EV Push Imploding

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Levi Russell writes at Heartland The Rush to Force Everyone into Electric Vehicles is Imploding. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

A recently published article in the peer-reviewed academic journal Transportation Research tells us that cars, even the supposedly anointed battery electric variety, are far too convenient and that the state must be empowered to “restrict car use.” The authors tell us that converting car lanes to bus lanes have reduced car use in Oslo. No surprise there. The fact that academia is floating this sort of policy should concern anyone who has any inkling of mistrust of the federal government.

Truly our freedom of movement is in peril.

Electric vehicles are not nearly as popular as their advocates would have had us believe, as sales are now slumping in the face of rising interest rates and a lack of so-called fast chargers. As we begin to bump up against mined mineral constraints and international relations complications, there’s no doubt the cost of making these glorified toys will continue to rise. A recent Consumer Reports publication shows that, over the last 3 model years, electric vehicles are less reliable than normal gasoline and diesel vehicles. So, several states want to ban the sale of reliable, inexpensive gas and diesel cars and force us to buy less reliable electric cars. Note well that the superior reliability of hybrids is likely down to the fact that car makers who are better known for their reliability make more hybrids. There’s nothing inherent to a hybrid that would make it more reliable than a gasoline engine vehicle.

[And in addition: No one wants to buy used EVs and they’re piling up in weed-infested graveyards Fortune magazine. No One Wants Used EVs, Making New Ones a Tougher Sell Too Bloomberg ]

Even our ability to travel using air travel is under the gun. A CNN op-ed recently floated the idea of limiting air travel through the use of carbon (read: sin) passports. We will be limited to traveling based on the amount of carbon dioxide emitted during the flight. The author wants this applied to cruise ships as well. It’s not hard to see this applied to your car as well.

Of course, such rules will not apply to the super-wealthy climate grifters.
They’ll be jetting all over the globe for their very important climate conferences.

And it’s not just transportation. In September, Reuters “fact checked” a claim that US cities had agreed to limit meat consumption, finding the claim false. And yet, we are told on a nearly daily basis that eliminating beef consumption is necessary to save the planet. The sin of using coal (but not apparently to create steel) has become the sin of eating a steak. What’s next? Rice? Pork?

Beginning in 2024, the German government will empower local electricity providers to limit the flow of electricity to heat pumps and electric cars. Such limits were the stuff of alleged conspiracy theories mere months ago. Now they’re a reality. Germany’s suicidal attempt to power their grid with nothing but wind and solar, killing off their own nuclear power generation over the last 20 years, has led to energy rationing. It’s not as if this is unpredictable. The unreliability of so-called renewables is common knowledge among energy experts.

It’s sensible for those who are concerned about their ability to choose where and when they travel, what they eat, and when they turn on their heaters and air conditioners to be skeptical of every single attempt to accrue more power by state and federal governments. That skepticism should turn into activism against these power grabs. Anyone who tells you these power grabs aren’t coming is telling you not to believe your own eyes.

Postscript Absurdum

Canada poised to pass rules that all new vehicles must be zero-emissions by 2035 Source Financial Post

The act to be announced in coming days aims
to phase out the sale of new combustion vehicles

The new rules will require zero-emissions vehicles — which include battery electric, hydrogen and plug-in electric vehicles — to make up 20 per cent of all new car sales in 2026, 60 per cent in 2030 and 100 per cent in 2035, the reports said.

 

Milei Liberating Argentina

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The graph shows the rapid deterioration of Argentines’ wellbeing in the last decade, and why they turned to Milei for a new path.  Only Venezuela’s hard left socialist regime was more destructive than the Peronists governing Argentina.  Many doubted that Milei would follow through on his promises, no different than other politicians.  Boy are they mistaken, and also scared that libertarian economics will takeover elsewhere and dismantle governmental bureaucracies.  The latest report is from Monica Showalter at American Thinker Argentina’s Milei proves to be the world’s strangest ‘dictator,’ handing out freedom all over the place.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

According to Breitbart News:

Argentine President Javier Milei announced during a national broadcast on Wednesday night the signing of a Necessity and Urgency Decree (DNU), a form of executive order, that would modify or overturn an estimated 350 federal economic policies.

Milei’s executive order targeted nearly every aspect of the Argentine economy – including imports, price controls, health care, sports federations, landlord and tenant policies, and the yerba mate industry – in what he described as an attempt to impose a “shock stabilization plan” to prevent a financial catastrophe. Argentina is facing the worst economic crisis of its history as a result of decades of socialist policies, lavish government spending, and corruption, fueling skyrocketing rates of poverty, joblessness, and inflation. The nation’s inflation rate reached 160 percent in the days after Milei’s December 10 inauguration.

And yeah, it’s a lot of stuff:

Milei eliminated multiple laws that allow the state to control the prices of various goods and services. The “Rental Law,” which greatly limited what kind of lease contracts landlords and tenants can sign, no longer exists. The Argentine outlet Infobae noted that rents in Argentina increased by 300 percent year-on-year in 2023 under the Rental Law, despite socialist lawmakers insisting it would keep rents low.

The executive order also eliminated price control laws for artisanal products, regulations governing the purchasing of rural land, and the federal government’s Price Observatory, “to avoid the persecution of companies.” Customs regulations controlling imports and exports were also severely reduced and a national registry of importers and exporters will cease to exist, as the DNU noted Argentina was one of the few countries in the world to have such a registry. Milei’s executive order addressed Internet access, as well, greatly deregulating telecommunications.

The regulations targeted some of Argentina’s largest industries, including winemaking – freed from a restrictive state regulation system – and the cultivation of yerba mate, a plant used to make a hot herbal drink popular in Argentina. The order called for the modernization of the National Institute of Yerba Mate to limit the use of quality control regulations to suppress the industry. It made similar revisions to policies for mining, the airline industry, and sugar. On the subject of health care, the executive order dramatically deregulates the drug industry, allowing Argentines greater access to generic drugs and expanding the use of electronic prescriptions “to achieve greater agility in the industry and minimize costs.”

Food prices have reportedly dropped 15% overnight.

And what does the left call him after doling out all this freedom, freedom, freedom?

They have a mighty funny understanding of what a dictator is. Apparently if you free your country and deregulate everything that made it a living hell, you are a dictator to the left. The real dictators, of course, like Fidel Castro or whoever the heck has succeeded him, always get pilgrimages, always get passes.

But Milei slashes regulation to allow the private sector to finally breathe and blossom, well, he’s the dictator.

Obviously, the left has a thing against freedom. The more it’s handed out, the more upset it gets.  Sound like anyone north of Argentina that you might have heard of?  We learn a lot about the left here in the states just by watching how they react in Argentina.

And we can only conclude that if this is a dictator, let’s have more of them.

