The Global Warming Potentials (GWP) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Table 2.14 of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) show the increase in warming by methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) is 21 and 310 times respectively that of CO2. There has been wide acceptance of these values since publishing in 2007. Nevertheless, they are inaccurate.
This study uses accurate methods to calculate the impacts of CO2, CH4, and N2O on the warming of the atmosphere. For example, this quantitative analysis from reliable physics shows the contribution of CO2 to warming at Amsterdam is 0.0083°C out of a difference of 26°C. The warming effect of CH4 on the Earth’s atmosphere is 0.408% of that of CO2, and the warming by N2O is 0.085% of that of CO2.
Thus, the warming effects of CO2, CH4, and N2O are too small to measure. The invalidity of the methane and nitrous oxide values indicates the GWPs of the remaining approximately sixty chemicals in the Table 2.14 list are also invalid. A recommendation is that the IPCC consider revising or retracting the GWP values in Table 2.14.
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to examine the Global Warming Potentials (GWPs) in Table 2.14 of the Fourth Assessment Report [1] of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Figure 1.The Global Warming Potentials (GWP) of methane and nitrous oxide calculated by the IPCC in Table2.14 have profoundly affected the decisions made by elected officials worldwide.
Nitrogen fertilizers have been restricted or banned in several countries because they emit a small amount of nitrous oxide. Nitrogen fertilizers are essential for the growth of plants, and nitrogen is often the limiting nutrient [2]. Restricting their use affects food production adversely and can cause food shortages. The IPCC claims that nitrous oxide has up to 310 times the warming effect of CO2. This value is so significant that we must determine whether or not this value of 310 is valid.
A similar situation occurs with methane, which is claimed to have 21 times the warming effect of CO2. Natural gas is virtually all methane transported widely by pipelines and pumping stations. The claim is that methane leaks from natural gas pipeline systems and processing are warming the Earth. Periodically, a scientist will quote Table 2.14 and raise the alarm about methane and the possibility of significant methane releases from the Arctic Tundra caused by the warming of the Earth [3].
The methodology of this study answers the question: “Of the temperature difference between two weather stations, how many degrees Celsius do CO2, CH4, and N2O contribute?”Four weather stations—Pond Inlet, Amsterdam, Colorado Springs, and Princeton, NJ—were selected to provide the answers. The temperature and relative humidity are recorded within the same.
Calculations for Table 2 Column D
In Row 5, the grams of CO2 per kilogram (kg) of dry air is (0.00041806 x 44 x (1000/29) = 0.630, where 44 and 29 are the molecular weights of CO2 and air, respectively. In Row 9, the grams of CH4 per kg of dry air are (0.000001927 x 16 x (1000/29)) = 0.001063, where 16 is the molecular weight of methane. Similarly, in Row 12, Column E, the grams of N2O per kg of dry air are (0.00000033675 x 44 x (1000/29) = 0.000511, where 44 is the molecular weight of nitrous oxide.There are 0.630/0.00106 = 594 grams of CO2 per gram of methane. Thus, there are (594 x 44)/16) = 1634 molecules of CO2 per methane molecule. Thus, because the molecular weights of CO2 and N2O are the same at 44, there are (0.630/0.000511) = 1235 molecules of CO2 for each molecule of N2O in the Earth’s atmosphere. Thus, in September 2023, CO2 molecules outnumber CH4 molecules by 1634 and N2O molecules by 1235.
Measuring the Contribution of CO2, CH4 and N2O to Temperature in the Earth’s Atmosphere
It is essential to understand that the measured and recorded temperature is the sum of all the factors affecting Earth’s temperature. These include warming caused by radiation from the Sun absorbed by CO2, CH4, N2O, feedback, and other warming or cooling effects. These factors also apply to temperature differences. The recorded temperature is input to the Humidair psychrometric program, which includes these factors in the heat content (enthalpy) and specific volume.
The following method quantifies the contribution of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide to the difference in temperature between three weather stations and Pond Inlet.Table 3 is a summary of the Excel calculations. The file for the Excel calculations is: “Excel calculations for GWP Mar 102024.xlsx.” From the Excel spreadsheet, Column H, the temperatures measured at Pond Inlet, Amsterdam, Colorado Springs, and Princeton on December 30, 2023, were -18°C, 8°C, 3°C, and 4°C, respectively. We set the recorded level of CO2 at 418.06 at the location with the lowest of the four temperatures, i.e., at Pond Inlet. This is because the number of molecules of CO2 per cubic meter falls as the temperature rises.
The grams of CO2 per kg of dry air in the Pond Inlet row of Table 3 are the same as in Column D of Table 2. The temperature contributions of CO2, CH4, and N2O to the difference in temperature in °C between Pond Inlet and the weather stations in Column A are in Columns G, H, and I. The total is in Column J. The upper lines in the titles of the columns are the locations in the Excel spreadsheet calculations. Note that the average CO2 for Table 2 was 418.06 in August 2023, and the level of CO2 during the recording of the values for the Excel spreadsheet was 422.3 ppm. The difference of 4.24 ppm has no significant effect on the results of this study.
As shown in Table 4, the temperature increase caused by CH4 and N2O is a small percentage of the temperature rise caused by CO2.The warming effect of CO2 is too small to measure [9, 10].Thus, the warming effects of CH4 and N2O are also too small.The data in IPCC Table 2.14, showing that CH4 has 21 times the warming effect of CO2 and that N2O has 310 times the warming effect of CO2, are grossly incorrect.
Summary and Conclusions
This study provides evidence that the IPCC Global Warming Potentials are incorrect. It starts with the levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) measured as molecules per million molecules of dry air, which is the molar fraction. Then, quantitative results from reliable physics establish the enthalpy and specific volume at four weather stations. Chemistry determines the grams of each gas per kg of dry air. The increase in the temperature bycurrent levels of methane (CH4) and nitrous (N2O) in the Earth’s atmosphere isa small percentage of that of CO2.Conclusions 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 answer, “Of the temperature difference between two weather stations, how many degrees Celsius do CO2, CH4, and N2O contribute?”
6.1.In this study, the difference in temperature between Pond Inlet and Amsterdam is 26°C. The contribution of CO2 to this difference is 0.0083°C, but this amount is too small to measure.
6.2.The contribution of CH4 to the 26°C difference between Pond Inlet and Amsterdam is 0.0000338°C.This current level of methane in the atmosphere increases the temperature by 0.408% of that of CO2. It does not have 21 times the warming of CO2 as claimed by the IPCC.
6.3.N2O’s contribution to the 26°C difference between Pond Inlet and Amsterdam is 0.00000705oC. This is 0.085% of that of CO2. It does not have 310 times the warming of CO2, as claimed by the IPCC
6.4.The total contribution of all three gases to the 26°C difference between Pond Inlet and Amsterdam is 0.00833oC. This is a typical result; this difference is too small to measure.
6.5.The warming of the Earth’s atmosphere by CH4 and N2O is 0.408% and 0.085% respectively of that of CO2.
6.6.The warming by CH4 and N2O is so tiny in the Earth’s atmosphere that the IPCC estimates of warming by GWP over several years are irrelevant.
6.7.It is reasonable for the IPCC to consider revising or withdrawing Table 2.14 in the Fourth Assessment Report
Footnote:
If like me you are new to the term “psychrometrics”, it refers to an engineering method for assessing the thermodynamic properties of moist air. From Understanding The Psychrometric Chart
The psychrometric chart is a tool commonly used in the field of engineering to understand and analyze the properties of air. This chart provides valuable information about the thermodynamic properties of moist air, which is crucial for various applications such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. By understanding the psychrometric chart, engineers can make more informed decisions and optimize their designs for enhanced efficiency and comfort.
