Fatal Flaw Discredits IPCC Science

Posted on by Ron Clutz

By way of John Ray comes this Spectator Australia article A basic flaw in IPCC science.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Detailed research is underway that threatens to undermine the foundations of the climate science promoted by the IPCC since its First Assessment Report in 1992. The research is re-examining the rural and urban temperature records in the Northern Hemisphere that are the foundation for the IPCC’s estimates of global warming since 1850. The research team has been led by Dr Willie Soon (a Malaysian solar astrophysicist associated with the Smithsonian Institute for many years) and two highly qualified Irish academics – Dr Michael Connolly and his son Dr Ronan Connolly. They have formed a climate research group CERES-SCIENCE. Their detailed research will be a challenge for the IPCC 7th Assessment Report due to be released in 2029 as their research results challenge the very foundations of IPCC science.

The climate warming trend published by the IPCC is a continually updated graph based on the temperature records of Northern Hemisphere land surface temperature stations dating from the mid 19th Century. The latest IPCC 2021 report uses data for the period 1850-2018. The IPCC’s selection of Northern Hemisphere land surface temperature records is not in question and is justifiable. The Northern Hemisphere records provide the best database for this period. The Southern Hemisphere land temperature records are not that extensive and are sparse for the 19th and early 20th Century. It is generally agreed that the urban temperature data is significantly warmer than the rural data in the same region because of an urban warming bias. This bias is due to night-time surface radiation of the daytime solar radiation absorbed by concrete and bitumen. Such radiation leads to higher urban night-time temperatures than say in the nearby countryside. The IPCC acknowledges such a warming bias but alleges the increased effect is only 10 per cent and therefore does not significantly distort its published global warming trend lines.


Since 2018, Dr Soon and his partners have analysed the data from rural and urban temperature recording stations in China, the USA, the Arctic, and Ireland. The number of stations with reliable temperature records in these areas increased from very few in the mid-19th Century to around 4,000 in the 1970s before decreasing to around 2,000 by the 1990s. The rural temperature recording stations with good records peaked at 400 and are presently around 200.

Their analysis of individual stations needs to account for any variation in their exposure to the Sun due to changes in their location, OR shadowing due to the construction of nearby buildings, OR nearby vegetation growth. The analysis of rural temperature stations is further complicated as over time many are encroached by nearby cities. Consequently, the data from such stations needs to be shifted at certain dates from the rural temperature database to either an intermediate database or to a full urban database. Consequently, an accurate analysis of the temperature records of each recording station is a time-consuming task.


This new analysis of 4,000 temperature recording stations in China, the USA, the Arctic, and Ireland shows a warming trend of 0.89ºC per century in the urban stations that is 1.61 times higher that a warming trend of 0.55ºC per century in the rural stations. This difference is far more significant than the 10 per cent divergence between urban and rural stations alleged in the IPCC reports; a divergence explained by a potential flaw in the IPCC’s methodology. The IPCC uses a technique called homogenisation that averages the rural and urban temperatures in a particular region. This method distorts the rural temperature records as over 75 per cent of the temperature records used in this homogenisation methodology are urban stations. So, a methodology that attempts to statistically identify and correct some biases that may be in the raw data, in effect, leads to an urban blending of the rural dataset. This result is biased as it downgrades the actual values of each rural temperature station. In contrast, Dr Soon and his coworkers avoided homogenisation so the temperature trends they identify for each rural region are accurate as the rural data are not distorted by the readings from nearby urban stations.


The rural temperature trend measured by this new research is 0.55ºC per century and it indicates the Earth has warmed 0.9ºC since 1850. In contrast, the urban temperature trend measured by this new research is 0.89ºC per century and indicates a much higher warming of 1.5ºC since 1850. Consequently, a distorted urban warming trend has been used by the IPCC to quantify the warming of the whole of the Earth since 1850. The exaggeration is significant as the urban temperature record database used by the IPCC only represents the temperatures on 3-4 per cent of the Earth’s land surface area; an area less than 2 per cent of the Earth’s total surface area. During the next few years, Dr Willie Soon and his research team are currently analysing the meta-history of 800 European temperature recording stations. When this is done their research will be based on very significant database of Northern Hemisphere rural and urban temperature records from China, the USA, the Arctic, Ireland, and Europe.

This new research has unveiled another flaw in the IPCC‘s temperature narrative as trend lines in its revised temperature datasets are different from those published by the IPCC. For example, the rural records now show a marked warming trend in the 1930s and 1940s while there is only a slight warming trend in the IPCC dataset. The most significant difference is the existence of a marked cooling period in the rural dataset for the 1960s and 1970s that is almost absent in the IPCC’s urban dataset. This later divergence upsets the common narrative that rising carbon dioxide levels control modern warming trends. For, if carbon dioxide levels are the driver of modern warming, how can a higher rate of increasing carbon dioxide levels exist within a cooling period in the 1960s and 1970s while a lower increasing rate of carbon dioxide levels coincides with an earlier warming interval in the 1930s and 1940s? Or, in other words, how can carbon dioxide levels increasing at 1.7 parts per million per decade cause a distinct warming period in the 1930s and 1940s while a larger increasing rate of 10.63 parts per million per decade is associated with a distinct cooling period in the 1960s and 1970s! Consequently, the research of Willie Soon and his coworkers is discrediting, not only the higher rate of global warming trends specified in IPCC Reports, but also the theory that rising carbon dioxide levels explain modern warming trends; a lynchpin of IPCC science for the last 25 years.

Willie Soon and his coworkers maintain that climate scientists need to consider other possible explanations for recent global warming. Willie Soon and his coworkers point to the Sun, but the IPCC maintains that variations in Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) are over eons and not over shorter periods such as the last few centuries. For that reason, the IPCC point to changes in greenhouse gases as the most obvious explanation for global warming since 1850. In contrast, Willie Soon and his coworkers maintain there can be short-term changes in solar activity and, for example, refer to a period of no sunspot activity that coincided with the Little Ice Age in the 17th Century. They also point out there is still no agreed average figure for Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) despite 30 years of measurements taken by various satellites. Consequently, they contend research in this area is not settled.

