of agencies, each of which can save tens of billions and possibly a trillion or more in total. That needs to happen immediately. It can happen through executive order or through legislation. One way or another, the spending in excess of revenue has to stop.

Second, if the Treasury stops the T-bill tsunami, the Fed will not be called upon to sponge up the excess with money creation. You can look at the charts over the last year and see how the Biden/Harris administration was spending and working with the Fed to promote more economic illusion going into the election. That was the whole point of the rate cuts. That really must come to an end. 

Third, Trump needs to fire up the wealth-creation engine of the American economy through dramatic, sweeping, historic levels of regulation torching plus the shock and awe of full agency elimination, same as in Argentina. The Trump team needs a list of 100 agencies to eliminate immediately but that should just be a start. Another 100 should be on the chopping block. Without all the regulatory clogging that they cause, investment will soar. 
Tax cuts–income and capital–will assist here too. The crucial point is the focus on boosting supply and jobs as a way of outrunning inflationary forces. Here again, the financial press will scream about the economy “overheating” but that metaphor is worn out. The effect of economic growth on inflation is exactly the opposite. Economic growth can bury the effects of price increases. 
There is not a lot of time, and it is a bargain that the Trump administration will surely lose if it does not act decisively and quickly. The debt creation and money creation must end and the economic growth through agency elimination and deregulation must become the top priority. All of this has the added advantage of making Trump more popular with the people who elected him. 
There is no incompatibility between political success and economic rationality. In this case, the incoming Trump administration is very fortunate: they go together. 

High Schoolers Understand Climate Science–You Can Too!

Posted on by Ron Clutz

If you’ve skipped or forgotten high school science, this will also work for you.

John Shanahan is a founder and editor of All About Energy and wrote a brief article for an audience of high school students and others ill or uninformed about climate science.  That website also provides many realistic articles about both energy and climate science. Excepts in italics with my bolds and added images.

High school students understand climate change science.

John Shanahan

November 6, 2024

Occam’s Razor is an idea first postulated in the 14th Century. Many scientists quote it: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

KEY POINTS

High school students can understand climate change if they first comprehend a few simple ideas.

1) We study everything that causes Earth’s climate to change, not just infrared radiation leaving Earth’s surfaces and interacting with CO2.

2) Energy is the ability to do work: Do you have a lot of energy? Are you on a school sports team or do you work for the school newspaper? Which takes more energy? Except for nuclear fission and fusion where matter is converted to energy, energy is always conserved. Energy can be converted from one form to another: from sunlight to chemical or electrical energy, from electrical energy to potential energy when an elevator goes up, from electrical energy to light when the stadium lights go on, from chemical energy to kinetic energy when you drive a car or ride a bike. Energy is very important in life.

3) Power is how fast energy can be delivered. A jet engine delivers more energy than the air coming out of an open-party balloon and does it faster. You need lots of power to pull a mile-long freight train. You need very little power to operate your smartphone.

4) Work is the total use of energy. On your utility bill, work is shown as kilowatt-hours. You pay so many cents per kilowatt-hour. For most of history, people had to do work themselves. For the last two hundred years coal, oil, and natural gas have done most of the work and provided thousands of by-products so we can have better lives. Nuclear power will have to do a lot of work in the future. What other major source of energy is there?

5) Once work is done, that energy is conserved but can’t do that same amount of work again. Only lower-quality energy is available. There are no perpetual motion machines.

6) Weather events are work. Sunshine is energy. The climate is an average of weather over a long time. To understand Earth’s climate change, you must understand how weather happens all over the globe and how it changes with time: hour by hour, with the seasons, over very long periods of time across ice ages and in between ice ages. You must explain all the systems: motion of the atmosphere and oceans, heat transfer from the equator to the poles and from the surface of the oceans and land to the top of the atmosphere, delivery of ocean water to the land, and other things.

7) To understand all issues of climate change, it is necessary to study both Radiative Transfer and Heat Transport. Climate change alarmists and some non-alarmists only study Radiative Transfer (infrared radiation from the surface of the land and oceans interacting with greenhouse gasses on the way to the Top of the Atmosphere). They don’t go into Heat Transport phenomena of air and ocean currents, water changes from ice to liquid to vapor and cloud formation, water transport to land, etc. They don’t explain Work related to the weather. You need millions of large power plants to do the work the sun does for free. They don’t analyze those details.

8) In order to understand climate and climate change we must explain all three things: energy, work, and power. To study “climate change” using global averages for sunlight and infrared radiation energy and spectrum analyses for interaction with greenhouse gasses and not explain work and power of actual weather events is not a complete study of climate change. By not explaining work and power in weather, they are implying that any combination of work and power is acceptable. IT IS NOT! Which combination of work and power is involved with climate change is not addressed. This is insufficient. You would never buy a car just knowing the size of the gas tank (how much energy you have) and not learn about the power of the engine to get up hills and pass trucks. You would want to know how much work you could do with the car – the number of miles you could drive it. Only study radiation and CO2 for climate change? No! Be smart when buying a car and when deciding what climate change policies to support

Photos of real weather, not just graphics of average global sunlight and infrared radiation:

Weather is a collection of many real events in Earth’s atmosphere. It varies tremendously from place to place, during the day, the season, during years of droughts, years of floods, in ice ages, in between ice ages, and in transitions to ice ages.

Climate is a global average of weather over 30 years or more. A change of an average of anything can never tell how the collection of real things is changing. Thus most studies of climate change can’t tell how the weather will change. Vast sums of “research” money are being squandered to do the impossible in order to force Europe and North America to stop using fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, the weather in most of the world is within the range of past history. Globally, only Mother Nature runs the show. Locally, humans have some influence by how they change land use from wilderness to agriculture and ranching, and how they build buildings, streets, and parking lots in place of wilderness. In cities, it is called the Heat Island Effect.

But on the whole, life on Earth is beautiful and wonderful. Humans have almost no control over the weather. Man-made global warming is a disgraceful hoax.

Fitz Roy Peak in Argentina in autumn

Mt Fuji in Japan in spring

Footnote: See also

Antidote for Radiation Myopia

 

 

 

 

Ocean Cools Further October 2024

Posted on 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 October 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.  A small warming was driven by NH summer peaks in 2021-22, but offset by cooling in SH and the tropics, By January 2023 the global anomaly was again below the mean.

Now in 2023-24 came an event resembling 2015-16 with a Tropical spike and two NH spikes alongside, all higher than 2015-16. There was also a coinciding rise in SH, and the Global anomaly was pulled up to 1.1°C last year, ~0.3° higher than the 2015 peak.  Then NH started down autumn 2023, followed by Tropics and SH descending 2024 to the present. After 10 months of cooling in SH and the Tropics, the Global anomaly is back down, after a small bump from NH summer warming.