In addition to temperature, the psychrometric chart also includes other properties such as humidity ratio, enthalpy, and specific volume. The humidity ratio represents the mass of moisture present in the air per unit mass of dry air, while enthalpy is the total heat content of the air including both sensible and latent heat. Specific volume, on the other hand, is the volume occupied by a unit mass of air. Together, these properties provide a comprehensive understanding of the thermodynamic behavior of moist air.
Charles MacKay: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
I have written here and elsewhere countless times before of the dangers of responding prematurely to alarmist concerns about climate change. Dr. Benny Peiser of the British Global Warming Policy Foundation spoke to the Friends of Science Society in Calgary earlier this month, warning that Europe’s extremist net zero carbon emission policies may get to Canada even though they are now running into extreme problems in Europe. The North American media has not much reported on the widespread and often violent farmer protests in Europe, which has caused every government that has been put to the test to scale back their aggressive climate change policies.
Tractors stand on a street during a protest by Belgian farmers over price pressures, taxes and green regulation, on the day of an EU agriculture ministers’ meeting in Brussels, Belgium March 26, 2024. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
For a long time, it was a political free lunch: everybody loves the environment, and the climate change issue was very skillfully transformed by the left into an assault on the capitalist system from a new angle in the name of saving the planet. As long as the heavy costs of displacing fossil fuels by so-called renewable energy were carefully disguised and diffused, everybody could wallow incollective self-praise for doing the healthy and environmentally responsible thing.
The burden of subsidized wind and solar farms didn’t appear on peoples’ energy bills, though eventually they were placed on the back of the taxpayer. Now, however, net zero policies are directly eating into the earnings and savings of the public and in most of Europe, the taxpayer rebellion is exploding, and the advantages of democracy are being reaffirmed as elected governments scamper to the rear, explaining that there has been a misunderstanding. When the German government tried to compel the people of that country to change their gas boilers for heat pumps at a cost of thousands of dollars per home, what critics called “boilergeddon,” it produced a so-called green-lash.
Another political disaster has befallen the western European governments that had rolled over like poodles in front of the climate change alarmists: once they had fully committed themselves to the boondoggle of electric vehicles (EV’s), and forced the powerful automobile industries of Germany, France, and Italy into conversion of gas powered vehicles to EV’s, sales of EV’s plummeted after the customary faddish start, just as much cheaper Chinese EV’s flooded into Europe. Germany and Italy forced the European Union into delaying its ill-considered ban on internal combustion engine vehicles past 2035. Those who jubilantly imagined that Europe would commit industrial suicide by destroying its own automobile industry, will have to revise their plans. There are now thousands of cheap Chinese EV’s parked at the main ports of Europe with no buyers in sight. As Dr. Peiser pointed out in Calgary, “If this was really about climate change, wouldn’t you want the cheapest EV’s, the cheapest wind, and solar, all from China?”
China’s Abandoned EV Graveyard: Thousands Of Cars Rot In Huge Fields
It is now clear in Europe, as it long has been in the private sector of the United States, that with whole industries and millions of jobs at stake, implementation of net zero policies in the West would make China the dominant economic and industrial power of the world. Even our most naïve and insipid global warming crusaders are unenthused by that bone-chilling prospect. Although Germany has finally acted to protect its auto industry, it is not yet doing the same for the public. It is still officially planning to ban weekend driving to meet climate targets. If the federal German government proceeds with such an insane plan, it will sink without a ripple at the next election.
There have even been some murmurings of emulation of this course in Canada; on Sept. 14, 2021, Journal Metro of Quebec proposed pre-emptively moving against a climate crisis by lockdown measures, an emulation of the Covid lockdown then ending, but including rations and limitations on personal travel. This proposal comes from the same sort of thinking that seeks to eliminate meat by a war on bovine flatulence.
Placid and docile toward virtue-posturing though Canadians are,
insane measures like these to mitigate climate change would surely
prove to be the funeral pyre of the coercive climate change terrorists.
For notorious historic reasons, Europe is always vulnerable to the madnesses and outrages of the left. The senior human rights court in Europe ruled three weeks ago in a lawsuit brought by 2000 elderly Swiss women against the Swiss government that it had violated the human rights of the plaintiffs by insufficiently mitigating climate change. Switzerland is a very small country but is responsible for between two and three per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, while Canada, a huge country with a much larger population, emits only 1.5 per cent of global emissions, compared to 27 percent for China. The European Court of Human Rights crossed the jurisdictional Rubicon by overruling the voters of a democratic country.
The rationale for hurling millions of auto workers into unemployment and
shutting down Europe’s greatest industry in order to profit the Chinese
is a case that even the most ardent climate-zealots will find challenging.
At the same time that the climate fanatics are encountering irresistible political headwinds, the intellectual arguments of the climate skeptics are becoming steadily more unanswerable. A brief filed with the court of appeals in The Haguein November by three eminent, American climate-related academics, Richard Lindzen of MIT, William Happer of Princeton, and Steven Koonin of New York University, the Hoover Institute, and former climate adviser to President Obama, challenged the finding of a lower court and held that scientific analysis, as opposed to an aggregation of “government opinion, consensus, peer review, and cherry-picked or falsified data,” shows that “Fossil fuels and CO2 will not cause dangerous climate change, there will be disastrous consequences for people worldwide if fossil fuels in CO2 emissions are reduced to net zero, including mass starvation.” They assert that the poor, future generations, and the entire West will suffer profoundly from any such policy. which “will undermine human rights and cripple the realization of the first three UN sustainable development goals-no poverty, zero hunger, and good health and well-being.”
The three experts warn against equating “the state of climate science with the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” which “have no value as science, because the IPCC is government-controlled and represents only government opinions, not science.” It also denounced the lower court verdict that “dangerous climate change and extreme weather are caused by CO2 emissions from fossil fuels… We demonstrate that these conclusions are contradicted by the scientific method, and only supported by the unscientific methods mentioned. Hundreds of research papers confirm the highly beneficial effects of the increased concentration of atmospheric CO2, especially in dry farming areas.”
They go on to represent the CO2 as essential to food, and thus to life on earth, and that the more there is of CO2, the more food there will be, especially in drought-stricken areas. They also make the case that greenhouse gases prevent us from freezing to death, that there are “enormous social benefits to fossil fuels and that net zero will expand human starvation by eliminating nitrogen fertilizer.”
This highly recondite and meticulously documented paper states that “600 million years of carbon dioxide in temperature data contradict the theory of catastrophic global warming being caused by high levels of CO2, and that the atmospheric CO2 is now heavily saturated, which means that more will have little warming effect.” Up until recently, the zealots pretended that such opinions are held only by the uninformed, or the paid lobbyists of the oil industry, but they are not going to be able to get away with this much longer The ranks of the critics are swelling every week with aggrieved members of the voting public distressed by completely unnecessary skyrocketing costs generated by the fear-mongering climate zealots.
With any luck, the tide of logical evidence will wash away the
climate lunatics of this country before the damage becomes irreparable.
I. THERE WILL BE DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES FOR THE POOR, PEOPLE
WORLDWIDE, FUTURE GENERATIONS AND THE WEST IF FOSSIL FUELS AND
CO2 EMISSIONS ARE REDUCED TO “NET ZERO”
A. CO2 is Essential to Our Food, and Thus to Life on Earth
B. More CO2, Including CO2 from Fossil Fuels, Produces More Food.
C. More CO2 Increases Food in Drought-Stricken Areas.
D. Greenhouse Gases Prevent Us from Freezing to Death
E. Enormous Social Benefits of Fossil Fuels
F. “Net Zeroing” Fossil Fuels Will Cause Massive Human Starvation by
Eliminating Nitrogen Fertilizer
II. THE IPCC IS GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED AND THUS ONLY ISSUES
GOVERNMENT OPINIONS, NOT SCIENCE, THUS PROVIDES NO SCIENTIFIC
BASIS FOR THE COURT’S OPINION
III. SCIENCE DEMONSTRATES FOSSIL FUELS AND CO2 WILL NOT CAUSE
DANGEROUS CLIMATE CHANGE AND EXTREME WEATHER
A. Reliable Science is Based on Validating Theoretical Predictions With Observations,
Not Consensus, Peer Review, Government Opinion or Cherry-Picked or Falsified
Data
B. The Models Predicting Catastrophic Warming and Extreme Weather Fail the Key
Scientific Test: They Do Not Work, and Would Never Be Used in Science.