Postscript

The precipitous drop in living standards and the monster rise in poverty tells us the story of what socialism does and why Argentinians elected wildly radical libertarian Milei.

And if we look to the United States, the story is comparable and in some ways even more alarming: Under Joe Biden’s socialism, U.S. poverty has risen 5 percentage points from 7.4% to 12.4% over a mere one year’s time, not ten years, according to a report in Time magazine.

The U.S. poverty rate saw its largest one-year increase in history. 12.4% of Americans now live in poverty according to new 2022 data from the U.S. census, an increase from 7.4% in 2021. Child poverty also more than doubled last year to 12.4% from 5.2% the year before.

The U.S. poverty level is now $13,590 for individuals and $23,030 for a family of three. The new data shows that 37.9 million people lived in poverty in 2022.

That story is the same everywhere on what socialism does and why people take chances on change. The correlation is so close it needs to become better known: Vote for a socialist, find poverty as a result. Happens every time. (Source: Chart shows why Argentinians voted for Milei.)

Background Post: 

Why Milei is Argentina’s Last, Best Hope

 

Heroic Doctors Still Fighting Covid Tyranny

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Larry Kaifesh explains in his American Thinker article One Doctor’s Fight for Covid Justice.  Excerpts it italics with my bolds and added images.

Background

A physician with more than 25 years of experience, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden is board-certified in otolaryngology and sleep medicine.  In 2019, she founded BreatheMD in Houston.  Educated at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, and the University of Texas Medical Branch, Dr. Bowden completed her residency at Stanford University.  She is one of the few direct care specialists in the U.S. who does not contract with any health insurance companies and strives to offer affordable care with clear pricing.

Dr. Bowden was targeted after speaking out against prescribed protocols for treating COVID-19 and the experimental COVID vaccine.  She has been a target of the Texas Medical Board, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Houston Methodist Hospital for her early treatment of over 6,000 patients with COVID-19, despite her record including no deaths.

Public Health Descent into Covid Madness

In the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Bowden started using monoclonal antibodies to treat her patients and had great success.  She explained that whenever she needed more, she could order them, and they would be delivered the next day.  However, the government took over the distribution of the monoclonal antibodies.  When this happened, it became harder and harder for her to get them until the government just stopped shipping them.  Dr. Bowden says this was in order to push the COVID-19 vaccine.

The monoclonal antibodies were effective, and she said patients would turn the corner the next day if they were treated early.  She emphasized that early treatments lead to better outcomes.

When she could not get any more monoclonal antibodies delivered by the government, she worried there would not be anything else as effective.  However, she discovered that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine worked just as well.

Her results highlight the effectiveness of her protocol in direct contrast to the protocols hospitals were using.  The hospital protocols are using are connected with countless deaths, hospitalizations, and adverse effects, according to the government data found on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

From early on in the pandemic, Dr. Bowden, and other doctors, were using ivermectin, the Nobel Prize–winning medication, in their extremely effective treatment protocols.  In response, the FDA initiated an aggressive campaign against using ivermectin in treating COVID-19.  The FDA used the famous “horse” message stating, “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19,” emphasizing that it is a horse dewormer and should not be used on people.  This message can still be found on the FDA website.

In 2021, the attacks on ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine increased exponentially.  Dr. Bowden and others believe that the more ivermectin, a generic prescription drug, threatened the lucrative pharmaceutical industry, the more enemies it accumulated.

At present, there are more than 17,000 physicians who support
early treatment and the protocol Dr. Bowden uses.

Covid Tyrants Continue to Oppress Doctors and Patients

Dr. Bowden and two other doctors sued the FDA for overstepping their authority and making suggestions for patient treatments.  Judge Don Willett agreed, declaring in his ruling that the “FDA is not a physician.  It has authority to inform, announce, and apprise — but not to endorse, denounce, or advise.”  Currently, this case is going back to the U.S. District Court in Galveston for further debate.

Dr. Bowden has also sued Houston Methodist for defamation.  Although her case was dismissed, she appealed, and the judge reviewed the case on Dec. 12, 2023.  She does not expect to hear anything back on this case for over a year.

Following Dr. Bowden’s success with her protocols, the Texas Medical Board filed a formal complaint against her for violations of the Texas Medical Practice Act.  Now, after a couple of appeals, her next hearing is scheduled to take place April 29, 2024.

Additionally, Dr. Bowden explained that there is now overwhelming data
showing that the spike proteins in the COVID-19 vaccines are causing
four major domains of disease:
cardiovascular, neurological, blood clots, and immunological abnormalities.

Because of this, her priority is to do everything she can to get the COVID-19 vaccine off the market.  She is working with elected officials and political candidates to pull these dangerous vaccines.  She said she is happy to report that every day, more and more are joining the initiative.

Dr. Bowden is also concerned about and focused on the pediatric vaccine schedule, which currently includes the COVID-19 vaccine.  This is scary, she explained, because most parents trust the government and do what they are told.  However, she is hopeful that more parents will wake up to the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccine.  In Dr. Bowden’s opinion, “there is no reason for children to get these shots. … We have no long-term safety data.”

‘Cures’ Worse than the Disease

Dr. Bowden went on to say when she looked at her new patient appointments, over seven percent are for ongoing chronic debilitating health issues that developed following individuals taking the vaccine.  She went on to say it is very hard to diagnose myocarditis in a nonverbal child.  How can a child communicate that he has chest pain, the primary symptom of myocarditis?  Dr. Bowden fears that these babies will get myocarditis — permanent scarring of the heart — and then one day they will collapse on the soccer field.  This is what we are looking at, she emphasized.

Any other vaccine with this record would have been pulled off
the market a long time ago, according to Dr. Bowden.  

She explained that in the 1976 swine flu outbreak, they stopped giving the vaccine after 25 deaths.  Currently on VAERS, there are more than 36,000 deaths reported, which is believed to be only one percent of the real number due to underreporting.  Yet they are still advertising this vaccine.

There is also significant concern with the protocol the hospitals are using to treat COVID-19 patients.  The CARES Act provides incentives for hospitals to use treatments directed solely by the federal government with the backing of the National Institute of Health.  These incentives are financial and provide payments to the hospitals for the following: a diagnosis of COVID, admission to the hospital, use of Remdesivir (a drug shown to cause kidney failure in 25 percent of the people who take it), a patient being put on a ventilator, and if the patient dies and the cause of death is listed as COVID-19.

These incentives were not designed to treat patients and facilitate their health,
but to aid in their demise, warned Dr. Bowden.

Last week, the FDA warned of a catastrophic drop in life expectancy, and in just the last nine months of this year, more than 158,000 more Americans died unexpectedly than in all of 2019, before the COVID-19 vaccine was introduced.  To put that number in context, that is more casualties than in all wars since Vietnam, combined.