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

Open image in new tab to enlarge.

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.  After July and August NH warming again pulled the global anomaly higher, September resumed cooling in all regions.

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. Then 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.

Then in 2024 the AMO anomaly started higher than any previous year, then leveled off for two months declining slightly into April.  Remarkably, May showed an upward leap putting this on a higher track than 2023, and rising slightly higher in June.  In July, August and September 2024 the anomaly declined, and despite a small rise in October, 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 2013-202409, value 0.69. As noted above, these rising stages are driven by the combined warming in the Tropics and NH, including both Pacific and Atlantic basins.

See Also:

2024 El Nino Collapsing

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

 

 

Top Ten Reasons Trump Won

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The best list comes from an independent overseas observer. David Farrar of New Zealand wrote two posts at his Kiwiblog.  Below are excerpts of the highlights, in italics with my bolds and added images. (H/T Jim Rose). His extended discussion with many examples can be accessed at this link 10 Reasons Why Trump Won.

Overview

Before I cover the ten points, I will cover an important point by way of an introduction as it overlays all these reasons and that is that a big reason why Donald Trump won and won convincingly is because of a series of unique skills that Trump brings to the table. For his opponents they are character flaws but to his supporters they are features not bugs:

* His phenomenal resilience in the face of a wall of overwhelming hostility and opposition from the his opponents, media, governing elites (some from his own party). . . Any other candidate would’ve given up.

* His work ethic. Trump thrives on an average of only 4 hours sleep a night and has energy that belies his age. Trump held 80 rallies since the US Labor Day.

* His personal wealth not only helped top up his campaign during fund-raising lulls but he was able to pay millions to a large team of lawyers to defend himself in the various court cases.

* His phenomenal political instincts combine with a great sense of humour. Trump is a genuinely funny guy, but he also responds to events on the fly with the aplomb of the most seasoned pol.

* Much is made of Trump’s aggression, his inartful speaking style and partisan, personal barbs at his opponents. To millions of Americans, sick of being lectured to and abused by governing elites, Trump abrasiveness and forceful personality is seen as essential to getting the job of draining the swamp done. Media and governing elites all over the globe hate Trump for this trait but tens of millions of voters see him as the last hope to actually get things done, break some eggs, crack heads in Washington DC and to stand up to the Putin’s, Xi’s Khamenei’s and Jung Ill’s of this world.

1.Harris and Waltz were poor candidates

Rather than turning to its bench of seasoned, experienced, media-savvy operatives, the woke DEI obsessed Democrat elites felt the optics of skipping over the sitting Vice President Harris as a woman of colour would be too devastating to the liberal base of the party and so they opted for Kamala in the hopes that their superior war chest and wall to wall favourable media coverage would cover for her manifest deficiencies. The gamble didn’t pay off because her failings couldn’t be hidden. They include:

* She ran an awful campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2019/2020 with faltering debate performances and a grab bag of far left policy positions that became frequent fodder for Trump campaign ads.

* She came across as scripted and inauthentic with her every public word crafted by her handlers. . . Teleprompters were used in seemingly ‘spontaneous’ town halls, questions and questioners were screened and known in advance and every voter interaction was choreographed, often poorly.

* Her few interviews, almost exclusively on Democrat friendly venues like CNN and The View, went poorly.

* She talked confidently of what she would do as President to solve the big problems like the cost-of-living crisis and the border crisis and when confronted as to why she hadn’t done anything about these pressing voter concerns over the almost 4 prior years as VP, she descended into yet more word salad circular answers.

* Her rallies were the definition of astroturf. Unlike Trump’s huge rallies that were packed to the gunnels with ordinary unscreened voters, Kamala’s rallies were often by invitation and held in locations small enough to create an illusion of a large full crowd. Many had paid attendees who, crisscrossed the country as professional rally attendees.

* The Harris campaign tried to run on joy, “brat summer”, happy vibes and a New Way Forward when she was an integral part of the poorly run Biden Harris Administration.

* Vice Presidential picks are usually not too impactful with the top of the ticket hoping to do no harm with the pick. In this election, Trump’s selection of JD Vance enhanced his candidacy and Harris’ choice of Tim Waltz diminished hers. . .Waltz proved to be almost as bad in interviews as Harris, being stumped a few times. And the mismatch between him and Vance became painfully obvious during the single VP debate that was one of the most one-sided debate victories in favour of Vance of this type of contest in a generation.

2. “It’s the economy stupid.”

The massive printing of money that began with Covid and accelerated with all the Green New Deal spending boondoggles had the predictable effect of driving up inflation. The Biden Administration’s war on traditional energy (cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline, cancelling new oil and gas leases on Federal land and the EV mandates) all had the effect of scaling back the massive domestic energy boom under Trump’s first term causing a rise in energy prices, a process accelerated by the war in Ukraine and the uncertainty in the Middle East. This had the effect of driving up grocery prices in leaps not seen since the high inflation of the ‘70’s and a substantial increase in prices of petrol at the pump. . . increasing numbers of Americans were struggling to make ends meet and suffered a decline in their standard of living.

The American dream of home ownership for the rising generation became a more distant and unreachable goal. For the first time since the formation of the Republic in the 18th century, Gen Z became the first generation of young American adults to face a country less prosperous and with fewer economic opportunities than the previous generation. . . We had a race between an incumbent (Harris) and a challenger who had recently been President in the previous term and the economic juxtaposition proved to be electorally damaging for Harris.

3 . The weeping sore of the open border = rising crime

This was a hot button issue that sailed somewhat under the radar for the first two years of Biden Harris until the cumulative numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the border reached a critical mass in cities and towns across America. For many years, the problems of illegal immigration were largely confined to the border states of CA, AZ, NM and TX. Trump worked hard to seal the border with a raft of policies: ending catch and release, the ‘stay in Mexico’ policy for asylum seekers, no benefits for migrants and building sections of a border wall. The net effect was, by the end of his Presidency in 2020, that the US had the lowest number of illegal border incursions in a generation.

Biden ended all that on almost Day 1 of his Presidency reversing a raft of effective Trump Executive Orders essentially throwing open the border. Asylum seekers could enter and then be given a court date years hence and then be released with no repercussions for failing to appear.