The CERES-SCIENCE research project pioneered by Dr Willie Soon and the father-son Connolly team has questioned the validity of the high global warming trends for the 1850-present period that have been published by the IPCC since its first report in 1992. The research also queries the IPCC narrative that rising greenhouse gas concentrations, particularly carbon dioxide, are the primary driver of global warming since 1850. That narrative has been the foundation of IPCC climate science for the last 40 years. It will be interesting to see how the IPCC’s 7th Assessment Report in 2029 treats this new research that questions the very basis of IPCC’s climate science.

The paper is The Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Land Surface Warming (1850–2018) in Terms of Human and Natural Factors: Challenges of Inadequate Data. 

Abstract

A statistical analysis was applied to Northern Hemisphere land surface temperatures (1850–2018) to try to identify the main drivers of the observed warming since the mid-19th century. Two different temperature estimates were considered—a rural and urban blend (that matches almost exactly with most current estimates) and a rural-only estimate. The rural and urban blend indicates a long-term warming of 0.89 °C/century since 1850, while the rural-only indicates 0.55 °C/century. This contradicts a common assumption that current thermometer-based global temperature indices are relatively unaffected by urban warming biases.

Three main climatic drivers were considered, following the approaches adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s recent 6th Assessment Report (AR6): two natural forcings (solar and volcanic) and the composite “all anthropogenic forcings combined” time series recommended by IPCC AR6. The volcanic time series was that recommended by IPCC AR6. Two alternative solar forcing datasets were contrasted. One was the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) time series that was recommended by IPCC AR6. The other TSI time series was apparently overlooked by IPCC AR6. It was found that altering the temperature estimate and/or the choice of solar forcing dataset resulted in very different conclusions as to the primary drivers of the observed warming.

Our analysis focused on the Northern Hemispheric land component of global surface temperatures since this is the most data-rich component. It reveals that important challenges remain for the broader detection and attribution problem of global warming: (1) urbanization bias remains a substantial problem for the global land temperature data; (2) it is still unclear which (if any) of the many TSI time series in the literature are accurate estimates of past TSI; (3) the scientific community is not yet in a position to confidently establish whether the warming since 1850 is mostly human-caused, mostly natural, or some combination. Suggestions for how these scientific challenges might be resolved are offered.

Climate Policies Built on CO2 Deceptions

Posted on by Ron Clutz

From response by James Matkin  Former Deputy Minister at Government of British Columbia to Quora question What are the criticisms of the Canadian federal carbon pricing system implemented under the Trudeau government’s “Pan-Canadian Framework” on climate change?  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The big lie is that Canada needs more carbon dioxide, not less, which is the intent of the carbon tax. Also, there is no carbon pricing system; rather, there is a carbon dioxide pricing system. Carbon is not the equivalent of CO2.

We need less carbon pollution from coal and more
carbon dioxide for our health and well-being.

This mistaken terminology deceives the public as it portends pollution. Amazingly, US President Obama, Trudeau, and Kamala Harris falsely call CO2 carbon pollution.

CO2 is used to save premature babies in incubators.

CO2 is the primary gas for fire extinguishers.

The solid form of CO2 is dry ice not carbon.
Likewise the solid form of H2O is ice not hydrogen.

More CO2 has enormous benefits for crops and our health. It also greens deserts and saves fresh water by spurring tree growth.

If CO2 was a problem why does the commercial greenhouse industry infuse up to 1500 ppm 7/24 to increase plant growth?

Canadians pay an imposing Carbon Tax to save the planet, while the rest of North America has no such Carbon Tax. If you look at economics, the Carbon Tax lowered our standard of living and did nothing for Climate Change.

Canada is a foolish outlier that punishes citizens with a carbon tax to harm plant growth, hospital surgeries, and water retention and cause inflation making the poor poorer.

Canadian emissions of CO2 by fossil fuels are only < 5% of natural
CO2 sources which are too tiny to matter if CO2 mattered to the climate, which it doesn’t.

The driving forces of climate change are natural
not human emissions of CO2

The UN claim that human industry Co2 emissions are causing runaway global warming that will end in catastrophe if not arrested with renewables and carbon taxes was only a thought experiment without any physical observation. Think about this – the UN said there was no historical precedent for the rapid rise in temperatures after industrialization therefore increased CO2 must be the culprit. This is both false logic and untrue. A raft of studies about temperature variability from ocean currents or changes in solar cycles evident in rising or falling sunspots easily explains the temperature rise.

Today with the benefit of hindsight there never was any fast rising temperatures needing explanation. In fact temperature’s rise of less than 1 °C over the past 140 years and now falling 0.4 °C in the past three years means no global warming now or in the past.

Because the climate changes over a long period of time no one living or dead has actually looked out the window and observed climate change. You see weather and it may be a heat wave, snow storm or record rainfall, but one weather event is never a new pattern of changing weather because that must be a statistical analysis.

SCOTUS Must Stop Climate Extortion Lawfare

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Jon Decker explains what’s at stake in the case awaiting US Supreme Court consideration.  His Real Clear Markets article is The Supreme Court Must Stop Climate Extortion Schemes.  Excerpts in itallics with my bolds and added images.

Chevron recently announced that it is moving out of California after almost a century and a half in the state. No wonder, since Sacramento sued the company, along with a number of other oil companies, for allegedly deceptive practices.

In their war on energy, progressive politicians increasingly turn to lawfare as another scheme to extract funds from productive citizens and dramatically reshape the economy. In the coming weeks, we’ll learn if the Supreme Court will stand up to them.

The critical case is Sunoco v. Honolulu, currently pending before SCOTUS. Honolulu is suing several oil companies, alleging their fossil fuel production caused significant damage to the city through rising sea levels and other climate-related infrastructure issues.