Medical Profession Betrayed by Overlords

Dr. Bowden expressed deep concern about what is happening to the medical industry.  Doctors have lost their autonomy and are now employees taking orders from the government and administrators on how to treat their patients, she explained.  Many are sheep, she said, who sit quietly and do what they are told, rather than what is right by the medical doctrine “first do no harm.”  She sympathized that they have families and mortgages but said they cannot allow themselves to be controlled by nefarious forces.

Footnote: Xmas 2020: Twelve Forgotten Principles of Public Health

Dr. Martin Kulldorff, PhD, is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research centers on developing new epidemiological and statistical methods for the early detection and monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks and for post-market drug and vaccine safety surveillance. This holiday gift remembrance is collected from Dr. Kulldorff’s twitter thread courtesy of AIER, which also includes links to articles adding depth to the 12 points. Tweets in italics with my bolds.

  1. Public health is about all health outcomes, not just a single disease like Covid-19. It is important to also consider harms from public health measures. More. 
  2. Public health is about the long term rather than the short term. Spring Covid lockdowns simply delayed and postponed the pandemic to the fall. More. 
  3. Public health is about everyone. It should not be used to shift the burden of disease from the affluent to the less affluent, as the lockdowns have done. More. 
  4. Public health is global. Public health scientists need to consider the global impact of their recommendations. More. 
  5. Risks and harms cannot be completely eliminated, but they can be reduced. Elimination and zero-Covid strategies backfire, making things worse. More. 
  6. Public health should focus on high-risk populations. For Covid-19, many standard public health measures were never used to protect high-risk older people, leading to unnecessary deaths. More. 
  7. While contact tracing and isolation are critically important for some infectious diseases, it is futile and counterproductive for common infections such as influenza and Covid-19. More. 
  8. A case is only a case if a person is sick. Mass testing asymptomatic individuals is harmful to public health. More. 
  9. Public health is about trust. To gain the trust of the public, public health officials and the media must be honest and trust the public. Shaming and fear should never be used in a pandemic. More. 
  10. Public health scientists and officials must be honest with what is not known. For example, epidemic models should be run with the whole range of plausible input parameters. More. 
  11. In public health, open civilized debate is profoundly critical. Censoring, silencing and smearing leads to fear of speaking, herd thinking and distrust. More. 
  12. It is important for public health scientists and officials to listen to the public, who are living the public health consequences. This pandemic has proved that many non-epidemiologists understand public health better than some epidemiologists. More.

Dr. Martin Kulldorff

 

After COP28: What Transition From Hydrocarbons?

Posted on by Ron Clutz

How Do You Want Your Energy ‘Transition’?

Mario Loyola wrote at The Wall Street Journal The Impossible Energy ‘Transition’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

After two weeks of negotiation, the United Nations climate conference in Dubai agreed last week to “transition away” from fossil fuels. Left unanswered is whether governments are supposed to do that by reducing supply, reducing demand or both. A lot rides on the answer, but neither would affect the climate much.

In the demand-side scenario, technology saves the day with cost-competitive renewables. This is the vision of the International Energy Agency, according to which the more rapid the transition from fossil fuels, the more precipitous the decline in fossil-fuel prices. In its “Net Zero Emissions” scenario, oil demand drops faster than supply this decade, pushing oil prices below $30 a barrel soon after 2030, which corresponds to $1-a-gallon gasoline.

Yet even with fossil-fuel prices near historic highs, effective renewable substitutes are nowhere near cost-competitive. They’d have to get cheaper still to compete with $30-a-barrel oil. And in developed countries, especially the U.S., it’s impossible to get permits quickly enough for the staggering amount of renewable capacity that would be needed.

In the supply-side approach, governments would slash oil production or impose rationing, hoping to make fossil fuels so expensive that renewables are the only option. This is the dark vision of “Stop Oil” and Greta Thunberg. But as long as renewable substitutes aren’t immediately available and oil and gas remain necessary, a small reduction in supply causes prices to soar. That means windfall profits for energy companies, scarcity for everyone else, and electoral danger for the governments responsible. Ms. Thunberg claims that climate change is a “death sentence” for the poor, but the poor are far more vulnerable to disruptions in energy supply. In the 1970s, an oil boycott aimed at the U.S. caused famines in Africa.

Putting into context the desire to stop consumption of fossil fuels. The graph shows that global Primary Energy (PE) consumption from all sources has grown continuously over nearly 6 decades. Since 1965 oil, gas and coal (FF, sometimes termed “Thermal”) averaged 88% of PE consumed, ranging from 93% in 1965 to 82% in 2022. Note that in 2020, PE dropped 21 EJ (4%) below 2019 consumption, then increased 31 EJ in 2021. WFFC for 2020 dropped 24 EJ (5%), then in 2021 gained back 26 EJ to slightly exceed 2019 WFFC consumption. (Source: Energy Institute)

While the stop-oil view was popular at Dubai, there were enough adults in the room to keep the conference from committing to it. “There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5 C” (the Paris Agreement’s proposed limit on 21st-century temperature increases), said conference president Ahmed al Jaber, “unless you want to take the world back into caves.” Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman dared countries to try to choke off the oil supply: “Let them do that themselves. And we will see how much they can deliver.”

Poor countries are clear-eyed about the danger of energy poverty. “We are not going to compromise with the availability of power for growth,” said India’s minister for power, R.K. Singh. China has more coal plants under construction than are in operation in the U.S. Few rich countries have announced plans to stop drilling for oil or gas, and none of those are major producers. Even President Biden ran away from increasing the gasoline tax as soon as prices went above $3 a gallon in the summer of 2021.

The administration’s answer to this conundrum is to defer political consequences via the regulatory state. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to require that all coal and natural-gas plants shut down or adopt unproven zero-carbon technologies by 2038. Another EPA proposal would require 62% of all cars sold in America to be fully electric by 2032.

Assuming they survive court challenges and future administrations, they would impose soaring prices and reduced mobility on Americans. They would have almost no impact on global temperatures unless other countries, including China and India, also commit to energy poverty. The question is how much damage these policies will do before they’re abandoned.

Mr. Loyola teaches environmental law at Florida International University and is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Foornote:  Advice from Berkeley Earth

Winter Solstice Teaches Us About Climate Change

Posted on by Ron Clutz

With Winter Solstice due this week (December 21) the shortest NH day of the year demonstrates the sun’s role in seasonal climate change.  I am reposting an analysis looking into global warming in relation to our empirical knowledge of solar orbital patterns.

From Previous Post When Is It Warming?

On June 21, 2015 E.M. Smith made an intriguing comment on the occasion of Summer Solstice (NH) and Winter Solstice (SH):

“This is the time when the sun stops the apparent drift in the sky toward one pole, reverses, and heads toward the other. For about 2 more months, temperatures lag this change of trend. That is the total heat storage capacity of the planet. Heat is not stored beyond that point and there can not be any persistent warming as long as winter brings a return to cold.