The impact of this steady stream of illegals, many being young men of military age, into many more northern cities led to pressure on resources usually only seen in border states, a very visible presence on streets and in places like parks and swimming pools but most significantly, because of zero vetting of unsuitable migrants, a surge in violent crime that saw a string of high profile rapes and murders of innocent usually women at the hands of criminal illegals who had been previously convicted of serious crimes in their home countries. . .The straw that broke the camel’s backs was the reports of violent Venezuelan gangs taking over whole apartment complexes in middle class suburbs like Aurora in Denver Colorado and other cities like LA and Seattle and of organised Chilean gangs of professional thieves robbing wealthy homes in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Trump and Vance hammered these huge negative impacts of illegal immigration relentlessly at every opportunity and the promise of a mass deportation of illegals beginning with the high-profile criminals wreaking havoc across cities and towns across America. At first the Democrats tried to gaslight the electorate that there was no border crisis, then they tried a bait and switch with RINO Republicans on a border bill that was amnesty lite and offered only a minuscule improvement in numbers of illegals.

And then blame Trump and the GOP for not properly securing the border until Harris, finally sensing the electoral damage the open border was causing her party, became all bullish and strong on the border vowing to do as the new President what she never did as Biden’s VP despite being appointed by him as the Border Czar. It was too little too late and Trump’s extreme sounding solution to the problems caused by illegal migrants began to resonate with more and more voters.

4. Trump is winning the cultural war

The Democrat Party and liberal elites are obsessed with abortion and trans gender rights. Many liberal and never-Trump commentators made much about how pro-choice Democrat candidates in the 2022 mid-terms and subsequent special elections overperformed, and this signaled somehow the overturning of Roe v Wade was the secret sleeper issue that would propel Kamala to victory. The problem was the left, as they often do, over egged the abortion pudding with a drumbeat of inflammatory rhetoric. . . Pro-choice candidates and media would then straight up lie repeatedly about all three of these points: they banged on endlessly about Trumps’ planned abortion ban, they mischaracterized the overturning of Roe v Wade, and they denied that pregnancies were terminated weeks prior to birth or even after birth. Trump drained the venom out of the abortion stinger such that it was not the decisive factor in 2024 that it was in 2022.

The left’s obsession with trans rights was personified by Harris when she bragged that when she was Attorney General of California, she arranged for the State to pay for trans gender surgeries for inmates. As more and more biological men who benefited from male puberty chose to transition and compete in women’s sports and to invade women only spaces like bathrooms, changing rooms and refuges, gradually this became the pointy end of the cultural war between traditional views on sexuality and the progressive left. . . The New York Times just reported that the most potent and effective of all the political ads that the Trump campaign ran was the one where Harris bragged about trans gender surgery for prisoners and illegals with the tag line Harris: They/Them – Trump: You!

The 2024 election gave voters the opportunity to use their silent majority electoral muscle to end what America by an out of touch elite. A vote for Trump was seen as a vote for a return to sanity and normalcy in the cultural wars.

5. The impact of a free Twitter

In the run up to the 2020 election and in its aftermath, the Democrats and governing elites were able to augment their overwhelming sympathetic support of the mainstream broadcast media with indirect ability, through the intervention of the FBI and other government agencies, to silence the voices of critics through the major social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, You Tube, Tik Tok and Snapchat. This meant that information that might be politically damaging to the left (such as the release of Hunter Biden’s laptop just prior to the 2020 election and the accusations of fraud in the same election) could be ruthlessly suppressed. The cutting edge of this suppression was Twitter 1.0 because it was the social media space most frequented by the politically active and influential media, celebrity and businesspeople. . . This was election interference at its most effective and sinister because post 2020 election polling showed that, had the truth of the laptop been allowed to disseminate and not be blocked by mainstream and social media, a significant minority of Biden voters might have changed their vote.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter in the summer of 2022, he not only fired the woke compliant left leaning management team but 75% of the whole work force and repositioned Twitter 2.0, renamed “X”, as a more neutral public square on social media. He engaged the services of prominent left leaning journalist Matt Taibbi who he allowed to pour over the files and, in a series of posts called the Twitter Files, revealed the extraordinary efforts undertaken by the Biden campaign then Administration to suppress any information critical of things like the Biden family corruption, Hunter’s laptop and 2020 election fraud as all this was deemed as dis or misinformation. Musk spent time removing the various algorithms that were embedded to screen for ‘misinformation’ and he restored the accounts of high profile Biden critics like Trump and even controversial figures like Alex Jones.

A raft of high profile conservative influencers who were suspended from Twitter were restored then allowed to tweet and post without restriction through the run up to the 2024 campaign. Twitter/X became the favoured platform for numerous releases of information that were restricted or never covered by the other social media platforms and the MSM.

Breaking news of a controversial nature that would either be ignored by legacy media or suppressed by all other platforms can now be done freely on Twitter where, contrary to the naysayers that predicted that Twitter 2.0 would fail, it has increased its reach and viewership even more since becoming a genuine free speech platform. Musk’s decision to liberate Twitter has had a profound impact on the type of dialogue that could be had in the run up to the 2024 election and it became impossible for Harris and the Democrats to silence their critics in the way they were successfully able to during the 2020 election.

6. Greatly improved Republican ground game

There are four areas where Republican efforts more closely matched or even exceeded those of the Democrats whereas in all four, GOP campaigns in 2020 were significantly outspent and outsmarted:

Media spending. Trump was outspent by Clinton by 3:1 in 2016 and by Biden 5:1 in 2020. Whilst Trump closed the gap in 2020 somewhat with free publicity from his controversial statements (something that is called earned media), the volume of Democrat material disseminated to voters was vastly more in 2020. In 2024 this gap was significantly narrowed to the point where, allowing for Trump’s natural publicity seeking antics, it is fair to say there was virtual parity for the first time in many election cycles,

Ballot harvesting. There are legal variations as to the extent of ballot harvesting that can be done depending on relevant state law but regardless of that, in 2020 Republican campaigns engaged in zero ballot harvesting. That changed dramatically in 2024. Both the formal Trump campaign and various offshoots such as Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action and Scott Pressler hired hundreds of young people across most of the swing states to actively chase ballots. This was encouraging low propensity voters to register and vote early in states that allowed it and the chasing of high propensity voters on election day to ensure they voted. Each used sophisticated Apps that fed from real data from state election offices that identify voters yet to cast a vote by party affiliation where allowed. These groups wrung out 10,000’s of votes many of them from people who had either never voted or rarely voted. The most dramatic example of this was Pressler’s efforts just in Pennsylvania where he and his team registered 180,000 Amish! The Amish traditionally don’t vote but regulatory overreach by the Democrat administration in Pennsylvania in seizing and destroying raw milk so upset the Amish that they were propelled into political activism and voted en mass for Trump.