That these companies are being sued not for specific instances of purported environmental harm, but instead under “public nuisance” and “consumer fraud” laws for an alleged “multi-decadal campaign of deception” about the nature of their products is crucial. That’s because it lets progressive cities and states get around long-standing legal doctrine that kept climate cases in federal courts, where defendants are somewhat likelier to get a fair hearing.

Knowing that federal environmental law presents a more difficult path for litigation, activists instead went “venue shopping” with their climate agenda to deep blue states, knowing that a multi-jurisdictional assault would be unworkable, and potentially fatal, for American energy companies. The progressive politicians who support this approach not only see a boost for their careers and fundraising goals, but a potentially massive source of new government revenue.

Because Honolulu, like a spate of other lawsuits driven by ambitious progressive state AGs and prosecutors, models its assault on energy companies on the 90s tobacco wars. And they are unsurprisingly seeking an eye-watering settlement similar to what the tobacco industry was forced to pay (dollars that still flow to the government to this day).

But you don’t have to be a fossil fuel corporate booster or a climate change skeptic to recognize that these paydays will come at the expense of ordinary consumers and taxpayers, and of the economy as a whole.

Fossil fuels are ubiquitous in every sector, from agriculture and clothing to steel production, electricity, heating, and transportation. If this lawfare succeeds then every single one of these products and services—anything that takes energy as an input—becomes more expensive.

There’s also a kind of incoherence to the idea that a small handful of companies are alone to blame for perceived climate ills. What about the thousands of companies worldwide that are involved in the exploration, production, and distribution of fossil fuels – or the millions of companies that use fossil fuels to make their own goods and perform their services? That’s not even to mention the fact that the same few energy companies now being sued also play a critical role in the U.S. leading the world in CO2 emission reductions, through greater adoption of natural gas. How do the companies spearheading the natural gas renaissance figure into the supposed “deception” at work here?

The stakes here remind us that judges—and therefore elections—matter. Hawaii Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald, who ruled in favor of Honolulu and thereby triggered SCOTUS review, has been associated with the far-left Environmental Law Institute’s (ELI) Climate Judiciary Project, a group that “trains” and “educates” thousands of judges and government lawyers across the country to deliver legal outcomes favored by progressives.

The Supreme Court may be the last line of defense against
fringe activists dictating energy policy for the rest of us.

But of course, SCOTUS itself is in the crosshairs of left-wing judicial scheming, with top Democrats, including presidential nominee Kamala Harris, threatening to pack the Supreme Court if elected. No doubt with judges in the Mark Recktenwald mode.

If Honolulu succeeds in its case, and progressives in their larger campaign of lawfare, Americans can say Aloha to higher prices.

Postscript on Arguing Deception in These Cases

As noted above, the rationale for filing these cases in state rather than federal courts depends on claiming consumer fraud, I.e. oil companies deceived the public while knowing about their damaging energy products.  A good rebuttal against the “Exxon Knew” fiction is provided (with my bolds) by Randal Utech at Master Resource:

To say that Exxon knew the truth back in the early 80s is a laughable fallacy. Effectively they built a primitive model that is characteristically similar to the erroneous modern climate models of today.

Fundamentally their work is based on the poorly understood climate sensitivity (ECS) derived from radiative convective models and GCM models. To their credit, they actually acknowledged the high degree of uncertainty in these estimations. Today, even Hausfather (2022 vs 2019) is beginning to understand the climate sensitivity (ECS) is too high. CMIP6 is running still even hotter than CMIP5 and using ECS of 3 to 5° C rather than ~ 1.2° C as highlighted in Nick Lewis’s 2022 study.

CMIP6 should have been better because it incorporated solar particle forcing (Matthes et. al.) and as they incorporate more elements of natural forcing (an active area of research as we still do not have a predictive theory for climate), the effect is highlighting more underlying problems with the models.

However, Exxon investigators fell into the same trap that climate modelers of today where they build the models to history match temperatures and then wow, because they can create a model that appears to history match temperatures, they assume it is telling them something. Truth? Anyone can create a model to do this, but it would never mean the model is correct. While the models today are much more complex, they are based on a complex set of non-linear equations, and the understanding of the various sources of nonlineararity is poor. This opens up wide degrees of uncertainty yet wide opportunity for tuning. Furthermore, natural forcing is undercharacterized and deemed inconsequential.

The contrived sense of accomplishment in history matching is spurious correlation for an infinitesimally small period of time. Using Exxon’s internal analysis of CO2 climate forcing is little more than a propaganda tool. Current climate models, much more sophisticated, face the same problem of unknown, false causality.

See Background Post:

19 State AGs Ask Supremes to Block Climate Lawsuits

Energy Revolution Not In The Cards

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Kite & Key explains in above video Why the Odds Are Stacked Against Net Zero.  For those preferring to read I provide a text from the captions, though the video is entertaining along with great images, some of which are included with the text in italics with my bolds.

Overview

Are we at the beginning of the end of fossil fuels? That’s the theory advanced by an international coalition of politicians who aim to get us to net zero carbon emissions by the year 2050. Just one problem: Research from the experts in their own governments suggests it’s a nearly impossible task. Enthusiasts for net zero often say we’re on the cusp of an “energy revolution.”

And that theory has a big problem: Energy revolutions don’t happen — at least not in the way that politicians often describe. While it’s true that technological and economic factors sometimes change the energy mix — countries that get wealthier become less dependent on wood, for example — the broader trend in the history of the world’s energy consumption can be defined by three words: more, more, more.

In a power-hungry world, we keep adding new energy sources. But there’s rarely any subtraction. And, with global energy demand expected to increase by about 35% by 2050, it’s nearly impossible that we can get all the power we need from carbon-free sources. For instance, meeting the net zero goals would require the construction of over 9,000 nuclear plants by 2050. The number currently being built around the world? 59.

So, what will the future of energy really look like? Our video explores.

Transcription

It doesn’t happen that often. But every once in a while, a single generation witnesses a technological breakthrough that will change the world forever.
The printing press.
The beginning of human flight.
And, for our generation, an inevitable full scale revolution in clean energy…
…that’s running a little behind schedule…
…Ok, way behind schedule.