C. 600 Million Years of CO2 and Temperature Data Contradict the Theory That High
Levels of CO2 Will Cause Catastrophic Global Warming.
D. Atmospheric CO2 Is Now “Heavily Saturated,” Which in Physics Means More CO2
Will Have Little Warming Effect.
E. The Theory Extreme Weather is Caused by Fossil Fuels and CO2 is Contradicted by
the Scientific Method and Thus is Scientifically Invalid
Benjamin Zycher celebrates how plastics benefit humans and the environment, in case this earth saver be overlooked by the Greens. His Real Energy article is Earth Day 2024: How Plastic Can the Enviros Get?
Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
It is Earth Day 2024, an annualexercise in self-applausethatalwaysistoomuchfun because of the inanities, hypocrisies, mendacities, and sheer stupidity of the Earth Day slogans, arguments, propaganda, and exhortations. And also because of the embarrassing spectacle of long queues of corporate officials and public relations gasbags desperate to advertise their environmental bona fides so that the green alligators might eat them last.
The Earth Day slogan for this year is “Planet vs Plastics,” and the list of horror stories is staggering. Plastics “flow through our blood stream, adhere to our internal organs, and carry with [them] heavy metals known to cause cancer and disease.” They “transmit hormone-disrupting chemicals.” They “can starve birds and suffocate sea life.” They “are a dangerous blight.”
One would think that this horror parade would have made life on earth ever more sickly, disease-ridden, and short. And one would be wrong: human life expectancy at birth now is 73.33 years, an increase of over 61% from the life expectancy of 45.51 years in 1950. Has the production of plastics declined? Of course not: From 2 million metric tons in 1950, production in 2019 was 459.8 million metric tons. Why else would the environmental left find plastics worthy of its annual screaming?
Such as: “More plastic has been produced in the last ten years than in the entire 20th century, and the industry plans to grow explosively for the indefinite future.” “More than 500 billion plastic bags … were produced worldwide last year.” “100 billion plastic beverage containers were sold last year in the United States.”
One would think that such massive output just might lead the Earth Day sloganeers to hypothesize that plastics offerreal benefits for ordinary people. Again one would be wrong. And if you think that the wreckage wrought by plastics is limited to such direct effects, think again. According to Earth Day 2024 propaganda — remember the slogan is Planet vs. Plastics — the fashion industry produces over 100 billion garments per year, 85% of which “end up in landfills or incinerators,” people buy 60% more clothing than was the case fifteen years ago, and over two-thirds of clothing is made “from” (that is, with the use of) crude oil, that evil of evils. The clothing industry is characterized by “exploitative working conditions, low wages, and widespread child labor.”
What does this have to do with plastics? The Earth Day 2024 rant about garments — inserted amid the larger rant about plastics — fails to mention plastics at all, a curiosity fully consistent with the disinterest on the part of the environmental left in rigorous thinking.
What is not so curious is the deafening Earth Day sermonizing about the evils of plastics, the importance of wind and solar power, and the worsening climate crisis, even as the scientific literature increasingly challenges the central Earth Day assumptions. Nonetheless, the Earth Day proponents applaud themselves for their devotion to science, that is, Science! So what does actual scientific research tell us about the relative greenhouse gas emissions engendered by plastics and the important alternatives? In brief:
We assess 16 applications where plastics are used across five key sectors: packaging, building and construction, automotive, textiles, and consumer durables. These sectors account for about 90% of the global plastic volume. Our results show that in 15 of the 16 applications a plastic product incurs fewer GHG emissions than their alternatives. In these applications, plastic products release 10% to 90% fewer emissions across the product life cycle. Furthermore, in some applications, such as food packaging, no suitable alternatives to plastics exist.
Maybe ensuing research will yield different conclusions — although the common argument that GHG emissions have created a crisis is supported by no evidence whatever — but the Earth Day cacophony ignores such subtleties, because Earth Day is the central religious holiday of modern left-wing environmentalism. But it reverses the traditional introspection, repentance, self-improvement, service to others, and faith in the moral requirements imposed by a higher authority. Instead, under the religious dogma of modern left-wing environmentalism generally and on Earth Day in particular, it is others who must examine their lifestyles, repent, purify themselves, suffer economically, and answer to the ideological demands of elite superiors. As I have noted many times, Dogbert perceived matters correctly: “You can’t save the Earth unless you’re willing to make other people sacrifice.”
Just as the pagans for millennia attempted to prevent destructive weather by worshiping golden idols, so do modern left-wing environmentalists now attempt to prevent destructive weather by bowing down before recycling bins. And so the Earth Day 2024 environmentalist Book of Genesis now begins as follows: “In the beginning, Earth was the Garden of Eden. But Mankind, having consumed the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Technological Knowledge, has despoiled it. After all, Plastics! And only through Repentance and economic suffering can Mankind return to the loving embrace of Mother Gaia.”
This report is produced by re.Climate, who are disappointed in Canadians weakening support for Net Zero alarm and expensive emissions initiatives. More on the findings, but first some facts about the source.
About Re.Climate
Re.Climate is Canada’s go-to centre for training, research and strategy on Climate Change communications and public engagement. We provide strategic services to help practitioners reach new audiences, overcome polarization, communicate urgency, and motivate change.
Re.Climate works closely with experts conducting research in misinformation and climate change communications.
Re.Climate Major Funders with mission slogans
Environment Funders Canada: A national network of philanthropic foundations and other organizations supporting efforts to transition toward a more sustainable world.
Ivey Foundation: A private charitable foundation dedicated to supporting Canada’s transition to a net-zero future while ensuring the country’s long-term economic competitiveness.
McConnell Foundation: We are dedicated to tackling the climate crisis and supporting communities coast to coast to coast in transitioning to net-zero carbon.
Donner Canada Foundation: Supporting Canada’s Transition to a Net-zero Carbon Future While Fostering Economic Prosperity
Clean Economy Fund: Supporting giant leaps toward net zero.
European Climate Foundation: Help tackle the climate crisis by fostering the development of a net zero emissions society at the national, European and global level.
The report is a meta-analysis by people dedicated to reduce hydrocarbon energy use in Canada. So while they claim to be non-partisan, their advocacy is aligned with the Trudeau government. Public opinion organizations conducted surveys in the last year, and Re.Climate consolidated and interpreted the findings.
Executive Summary
Canadians report high levels of concern about climate change and are connecting the dots between wildfires, extreme weather and global warming. But the affordability crisis has displaced climate action on the list of priorities while concerted opposition has dampened support for key policies.
The world is experiencing record temperatures and we are skirting 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels over a full year for the first time. But climate policies and actions are hindered by narratives framing them as costly, unfair and ineffective.
The competing concerns and undermining narratives are impacting public attitudes. Many Canadians say they do not believe we can meet our energy and climate objectives, even when they agree that climate change is a serious threat that requires concerted effort. There is a worrying gap between general concern about climate change and the erosion of support for specific climate actions.
Theme: Mind the Gaps
The report contains communications advice to activists concerning declines in support and shifts away from desired initiatives. Examples of some of the gaps are excerpted below.