Campus outreach. Charlie Kirk, as a young 30-year-old articulate and knowledgeable debater, had for years visited large university campuses across America but in the run up to 2024, he ramped up his efforts. Often all it involved was setting up a TPUSA tent and advertising that he was there to answer any questions from student voters with a particular emphasis on Harris or non-committed voters. Kirk’s exchanges are legendary and as the swell of support for Trump grew, these events attracted thousands of students each time and Kirk gave away 1,000s of MAGA hats each time at literally hundreds of events over the years. Exit polls show that Trump made huge inroads into the Gen Z vote and won a plurality of Gen Z males, and this result was largely because of Charlie Kirk’s efforts, and this campus outreached was barely matched by the Democrats.

Defensive lawfare. Trump’s campaign in 2020 ran out of money 3 weeks out from the election for anything other than his huge rallies. Media advertising almost dried up and there was no money to pay lawyers to defend the vote from illegal actions by mostly Democrat election officials at the state and county level. In contrast, in 2024 a vast sum was spent recruiting hundreds of lawyers and hundreds of thousands of poll watchers and these lawyers were judiciously deployed in battleground states and were phenomenally successful. Various incidents cropped up in the weeks leading up to the election and on the day itself from shutting down early voting lines too early, to deliberately malfunctioning machines to barring Republican poll watchers. The lawyers were specific to each states’ election laws and swiftly intervened and the threat of legal action was often enough to get a behaviour change and when legal action made it to court, the well documented evidence was almost always sufficient to have a capricious and incorrect ruling or procedure overturned or aligned with state law. .  .Whilst there was undoubtedly fraud in places on November 5th, this time it was far less impactful because of the aggressive defensive lawfare waged by the Trump campaign.

7. The fall of legacy media and the rise of alternative media

Donald Trump began labeling the mainstream media as fake news pretty early into his 2016 campaign. Since then, he has gone a step further and often called the MSM “the enemy of the people”. It has been known for many decades that the world’s legacy media generally have a liberal left leaning bias. For many years institutions like the big 3 US networks, Canada’s CBC, Britain’s BBC, Australia’s ABC and NZ’s TVNZ and RNZ journalists tried hard to hide their biases and reported the news in a more neutral and professional way.

But as time has gone by and as journalism schools have been churning out more and more ideologically activist and more overtly political graduates, the newsrooms of legacy media globally have become more openly biased and more nakedly partisan. Parties and politicians from the right are subjected to more slanted coverage, more hostile questioning and way more investigative scrutiny whilst favoured candidates and parties on the left increasingly face limited scrutiny, soft ball questions and outright suppression of news stories that might make them look bad.

But when Donald Trump came onto the political stage, he provoked a veritable firestorm of MSM opposition that has intensified and not abated. The MSM have rushed to cover hoax after hoax that initially made Trump look bad (I covered a bunch of these here). The US corporate media peddled the lies that Trump only won in 2016 with the help of Russia, they gleefully published lies of the 51 Democrat friendly intelligence experts who claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation and they lied about the origin of Covid and pilloried and banned people who said the virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. All these lies were eventually uncovered and debunked, but the media have continued to peddle any lie that makes Trump look bad. In the current Presidential campaign, this is but a sample of the massive anti-Trump pro-Kamala skewering that has occurred on MSM outlets:

* During the ABC sponsored debate between Trump and Harris, ABC executives agreed in advance to limit certain types of questions to Harris and stayed away from all ‘no-go’ topics as suggested by the Harris campaign. Trump was only asked questions of concern to Democrats and was subjected to attempts at real time fact checking by the moderators whilst ABC agreed in advance to no fact checking of Harris. It was obvious to even the most nonpartisan observer that Trump was debating not just Harris but the moderators as well.

* Harris’ 60 Minutes interview reached a new low of the MSM putting their thumb on the scales when they replaced a long rambling word salad nonsensical answer that Harris gave to a question posed about the administration’s response to the Gaza war with a more simple and rational answer that she gave in another part of the interview. That is extreme journalistic malpractice AND election interference that will have profound repercussions for CBS once Trump changes the partisan makeup on the FCC and FEC.

* The MSM are notorious for amplifying outlier polls that favoured Harris. Perhaps the most egregious example of this was the famous Des Moines Register poll by Ann Seltzer, considered by many as the gold standard of polls. Whilst Seltzer had a prior track record that has been pretty accurate, any polling expert could’ve told you that a poll showing Harris up 3 in Iowa when all other polls had Trump up by 7 to 10% (and the fact that Trump won Iowa by 11% and 8% in 2016 and 2020 and eventually won in 2024 by 13%!) was a dramatic outlier. But in the heat of the campaign with Trump tied in national polls and slightly up in swing state polls, the prospect of a hidden Harris blue wave was too tempting to pass up and so this poll was blasted from legacy media rooftops (and was even given prominence from our esteemed site owner Mr. Farrar perhaps because of his well-publicised disdain for DJT). The pollsters who picked Trump’s eventual result were ignored and even scoffed at. The pushing of outlier polls is a deliberate conservative voter suppression tactic engaged in on a regular basis by the MSM.

People aren’t stupid, they can see this bias and they react accordingly.

What has been the impact of the media’s descent from neutral, a-political, down the middle reporting to slanted, ideologically driven coverage and outright hostility to the GOP candidate for the most powerful office in the world?

* Gradual but accelerating ratings and subscription declines – more on that later.

* Decline in profitability – MSM newspapers like the Washington Post have laid off hundreds and look at the closing of TV3 and layoffs at TVNZ and Stuff in New Zealand.

* Slump in public trust as indicated in polls that show the MSM polling worse than Congress.

* A widespread belief that the MSM are biased against Trump and protecting Kamala has inevitably led to a rise in viewership of alternative media.

Into the void left by the increasing partisan legacy media has stepped a variety of conservative commentators who have been able to rack up substantial views and social media impressions that have come to swamp who views the legacy media. Many of the people I am about to mention have podcasts and shows that they broadcast from their websites, Twitter, Rumble and even mainstream social media platforms that regularly match and exceed even the major network news shows and far exceed equivalent shows on CNN and MSNBC. The biggest players on this list have audiences that vastly outstrip even the biggest MSM shows or podcasts.