“The beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.” That’s how the United Nations referred to the outcome of a 2023 climate change summit held in…the United Arab Emirates. Which is sort of like having the Prohibition Conference in Vegas. Nevertheless, delegates from throughout the world left the gathering having pledged that the world would transition away from fossil fuels and get the world to net zero carbon emissions by the year 2050.

Now, the rationale for this is clear enough. Leaders from around the globe are worried that without a shift over to carbon-free energy sources like wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear the world will face significant problems as a result of climate change.

But, regardless of why they’re doing this, the more important question is whether they can do it. Because here’s the thing about energy revolutions: they don’t happen. At least not in the way that the UN is imagining. To understand why, it’s worth looking at the history of the world’s energy consumption – which looks like this.

Go back a couple of centuries and the world basically ran on “traditional biomass”– -which is a fancy way of saying … wood. We burned a lot of wood and also … dung. Then in the mid 19th century, coal came into the picture in a big way. By the 20th century, we’re using tons of oil. And natural gas is a big factor too, especially as we cross into the 21st century, and fracking makes it both abundant and more affordable. As the years went by, we added low-carbon sources of energy as well, like nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar–though overall, they’re still a pretty small part of the picture.

Now, there are two important things to note about this chart. First, the history of the world’s energy consumption can be defined in three words: more, more, more. Which kind of makes sense. After all, pretty much everything that defines modern life involves a lot of energy. Between 1950 and 2022, for example, the population of the U.S. a little more than doubled. But in that same time period, our electricity use got 14 times larger.

And second, because of that “more and more, more” trend, the only things we’ve ever had that look like energy “revolutions” have been about adding new sources into the mix, not getting rid of existing ones as net zero goals propose.

Now, to be clear, that doesn’t mean that nothing ever changes. In wealthier nations, the rise of cheaper natural gas has led to less coal usage, especially in the U.S. And poorer countries usually abandoned traditional biomass as they get wealthier, because no advanced nation powers itself by burning wood. We use it for much more sophisticated purposes…like doing psychedelics in the Nevada desert.

But using a little less coal or wood or relatively modest changes–and importantly are driven by cold, hard economic facts. By contrast, what the net zero goals entail is replacing all of this … with this … in just about 25 years. Based on little more than the fact that politicians just want it to happen.

To understand just how tall a task this is, it’s worth looking at what it would require to make it a reality. It’s estimated that meeting net zero goals would require deploying 2000 new wind turbines…
…every day … for the next 25 years. To give you some context for that, the U.S. builds about 3000 new wind turbines…
…a year.

Alternately, you could open one new nuclear plant every day for the next 25 years. For the record, that’s over 9,000 of them. And, also for the record, as of 2023, the number that were actually being built across the entire world was … 59.  And here in the U.S. anyway, it generally takes over a decade to build them.

And those are some of the reasons why what politicians promise about net zero and what the experts in their own governments say…don’t exactly match up. The government’s U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA, projects that by the year 2050, far from seeing a revolution in energy, America will be a little less reliant on coal, a little more so on renewables…and the rest of the picture looks pretty much the same as today.

And in fact, this is true for the entire world. The EIA ran seven different scenarios for what the world’s energy consumption could look like in 2050, and while all of them showed a significant increase in renewables … they also all showed a world that continued to get most of its energy from things like coal, oil, and natural gas. Not exactly “the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.”

The reason for all of this: We simply can’t take enormous quantities of energy offline in a world where it’s predicted that we’re going to need almost 35% more of it by the year 2050. For one thing, there are a lot of poor countries around the world who are going to need dramatically more energy to bring themselves up to even a fraction of our standards of living.

And for another, the technologies of the future require vast amounts of power. By the year 2030, it’s estimated the computer usage around the world will take up as much as five times more of the world’s electricity production as it did even in 2020. The digital cloud we all use to store data already uses twice as much electricity as the entire nation of Japan. And with new energy-hungry technologies like AI on the way, things are only gonna move further in that direction.

Which means the real future of energy is probably: everything. Nuclear, natural gas, wind, and solar, oil, hydropower, coal. We’re going to need all of it. Probably not much wood though.
Except for these guys.

Depravity of Net Zero Agenda

Posted on by Ron Clutz

From Daily Sceptic The Real ‘Climate Change Deniers’ Are Those Who Deny the Climate Changed Before We Started Burning Fossil Fuels, Says Geologist.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

“We need to be resilient”

As a geologist, Wielicki undoubtedly has a better-than-average understanding of how our planet has evolved in the first place, and how its climate has been in a constant state of flux. Today’s climate science, however, links climate change primarily to the increasing amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, especially its anthropogenic component. Scientists who doubt or dispute this are labelled climate deniers. Wielicki points out that we know very well from Earth’s relatively recent history that major climate changes, such as the Medieval Warm Period (ca. 950-1250) or the subsequent Little Ice Age (ca. 14th to mid-19th century, precise timing depending on the location), occurred without any significant change in the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere.

“If there’s anything that I argue, it’s that we need to be resilient. We should stop pretending that if we changed or lowered our emissions the climate would stop changing. That’s the true denial of climate right there,” Wielicki says. “What we need to accept is that regardless of the CO2 in the atmosphere, we are going to have climate change and those shifts could occur over timescales of decades or centuries, and we should be prepared.

And being prepared means we need access to cheap, reliable energy.

But the world is moving in the opposite direction under the leadership of today’s political leaders. One of the main objectives is to fight CO2 emissions and to do so by phasing out fossil fuels, among other measures. However, according to Wielicki, the planners have not quite thought everything through. First of all, wind and solar power are unreliable substitutes because they can only be produced when the conditions are right, i.e., when the wind blows and the sun shines. In addition, they need constant support from the taxpayer, because when they can be produced, i.e., sold as energy to the grid, the price of electricity on the market will be low since there is a lot of it at that particular time. So in order for investors to build up these capacities, they need price guarantees from governments or taxpayer support. And on top of that, you still need to additionally build up controllable capacity to ensure that electricity is always available.