I’d actually assert that there are only two measurements needed to show the existence or absence of global warming. Highs in the hottest month must get hotter and lows in the coldest month must get warmer. BOTH must happen, and no other months matter as they are just transitional.

I’m also pretty sure that the comparison of dates of peaks between locations could also be interesting. If one hemisphere is having a drift to, say, longer springs while the other is having longer falls, that’s more orbital mechanics than CO2 driven and ought to be reflected in different temperature trends / rates of drift.” Source: Summer Solstice is here at chiefio

Monthly Temps NH and SH

Notice that the global temperature tracks with the seasons of the NH. The reason for this is simple. The NH has twice as much land as the Southern Hemisphere (SH). Oceans have greater heat capacity and thus do not change temperatures as much as land does. So every year when there is almost a 4 °C swing in the temperature of the Earth, it follows the seasons of the NH. This is especially interesting because the Earth gets the most energy from the sun in January presently. That is because of the orbit of the Earth. The perihelion is when the Earth is closest to the sun and that currently takes place in January.

sun-distances

Observations and Analysis:

At the time my curiosity was piqued by Chiefio’s comment, so I went looking for data to analyze to test his proposition. As it happens, Berkeley Earth provides data tables for monthly Tmax and Tmin by hemisphere (NH and SH), from land station records. Setting aside any concerns about adjustments or infilling I did the analysis taking the BEST data tables at face value. Since land surface temperatures are more variable than sea surface temps, it seems like a reasonable dataset to analyze for the mentioned patterns. In the analysis below, all years refers to data for the years 1877 through 2013.

Tmax Records

NH and SH long-term trends are the same 0.07C/decade, and in both there was cooling before 1979 and above average warming since. However, since 1950 NH warmed more strongly, and mostly prior to 1998, while SH has warmed strongly since 1998. (Trends below are in C/yr.)

 Tmax Trends NH Tmax SH Tmax
All years 0.007 0.007
1998-2013 0.018 0.030
1979-1998 0.029 0.017
1950-1979 -0.003 -0.003
1950-2013 0.020 0.014

Summer Comparisons:

NH summer months are June, July, August, (6-8) and SH summer is December, January, February (12-2). The trends for each of those months were computed and the annual trends subtracted to show if summer months were warming more than the rest of the year (Trends below are in C/yr.).

Month less Annual NH
Tmax		 NH Tmax NH Tmax SH Tmax SH Tmax SH Tmax
Summer Trends

6

 7 8 12 1

2
All years -0.002 -0.004 -0.004 0.000 0.003 0.002
1998-2013 0.026 0.002 0.006 0.022 0.004 -0.029
1979-1998 0.003 -0.004 -0.003 -0.014 -0.029 0.001
1950-1979 -0.002 -0.002 -0.005 0.004 0.005 -0.005
1950-2013 -0.002 -0.003 -0.002 -0.002 -0.002 -0.002

NH summer months are cooler than average overall and since 1950. Warming does appear since 1998 with a large anomaly in June and also warming in August.  SH shows no strong pattern of Tmax warming in summer months. A hot December trend since 1998 is offset by a cold February. Overall SH summers are just above average, and since 1950 have been slightly cooler.

Tmin Records

Both NH and SH show Tmin rising 0.12C/decade, much more strongly warming than Tmax. SH shows average warming persisting throughout the record, slightly higher prior to 1979. NH Tmin is more variable, showing a large jump 1979-1998, a rate of 0.25 C/decade (Trends below are in C/yr.).

 Trends NH Tmin SH Tmin
All years 0.012 0.012
1998-2013 0.010 0.010
1979-1998 0.025 0.011
1950-1979 0.006 0.014
1950-2013 0.022 0.014

Winter Comparisons:

SH winter months are June, July, August, (6-8) and NH winter is December, January, February (12-2). The trends for each of those months were computed and the annual trends subtracted to show if winter months were warming more than the rest of the year (Trends below are in C/yr.).

Month less Annual NH Tmin NH Tmin NH Tmin SH Tmin SH Tmin SH Tmin
Winter Trends

12

 1 2 6 7

8
All years 0.007 0.008 0.007 0.005 0.003 0.004
1998-2013 -0.045 -0.035 -0.076 -0.043 -0.024 -0.019
1979-1998 -0.018 -0.005 0.024 0.034 0.008 -0.008
1950-1979 0.008 0.005 0.007 0.008 0.012 0.013
1950-2013 0.001 0.007 0.008 -0.001 -0.002 0.002

NH winter Tmin warming is stronger than SH Tmin trends, but shows quite strong cooling since 1998. An anomalously warm February is the exception in the period 1979-1998.  Both NH and SH show higher Tmin warming in winter months, with some irregularities. Most of the SH Tmin warming was before 1979, with strong cooling since 1998. June was anomalously warming in the period 1979 to 1998.

Summary

Tmin did trend higher in winter months but not consistently. Mostly winter Tmin warmed 1950 to 1979, and was much cooler than other months since 1998.

Tmax has not warmed in summer more than in other months, with the exception of two anomalous months since 1998: NH June and SH December.

Conclusion:

I find no convincing pattern of summer Tmax warming carrying over into winter Tmin warming. In other words, summers are not adding warming more than other seasons. There is no support for concerns over summer heat waves increasing as a pattern.

It is interesting to note that the plateau in temperatures since the 1998 El Nino is matched by winter months cooler than average during that period, leading to my discovering the real reason for lack of warming recently.

The Real Reason for the Pause in Global Warming?

These data suggest warming trends are coming from less cold overnight temperatures as measured at land weather stations. Since stations exposed to urban heat sources typically show higher minimums overnight and in winter months, this pattern is likely an artifact of human settlement activity rather than CO2 from fossil fuels.

uhi_profile-rev-big

Thus the Pause (more correctly the Plateau) in global warming is caused by end of the century completion of urbanization around most surface stations. With no additional warming from additional urban heat sources, temperatures have remained flat for more than 15 years.

Note on Data:

I thought about updating this analysis, but discovered that the BEST tables have not been updated since 2018.  The sources have also moved, now located here:

https://berkeleyearth.org/temperature-region/southern-hemisphere

https://berkeleyearth.org/temperature-region/northern-hemisphere

Happy Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice farolito labyrinth in Santa Fe

COP28 Stabilizes Mid-Dec. Arctic Ice

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

As COP28 began, Arctic ice extrent grew rapidly and by its end the Arctic was completely normal. On lower left, Chukchi sea filled in and below Bering sea started serious freezing. Lower right Hudson Bay more than doubled up to 800k km2, 2/3 of its maximum extent.  Center right Baffin Bay grew to 45% of max.