Trump became very adept at using new media despite his age. His youngest son Barron, who is an 18-year-old college student in New York, mingles with all the big conservative Gen Z and Millennial influencers from the so-called Manosphere including Theo Von, the Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Andrew Schulz and Shawn Ryan. Trump appeared on all their shows each with millions of views and came across as natural and funny to huge audiences of disaffected young males. Of course, the grand poohbah of the Manasphere is former UFC executive Joe Rogan whose centrist Spotify show has the biggest reach of any podcast in the world, each with an average viewing audience of 16 million. Trump’s famous 3-hour unscripted riff with Rogan where Rogan asked whatever questions he wanted (and Trump answered without ducking and diving) garnered across Spotify, You Tube and Twitter almost 100 million views! These appearances helped propel Trump to dominating the under 30 male vote in a way that Harris couldn’t come close.

The net effect of all of this: the Trump hating MSM are losing their grip on the narrative. Whilst they still have some influence, they are increasingly becoming a liberal echo chamber religiously watched mostly by left leaning true believers whilst Independents and right leaning folk are consuming their news from alternative sources that increasingly have a far greater reach then the legacy media. This played a vital role in Trump’s victory and his decisive win will only accelerate this decline unless the MSM return to their roots in reporting unbiased straight news and let go of the politically slanted advocacy that poses for news.

8. The proliferation of global conflicts

Trump is the first President in 40 years to not commence a new war. Reagan invaded Grenada, Bush 1 fought the Gulf War, Clinton attacked the former Yugoslavia, Bush 2 invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama toppled Gaddafi and Biden has sent hundreds of billions to fund Ukraine. Trump withdrew troops from Iraq and laid the plans (that were massively cocked up by Biden) for an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. Trump negotiated and signed the Abraham Peace Accords ushering unprecedented diplomatic rapprochements between Israel and various Arab nations. Trump defused the escalating nuclear tension with North Korea all while getting NATO countries to pay their fair share of military expenditures.

More significantly is what Putin didn’t do during Trump’s 4 years. Under Obama he invaded Crimea and Georgia and under Biden, he invaded Ukraine. Putin made no territorial incursions under Trump. There was relative stability in the Middle East from 2017 to 2021. There is no way Hamas would’ve attempted their brazen infiltration into southern Israel under Trump and yet their actions under Biden have sparked the most prolonged and bloody conflict in Gaza and such tension and military retaliatory action with Iran as to see the whole region on the brink of war.

Biden’ poor handling of the Ukraine war, for a while, saw the very real threat of US and NATO boots on the ground in an escalation of the war between Ukraine and Russia. And if that isn’t enough, the Chinese also sensed Biden’s weakness and have threatened the sovereignty of Taiwan in a way that Xi never remotely attempted when Trump was in power.

The supreme irony in all this is that in 2016, the Democrats said that Trump would plunge the US into global wars and that his warmongering would lead to an unstable world. The truth was the opposite happened – Trump presided over a period of relative peace and only used US military muscle selectively to quickly destroy the ISIS Caliphate in Syria and Iraq, a task that eluded Obama for 8 years. It is Biden and his weakness as a leader that sees the world on fire and on the brink of something akin to WW3 and it is Trump who was and will be again the candidate for peace. The prospect of America’s sons fighting in the midst of a Slavic conflict thousands of miles from home was a motivation for some voters to hold their nose and vote for the man who sends mean Tweets.

In the two days since Trump was elected, Zelenskyy has called him, Putin has scheduled a call, Hamas is saying it will end the war, Qatar has asked Hamas’ leadership to leave and I’m guessing the Chinese won’t be trying any drills where they encircle the whole island of Taiwan any time soon.

9. The RFK Jr – Tulsi Gabbard coalition

I covered the positive political impact of RFK Jr’s endorsement here. Trump has brought into his inner circle three high profile Democrats: JFK Jr from the closest America gets to a political royal family, Tulsi Gabbard who once was deputy chair of the Democrat National Committee and ran for the Democratic nomination for President in 2020 and Elon Musk who publicly backed and donated to Democrat politicians for years. Each of these people brought key constituencies to Trump’s cause and, perhaps more importantly, they gave permission for centrists and moderate Democrats, disgusted by their own party’s decent into left wing identity politics but turned off by Trump’s bombastic and at times arrogant persona, to vote for Trump.

Joe Rogan (and many others) made the case that voting for Trump is not just about Trump but you’re voting for Tulsi, for RFK Jr and for the thousands of political appointees that will implement the policies that resonate with an actual majority of voters. Trump drove the Cheney’s, Mitt Romney and Adam Kinzinger to support Kamala and in exchange, he got Kennedy, Musk and Gabbard. I think that’s an awesome winning exchange and in the end, so did voters.

10. The lawfare and the assassination attempts against Trump backfired.

I covered this topic more extensively in these two posts. In summary, Trump’s opponents thought they had him on the ropes with all the various indictments when in actual fact, the politically motivated lawfare against Trump worked in his favour. When Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis insisted Trump be arraigned in person at the County Jail in a seedy inner city part of Atlanta, Trump’s defiant mug shot became a viral sensation but, much more significantly, it helped cement Trump’s record level of black male support that helped propel him to victory in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. The footage of thousands of poor blacks lining the streets to the jail to cheer Trump as he exited the arraignment went viral in the African American community.

I don’t need to overstate the political impact of the two assassination attempts, most particularly the July 13th attempt at the rally in Butler, PA. The photo of a bloodied Trump with his raised pumped fist under a huge American flag ranks up there with the shot of Churchill’s VE Day speech to a monstrous crowd in London, the flag raising at Iwo Jima, John Kennedy Jr saluting his Dad JFK at his funeral, the fleeing Vietnamese refugees from the My Lai massacre in 1968 or the lone protestor holding up the tanks on Tiananmen Square. Trump’s pugnacious and defiant response reinforced his image as the ultimate alpha male in the eyes of millions and, whilst not intended nor sought after, became a major electoral plus for him.

Conclusion

Whilst the electoral magnitude of Trump’s victory is not on the same scale as the two Reagan victories in 1980 and 1984 (489 to 49 and 525 to 13) nor the Nixon 1972 49 state sweep, nonetheless it will go down as one of the greatest comebacks in US political history given the unique nature of Trump and his experiences. His defeat in 2020 was shrouded in controversy with allegations (credible IMO) of election fraud that were of a magnitude that, in his mind and in the mind of many supporters, cost him the election. The events of January 6, 2021, came to overshadow and dominate Trump’s prospects with unprecedented levels of negative publicity aimed at Trump as his opponents sought to blame him for the events at the Capitol that day. He faced two impeachments, he was the subject of two Special Counsel enquiries, he was indicted 94 times on politically motivated charges (many of which will now melt away now that he has won and the rest will be reversed or die in appellate courts), the state of New York tried to bankrupt him and seize key properties, he has faced the most unrelenting media opposition of any politician, he faced two assassination attempts that came close to succeeding, frankly any other person would’ve given up. He faced a wall of negative media coverage of his campaign and fawning sycophantic coverage of his opponent, and countless attempts yet again at electoral fraud and he faced down the lot AND WON and won convincingly. It is a feat that may never be equaled in the annals of US political history!