Wielicki also says that we need to understand that fossil fuels are not just liquids that we put in our cars at the petrol station but are essential to many aspects of our lives. “About four billion people on the planet are being fed off of agricultural crops that are being fertilised with synthetic fertilizers that are being created from fossil fuels. So you can’t just look at one side of a picture,” Wielicki explains, adding that the increases in atmospheric CO2 levels have actually also increased yields.

In addition, Wielicki says, it is worth thinking that we need to replace many of today’s fossil-fuel-based materials in everyday use, such as plastics, lubricants, oils, chemicals, etc., with new ones if we really want to phase out fossil fuels. “We have to ask what are the benefits that fossil fuels have given the society? And then let’s weigh that against the possible detrimental effects that these climate models argue will happen, but haven’t happened in the observable data yet,” he says.

The rise of the new green colonialism

Programmed into this whole Western orientation towards CO2 reduction, Wielicki says, is hypocrisy on several levels. For a start, it’s worth recognising that by reducing CO2 emissions in Europe or North America, we have effectively decided that we do not produce the goods we need here, but will produce them elsewhere in the world. “We pat ourselves on the back and say: look, we’ve lowered our CO2 emissions by this much! But all we’ve done is essentially offshored that industry to China and India, They do it dirtier. They have no regard for things like environmental policy. And so the global CO2 is going up faster than ever,” Wielicki notes.

While the big Asian countries are ramping up the use of coal to satisfy their energy appetite, many African countries don’t have a similar option. According to Wielicki, this is directly linked to the UN’s policy of not wanting these countries to increase their use of fossil fuels. This means, for example, that farm work that is done elsewhere by tractor still has to be done by many Africans with their hands. A large proportion of Africans also have little or no access to electricity. Food is cooked indoors on open fires, burning dung and wood.

The resulting smoke leads to respiratory illnesses and many people die as a result. All this could be easily avoided, according to Wielicki, by giving them access to propane bottles and gas cookers. “It might make them breathe easier at night. It might make their health better. But it’s going to increase the atmospheric CO2, and that is something we can’t have. These poor people must suffer and live in poverty because we need to save the planet. It’s so hypocritical,” Wielicki says.

What’s more, according to Wielicki, our hypocrisy lies in the fact that at the same time, we want to mine the minerals we need for our own energy transition, such as cobalt, in that very same Africa. “We’re switching to very mineral and energy intensive technologies like solar panels and electric vehicles. And we’re taking all of these raw materials from Africa,” he says. “I think this is going to be, probably, the legacy of this green revolution. I call it the new green colonialism. It’s unfortunately going to keep hundreds of millions of poor people in developing nations in poverty for decades longer than they ever needed to be,” Wielicki adds.

Again Wuhan Lab Coverup for Covid Virus Origin. Don’t Buy it!

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Today we have a coordinated release globally of a study claiming to disprove the Covid 19 virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Viology (WIV).  An example is the article from the UK so-called Independent ‘Beyond reasonable doubt’ Covid pandemic originated at Wuhan market stall.  Excerpts in italics.

US and French researchers traced coronavirus to one stall in
Wuhan, China after analysing genetic samples

It is beyond “reasonable doubt” that the Covid-19 pandemic originated in a Chinese animal market, a new scientific study has found.

Researchers from the United States and France discovered one stall in Wuhan, China, was a hotspot for coronavirus after analysing hundreds of genetic samples collected by Chinese authorities in 2020.

The analysis, published in Cell, compiled a list of animals including raccoon dogs, masked palm civets, hoary bamboo rats and Malayan porcupines, that were likely to have passed the virus to humans.

“It’s far beyond reasonable doubt that this is how it happened,” Professor Michael Worobey at the University of Arizona told the BBC, noting that other theories involve some “really quite fanciful absurd scenarios”.

Professor Kristian Andersen from Scripps Research in the US, added: “We find a very consistent story in terms of this pointing to the market as being the very likely origin of this particular pandemic.”

Color me skeptical.  Both Worobey and Andersen were carrying Fauci’s water in 2020-21 when he was lying to congress about funding gain of function research at WIV.  Cui Bono from this paper?  China, who destroyed all the evidence in 2020, but now it supposedly appears in 2024.  And Fauci, who enlisted these and other researchers to publish fake studies in various journals to cancel the lab-leak explanation for the covid pandemic.

For a desciption of the malfeasance perpetrated by these charlatans, see this expose by Vanity Fair in 2022 “This Shouldn’t Happen”: Inside the Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy.

For a level-headed reaction to this latest coverup, here is a comment to the published Worobey et al paper by Alexander Chervonsky Professor of Pathology The University of Chicago.  In italics with my bolds.

Two seemingly mutually excluding theories of SARS-CoV2 origin are now a matter of a heated debate.

On one hand, scientists siding with the lab-leak idea are bringing up a lot of reasonable but circumstantial evidence in favor it.  There is no real way to prove the leak until an unbiased commission of researchers inspects the potential sites and lab records.  That is unlikely to happen, and the problem may be never solved, unless another leak, next time a leak of critical information happens.

On the other hand, a seemingly large group of scientists supports the natural origin of the COVID19 pandemics. The key point here is that they also do not have a direct evidence of SARS-CoV2 being transmitted to humans through an intermediate host in a manner similar to what was found before for SARS and MERS viruses.

The debate becomes more and more heated, not at the least being motivated by non-scientific reasons. Major journals publish unbalanced editorials favoring ‘natural origin’ theory that so far has not produced the fatal blow to the opposite view. It is argued that it is hard to find a needle in the haystack (an animal that is an intermediate host for SARS-CoV2), but this is the real source of uncertainty. 

For an unbiased critical mind, it is impossible to take sides in this debate simply because both previous lab leaks (including of SARS virus) and a natural transmission through intermediate hosts of human SARS and MERS coronaviruses have been documented. If one wants to convince that unbiased critical mind of the natural origin of human SARS-CoV2 – show us the money!