A Lufthansa aircraft at the snow-covered Munich airport on Saturday. Photograph: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AP

Coincidently, COP28 also triggered heavy snow bringing chaos to southern Germany causing Munich to suspend flights to anywhere, including Dubai.

The graph below shows the gains in ice extent mid-November to Mid December for 2023, the 17 year average and some other recent years, as well as SII (Sea Ice Index)

MASIE showed 2023 and 2022 tracking the 17 year average and ending very close together.  2007 fluctuated a lot, well below average in December before rising at the end.  SII tracked ~400k km2 lower most of this period, before rising to match MASIE in the last few days.

 

The table below shows the distribution of ice in the Arctic Ocean basins.

Region 2023349 Day 349 2023-Ave. 2007349 2023-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 12104311 12162108  -57797  12000124 104187 
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070966 1070103  863  1069711 1255 
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 948805 934827  13978  796459 152347 
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1086539  598  1077192 9945 
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897835  9  897845 0 
 (5) Kara_Sea 826874 847433  -20559  842174 -15300 
 (6) Barents_Sea 370088 335870  34218  285179 84909 
 (7) Greenland_Sea 688238 546548  141690  571916 116322 
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 819365 824803  -5438  852443 -33079 
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854860 853420  1440  852556 2304 
 (10) Hudson_Bay 800760 1101080  -300320  1248305 -447546 
 (11) Central_Arctic 3212059 3204043  8016  3192331 19728 
 (12) Bering_Sea 226652 236725  -10073  93340 133312 
 (13) Baltic_Sea 55323 11920  43403  10353 44970 
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 231640 200090  31550  206342 25297 

Note that Arctic ice now exceeds 12M km2, or 80% of last March maximum.  As shown in the table above, the main deficit to average is in Hudson Bay, likely to be overcome with the current rapid growth. Offsetting are surpluses elsewhere, mostly in Greenland sea, along with Barents and Baltic seas.

 

 

Keep Your Head, Others are Losing Theirs Over Climate

Posted on by Ron Clutz

John Stossel’s interview with Bjorn Lomborg is featured in his article at Reason The Media’s Misleading Fearmongering Over Climate Change. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

“Over the last 20 years, because of temperature rises, we have seen about 116,000 more people die from heat. But 283,000 fewer people die from cold.”

United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry says it will take trillions of dollars to “solve” climate change. Then he says, “There is not enough money in any country in the world to actually solve this problem.”

Yes, they are projecting more than 100 Trillion US$.

Kerry has little understanding of money or how it’s created. He’s a multimillionaire because he married a rich woman. Now he wants to take more of your money to pretend to affect climate change.

Bjorn Lomborg points out that there are better things society should spend money on.

Lomberg acknowledges that a warmer climate brings problems. “As temperatures get higher, sea water, like everything else, expands. So we’re going to maybe see three feet of sea level rise. Then they say, ‘So everybody who lives within three feet of sea level, they’ll have to move!’ Well, no. If you actually look at what people do, they built dikes and so they don’t have to move.”

Rotterdam Adaptation Policy–Ninety years thriving behind dikes and dams.

People in Holland did that years ago. A third of the Netherlands is below sea level. In some areas, it’s 22 feet below. Yet the country thrives. That’s the way to deal with climate change: adjust to it.

“Fewer people are going to get flooded every year, despite the fact that you have much higher sea level rise. The total cost for Holland over the last half-century is about $10 billion,” says Lomberg. “Not nothing, but very little for an advanced economy over 50 years.”

For saying things like that, Lomberg is labeled “the devil.”

“The problem here is unmitigated scaremongering,” he replies. “A new survey shows that 60 percent of all people in rich countries now believe it’s likely or very likely that unmitigated climate change will lead to the end of mankind. This is what you get when you have constant fearmongering in the media.”

Some people now say they will not have children because they’re convinced that climate change will destroy the world. Lomborg points out how counterproductive that would be: “We need your kids to make sure the future is better.”

He acknowledges that climate warming will kill people.

“As temperatures go up, we’re likely to see more people die from heat. That’s absolutely true. You hear this all the time. But what is underreported is the fact that nine times as many people die from cold…. As temperatures go up, you’re going to see fewer people die from cold. Over the last 20 years, because of temperature rises, we have seen about 116,000 more people die from heat. But 283,000 fewer people die from cold.”

A 2015 study by 22 scientists from around the world found that cold kills over 17 times more people than heat. Source: The Lancet

That’s rarely reported in the news.

When the media doesn’t fret over deaths from heat,
they grab at other possible threats.

CNN claims, “Climate Change is Fueling Extremism.”

The BBC says, “A Shifting Climate is Catalysing Infectious Disease.“

U.S. News and World Report says, “Climate Change will Harm Children’s Mental Health.”

Lomborg replies, “It’s very, very easy to make this argument that everything is caused by climate change if you don’t have the full picture.”

He points out that we rarely hear about positive effects of climate change, like global greening.

Spatial pattern of trends in Gross Primary Production (1982- 2015). Source: Sun et al. 2018.

 

“That’s good! We get more green stuff on the planet. My argument is not that climate change is great or overall positive. It’s simply that, just like every other thing, it has pluses and minuses…. Only reporting on the minuses, and only emphasizing worst-case outcomes, is not a good way to inform people.”

Synopsis of Lomborg’s Policy Recommendation (excerpted transcription)

If you’re a politician and you look at ten different problems, you’re natural inclination is to say, “Let’s give 1/10 to each one of them.” And economists would tend to say, “No, let’s give all of the money to the most efficient problem first and then to the second most efficient problem, and so on. I’m simply suggesting there’s a way that we could do much better with much less.

Of course if you feel very strongly about your particular area, when I come and say, “Actually, this is not a very efficient use of resources.” I get why people get upset. But for our collective good, for all the stuff that we do on the planet, we actually need to consider carefully where do we spend money well, compared to where do we just spend money and feel virtuous about ourselves.

If we spend way too much money ineffectively on climate, not only
are we not fixing climate, but we’re also wasting an enormous amount
of money that could have been spent on all these other things.

I’m simply trying to make that simple point, and I think most people kind of get that.  Remember, electricity is about a fifth of our total energy consumption. So, all everybody’s talking about is all the electricity, which is the easiest thing to switch over. But we don’t know anything about how we’re going to, know very, very little about how we’re going to deal with the other 4/5. This is energy that we use on things that are very, very hard to replace. So it’s a fertilizer that keeps 4 billion people alive. Making the fertilizer. It’s steel, cement, it’s industrial processes. Most of heating we use comes from fossil fuels, most transportation, that’s fossil fuels.