 

Both US and Canadian Media Misunderstand America

Posted on by Ron Clutz

David Polansky is an American living in Canada (as am I) and expresses very clearly the frustration I share with him.  His National Post article is Neither Canadian nor U.S. media understand America. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The great novelist Saul Bellow once wrote: “I have developed a certain sympathy with Canada. It’s no easy thing to share a border with the USA. Canada’s chief entertainment — it has no choice — is to watch (from a gorgeous setting) what happens in our country. The disaster is that there is no other show.”

Unfortunately, despite countless hours of American media consumption,
many Canadians understand their neighbor surprisingly poorly.

The latest program to capture attention here, as elsewhere, was of course the U.S. general election, which Donald Trump won for a second time, much to the consternation of the pundit class in particular.

Now, my own life has taken the inverse trajectory of Bellow’s, having been born in the United States and subsequently moved to Canada, and I have reflected over the years upon both the differences between the two countries, and how each appears to the other. And a recurring theme I’ve noticed is the particular way that Canadian political commentators consistently misapprehend their southern neighbor.

Part of the reason for this goes beyond ordinary errors of judgment. The commentariat class here heavily derives its understanding of American political developments from its U.S counterparts in the media complex and is thus twice removed from political reality when those same counterparts prove deficient in anticipating and accounting for events.

Many decades ago, the literary scholar Lionel Trilling described conservatism as merely “a series of irritable mental gestures.” Something like this could be applied to many of the reactions to Trump’s presidential victory this week — particularly those which aim their ire not just at Trump or his inner circle, but at Americans in general.

And this last line of criticism is particularly appealing to Canadian pundits, as it affords them the opportunity to indulge in a passive-aggressive form of nationalist preening (“oh, the Americans are at it again”) otherwise rarely available to them.

Meanwhile, the incessant reliance of pundits on “fascism” and “populism” as explanations for Trump’s continued success have proven emotionally satisfying at the cost of real analysis, as it prevents people from recognizing the democratic nature of Trump’s appeal. It has also led these critics to disregard the ways in which ordinary democracy is perfectly capable of procuring undesirable outcomes on its own.

It is not particularly helpful to blame election outcomes on oligarchy when Trump handily won the popular vote as well as the electoral vote, nor can the by-now instinctive reference to racial supremacism and bigotry account for his unprecedented gains among non-white voters of nearly all backgrounds.

Acknowledging these realities hardly requires endorsing him; none of this means that political observers are obliged to like or admire Trump. But it does mean that they cannot in good faith blame his political success on extra or anti-democratic factors. It is only the false belief that all desirable things must go together, such that democracy cannot be democracy if it produces unwelcome outcomes, that leads people to think this way.

Finally, it must be said that what Machiavelli would call “tumults”— that is tempestuous democratic political commotion — have long been a feature of the U.S. political landscape; and while not wholly positive, these have also contributed in complex ways to that country’s unique dynamism. That this aspect of American political life is not entirely to Canadian tastes is perfectly understandable (nor are Canadians alone in this regard), but it is a consistent mistake that outsiders make in pathologizing political tendencies that lie outside the boundaries of acceptable behavior in one’s own country. That these same dynamics are not much-loved (or well understood) by America’s own media and academic elites is yet another filter that obscures clear-sighted observation from across the border.

Meanwhile, the worst thing Canadians could do now is treat American politics as a foil for their own situation at home. For, within Canada itself, we will likely see an impulse to react to events in the United States not simply as matters of concern for foreign policy, but as though they required a domestic political response. This would be a mistake, partly because Trump is, of course, not a Canadian political figure, nor is there such a thing as “Trumpism” here in any meaningful sense. But also, because Canada presently faces serious political and economic challenges of its own, none of which are causally related to developments within the United States, despite their proximity. Indeed, at a time when Canada’s economy is performing worse than Italy’s or Spain’s, there will likely be strong incentives for pundits and politicians to fight pretend culture wars against phantom American threats as a distraction from the difficult and serious business of actually governing.

This impulse should be resisted at all costs. But if past is precedent, the Great American Show, broadcast in every household in blazing 4k resolution, will continue to overwhelm attempts at sober and reasoned consideration of real political issues at hand.

 

At a Climate Policy Tipping-point

Posted on by Ron Clutz

UCP members voted in favor of a resolution to “recognize the importance of CO2 to life and Alberta’s prosperity.” Credit: Danielle Paradis [Participants numbered over 6000]

Joe Oliver explains at National Post We’re at a climate policy turning-point.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.  Much as the term “tipping-point” is overused regarding physical and natural systems, it is relevant to socio-political systems.  Oliver’s article was written before the US election vote between two candidates with completely opposite climate/energy positions.  It was a few days after an important vote in energy rich Alberta affirming the vital role of hydrocarbons. [See Alberta: “CO2 Gas of Life, Not Pollutant!” Media Outrage Ensues]

Across Europe and North America, voters are increasingly skeptical
of climate alarmism and worried about the high cost of net-zero policies

Climate alarmism is facing daunting scientific, economic and political challenges to its credibility with the public and its influence on government policy in Europe, the United States and Canada. It may finally have reached an historic turning point.

The public is constantly warned about a dangerous surge in warming since the late 1970s due to increased man-made GHG emissions. But a recent peer-reviewed article by five academicians with expertise in oceanography, mathematics and statistics contradicts that conventional wisdom. They find no statistically significant change in the warming rate beyond the 1970s — even though emissions have risen 121 per cent since then, from 24 billion metric tonnes in 1970 to 53 billion in 2023.

They are not alone. John F. Clauser, 2022 winner of the Nobel Prize for physics, is one of 1,960 scientists and professionals from around the world, including 146 Canadians, who have signed the Clintel World Climate Declaration, whose central message is that there is no climate emergency.

These results pose two basic challenges to the core beliefs of climate alarmists.

♦  If warming has not accelerated in the past half century, where is the crisis? And,
♦  If a doubling of GHG emissions is supposed to directly impact temperatures, why have temperatures not shot up?

The latter question also applies to the 1970’s, when go-to experts and the mainstream media were hyperventilating about a return to an Ice Age, though GHG emissions had doubled in the previous 30 years.

Meanwhile, European economic growth has stalled, in large part due to the high cost of energy, which makes industry uncompetitive and drives energy-dependent companies to the United States. Germany, now the sick man of Europe, is de-industrializing, a direct result of former chancellor Angela Merkel’s reckless abandonment of nuclear energy and her country’s consequent reliance on Russian gas. The German automotive sector is also in crisis, the loser in a failed bet on EVs.