Find the intermediate host, find the virus, explain in molecular terms
how it got the furin cleavage site, or better continue working hard.

The article by Michael Worobey is an example of delivering arguments that can hardly make a dent in the leak theory for the following reasons:

  • Since COVID19 can be totally asymptomatic, the claim that the first symptomatic cases came from the putative place of origin (the markets) cannot be taken seriously;
  • Nothing in this article suggests that the virus could not have been brought to the market by someone from Wuhan Virology lab who went there to buy food for his/her family;
  • Markets are places of high concentration of people and are perfect for quick transmission between sellers and visitors (or visitors and sellers);
  • The sensitivity of racoon dogs to SARS-CoV2 argument can be used equally well for human to animal transmission as for racoon dogs to human. Again – show us the actual virus in the intermediate host or remain calm.

Calm, however, is an unlikely outcome of this debate. My argument is that scientific thinking and integrity should come first.  It is really tiring to read the numerous editorials and letters that are unilateral with no substance.  I rest my case totally prepared to be convinced one way or another by solid direct evidence.

Comment:  The origin debate is important and heated because it determines whether or not the pandemic virus was man-made, and the accountability for consequences that comes with that.

 

Green Deal Cuts EU Emissions, Doubles Them Elsewhere

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The news and analysis from University of Groningen is reported at Science Daily European Green Deal: A double-edged sword for global emissions.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Greenhouse gas emissions will fall in the EU, but rise even more elsewhere

Summary:  The European Green Deal will bring down the emission of greenhouse gases in the European Union, but at the same time causes a more than a twofold increase in emissions outside its borders.

The European Union aims to be carbon-neutral by 2050 as part of the comprehensive Green Deal that was agreed upon four years ago. However, an analysis of the policy documents outlining the practical measures of the Green Deal shows that it will decrease carbon emissions in Europe, but also increase carbon emissions outside of the EU. This increase is more than double the amount of carbon emissions saved by the Green Deal. This analysis was published in Nature Sustainability on by an international team of scientists led by Klaus Hubacek, Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the University of Groningen.

The European Green Deal is a set of policies intended to fully decarbonize Europe by 2050, but it also includes measures for clean energy production and ecological restoration. Hubacek and colleagues from the United States and China carried out full supply chain analyses of the policy documents underlying the Green Deal. Their conclusion is that the Green Deal in its current form will lead to an increase in emissions in countries outside the EU by 244.8 percent compared to the Green Deal’s carbon reduction goal in the land, land use change, and forestry sector within EU borders.

Reasons to be Skeptical of Policies

One example is the measure to increase biodiversity in Europe by planting three billion trees. ‘However, trees require a lot of land that cannot be used to produce food. That means that food must be produced elsewhere, and to do this, land must be converted into cropland. This increases the carbon dioxide emission and reduces biodiversity,‘ says Hubacek. In this way, the EU would reduce carbon emissions within its borders, but ‘export‘ them to the countries that would produce our food, for example Africa or South America.

Of course, the Green Deal does contain a paragraph forbidding the import of products (such as meat or animal feed) for which woodland is converted to farmland. Hubacek is sceptical: ‘Nothing stops these other countries from growing products for Europe on existing farmland and felling forests to produce for the local market. There are simply too many uncertainties in these types of regulations.’ The Green Deal also calls for an increase in organic farming, but this requires more farmland in Europe. Hubacek: ‘Again, there is very little information available on the impact on land use.’

No free lunch

However, the scientists did not just reveal the negative impacts of the Green Deal on the rest of the world. They also looked at different scenarios to see if overall carbon reductions could be enhanced. ‘We found one very effective way to do this.’ says Hubacek, ‘By adopting the more plant-based “planetary health diet,” it is possible to save an enormous amount of carbon emissions.’ Another measure is to phase out food-based biofuels within the EU, which would reduce the amount of farmland needed and thus save carbon emissions and prevent biodiversity loss. Also, the EU could assist developing regions to increase their agricultural efficiency, which would also reduce land use.

Although the Nature Sustainability article shows that the European Green Deal in its present form could result in a net loss for the global environment, the scientists conclude that it can be remedied. ‘By adopting the planetary health diet, which is relatively simple’, says Hubacek. However, there is one more thing that needs to change, he stresses: ‘The programme is driven by techno-optimism, but our analysis underlines that there is no free lunch. I very much doubt that “Green Growth” is possible, as everything you produce requires an input of resources. So we really need to consume less.’ There is a strong sense of urgency now that global warming seems set to surpass the 1.5 degrees from the 1995 Paris Agreement, and many other planetary boundaries are also being overstepped. Hubacek: ‘It is time to implement measures that work.’

Comment:

The authors share the IPCC notion of climate emergency caused by GHGs, but are practical enough to realize the proposed policies are counter productive.  I am among those who agree with Dr. Happer that the only climate crisis is coming from the torrent of ill-advised governmental policies that are not likely to reduce GHG emissions or temperatures, but will achieve great economic and social destruction.

See the series of four posts World of Hurt from Climate Policies

World of Hurt from Climate Policies-Part 1

See Also

Climate Policies Fail in Fact and in Theory

 

SC-GHG: Weapon of Mass Social Destruction

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A reminder that first there was Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) which purported to estimate future costs of damages from CO2 emissions. Now there is Social Costs of Green House Gases (SC-GHG) which ups the ante by adding purported damages from methane (CH4) and Nitrogen oxides (N2O). At the end of this post are references describing this sordid history.

Remember also the regulators game.  Regulations by far outnumber laws passed by congress, and they impose costs upon businesses and consumers of the targeted industries.  Instigating agencies justify their rules by claiming greater savings from preventing future damages.  So the higher the damages estimates the more intensive and expensive can be the regulations.

Mark Krebs provides a recent example of this in his Master Resource article Heat Pump Subsidies: Never Enough.  It reports on various machinations by the Biden/Harris regime to spend all the money they can on decarbonizing projects before their term ends.  As Biden himself said after terminating his re-election campaign:  We should have named the Inflation Reduction Act what it really was, the Green New Deal.