Know that if the U.S. went entirely net zero today and stayed that way for the rest of the century, consider how incredibly extreme this would be. First of all, you would not be able to feed everyone in the U.S. The whole economy would break down. You wouldn’t know how to get transportation. A lot of people would freeze. Some people would fry. There would be lots and lots of problems. But even if you did this and managed to do it, the net impact, if you run it through the U.N. climate model, is that you would reduce temperatures by the end of the century by 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit. We would almost not be able to measure it by the end of the century. It would have virtually no impact.

Look, again, we’re rich and so a lot of people feel like you can spend money on many different things. And that’s true. I’m making the argument that for fairly little money, we could do amazing good. If we spent $35 billion, not a trillion dollars, just $35 billion, which is not nothing. I don’t think, neither you or I have that amount of money. But, you know, in the big scheme of things, this is a rounding error. $35 billion could save 4.2 million lives in the poor part of the world, each and every year and make the poor world $1.1 trillion richer.

I think we have a moral responsibility to remember, that there are lots and lots of people, so mostly about 6 billion people out there, who don’t have this luxury of being able to think 100 years ahead and think about a little bit of a fraction of a degree, who wants to make sure that their kids are safe.
And so, the next money we spend should probably be on these very simple and cheap policies.

 

November 2023 Ocean Warmth Persists Due to Tropics

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 November 2023.  A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016. 

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.  In 2021 the summer NH summer spike was joined by warming in the Tropics but offset by a drop in SH SSTs, which raised the Global anomaly slightly over the mean.

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

Now comes El Nino as shown by the upward spike in the Tropics since January, the anomaly nearly tripling from 0.38C to 1.07C.  In August 2023, all regions rose, especially NH up from 0.70C to 1.37C, pulling up the global anomaly to a new high for this period. September showed a new peak for NH at 1.41, but then in October anomalies in all regions have dropped down 0.1C bringing down the Global anomaly.  In November, NH added cooling, offset by slight warming in SH.  Tropical ocean temps rose to nearly match 2015 in November, but the Global anomaly changed little and remained lower than the September peak.

Comment:

The climatists have seized on this unusual warming as proof of their Zero Carbon agenda, 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 is well understood at this point that the phenomenon has nothing to do with CO2.

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

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

A longer view of SSTs

To enlarge, open image in new tab.

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

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

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

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

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

Now in 2023 the Tropics flipped from below to well above average, while NH has produced a summer peak extending into September higher than any previous year. In fact, October and now November are showing that this number is likely the crest, despite El Nino driving the Tropics anomaly close to 1998 and 2015 peaks.

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 data through October.  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 varibility, high and low, drives the annual results for this basin.  Note also the peaks in 2010, lows after 2014, and a rise in 2021. Now in 2023 the peak is holding at 1.4C.  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 now November cooled by ~0.3C.

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 1980-202306, value 0.38, also for the period 1997-2012. The red line is 2013-202306, value 0.64. As noted above, these rising stages are driven by the combined warming in the Tropics and NH, including both Pacific and Atlantic basins.

Curiosity:  Solar Coincidence?

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

Summary

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

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

Footnote: Why Rely on HadSST4

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

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

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

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

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

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

 

 

COP28 Optics: Deal to “Transition Away” not “Phase Out” Fossil Fuels

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Once again equivocation rules climatists.  After the uproar over demands to “phase out” hydrocarbon fuel, the wording was changed to say “transition away.”  Thus the divide is papered over while alarmists claim agreement was reached to “leave it in the ground.”  Others will point to language such as “transition away in a just, orderly and equitable manner.”  Just like Paris COP, everyone pledges and celebrates as though something has changed

David Blackmon explains the wordplay in his Forbes article COP28 Offers ‘Transition Away’ From Fossil Fuels But No ‘Phaseout’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

COP28 just concluded feverish negotiations in its final hours—actually, beyond its scheduled final hours—with the announcement of a final agreement Wednesday that includes language committing its near-200 participating nations to “transition away from” fossil fuels. That is the language negotiators landed upon to replace the previous language pledging to “phase out” the use of coal, oil and natural gas across the coming decades preferred by energy transition boosters.

Many observers are no doubt left wondering what the real difference is between the two phrases, other than that the “transition away from” language was found to be less offensive to big producers and users of these energy resources than a phasing-out turned out to be. It isn’t a bad question, to be sure.

Advocates for this final language claim it is “historic” in that it is the first time any of the 28 UN Conference of the Parties climate summits have overtly mentioned moving away from the use of fossil fuels in a final agreement. But it is fair to note that countries across the globe have invested many trillions of dollars—much of it funded by costly debt—in efforts to “transition away from” fossil fuels over the last three decades now and little has changed. The world still gets roughly 80% of its primary energy from coal, oil and natural gas, only a sliver less than it did at the turn of the century. The world will use record volumes of all three fossil fuels in 2023, and most experts project it will do so again in 2024 and beyond.

So, while this language may well be “historic,” it is also merely a restatement of commitments many of the signatory governments have already embarked upon for years and failed to achieve. Honestly, it is difficult to envision how what amounts to yet another COP-generated word salad will do anything to change the undeniable global dynamic.

Reuters quotes Anne Rasmussen, lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, assessing the language as uninspiring. “We have made an incremental advancement over business as usual, when what we really need is an exponential step change in our actions,” she said.

But COP conferences involving more than 190 participating countries with widely disparate economic and energy security priorities and 70,000+ attendees are not really designed to produce exponential step changes, are they? COP rules requiring unanimous consent to all language included in each subsequent final agreement ensure that commitments will inevitably be watered down with qualifying language designed to enable each country to act upon its own unique interpretation of what phrases like “transition away from” actually mean.

Those are bold words, but everyone should recognize that “real-economy outcomes” in, say, Peru or Uganda are likely to look entirely different than those in Belgium or Canada. The same is likely true of the respective outcomes we will see in the coming years in India as compared to the United States.

The Bottom Line

As an example: If China wished to signify a zeal to “transition away from” its own massive use of fossil fuels, it might decide to cancel its new program going into effect January 1, 2024, which will subsidize the building of hundreds more coal-fired power plants. Does anyone involved in COP28 expect that or any similar action by the Xi Jinping government as a result of its signing off on this agreement? Of course not. Beijing will interpret the phrase “transition away from” as it sees fit and continue to prioritize its national energy security over any climate commitments.

At the end of the day, this final agreement from COP28 seems destined to be remembered in the same vein as all previous COPs other than COP3 (Kyoto) and COP21 (Paris) are remembered—as, to paraphrase William Shakespeare, a lot of sound and fury signifying not much at all.

Footnote:  Let the Blame Games Go Onto Steroids.

 

Gross Errors in Textbook Climate Science

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Dr. Paul Pettré provides a damning critque of textbook climate science taught to impressionable students.