Tellingly, the issue of climate change has been virtually absent
from the American presidential campaign, even though the
two candidates have opposing views on the subject.

Donald Trump has made some headway condemning Kamala Harris for senseless green policies that damage the economy and hurt American workers. The one climate issue that has been high-profile is fracking. In a dramatic reversal from her position in 2019, Harris now supports it, which is important in Pennsylvania, a state crucial to her election chances. If she wins, she will back subsidies for renewables and discourage fossil fuel development. If Trump wins, it will be “Drill, baby, drill,” a rejection of climate alarmism and a retreat from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, all of which would reverberate globally.

Although most Canadians claim to be concerned about global warming, it is no longer high on their priority list and they were never prepared to pay much to deal with it, in any case. Axing Ottawa’s key climate policy, the carbon tax, has become a powerful vote-winner for Conservatives across the country. Ontario Minister of Energy and Electrification Stephen Lecce has come out in favour of every source of energy to produce electricity, including nuclear for base load and natural gas to back up wind and solar. Without gas, the province would suffer from brownouts and blackouts, ballooning costs and an uncompetitive industrial sector.

Despite all this, Canadian politicians are not yet ready to acknowledge publicly three increasingly evident realities that contradict climate orthodoxy:

    • Net zero is unattainable without devastating economic and social costs — and may be unattainable, period.
    • Canada cannot on its own make a discernible difference to the global climate. And, therefore,
    • Climate policies are mainly an extremely expensive form of virtue-signaling.

The federal Liberals, blinded by catastrophism and the appeal of big-government solutions, will not retreat from their crushingly costly climate program. But they almost certainly will be gone within a year, though their death throes seem interminable. A new Conservative government should focus on adaptation and research, which are effective and affordable ways to deal with extreme weather and moderately rising temperatures.

Yes, those are Trillions of US$ they are projecting to spend.

Though the signs are encouraging it is still too early to be sure we have reached peak climate alarmism. But the time is coming when common sense and rationality re-emerge — first gradually and then probably suddenly. One day we will look back with deep regret and wonder how collective madness captured the Western world and caused it to sacrifice hundreds of trillions of dollars to a false idol.

 

10/2024 Update Recent Warming Spike Drives Rise in CO2

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Previously I have demonstrated that changes in atmospheric CO2 levels follow changes in Global Mean Temperatures (GMT) as shown by satellite measurements from University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH). That background post is reprinted later below.

My curiosity was piqued by the remarkable GMT spike starting in January 2023 and rising to a peak in April 2024.  I also became aware that UAH has recalibrated their dataset due to a satellite drift that can no longer be corrected. The values since 2020 have shifted slightly in version 6.1, as shown in my report yesterday UAH October 2024: NH and Tropics Lead Global Cooling.

In this post, I test the premise that temperature changes are predictive of changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.  The chart above shows the two monthly datasets: CO2 levels in blue reported at Mauna Loa, and Global temperature anomalies in purple reported by UAHv6.1, both up to October 2024. Would such a sharp increase in temperature be reflected in rising CO2 levels, according to the successful mathematical forecasting model?

The answer is yes: that temperature spike results
in a corresponding CO2 spike as expected.

Above are UAH temperature anomalies compared to CO2 monthly changes year over year.

Changes in monthly CO2 synchronize with temperature fluctuations, which for UAH are anomalies now referenced to the 1991-2020 period. CO2 differentials are calculated for the present month by subtracting the value for the same month in the previous year (for example October 2024 minus October 2023).   Temp anomalies are calculated by comparing the present month with the baseline month. Note the recent CO2 upward spike and drop following the temperature spike and drop.

The final proof that CO2 follows temperature due to stimulation of natural CO2 reservoirs is demonstrated by the ability to calculate CO2 levels since 1979 with a simple mathematical formula:

For each subsequent year, the CO2 level for each month was generated

CO2  this month this year = a + b × Temp this month this year  + CO2 this month last year

The values for a and b are constants applied to all monthly temps, and are chosen to scale the forecasted CO2 level for comparison with the observed value. Here is the result of those calculations.

In the chart calculated CO2 levels correlate with observed CO2 levels at 0.9987 out of 1.0000.  This mathematical generation of CO2 atmospheric levels is only possible if they are driven by temperature-dependent natural sources, and not by human emissions which are small in comparison, rise steadily and monotonically.  For a more detailed look at the recent fluxes, here are the results since 2015, an ENSO neutral year.

For this recent period, the calculated CO2 values match the annual lows, while some annual generated values of CO2 are slightly higher or lower than observed at other months of the year. Still the correlation for this period is 0.9928.

Key Point

Changes in CO2 follow changes in global temperatures on all time scales, from last month’s observations to ice core datasets spanning millennia. Since CO2 is the lagging variable, it cannot logically be the cause of temperature, the leading variable. It is folly to imagine that by reducing human emissions of CO2, we can change global temperatures, which are obviously driven by other factors.

Background Post Temperature Changes Cause CO2 Changes, Not the Reverse

This post is about proving that CO2 changes in response to temperature changes, not the other way around, as is often claimed.  In order to do  that we need two datasets: one for measurements of changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations over time and one for estimates of Global Mean Temperature changes over time.

Climate science is unsettling because past data are not fixed, but change later on.  I ran into this previously and now again in 2021 and 2022 when I set out to update an analysis done in 2014 by Jeremy Shiers (discussed in a previous post reprinted at the end).  Jeremy provided a spreadsheet in his essay Murray Salby Showed CO2 Follows Temperature Now You Can Too posted in January 2014. I downloaded his spreadsheet intending to bring the analysis up to the present to see if the results hold up.  The two sources of data were:

Temperature anomalies from RSS here:  http://www.remss.com/missions/amsu

CO2 monthly levels from NOAA (Mauna Loa): https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/data.html

Changes in CO2 (ΔCO2)

Uploading the CO2 dataset showed that many numbers had changed (why?).

The blue line shows annual observed differences in monthly values year over year, e.g. June 2020 minus June 2019 etc.  The first 12 months (1979) provide the observed starting values from which differentials are calculated.  The orange line shows those CO2 values changed slightly in the 2020 dataset vs. the 2014 dataset, on average +0.035 ppm.  But there is no pattern or trend added, and deviations vary randomly between + and -.  So last year I took the 2020 dataset to replace the older one for updating the analysis.