The article includes this quote from Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) regarding SCC (with my bolds):

Junk Science Behind Federal Appliance Regs About to Get Junkier

The Biden-Harris administration has embarked on a wave of anti-consumer home appliance regulations over the last several years. Each was justified in part by overblown claims of climate change benefits. And now, the Department of Energy (DOE) has proposed using a new methodology that would further inflate these hypothetical benefits to justify even worse regulations in the years ahead.

DOE is in the process of creating new energy use limits for stoves, dishwashers, furnaces, washing machines, water heaters, ceiling fans, refrigerators, and more. The agency always asserts that consumers experience net gains from these regulations, but CEI has filed comments highly critical of these rosy assumptions. In reality, such rules often raise the up-front costs of appliances more than is likely to be earned back in the form of energy savings. Some rules also compromise appliance choice, performance, and reliability.

But DOE’s fictitious consumer benefits are only part of the problem. CEI has also taken issue with the agency’s assertions that these regulations deliver quantifiable climate change benefits. For example, DOE’s costly 2023 final rule for residential furnaces was estimated by the agency to provide $16.2 billion worth of such benefits.

The agency arrives at this figure by calculating the reduced energy use attributable to the efficiency standards and then estimating the amount of greenhouse gas emissions avoided as a result – mostly carbon dioxide emitted to produce electricity at coal or natural gas-fired power plants. Then it multiplies the tons of emissions avoided by the calculated per unit dollar cost to society of such emissions.

Until now, DOE has relied upon the 2021 Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (IWG 2021). IWG 2021 provides the agency with the per ton Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (SC-GHG) values.

Relying on IWG 2021 was bad enough, but in its most recent proposed rule for commercial refrigeration equipment DOE is switching to an updated 2023 version of SC-GHG provided by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The new methodology takes several already-dubious assumptions in IWG 2021 and stretches them further. For one category of commercial refrigeration equipment covered in the proposed rule, DOE calculates the climate benefits of $48-$320 million dollars under IWG 2021 but a whopping $564-$1,713 million under the new way. That’s around 5-10 times higher.

How Did They Weaponize SC-GHG?

Briefly recapping, the Obama WH activist bean counters pushed numbers around and came up with $51 per ton of CO2 emitted. Then Trump WH said more realistic interest rates give an SCC of $1 per ton CO2.  Then Biden/Harris came into power with a deluge of Excutive Orders (EO), including one that reset SCC at 51$  Maybe you recall scenes like this from early 2021:

That prompted ten states to file for an injunction against Biden’s EO 13990 which was granted by the federal District Court of Louisiana February 2022.  Manhattan Contrarian commented at the time (my bolds):

On taking office, the Trump administration took steps to neutralize the SCC, so that not much has been heard from it for a while. But Biden’s EO 13990 caused the Obama-era version to get re-instated. The Biden people claim that they are working on further tweaks to the regulations, but meanwhile a large group of Republican-led states went ahead and commenced litigation.

With a regulatory initiative obviously intended to force a gigantic transformation of the economy without statutory basis, the Biden people defended against the Complaint using every shuck and jive and technicality known to man. The SCC rules were not “final” because the administration was still working on a few more tweaks (and then a few more, and then a few more); the state plaintiffs lacked “standing” because the harm was to citizens rather than the state itself; and so forth. The court was having none of it.

The heart of the court’s decision is its determination that the SCC falls under the Supreme Court’s “major questions doctrine,” under which the bureaucracy cannot on its own authority impose “new obligations of vast economic and political significance” unless Congress “speaks clearly.” The states had identified some 83 pending projects involving something in the range of $447 and $561 billion dollars as affected by the SCC rule. That impressed the court as easily within the concept of “major questions.”

However in March 2022 the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals stopped the injunction, and in May 2022 the Supreme Court refused a request by plaintiff states to block EO 13990.

From Technical Support Document: Social Cost of Carbon, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide 2021

The first table was the same one produced by Obama WH.  Note that at 5% discount rate, CO2 goes from $14 to $32 in 2050.  Obama era regulations presumed the 3% rate which results in $51 up to $85. Note the astronomical numbers for CH4 $1500 per ton up to $3100.  And N2O starts at $18,000 to $33,000.  Hide your cows and fertilizers!.  But that was not expensive enough for Team Biden/Harris .

From the EPA Report on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases: Estimates Incorporating Recent Scientific Advances 2023

So no more 5% rate, and the middle scale is 2% rather than 2.5%.  That starts at $190 per ton of CO2 up to $310 by 2050 and $410 in 2080.  CH4 on the same basis is $1600 to $4200 in 2050 up to $6800 by 2080.  Of course a ton of N2O is unaffordable at $54,000 up to $130,000.

In other words, this regime can regulate the hell out of appliance manufacturers and agricultural operations, among others, justified by such numbers. It started with gas stoves, but won’t end there.

Will anyone put a stop to them?

Regarding Social Costs of GHGs

Blatant Hypocrisy re. Social Cost of Carbon

Six Reasons to Rescind Social Cost of Carbon

SBC: Social Benefits of Carbon

 

2024 Arctic Ice Abounds at Average Daily Minimum

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The annual competition between ice and water in the Arctic ocean has reached the maximum for water, which typically occurs mid September.  After that, diminishing energy from the slowly setting sun allows oceanic cooling causing ice to regenerate. Those interested in the dynamics of Arctic sea ice can read numerous posts here.  This post provides a look at mid September from 2007 to yesterday as a context for understanding this year’s annual minimum.

The image above shows Arctic ice extents on day 260 (lowest annual daily extent on average) from 2007 to 2024 yesterday.  Obviously, the regions vary as locations for ice, discussed in more detail later on. The animation shows the ice deficits in years 2007, 2012, 2016, and 2020, as well as surplus years like 2010, 2014, 2022 and 2024.