Paul Pettré is Honorary Chief Meteorological Engineer. His scientific training took place at the Pierre and Marie Curie University (Paris VI) where he obtained a PhD in geophysics with Professor Paul Queney. His career developed at Météo-France by analyzing aerological campaigns on local winds and air pollution problems. At the end of his career, Paul Pettré turned to the study of atmospheric circulation and climate in Antarctica, where he carried out seven missions. Paul Pettré has published numerous articles in high-level peer-reviewed journals internationally and has established collaborations with several international research teams.

His article in French is at the blog Association des climato-réalistes Critique objective du concept d’effet de serre (Objective Critique of Greenhouse Gas Effect).  The paper in French is here as a Word Document. Below is an English translation I produced using an online translator (any mistakes you can attribute to Mr. Google).  Later on I post some insightful comments with responses from the author, which really served as a tutorial on earth’s climate system and its thermodynamics.   Dr. Pettré’s summary comment in that thread serves as an overview to the paper and discussion. (bolds are mine along with some images).

Plain Language Overview

In this paper, we discuss the radiation budget observed by satellite over an annual cycle. In this radiation budget, only two fluxes are measured: the incoming flux of 340 W and the flux emitted by the surface of the Earth + Oceans system of 240 W. All other terms of the Earth’s energy balance are estimates. The IPCC says that the Earth is in thermal equilibrium, implying that the energy emitted to the cosmos is 340 W to balance the incoming energy.

The IPCC says that the Earth + Ocean system emits to the atmosphere all the energy received from the sun estimated at 240 W, implying that the Earth + Ocean system is a black body. What physics says is that the thermodynamic system Earth + Oceans + Atmosphere is not in thermal equilibrium and that it has entropy. Physics also says that the Earth + Oceans thermodynamic system is not a black body and therefore the energy emitted from the surface of the system to the atmosphere is not equal to the energy received.

The IPCC’s energy balance is therefore wrong for these two reasons, which are purely a matter of thermodynamics. In this false assessment, a certain amount of energy is missing, which comes from hazardous estimates attributed to what the IPCC calls the “greenhouse effect”. This missing energy, estimated at 155 W, was calculated according to the “Earth’s energy budget” proposed by NASA/NOAA, which is agreed upon by the IPCC.

Objective Criticism of the Greenhouse Effect Concept

The scientific consensus introduced by the IPCC several years ago is that the Climatic warming observed since the mid-19th century would be the consequence of the increase in the concentration of “greenhouse gases” (GHGs) resulting from the concomitant increase in the industrial activities that consume the fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

For example, the chemistry textbook for university students (Th.L.Brown, H.E. LeMay, Jr. a.o. Chemistry. The Central Science. Pearson Education. 2009. ISBN 978-0-13-235-848-4. 1117 pp.) says on page 761 [1, p 761]:

“In addition to protecting us from harmful short-wavelength radiation, the atmosphere is essentially at a reasonably uniform and moderate temperature at the Earth’s surface. The Earth is in global thermal equilibrium with its environment. That means that the planet is emitting energy into space at a rate equal to the rate at which it absorbs energy from the sun. (…)

A portion of the infrared radiation that covers the surface of the the Earth is absorbed by water vapor and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In Absorbing this radiation, these two atmospheric gases help to maintain a uniform and livable temperature at the surface by retaining, so to speak, infrared radiation, which we feel as heat. The influence of H2O, CO2 and certain other atmospheric gases on the temperature of the Earth is called the “greenhouse effect” because, by trapping infrared radiation, these gases act like the glass in a greenhouse. The gases themselves are called “greenhouse gases” (GHG).”

This definition corresponds to the current scientific consensus of what is known as the “greenhouse effect” advocated by the IPCC and supported by most of the national scientific institutes such as NOAA in the United States or CNRS in France.

However, this definition lacks scientific rigour due to approximations or
neglect and ignorance of the physical laws that govern general circulation
of the atmosphere at the origin of what is known as the climate.

The first three sentences of the first paragraph of this definition are erroneous from a scientific point of view:

1. The atmosphere does not maintain a uniform and moderate temperature at the surface of the Earth.

The atmosphere of planet Earth is the gaseous fluid that surrounds its surface. This gas is held together by gravitational attraction and is set in motion by the unequal heating of its surface (thermodynamics) and by the rotation of the planet (force of of Coriolis).

The general circulation of the atmosphere is characterized by a very strong predominance of horizontal displacements, which are themselves generated by the predominance of meridional temperature or pressure gradients. On a global scale, it is considered that there is a close correlation between the distribution of the wind and pressure, and therefore also temperature by virtue of the hydrostatic equation.

It is therefore necessary to consider seasonal mean meridional distribution of temperature, pressure, and meridional component of the wind. In the troposphere, the average temperature decreases upwards at an average rate of 6 to 7°C per km, and horizontally towards the pole in each of the temperate zones, maximum amplitude in winter and minimum amplitude in summer. Horizontal meridional gradients are especially important in temperate zones and very low in all seasons in the equatorial zone.

As a result, the Earth’s global atmospheric circulation has bands alternating zonal circulation resulting from meridional temperature gradients, separated by areas of convergence and divergence of winds, which result from the Coriolis force generated by the rotation of the Earth on the herself. It is not scientifically possible to separate the global atmospheric circulation climate.

As a result, the control of climate models cannot be based on a criterion
that has no physical link with the overall atmospheric circulation.

Control of climate models based on an average surface temperature should, in order to be scientifically credible, be based on five meridian zones: -90° at -60°, -60° to -30°, -30° to +30°, +30° to +60° and +60° to +90°, where the – and + signs denote the southern and northern hemispheres.

2. The Earth is not in thermal equilibrium with its environment.

According to William Lowrie, the Earth’s internal heat is its greatest source of energy. It feeds into global geological processes such as the tectonics of the plates and the generation of the geomagnetic field. The Earth’s Internal Heat comes from two sources: the decay of radioactive isotopes present in rocks of the crust and mantle, and the primordial heat from the formation of the of the planet. Internal heat must find a way to remove itself from the Earth. The three main forms of heat transfer are radiation, conduction, and convection. Heat is also transferred during the transitions of composition and phase. Heat transport by conduction is the most important in solid regions of the Earth, while thermal convection occurs in the viscous mantle and the molten outer core.

According to the KamLAND collaboration, the Earth has cooled since its formation, but the decay of radiogenic isotopes, in particular uranium, thorium and potassium, in the interior of the planet, are a source of permanent heat. The current total heat flux from Earth to space is 44.2±1.0 TW, but the contribution from the primary waste heat and the radiogenic decay remains uncertain. However, the disintegration of radiogenic radiation can be estimated by the flux of geoneutrinos, electrically neutral emissions that are emitted during radio decay and that can cross the Earth practically unaffected. Here we combine precise measurements of the geoneutrino flux made by the antineutrino detector Kamioka, Japan, with existing detector measurements Borexino, Italy.