My Comment:
All opinion surveys are testing the effectiveness of media messaging upon public awareness. This one seems to show that Canadians have been frightened by what they are told, but are not convinced that current and proposed actions will be practical and effective solutions to the claimed problem.
In the video Rupert Darwall is interviewed by Lee Hall discussing the plight of UK obsessing over global warming/climate change. For those preferring to read, below is an excerpted transcript lightly edited from closed captions. In italics with my bolds and added images. (RD is Rupert Darwall and LH is Lee Hall)
Keynotes
Britain is in a deep in a growth trap and we’ll remain in this growth trap. You know someone says if you’re in a hole stop digging. What we’re doing with Net Zero, we’re just digging harder and harder.
Today environmentalism is against economic growth and the green policies allow the ultra wealthy to feel virtuous. If you’re a multi-billionaire, like say Mike Bloomberg, you love it. Because what can you do to protect yourself from people complaining about your wealth? Well I’m saving the planet he says.
Europe’s green push is bringing economic benefit but not to Europe. German trade unions were promised during at the beginning of the energy transition there would be lots of green jobs and there were . . . in China. That’s where the green jobs went.
Green Policies and Economics
LH: Let’s talk about green policies and economics and how to really understand it all.
RD: So setting the scene: 2008 was quite a tough year and we had the financial crisis but then we also had the Climate Change Act. And was there a connection between Britain’s economic woes and then the introduction of what was arguably the most extreme green policies in the world.
The British economy was deeply scarred by the financial crisis and its trend growth of productivity has basically flatlined since 2008, and as you point out 2008 is the same year that parliament passed the Climate Change Act. Which as a result saw huge amounts of capital deployed on very low yielding to negative yielding assets in the power generation sector; namely wind and solar.
It’s very difficult to disentangle the long-term effects of the financial crisis and the so-called energy transition. But it is unquestionably the case that mandating very aggressive decarbonization worsens the productive potential of the economy. To give you an idea of how bad is the energy transition for a Net Zero: The International Energy Agency produced a net zero plan, and by 2030 under its Net Zero assumptions, the global energy sector will be employing 25 million more people using 16 and a half trillion more dollars of capital. 16 and a half trillion dollars more Capital using vast land areas of the combined size of Mexico, France, California, New Mexico and Texas to produce 7% less energy.
So the the critical thing to understand about the energy transition is it means you need more more resources to produce less.
That’s exactly what we’re seeing, what effect the push for Renewables has had on our Energy prices, and thus on our economy and our competitiveness. Well it’s made Britain one of the most expensive places in the world for businesses in terms of of the electricity bills. We’re seeing steel making basically being put out of business in this country. We’re seeing oil refining with the Grangemouth oil refinery being closed. The petrochemical industry is going to have a very hard time to survive.
So a lot of industry is basically going to be wiped out. But then you look at the automotive industry where we have effectively mandates for EV adoption requiring rising proportions of car sales must be EV. If car manufacturers don’t meet those targets, they get taxed and that will basically lead to almost obliterating the British automotive industry, apart from some really very upscale names like Bentley. Essentially you’re looking at the death of the British automotive sector.
LH: Could you give us a a Layman’s introduction to what’s happened with wind power in Britain and what this teaches us about environmentalism?
RD: In 2022 Boris Johnson said offshore wind is the the cheapest form of electricity in the country. It was a line fed to him by Carbon Brief, which is heavily funded by the European Climate Foundation, which in turn is funded by multi-billion philanthropic foundations in the US. It is pure propaganda; there is not any basis for saying that.
Remember that at the time of the energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, then about 40% of the increase of the natural gas price was actually artificial carbon taxes and the price of carbon. So take that that out; these are completely artificial. This cost isn’t about supply and demand of fossil fuels, it is simply government imposed taxes to basically tax natural gas production out of the system.
Then offshore wind is inherently expensive. If you think about it, putting very large wind turbines in the middle of a hostile marine environment like the North Sea you need to have a big question mark over it. This defies common sense. What happened was the wind industry telling the government and the government believing that the cost of offshore wind was about 50 pounds per megawatt hour. In fact analysis of the accounting data for the financial entities shows that the break even price of North Sea power above 100 pounds per megawatt hour.
Basically the wind industry had conned the government into saying wind is cheap. And of course then they’ve now turned around and said actually our costs are a lot higher than you thought. But you’ve got the climate change act which gives a legal Duty on the government to reach Net Zero. So if you don’t give us more subsidy you’ll be defying your legal duty to reach Net Zero, and we just might take you to court to to have the courts decide whether you are.
LH: We heard recently Constraint Payments that there may be a watchdog investigation into wind farms for overcharging on constraint payments, the constraint payments being getting paid to not produce electricity. Can you help us understand the logic behind this? So they get paid to not produce something then they’re overcharging on the nothing?
RD: Yes, the problem is kind of obvious when you see that the more wind capacity you have, when the wind’s blowing the more electricity is produced and that creates two problems. It may be in excess of demand so you have a sharp fall in the wholesale price of electricity. Which incidentally means that gas generators start to be loss making, and it’s very bad for the economics of the power stations that are needed to keep the lights on. It can actually go negative so you pay them to constrain.
The other thing is that the wind turbines are in remote windy locations and they have to be connected to the grid and there’s simply not enough grid connection. So the wind operators are saying well you need to you need more grid infrastructure. Well that’s not free, but they won’t pay for it, they’re expecting consumers to to pick up the tab. And indeed ofgem the energy regulator has a sort of policy, what they call socializing the cost of grid connection, so they’re picked up by customers rather than by the investors.
LH: People that push Green Growth, the green policies, are talking about green growth and green jobs a lot of the time. It seems they they don’t really materialize and we end up paying more to produce less in a less efficient way. I mean is the environmentalism actually an anti-growth strategy?
RD: In Germany for example the German trade unions were promised during at the beginning of the so-called energy transition there’ll be lots of green jobs. And there’s workers in China, that’s where the green jobs are, they’re not in Europe. I mean Europe is not competitive, doesn’t have the low energy cost that China has. To make this kit is very, very energy intensive.
Since the limits to growth debates of the early 1970s in fact limits to growth came out in 1972, greens have argued that economic growth will destroy the planet. And therefore growth is bad. Now they’re turning around and saying well we’re going to have green growth. Well don’t believe it, you should really believe that they are against growth and that their policies are designed have to knock growth on the head. That’s what we’re seeing now.
This kind of degrowth, anti-growth push is very bad news, for people’s living standards, for their aspirations, for their wanting to have a better life for their children; having greater opportunities, more enjoyable ways to to spend money, to spend your life. All that’s true but also growth is needed to fund the state and to fund fund public services. Having had very little growth since 2008, essentially green policies mean endless austerity, it means extremely high tax rates. The tax burden in Britain is the highest it’s been since since I think the late 1940s, since the post war period. So yes it’s very bad both for private consumption but also for public consumption, also public investment.
Britain has a very low level of public investment. Also we have a very low level of private investment So all together in Britain we find ourselves deep in a growth trap. And we’ll remain in this growth trap. You know someone says if you’re in a hole stop digging. What we’re doing with Net Zero is we’re just digging harder and harder.
LH: Marxism policy is to take the means of production away from private ownership whereas what we’re looking at now is to almost destroy the means of production. I often make the point, that in some respects environmentalism is a more radical ideology. Marxism is about changing the ownership of the means of production. This is about changing the means of production themselves.
RD: The early marxists like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, actually if you look at the Communist Manifesto, there’s this great Paean of praise to capitalism and the Bourgeois for creating these fantastic means of production that that have unlocked hitherto unknown levels of prosperity. Of course as we just discussed the greens are very much against that. But what where the greens score is although it’s a radical ideology in terms of changing the means of production and degrading the means of production, it is very socially conservative. It doesn’t challenge the existing social hierarchy.