Note that for climate purposes the annual minimum is measured by the September monthly average ice extent, since the daily extents vary and will go briefly lowest on or about day 260. In a typical year the overall ice extent will end September slightly higher than at the beginning.  2024 September ice extent averaged 4.6M over the first 16 days, and is likely to end the month with at least that amount for the entire month. For comparison, the 17 year average for Sept. 1-16 is 4.7M.

The melting season to mid September shows 2024 tracked lower than average but ended the period slightly above.

The graph above shows September daily ice extents for 2024 compared to 18 year averages, and some years of note. Day 260 has been the lowest daily ice extent on average for the last 18 years.

The black line shows on average Arctic ice extents during September decline 358k km2 down to 4.5M Km2 by day 260. The average increase from now on is 490k km2 up to 5.0M km2 end of September.  2024  tracked a little lower than the 18-year average in the second week reaching a low of 4.49M km2 on day 255, before going above average on day 260.

SII was reporting deficits as high as 0.5M km2 (half a Wadham) compared to  MASIE early in September.  For some reason, apparently data access issues, that dataset has not been updated for the last five days.  2023 bottomed out at 4.1M while 2007 daily minimum hit 4.0M, ended ~ 0.5M km2 in deficit to average and 535k km2 less than MASIE on day 260.  2020 ice on day 260 was ~740k km2 in deficit to average.

The main deficit to average is in CAA with a smaller loss in Chukchi, overcome by surpluses almost everywhere, especially in Central Arctic along with Laptev and Greenland seas. And as discussed below, the marginal basins have little ice left to lose.

The Bigger Picture 

We are close to the annual Arctic ice extent minimum, which typically occurs on or about day 260 (mid September). Some take any year’s slightly lower minimum as proof that Arctic ice is dying, but the image above shows the Arctic heart is beating clear and strong.

Over this decade, the Arctic ice minimum has not declined, but since 2007 looks like fluctuations around a plateau. By mid-September, all the peripheral seas have turned to water, and the residual ice shows up in a few places. The table below indicates where we can expect to find ice this September. Numbers are area units of Mkm2 (millions of square kilometers).

Day 260 17 year
Arctic Regions 2007 2010 2014 2016 2018 2020 2021 2022 2023 Average 2024
Central Arctic Sea 2.67 3.16 2.98 2.92 2.91 2.50 2.95 3.08 2.96 2.92 2.95
BCE 0.50 1.08 1.38 0.52 1.16 0.65 1.55 0.99 0.50 0.88 1.02
LKB 0.29 0.24 0.19 0.28 0.02 0.00 0.13 0.20 0.39 0.18 0.16
Greenland & CAA 0.56 0.41 0.55 0.45 0.41 0.59 0.50 0.43 0.44 0.47 0.39
B&H Bays 0.03 0.03 0.02 0.03 0.05 0.02 0.04 0.02 0.04 0.04 0.05
NH Total 4.05 4.91 5.13 4.20 4.56 3.76 5.17 4.73 4.33 4.49 4.58

The table includes some early years of note along with the last 4 years compared to the 17 year average for five contiguous arctic regions. BCE (Beaufort, Chukchi and East Siberian) on the Asian side are quite variable as the largest source of ice other than the Central Arctic itself.   Greenland Sea and CAA (Canadian Arctic Archipelago) together hold almost 0.5M km2 of ice at annual minimum, fairly consistently.  LKB are the European seas of Laptev, Kara and Barents, a smaller source of ice, but a difference maker some years, as Laptev was in 2016 and 2023.  Baffin and Hudson Bays are inconsequential as of day 260.

2024 extent of 4.58 is 1.3% over average, mainly due to surpluses in Chukchi and East Siberian seas.

For context, note that the average maximum has been 15M, so on average the extent shrinks to 30% of the March high (31% in 2022) before growing back the following winter.  In this context, it is foolhardy to project any summer minimum forward to proclaim the end of Arctic ice.

Resources:  Climate Compilation II Arctic Sea Ice

2024 Arctic Ice Beats 2007 by Half a Wadham

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The graph above shows September daily ice extents for 2024 compared to 18 year averages, and some years of note. Day 260 has been the lowest daily ice extent on average for the last 18 years.

The black line shows on average Arctic ice extents during September decline 358k km2 down to 4.5M Km2 by day 260. The average increase from now on is 490k km2 up to 5.0M km2 end of September.  2024  tracked a little lower than the 18-year average in the second week reaching a low of 4.49M km2 on day 255, before going above average on day 260. 

SII was reporting deficits as high as 0.5M km2 (half a Wadham) compared to  MASIE early in September.  For some reason, that dataset has not been updated for the last five days.  2023 bottomed out at 4.1M while 2007 daily minimum hit 4.0M, ended ~ 0.5M km2 in deficit to average and 535k km2 less than MASIE on day 260.  2020 ice on day 260 was ~740k km2 in deficit to average.

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

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

Also, a longer term perspective is informative:

post-glacial_sea_levelThe table below shows the distribution of Sea Ice on day 260 across the Arctic Regions, on average, this year and 2007. At this point in the year, Bering and Okhotsk seas are open water and thus dropped from the table.

Region 2024260 Day 260 ave 2024-Ave. 2007260 2024-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 4581327 4524401 56926 4045776 535551
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 304967 491931 -186963 481384 -176416
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 360456 167361 193095 22527 337929
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 353456 252958 100498 311 353145
 (4) Laptev_Sea 160792 135574 25218 235869 -75076
 (5) Kara_Sea 0 31612 -31612 44067 -44067
 (6) Barents_Sea 0 14610 -14610 7420 -7420
 (7) Greenland_Sea 165965 191196 -25230 333181 -167216
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 53126 29745 23381 26703 26423
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 228869 274428 -45559 225526 3344
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1692 4595 -2903 2270 -578
 (11) Central_Arctic 2950861 2929452 21409 2665243.87 285617

The overall surplus to average is 57k km2, (1.3%).  The major deficit is in Beaufort, offset by large surpluses in Chukchi and East Siberian seas. 

bathymetric_map_arctic_ocean

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

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