We find that the decay of uranium-238 and of Thorium-232 both contribute to the Earth’s heat flow. Neutrinos emitted by the decay of potassium 40 are below the detection limits of our experiences, but they are known to contribute 4 TW. Overall, our Observations indicate that the heat from the radioactive decay contributes to about half of the Earth’s total heat flux. We therefore conclude that the primordial heat of the Earth is not yet exhausted.

3.  The Earth emits more energy into space than it receives from the sun

The sun is not the Earth’s only source of heat. The sun provides the Earth a net solar radiation of 235 W/m2. In order for the Earth to be in thermal equilibrium, it would have to move into space as soon as possible 244 W/m2. In this case, the Earth would behave like a black body and there would be neither global warming nor cooling of the surface. For an emission of 235 W/m2 from Earth to space, that is, if the Earth were a black body, corresponds, by applying the Stefan-Boltzmann law with an albedo of 1, an average Earth’s surface temperature of -19°C.

But the Earth emits 390 W/m2 to space. So the Earth is not a black body since it emits 155 W/m2 more than it receives. For an emission of 390 W/m2, corresponds, applying the Stefan-Boltzmann law with an average albedo of 0.3, an average surface temperature of the Earth of 15°C. The mere fact that the Earth is not a black body, but a body with an average albedo has been estimated at 0.3 results in a warming of the average temperature Earth’s global surface temperature of about 30°C.

The CNRS in an article written by Marie-Antoine Mélières explains what warming by the “greenhouse effect” would provide the 155 W/m2 required for emission from the Earth’s surface of 390 W/m2. This theory assumes that the Earth and its atmosphere are two separate bodies, each in thermal equilibrium, and that all the energy received independently by one and the other is fully reissued by each one. This concept is demonstrably false since it would require that the Earth and the atmosphere be black bodies.

The Earth cannot be a black body because: on the one hand, it has an average albedo estimated at 0.3, which means that it does not re-emit all the energy received. And on the other hand that its core is made of molten material that radiates heat to the surface that it warms up. The volcanic regions are a clear proof of this. Similarly, there is no physical evidence that the atmosphere is a black body. It could not be since you can’t define its upper limit: it has no surface area above a given temperature.

As a result, it must be noted that the definition of the “greenhouse effect”
that is proposed by the IPCC and generally supported by scientific
institutions is a concept that cannot be not be scientifically proven.

We have seen that in the radiative balance of the Earth the 155 W/m2 that are emitted into the atmosphere can not be attributed to the “greenhouse effect. “That assumes the Earth behaves in a way like a black body, which it clearly is not, since it is scientifically accepted that it has a mean albedo different from 1 (O,3). And at least one can observe and evaluate locally, the heating of the surface by the Earth’s internal heat.

The CNRS statement (cited above) states: “The global effect of the greenhouse effect (is estimated): 155 watts per m2 surface heating (of which approximately 100 Watts related to the role of water vapour and 50 watts to CO2, all other remaining greenhouse gases constant”. That statement is therefore not physically demonstrated, nor is there any evidence of the effects claimed for the doubling of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Comment Thread at Association des climato-réalistes

Various commenters participated, a few quite adversarial, and many inquisitive, with several responses provided by the author Dr.Paul Pettré.  Not surprising was the dismissing of earth internal heat as a climate factor.  The author responded accordingly.

Contrary to what you say, I do not give in my article the value of 44 TW for “the terrestrial heat flux”, but for one of the two terrestrial fluxes identified in the article cited in reference and estimated at 155 W per m2. Meteorology and climate are not exact sciences, but the mechanisms that govern them must always be able to be explained by physics. This requires working with proven scientific methods and some approximations or assumptions are permitted, but a responsible scientist must always keep in mind the assumptions on which he or she has based his or her study and be willing to examine contradictions if they arise.

Pettré provides a context regarding Earth internal heat:

Any thermodynamic system that is not in equilibrium, i.e. if a temperature gradient and/or movement is observed within the system, will necessarily tend for physical reasons to eventually reach a state of equilibrium. The Earth is no exception to this rule: it consumes energy that is not renewable and it is inexorably cooling. The problem is therefore to assess the entropy of the Earth and, knowing its energy reserve, to estimate its lifetime.

The loss of energy by radiation is not the only one to be taken into account because there is also the friction due to its rotation on itself and its displacement in the cosmos which is not empty. There may be others that I don’t know about, but I guess the energy lost through radiation is the most important. What is shocking about the very low value in mW/m2 that is proposed to us is that it leads to the Earth being almost eternal, which is probably not consistent with generally accepted astronomical theories.

I believe that the Earth’s energy reserve is evaluated on the basis of the mass of iron that constitutes the core of the Earth and its temperature, which has recently been re-evaluated, to the order of 6250°C, close to that of the surface of the sun. The objective of the referenced article was to assess the Earth’s life reserve. The authors’ conclusion is that there was no need to worry about this.

The problem we are interested in is whether the heat transfer from the centre of the Earth to the cosmos is the one identified so far of 44 TW or whether there could be another one of unidentified electromagnetic origin. The referenced article identified such a source of electromagnetic radiation measurable by complex methods and gave an approximate estimate of 155 W/m2, but this assessment was not the objective of the study and is given as a guideline. Nevertheless, it is of great value to us because it is a new result for the Earth’s energy balance.

To answer your question, we need to take into account the functioning of the Earth’s core and the influence of solar radiation on it. These questions are the subject of arduous discussions among astronomers which I cannot go into. Basically, in the center of the Earth, there is a core made of iron at a temperature of 6250°C. The energy source is nuclear fission. Around this core there is magma at a temperature between 680°C and 1200°C. Around the magma there is the Earth’s crust formed by tectonic plates.

Magma is in motion because the Earth rotates and it is subject, like the atmosphere, to the Coriolis force which varies with latitude, zero at the poles, maximum at the equator and combines with centrifugal force. It is this movement of the plasma that explains why there is a certain thrust on the Earth’s crust that displaces the tectonic plates. Over a very long period of time, on the order of billions of years, this force moves continents and modifies the climate.

Some authors believe that magma is isothermal and therefore not a source of electromagnetic radiation. Other authors consider the fact that the earth is in the atmosphere of the sun and subject to solar electromagnetic radiation which would have an effect on the magma which would be anisotropic from a magnetic point of view with an outward orientation. This electromagnetic anisotropy of the magma would explain the electromagnetic radiation observed by the authors.

Solar electromagnetic disturbances have a known period of 11 years. We are currently at the maximum of these disturbances, which may explain the increase in the frequency of some of the events currently observed. I can mention the auroras because the connection is obvious. To conclude, I would say that the discussion around these 155 W/m2 can take place, but it is not possible to dismiss this observation without serious argumentation.

Background Post Overview: Seafloor Eruptions and Ocean Warming