So if you’re a member of the a feudal royal family like King Charles, you like green stuff. It doesn’t say Dethrone him or cut off their heads. If you’re a plutocrat, if you’re a multi-billionaire like say Mike Bloomberg in the US, you love it because again is what you do to protect yourself from people complaining about your wealth. You say well I’m I’m saving the planet. I’m using my money, my business and my philanthropy is about saving the planet.
So on the one hand, economically it’s very radical, but socially it’s all about maintaining existing social stratifications and of course denying people lower down the means to rise up, to better themselves.
LH: So in the original Marxism the rich guy or the top was the bad guy, but now those Rich guys can actually be the good guys in the environmentalism.
RD: The way I put it is that green policies and decarbonization are ethics for the super wealthy. You see Bill Gates when he gets asked in interviews, what about your carbon foot footprint, he’s got so much money he pays an enormous amount to have carbon dioxide sucked out of the air, direct air capture. Well of course you can do that if you’re if you’re one of the richest people on the planet. But of course but for ordinary people when they take their holiday to the Mediterranean if you’re going to expect them to pay hundreds of pounds extra, I mean it’s not going to happen. So yes this is about the super wealthy.
Another example of virtuous contradictions would be to look at say wind farms or solar panel farms. That’s supposed to be good for the environment but they’re destroying the landscape and they’re destroying the habitats and they’re chopping up birds, killing insects and threatening whales.
LH: This environmentalism expects us to suspend our beliefs to some degree yeah this is what you pointed out is a fundamental contradiction deep in the heart of modern environmentalism. It’s like saying, to save the village we had to destroy it.
RD: It is absolutely clear that the environmentalists don’t care about this. Fundamentally it’s about the precautionary principle so you’ve got to be extra specially careful. But not when it comes to wind power; they’re perfectly okay with with wind turbines destroying nature, since they see it as saving the planet.
So for the greater good we need to ruin some of the planet to save the the greater Planet.
The error is that as soon as you go from the local to the global, you sacrifice the local. And of course the global is an aggregate of the locals but for them it isn’t. This maniacal obsession with carbon dioxide emissions which has led to this tragedy that so much nature is being destroyed in the name of saving nature which it won’t do.
LH: When Rishi Sunak was Chancellor Exchequer he talked about rewiring the global financial system for Net Zero and then redeploying $130 trillion dollar of assets can you help us understand like how that would be possible and and tell us about the role that ESG is playing.
RD: He made that that speech at the Glasgow climate conference, in my opinion the single worst speech ever given by any Chancellor of Exchequer of either party. It was an absolutely appalling speech because essentially he’s saying private savings should be socialized to meet public policy objectives. ESG is very much a part of the socialization of private savings. ESG is basically politics by other means Instead of government saying we’re going to pass laws and regulations and raise taxes and spend lots of money ourselves doing it. We are going to pass regulations and we’re going to browbeat business to do this for us.
There’s a twofold cost in that. One is to investors whose capital is being basically expropriated, is being used by politicians. And the other is to Consumers who pay higher prices as a result. ESG is a very malign trend in in finance. It’s very interesting to look what’s been happening in the United States where it’s in retreat for for basically two reasons. First of all because the anti-green stocks, if you like, that is the oil and gas sector suddenly in the covid recovery suddenly put on great growth spurt in the stock market. So if you weren’t in oil and gas stocks you lost out.
And secondly there’s been a big reaction in in Republican states against these ESG mandates. However in Britain and Europe ESG continues. The government is effectively telling businesses they have to come up with Net Zero transition plans, so ESG is alive well and doing a lot of damage in Britain and Europe. In the US we saw Texas divest about 8 billion dollars from Black Rock because of their ESG measures.
LH: I mean do you think we we’ll see anything like that here or is that very much an American approach
RD: If you like the strength and vibrancy of capitalism in America there is not a peep of that in the UK or Europe. Britain’s largest asset manager is LGIM, Legal & General Investment Management, and it is completely signed up to the Net Zero ESG agenda. There’s very little sign of a backlash. Local authorities turn to be green they want to they say they want they invest want to invest their pension funds in in some nice ESG ways. You have the university superannuation funds. Universities are all kind of green and woke and so forth. so there there is unfortunately. You’ve seen that the London Stock Market until just recently, the last few weeks or so, has massively under performed the S&P 500 in the states.
LH: We seeing this contradiction again, but if I invest some money in a big investment firm, I’d expect them to use it to make money instead they’re using it for ideological means.
RD: There was this the ESG sales patter that it was doing well by doing good. They said we’ll use your money to do good and by the way you will make more money doing that than you otherwise would. That was always rubbish, it defied modern Financial portfolio Theory. But they got away with it until about 2022when oil stocks did extremely well, had a very strong run on on the stock market.
The other thing to point out, ESG used to exclude any defense stocks because armor manufacturers are evil and so forth. Then Putin invades Ukraine and they suddenly wake up saying, well actually we should have defense contractors in there. So it’s completely muddled, an ill-defined concept that is made up as it goes along.
And there’s also why should it be fund managerstaking these really important decisions about things like defense and National Security. These are preeminently decisions and policies for politicians not for market traders.
LH: You’ve very much got your finger on Green and economic issues. Are there any things coming up that you think we should keep an eye out for that are going surprises in the coming year?
RD: The big thing will be what happens in the American elections in November. On the one hand you have the Biden Administration which has set itself a net zero policy goal. The EPA is making a rule which will really take coal Off the Grid. It will cut massively the amount of natural gas power they’ve got on the grid. Biden has imposed a moratorium on new permits for export of natural gas.
On the other hand you have Trumpwho believes in what he calls American Energy dominance, he’s a hydrocarbon politician. He’s actually the only Western leader of the last couple of decades who is what I call an energy realist, who really understands energy. In his first term as president he pulled out of the Paris climate agreement. I think he would do the same again, and if that happens it will raise a huge question mark. What is the sense of persisting with Net Zero if the second largest emitter in the world pulls out of the the Paris agreement?
LH: I think it will it really kill Net Zero to anyone intelligent looking at it. We already had India and China not really buying in, but for America to join them?
RD: There is the conceit of the structure of the Paris agreement in these nationally determined contributions. So what China and India have been doing is they they’re not pledging any Cuts. They say well the carbon intensity of our economy will decline over time, which it will do anyway. One of the interesting facts of Britain is that when Rishi Sunak and British politicians boast about Britain cutting its carbon emissions. Britain’s CO2 emissions peaked in 1972 and you know as economies mature they tend to become less carbon intensive; that’s been the case in Britain.
What has happened since 2008 as we discussed at the beginning, that has been massively accelerated with quite a lot of damaging effect on manufacturing, on Energy prices um on the grid reliability and so forth.
LH: If Trump did get in and and pulled out of the agreement in that way, do you think the UK will follow along or oppose? What do you think will happen here?
RD:I don’t think a Keir Starmer government would follow particularly given Ed Miliband in the position of Energy Secretary, who was Energy Secretary when the 2008 climate Act was passed. He was at the Copenhagen conference in 2009 and played quite an important part there. There is no way they are going to have second thoughts on it.
What will change or what could change is the conservatives in opposition might actually begin to smell the coffee and say actually this is this is a really bad idea this Net Zero costs us votes, it costs people money, and therefore we need to question it. so I think the I think it will change the dynamic of politics in this country particularly if Trump were to repeat what he did between 2016 and 2020.
LH: Will there be an opposition Conservative party think in like five years time we could be seeing an opposition conservative party that’s against a lot of the green policies and quite different from what it is now?