Now I find the NOAA dataset starting in 2021 has almost completely new values due to a method shift in February 2021, requiring a recalibration of all previous measurements.  The new picture of ΔCO2 is graphed below.

The method shift is reported at a NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory webpage, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) WMO Scale, with a justification for the difference between X2007 results and the new results from X2019 now in force.  The orange line shows that the shift has resulted in higher values, especially early on and a general slightly increasing trend over time.  However, these are small variations at the decimal level on values 340 and above.  Further, the graph shows that yearly differentials month by month are virtually the same as before.  Thus I redid the analysis with the new values.

Global Temperature Anomalies (ΔTemp)

The other time series was the record of global temperature anomalies according to RSS. The current RSS dataset is not at all the same as the past.

Here we see some seriously unsettling science at work.  The purple line is RSS in 2014, and the blue is RSS as of 2020.  Some further increases appear in the gold 2022 rss dataset. The red line shows alterations from the old to the new.  There is a slight cooling of the data in the beginning years, then the three versions mostly match until 1997, when systematic warming enters the record.  From 1997/5 to 2003/12 the average anomaly increases by 0.04C.  After 2004/1 to 2012/8 the average increase is 0.15C.  At the end from 2012/9 to 2013/12, the average anomaly was higher by 0.21. The 2022 version added slight warming over 2020 values.

RSS continues that accelerated warming to the present, but it cannot be trusted.  And who knows what the numbers will be a few years down the line?  As Dr. Ole Humlum said some years ago (regarding Gistemp): “It should however be noted, that a temperature record which keeps on changing the past hardly can qualify as being correct.”

Given the above manipulations, I went instead to the other satellite dataset UAH version 6. UAH has also made a shift by changing its baseline from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020.  This resulted in systematically reducing the anomaly values, but did not alter the pattern of variation over time.  For comparison, here are the two records with measurements through December 2023.

Comparing UAH temperature anomalies to NOAA CO2 changes.

Here are UAH temperature anomalies compared to CO2 monthly changes year over year.

Changes in monthly CO2 synchronize with temperature fluctuations, which for UAH are anomalies now referenced to the 1991-2020 period.  As stated above, CO2 differentials are calculated for the present month by subtracting the value for the same month in the previous year (for example June 2022 minus June 2021).   Temp anomalies are calculated by comparing the present month with the baseline month.

The final proof that CO2 follows temperature due to stimulation of natural CO2 reservoirs is demonstrated by the ability to calculate CO2 levels since 1979 with a simple mathematical formula:

For each subsequent year, the co2 level for each month was generated

CO2  this month this year = a + b × Temp this month this year  + CO2 this month last year

Jeremy used Python to estimate a and b, but I used his spreadsheet to guess values that place for comparison the observed and calculated CO2 levels on top of each other.

In the chart calculated CO2 levels correlate with observed CO2 levels at 0.9986 out of 1.0000.  This mathematical generation of CO2 atmospheric levels is only possible if they are driven by temperature-dependent natural sources, and not by human emissions which are small in comparison, rise steadily and monotonically.

Comment:  UAH dataset reported a sharp warming spike starting mid year, with causes speculated but not proven.  In any case, that surprising peak has not yet driven CO2 higher, though it might,  but only if it persists despite the likely cooling already under way.

Previous Post:  What Causes Rising Atmospheric CO2?

nasa_carbon_cycle_2008-1

This post is prompted by a recent exchange with those reasserting the “consensus” view attributing all additional atmospheric CO2 to humans burning fossil fuels.

The IPCC doctrine which has long been promoted goes as follows. We have a number over here for monthly fossil fuel CO2 emissions, and a number over there for monthly atmospheric CO2. We don’t have good numbers for the rest of it-oceans, soils, biosphere–though rough estimates are orders of magnitude higher, dwarfing human CO2.  So we ignore nature and assume it is always a sink, explaining the difference between the two numbers we do have. Easy peasy, science settled.

What about the fact that nature continues to absorb about half of human emissions, even while FF CO2 increased by 60% over the last 2 decades? What about the fact that in 2020 FF CO2 declined significantly with no discernable impact on rising atmospheric CO2?

These and other issues are raised by Murray Salby and others who conclude that it is not that simple, and the science is not settled. And so these dissenters must be cancelled lest the narrative be weakened.

The non-IPCC paradigm is that atmospheric CO2 levels are a function of two very different fluxes. FF CO2 changes rapidly and increases steadily, while Natural CO2 changes slowly over time, and fluctuates up and down from temperature changes. The implications are that human CO2 is a simple addition, while natural CO2 comes from the integral of previous fluctuations.  Jeremy Shiers has a series of posts at his blog clarifying this paradigm. See Increasing CO2 Raises Global Temperature Or Does Increasing Temperature Raise CO2 Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The following graph which shows the change in CO2 levels (rather than the levels directly) makes this much clearer.

Note the vertical scale refers to the first differential of the CO2 level not the level itself. The graph depicts that change rate in ppm per year.

There are big swings in the amount of CO2 emitted. Taking the mean as 1.6 ppmv/year (at a guess) there are +/- swings of around 1.2 nearly +/- 100%.

And, surprise surprise, the change in net emissions of CO2 is very strongly correlated with changes in global temperature.

This clearly indicates the net amount of CO2 emitted in any one year is directly linked to global mean temperature in that year.

For any given year the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will be the sum of

  • all the net annual emissions of CO2
  • in all previous years.

For each year the net annual emission of CO2 is proportional to the annual global mean temperature.

This means the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will be related to the sum of temperatures in previous years.

So CO2 levels are not directly related to the current temperature but the integral of temperature over previous years.

The following graph again shows observed levels of CO2 and global temperatures but also has calculated levels of CO2 based on sum of previous years temperatures (dotted blue line).

Summary:

The massive fluxes from natural sources dominate the flow of CO2 through the atmosphere.  Human CO2 from burning fossil fuels is around 4% of the annual addition from all sources. Even if rising CO2 could cause rising temperatures (no evidence, only claims), reducing our emissions would have little impact.

Atmospheric CO2 Math

Ins: 4% human, 96% natural
Outs: 0% human, 98% natural.
Atmospheric storage difference: +2%
(so that: Ins = Outs + Atmospheric storage difference)

Balance = Atmospheric storage difference: 2%, of which,
Humans: 2% X 4% = 0.08%
Nature: 2% X 96 % = 1.92%

Ratio Natural:Human =1.92% : 0.08% = 24 : 1

Resources
For a possible explanation of natural warming and CO2 emissions see Little Ice Age Warming Recovery May be Over
Resources:

CO2 Fluxes, Sources and Sinks

Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

Fearless Physics from Dr. Salby