RD: That’s a possibility. The problem is that when when a party goes into opposition quite often as happened in 1997 essentially the conservative party had a collective nervous breakdown and gave up on conservatism. That’s essentially what happened and it went through that long period and it was completely enamored with with Tony Blair and the promise of David Cameron and George Osborne.
Well are we are going to emulate Tony Blair and we’re going to get the conservative party to love the leftward drift of British politics? Will that happen again? Well Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair is he? But on the other hand the ability of the conservative party to really screw things up should never be underestimated.
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Yes, the carbon tax works great in a ‘first-best’ world where it’s the
only carbon policy. In the real world, carbon policies are piled high.
An open letter is circulating online among my economist colleagues aiming to promote sound thinking on carbon taxes. It makes some valid points and will probably get waved around in the House of Commons before long. But it’s conspicuously selective in its focus, to the point of ignoring the main problems with Canadian climate policy as a whole.
EV charging sign Electric-vehicle mandates and subsidies are among the mountain of climate policies that have been piled on top of Canada’s carbon tax. PHOTO BY JOSHUA A. BICKEL/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
There’s a massive pile of boulders blocking the road to efficient policy, including:
subsidies for electric buses and emergency vehicles in Canadian cities,
new aviation and rail sector emission limits, and many more.
Not one of these occasioned a letter of protest from Canadian economists.
Beside that mountain of boulders there’s a twig labelled “overstated objections to carbon pricing.” At the sight of it, hundreds of economists have rushed forward to sweep it off the road. What a help!
To my well-meaning colleagues I say: the pile of regulatory boulders
long ago made the economic case for carbon pricing irrelevant.
Layering a carbon tax on top of current and planned command-and-control regulations does not yield an efficient outcome, it just raises the overall cost to consumers. Which is why I can’t get excited about and certainly won’t sign the carbon-pricing letter. That’s not where the heavy lifting is needed.
My colleagues object to exaggerated claims about the cost of carbon taxes. Fair enough. But far worse are exaggerated claims about both the benefits of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and the economic opportunities associated with the so-called “energy transition.” Exaggeration about the benefits of emission reduction is traceable to poor-quality academic research, such as continued use ofclimate models known to have large, persistent warming biasesand of the RCP8.5 emissions scenario, long since shown in the academic literature to be grossly exaggerated.
But a lot of it is simply groundless rhetoric. Climate activists, politicians and journalists have spent years blaming Canadians’ fossil fuel use for every bad weather event that comes along and shutting down rational debate with polemical cudgels such as “climate emergency” declarations. Again, none of this occasioned a cautionary letter from economists.
There’s another big issue on which the letter was silent. Suppose we did clear all the regulatory boulders along with the carbon-pricing-costs-too-much twig. How high should the carbon tax be? A few of the letter’s signatories are former students of mine so I expect they remember the formula for an optimal emissions tax in the presence of an existing tax system. If not, they can take their copy of Economic Analysis of Environmental Policy by Prof. McKitrick off the shelf, blow off the thick layer of dust and look it up. Or they can consult any of the half-dozen or so journal articles published since the 1970s that derive it. But I suspect most of the other signatories have never seen the formula and don’t even know it exists.
To be technical for a moment, the optimal carbon tax rate varies inversely with the marginal cost of the overall tax system. The higher the tax burden — and with our heavy reliance on income taxes our burden is high — the costlier it is at the margin to provide any public good, including emissions reductions. Economists call this a “second-best problem”: inefficiencies in one place, like the tax system, cause inefficiencies in other policy areas, yielding in this case a higher optimal level of emissions and a lower optimal carbon tax rate.
Based on reasonable estimates of the social cost of carbon and the marginal costs of our tax system, our carbon price is already high enough. In fact, it may well be too high. I say this as one of the only Canadian economists who has published on all aspects of the question. Believing in mainstream climate science and economics, as I do, does not oblige you to dismiss public complaints that the carbon tax is too costly.
Which raises my final point: the age of mass academic letter-writing has long since passed. Academia has become too politically one-sided. Universities don’t get to spend years filling their ranks with staff drawn from one side of the political spectrum and then expect to be viewed as neutral arbiters of public policy issues. The more signatories there are on a letter like this, the less impact it will have. People nowadays will make up their own minds, thank you very much, and a well-argued essay by an individual willing to stand alone may even carry more weight.
Online conversations today are about rising living costs, stagnant real wages and deindustrialization. Even if carbon pricing isn’t the main cause of all this, climate policy is playing a growing role and people can be excused for lumping it all together. The public would welcome insight from economists about how to deal with these challenges. A mass letter enthusing about carbon taxes doesn’t provide it.
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Wyoming has vast resources of coal, oil and natural gas. With 40% of the nation’s coal resources, the state has been the United States’ top producer since 1986, primarily from the Powder River Basin located in the northeastern part of the state. It is also a national leader in the production of oil and natural gas, ranking in the top 10 in production of both products.
Yet, even though the Wyoming economy is heavily dependent on the mining and extraction of fossil fuels, its governor, Mark Gordon, has adopted a strong “decarbonization” policy. The science tells us that this is not a winning strategy for the people of Wyoming.
We also sent a team of climate experts from the CO2 Coalition, including Dr. William Happer, Dr. Byron Soepyan and Gregory Wrightstone to Wyoming to provide the facts concerning the huge benefits of carbon dioxide. This team presented the science at a hearing of the Wyoming Senate Agriculture Committee (pictured above.)
The team also presented accurate science regarding Wyoming’s climate to students at Gillette College, Laramie County Community College, and at the University of Wyoming.
Temperature Data Shows Good News for Wyoming
Data for Wyoming contradict the 4th National Climate Assessment (NCA4) assertion that “the frequency and intensity of extreme high temperature events are virtually certain to increase.”
Our data analysis shows that high daily temperatures peaked during the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s and have been in a 90-year decline. This is confirmed by reviewing the percentage of days that were reported to be hotter than 100°F (37.8°C) by Wyoming temperature stations. There is no discernible increase, and the largest numbers occurred in the first half of the 20th century when CO2 levels were 70% of recent measurements.
There has been, however, a beneficial increase in the minimum nighttime temperatures, which has led to a lengthening of the Wyoming growing season. Since the late 1800s, these nighttime temperatures have increased about 2°F (1.1°C).
The slight increase of about 1.2°F (0.7°C) in the average temperature
in the last 120 years is being driven by reductions in extreme cold
rather than increases in extreme heat.
The recent proposal by Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon to use “carbon capture” to achieve what he terms “negative net zero” (Gordon 2021) is based on a flawed theory that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is leading to harmful effects on Wyoming’s environment and its people. Within this report, we have documented that modest warming and increasing carbon dioxide are clearly beneficial for the Cowboy State’s ecosystems and citizenry.
The data tell us the following:
• Current levels of carbon dioxide are at near historically low concentrations. • Adjustments to historic temperature records have artificially amplified modern warming. • Wyoming temperatures have increased a modest 1.2°F (0.7°C) since 1895. • Heat waves peaked in the 1930s and have been in slight decline since that period. • Nightime low temperatures have increased, lengthening growing seasons. • Precipitation data, while varying greatly from year-to-year, show no increasing or decreasing trend. • Droughts are not increasing in Wyoming. • Severe weather and natural disasters are declining. • Agricultural production, globally and in Wyoming, is thriving due to modest warming and more CO2. • Vegetation in Wyoming and around the world is increasing. • Greenhouse-induced warming that would be averted (< 0.003°F) by eliminating Wyoming’s CO2 emissions would be too small to measure and achieved, if at all, at enormous cost. • Models used to project future temperatures significantly overpredict the amount of warming in coming decades.
This is a beginning post toward infographics exposing the damaging effects of Climate Policies upon the lives of ordinary people. And all of the pain is for naught in fighting against global warming/climate change, as shown clearly in the image above. This post presents graphics to illustrate the first of four themes:
Zero Carbon Means Killing Real Jobs with Promises of Green Jobs
Reducing Carbon Emissions Means High Cost Energy Imports and Social Degradation
100% Renewable Energy Means Sourcing Rare Metals Off-Planet
“While many experts dispute the feasibility of Jacobson’s plan for a renewables-only energy grid, the severe job losses are far more difficult to dispute, given that they come directly from Jacobson’s research. Those job losses would undoubtedly be devastating for millions of American families.”
And about Those Promised Green Jobs to replace the lost ones:
In February 2009, the last time Democrats controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden flew to Colorado to sign their $787 billion stimulus package into law.
The plan was to invest $150 billion over 10 years that would advance a “clean energy” economy built around biofuels, hybrid cars, low-emission coal plants, and renewable sources such as solar and wind. Obama and Biden promised to create five million green jobs that would specifically benefit low-income earners, claiming that the stimulus package included “help for those hit hardest by our economic crisis.”
A decade later, we now know that the 2009 green jobs program was a complete failure. The Department of Labor (DoL) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issued several reports on the green jobs program. Each report was an indictment on the program, as job placement met only 10 percent of the targeted level, and many of those who were hired remained employed for less than six months.
Even the new, redefined green jobs did not reach the five million promised in February 2009. According to a study by the Brookings Institution, the Obama–Biden administration identified nearly 2.7 million green jobs, but most were bus drivers, sewage workers, and other types of work that do not match the “green jobs of the future” that the administration promised. Most of them were preexisting jobs, which were simply re-characterized by the government, apparently in an effort to boost the numbers. Source: If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try ‘Green Jobs’ Again
A green nonprofit that is indirectly funded by a foreign billionaire is pressuring broadcasters to drop advertisements that criticize the Biden administration’s massive electric vehicle (EV) agenda.
Climate Power wrote to numerous broadcasters this week demanding that they stop airing American Fuel and Petrochemicals Manufacturers (AFPM)-funded advertisements in swing state markets that rail against President Joe Biden’s plans to impose widespread EV adoption in the coming years. The charitable organization affiliated with Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss health care mogul and billionaire philanthropist, donates millions of dollars to the Fund for a Better Future, which was the fiscal sponsor for Climate Power until 2023, a spokesperson for Climate Power previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
AFPM launched its seven-figure ad campaign designed to highlight and criticize the administration’s EV policies on Tuesday. The ads, which describe Biden’s policies as an EV mandate, are airing in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio, Montana and Washington, D.C.
Climate Power’s warning letter to local affiliates states that the broadcasters “must remove these ads from the air immediately” because “there is no pending federal ‘car ban,’ and to claim otherwise is patently false and intentionally misleading.” The letter suggests that AFPM’s ads could be in violation of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules, and instructs the broadcasters to contact Climate Power — an Internal Revenue Service-recognized 501(c)4 that is spending more than $80 million to tout Biden’s climate policies ahead of the 2024 presidential election — to confirm that the ads are no longer running on their stations.
What Big Climate Wants to Hide
A recent Wall Street Journal video says it out loud: EVs are not practical for most people. The short video can be seen here. A transcript is below for those who prefer to read.
Hertz announced last week that it is selling one third of its EV fleet, about 20.000 vehicles, and will replace them with gas powered cars, citing weaker demand for electrics and their higher operating and repair costs. The car rental giant had previously vowed to convert 25% of its fleet to electric by the end of 2024. In an interview in Davos this week, President Biden’s soon to be former climate envoy,
John Kerry, blamed recent setbacks in the industry on electric car critics,
accusing them of engaging in “high levels of disinformation.”
Kerry also told the panel at the World Economic Forum that the green energy transition will continue no matter who wins the 2024 presidential race. “You think those CEOs are gonna say, Oh My God, they just elected a new president. Let’s go back and build internal combustion engine cars. Not on your life. This economic revolution is underway and it’s much bigger than any politician, any one person.”
We’re back with Dan Henniger, Kim Strassel, and Wall Street Journal columnist, Allysia Finley. So Allysia, also this week Ford announced that it is cutting back on production of its Lightning 150 electric trucks. So this is a pretty broad cutback in production.
Well, the biggest reason is there’s flagging demand. So there were a lot of, “early adopters. It was people who lived in California and big cities who bought EVs. Especially Teslas which make up about 60% of sales. And so there was a big rush of automakers, and partly propelled by the government mandates, both California’s Air Resources Board and the Biden administration’s coming mandate, which ratchets up to two thirds of all sales to be EVs by 2032.
And so they all rushed in, they started mass producing EVs. And all of a sudden they’re realizing demand’s actually softening for the mainstream public because they’re actually not ready.
And suffering difficulties. And what we saw in Chicago with the lines of people and the cold weather. It’s cold weather and EVs don’t really work in the north very well. It’s repair costs. So it’s not easy to go long distances. It’s charging station availability, and people want sometimes to go long distances. Are those the reasons consumers are resisting?
I mean the costs are still about $20,000 higher on average, and the have to factor repair costs, yes. But also insurance costs, which are about 20% higher. In part because they’re more expensive, but also because the replacement parts are more expensive. And so they’re just not really practical for most people. This isn’t to say that someday then they’ll be much more practical and popular.
Maybe, but it doesn’t make sense to be mandating and subsidizing them at this juncture. Dan, what do you make of John Kerry’s line that this reluctance is just all disinformation by critics?
When Kerry said that, I thought he might take a side trip from Davos, Switzerland, to Germany to see what’s happening with EVs there. In December EV sales in Germany dropped by 50%. The auto industry there is really on the brink of collapse because people are simply not buying electric vehicles. And as Allysia was just describing, it that happens here, and it could, people simply say, “I’m not gonna put up , Ford and GM are really gonna get strung out and hit hard by the refusal of people.
Allysia, the one thing Kerry has going for his prediction is EVs which are being mandated by the government is that the flow of money from the Inflation Reduction Act will be so great, how much money they’re throwing at charging stations and subsidies for consumers and subsidies for production. It’s astonishing, even subsidies for batteries. Will that ultimately push EVs over the top?
Well, that is the risk in my mind, that consumers at the moment don’t want them. But the plan on the left is always that you get something in motion, you make the industry change its standards and retool and regear itself toward this goal. You put money out there as incentive for them to keep doing it and for buyers to get them. And then you can’t reverse it.
And you hope that it trundles along of its own accord. Which is why there’s growing attention in Washington, especially among Republicans, that if they’re going to try to claw back money, it ought to be more out of this area. Because if they really do care about issues like consumer choice, giving people the ability to drive what they want to drive, you’ve got to remove this government distortion that is creating this supposed economic revolution.
It’s not an economic revolution, it’s a government imposed transition.
Allysia, you wrote an interesting column about how CEOs not too long ago were cheering on this and all thinking alike about the great EV future. One of those was the Hertz CEO, another one, the Ford CEO. Are they really having second thoughts?
Well, it’s funny now in recent months, they’ve all been coming out saying, “Oh well, we need to cut production”, and “This is just not sustainable.” Across the industry, they’re definitely having second thoughts, and some of their statements are more public than others. And they’re pleading to the administration. Again this is representative of the auto industry, not the individual automakers, but they’ve sent a letter saying, please, we cannot do this. These aggressive goals are not achievable and auto workers would lose their jobs.
Roy Gilbert exposes the fundamental mistaken thinking regarded global warming/climate change. His Spectator Australia article is Conceptual Error in Climate Change Analysis. H/T John Ray Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
It is often said that the ‘science is in on climate change’. Is it? We should always adhere to the principle of the ‘working hypothesis’ and have an open mind on scientific questions no matter how well-recognised the researchers are. In the study of science, there is always the chance new information can come along to cause a rethink.
A common error in problem-solving and policy development is to confuse
a technical strategy for a desired client outcome.
Our Climate Change Minister could be accused of this. Reducing emissions is a ‘strategy’, not the fundamental desired client outcome. With the mission ‘to reduce carbon emissions’ by increasing renewable energy, the way to assess performance is to concentrate on measuring emission reduction, and then to follow this up with how quickly the renewables are built and their cost (wind farms, solar panels, transmission lines).
Instead of the current strategy-driven mission, a fundamental client outcome statement would be: ‘To protect against, and where possible, prevent damage from extreme off-trend fluctuations in climate.’ How would you go about managing your program using this mission statement?
First, you gather accurate temperature, rainfall, and weather measurements. They are the valid and fundamental ‘outcome’ measures – not data on CO2 emissions. If there is an undeniable and dangerous increase in temperature and rainfall, more cyclones, and a clear and unabated rise in sea level, then the possible cause must be thoroughly identified. Depending on the answer, you would adopt appropriate mitigation strategies, or strategies that adapt to weather patterns and temperature levels.
Another principle of problem-solving is to map out the total picture and not be driven by ideology. The Climate Change Minister should consider possible causes other than human-induced emissions. It was announced in April 2023 that coronal cones 20 times larger than Earth have been discovered and may cause a massive outburst of energy from the sun. What could be the implications for our planet? Ask solar physicists.
Chief scientist in applied helio-physics at John Hopkins, Ian Cohen, has suggested that solar storms could take out satellites, cut power and shut down the internet. In 1972 a solar storm caused 4,000 magnetically sensitive mines in water off Vietnam to detonate. Earth is said to be entering a period of peak activity as part of an eleven-year cycle. It is suggested this potentially could be more violent than the solar cycles of the past three decades. Now that would be something for climate scientists to really worry about…
With respect to the world’s temperature, there are several sources that claim to present the precise figure. One says the 2023 average global temperature was 1.45c above the 1950-90 average. Another says since 1880, Earth’s temperature has increased by 0.08c. Another says during the last 50 years the increase is 0.13c. To the unscientific mind, these temperatures do not appear to be verging on catastrophic boiling us all to death.
As of 2024, data on natural changes in temperature, rainfall, and sea level
do not show any statistically significant difference to historical records.
There are respected scientists who questionthe current climate orthodoxy. Physicist Prof. William Happer of Princeton University and Prof. Richard Lindzen, Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT have argued science demonstrates there is no climate-related risk caused by fossil fuels and CO2, and that 600 million years of CO2 and temperature data contradicts the theory that high levels of CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming. They state reliable scientific theories come from validating theoretical predictions with observations, not consensus, peer review, government opinion, or manipulated data.
In July 2023, the International Monetary Fund cancelled a planned talk on climate change by 2022 Nobel physicist John Clauser when they learned he had stated publicly: ‘I can confidently say there is no real climate crisis, and that climate change does not cause extreme weather events. The IPCC is one of the worst sources of dangerous disinformation.’ Clauser pointed out that the US Environmental Protection Authority has charts that show a heatwave Index going back to 1895, showing heatwaves were more common before the 1960s and especially in the 1930s.
In addition to these physicists, there are eminent Australian geologists who challenge the CO2 cause theory. Emeritus Prof. Ian Pilmer of the University of Melbourne, and Prof. Michael Asten of Monash University, have argued that throughout the history of the planet, there have been long periods of major change in climate due to natural forces. This would indicate recent human-based emissions may not be the important factor that we have been led to believe.
With respect to measuring emissions (nitrous oxide and methane), there is an expectation that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would have collected accurate data. Then one reads an independent 2023 report of these greenhouse gas emissions from farm dams in Australia’s irrigation regions, that the measurements had been massively over-estimated by the IPCC by 4 to 5 per cent.
To add further confusion to the issue, a 2023 research paper submitted to the European Physical Journal Plus claimed climate science has become ‘highly politicised’. Italian scientists analysed long-term data on heat, droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and ecosystem productivity, and found no clear trend of extreme events. The statements by these scientists would appear worthy of examination. Unfortunately, comments to the publisher by other climate scientists caused the withdrawal of the article.
If activists are correct, and if temperatures and rainfall start to show a significant increase without any influence from natural factors such as the sun or outer atmospheric disturbances, the second ‘outcome’ mission opens your mind to several strategies that could be compared against each other on cost and effectiveness – renewables, outer space satellites capturing solar energy and transmitting to Earth, small nuclear, carbon capture, examine possibility of amalgamating carbon and turning it into a useful product, lower emission coal-fired power stations, hydro, hydrogen fuel cells, a scientific search for a predator for carbon other than trees (or the planting of more trees), and so on.
A valid client ‘outcome’ statement encourages you not to jump to a conclusion
in the initial stages of critical thinking about the cause of any global warming.
If you make a mistake at that point, there are significant productivity implications. Governments could waste a significant amount of money (a catastrophic amount) on a less than optimum strategy. Rather than relying almost entirely on climate scientists who concentrate on carbon emissions, a politician with a mind focused on validity could bring together an inter-disciplinary team – climate scientists, nuclear physicists, solar physicists, atmospheric physicists, examine the moon’s behaviour, plant technologists, oceanographers, geologists, volcanologists, botanists, bushfire specialists and so on. Has any national government followed this approach? Has any Minister for Energy, in any country, expanded their vision beyond their own narrow ideology is a potential danger to their country…?
There are very obvious reasons why some politicians and many rich investors in renewable energy would oppose a serious questioning of the renewable strategy and switching to nuclear instead. If small nuclear was introduced – as is being done in many countries – it would make current renewable energy strategies redundant. That would mean all the billions of dollars spent on wind and solar would have been a waste of money. We wouldn’t need them. Admitting that would be far too embarrassing for any ideological politician and far too financially damaging to any rich wind farm investor obtaining government grants.
If the Sun is found to be the fundamental cause of the problem (variations in energy output, massive infrequent solar flares, and/or variations in distance between Earth and Sun), or if there is a slight tilting of the Earth on its axis, or the Moon changes position, or even disturbance further out in our solar system, you would evaluate adaptation strategies.
It seemed reasonable for some people to assume the vast flooding in 2022 could be attributed to human-induced climate change. There is however, a different possibility … nature. Environment analyst Graham Lloyd explained.
‘The meteorological processes at play are well understood. Three consecutive La Nina weather patterns have left the eastern seaboard soaked and prone to flooding. Triple La Ninas have happened four times in the Bureau of Meteorology’s 120-year record … The Southern Annular Mode is a climate driver that can influence rainfall and temperature. Although wet, the latest BoM figures show that 2022 was the ninth wettest year on record (not the wettest).’
fWhen the above material, stressing the need to examine the total picture in any critical thinking, was shown to a high school Principal, to a high school science teacher and to an environmental engineer, they were all surprised and quite critical that one would want to show this to students. Annoyed actually. One was emphatic…
‘Why waste the students’ time having them look at irrelevant issues?
We KNOW what the problem is. It is CO2 emissions.
And we KNOW what the solution is. It is 100 per cent renewables.’
My answer to them was:
‘The difference between you and me, is that you want to tell the students WHAT to think. I want to teach them HOW to think. I want them to understand insightful thinking. Not to be indoctrinated’. You can be the judge as to who is on the right track.
fWhen the above material, stressing the need to examine the total picture in any critical thinking, was shown to a high school Principal, to a high school science teacher and to an environmental engineer, they were all surprised and quite critical that one would want to show this to students. Annoyed actually. One was emphatic…
Science Matters 