The Week That Was: 2022-10-22 (October 22, 2022)Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “And it is of paramount importance, in order to make progress, that we recognize this ignorance and this doubt. Because we have doubt, we then propose looking in new ideas. The rate of development of science is not the rate at which you make observations alone but, much more important, the rate at which you create new things to test.” — Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All
Number of the Week: Down 36.5%
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: This TWTW will focus on the following developments:
Roy Spencer compared the latest 50-year summer surface temperatures trends for the 48 contiguous states of the US with modeled trends from 36 CMIP-6 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) climate models. They are all show too much warming, and the average is almost two times actual trends. The period covers 1973 to 2022.
Physicist Ralph Alexander produced a brief report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). Paul Homewood describes it:
“A new paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals how sober factual information in official climate reports is steadily distorted in moving from the original text (written by scientists) to the Summary for Policymakers (written by political hacks), to the official press releases (written by public relations officials), and then to the media coverage (written by journalists).”
Judith Curry presents and discusses a new book by physicist Tim Palmer. He is a noted climate modeler who is very influential with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The book is discussed as presented by Curry. TWTW is awaiting the book to review it from the perspective of physical science, particularly as presented by Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, especially in The Meaning of It All.
Econometrician and Statistician Ross McKitrick and statistician Stephen McIntyre exposed the noted “hockey-stick” as inferior statistics and poor science. The hockey-stick was featured in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (AR3 (TAR), 2001). As discussed by Alexander and others, it is back in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6, 2021). Last week, TWTW discussed an interview of Willie Soon by Tom Nelson. This week, Nelson posted an interview with Ross McKitrick on “Big problems with paleoclimate data and land temperature records.” A lightly edited transcript of part of the interview is posted by Ron Clutz, which is used in this TWTW.
Several readers commented on the statement in last week’s TWTW about Professors William van Wijngaarden and William Happer being too busy to fight with the censorship by editors of western “science” journals. Other examples are presented.
Brief comments are made on the energy policies of western governments, which can be described as policies for economic destruction and endless subsidies.
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Overestimating the Ground? Climate modelers claim they adjust their Global Climate Models (General Circulation Models) to surface-air temperatures, about 2 meters (six and one-half feet) above ground level. On his blog, Roy Spencer summarized his research:
“I’ll get right to the results, which are pretty straightforward.
“As seen in the accompanying plot [not shown here], 50-year (1973-2022) summer (June/July/August) temperature trends for the contiguous 48 U.S. states from 36 CMIP-6 climate model experiments average nearly twice the warming rate as observed by the NOAA climate division dataset.
The 36 models are those catalogued at the KNMI Climate Explorer website, using Tas (surface air temperature), one member per model, for the SSP2-4.5 radiative forcing scenario. (The website says there are 40 models, but I found that four of the models have double entries). The surface temperature observations come from NOAA/NCEI. [SSP2-4.5 is Shared Socio-economic Pathway #2 with 4.5 W/m2 total forcing.]
The official NOAA observations produce a 50-year summer temperature trend of +0.26 C/decade for the U.S., while the model trends range from +0.28 to +0.71 C/decade.
As a check on the observations, I took the 18 UTC daily measurements from 497 ASOS and AWOS stations in the Global Hourly Integrated Surface Database (mostly independent from the official homogenized NOAA data) and computed similar trends for each station separately. I then took the median of all reported trends from within each of the 48 states, and did a 48-state area-weighted temperature trend from those 48 median values, after which I also got +0.26 C/decade. (Note that this could be an overestimate if increasing urban heat island effects have spuriously influenced trends over the last 50 years, and I have not made any adjustment for that).
The importance of this finding should be obvious: Given that U.S. energy policy depends upon the predictions from these models, their tendency to produce too much warming (and likely also warming-associated climate change) should be factored into energy policy planning. I doubt that it is, given the climate change exaggerations routinely promoted by environment groups, anti-oil advocates, the media, politicians, and most government agencies. [Boldface in original]
Spencer’s research confirms the official NOAA surface-air temperature trends. Yet, the climate modelers produce trends that are almost double that. As Spencer states in other posts, the 43-year record of atmospheric temperature trends is plus 0.13° C per decade. Although far from a perfect measurement of the greenhouse effect, this is where the greenhouse effect occurs and is more unlikely to be biased by other human activity. Thus, the US surface trends of +0.26° C per decade are twice those of the atmosphere (the better estimate of the effects of greenhouse gases).
The trends from climate models are twice those of the surface, thus approximately four times atmospheric trends. And we are to believe that this warming of four times the warming of the atmosphere is produced by atmospheric greenhouse gases? See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Exaggeration Amplified: In “Chinese Whispers: How climate science gets distorted in translation” retired physicist Ralph Alexander credits the idea to New York University’s Steve Koonin. Alexander writes:
“Koonin concludes that most of the disconnect arises from miscommunication, analogous to the children’s game of Chinese Whispers, as it is known in the UK, or its North American counterpart, Telephone. He points out that there are ample opportunities for climate information to be misinterpreted or even twisted as it is successively distilled down in going from the research literature to scientific assessment reports, to summaries of the assessment reports, to press releases and ultimately to the media. Media coverage is, of course, the public’s primary source of information about climate science.
“The purpose of this paper is to show how Koonin’s assertion about distorted transmission of the climate message is essentially correct. To do this, I will examine in detail two examples drawn from the voluminous climate science literature: the global temperature record over the last 2000 years, and marine heatwaves. I will trace the distortion of the underlying science as it progresses through the following stages, focusing on the 2021 Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
“• Assessment Report → Summary for Policymakers (SPM)
• SPM → Press release
• Press release → Media and environmental coverage”
Alexander traces the amplification through two examples. One is the return of the notorious hockey-stick. As discussed in previous TWTWs, Steven McIntire demonstrated this process of taking multiple bits of proxy data and forming them into a whole, without any established standardization period to show they measure the same thing. This is like mixing glue and oak sawdust to make boards for a desk and claiming the desk is solid oak. McIntyre called the issue PAGES 2K, PAGES being an acronym for the group based in Geneva, Switzerland, which compiled it and 2K in that it covers about 2,000 years, irregularly.
As discussed in previous TWTWs, in a series of posts, McIntyre shows how deceitful the process is. As Alexander discusses, the new hockey-stick does not appear in the scientific assessment of IPCC AR6. Thus, it was manufactured for the Summary for Policymakers, the political version. In discussing the role of the UN Secretary-General in press releases, Alexander writes:
“The second IPCC press release, on the UN’s website, takes the Telephone game to an entirely new level, with UN Secretary-General António Guterres warning that:
Today’s IPCC Working Group 1 Report is a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable. [Boldface added]
“The wording of this widely reported statement may have been chosen for maximum political impact, but has little connection to the science reported in AR6. The Secretary-General also repeats the IPCC’s statement above about ‘unprecedented’ changes.”
Thus, the UN Secretary-General has become little more than a carnival barker, or an announcer for a circus whose acts are poor. Also Alexander discusses examples of Marine Heatwaves before concluding:
“These two examples show just how large a gulf can exist between the science presented in the IPCC’s climate assessment reports and how the public perceives it, thanks to garbled transmission as the scientific message progresses from assessment reports to their summaries to press releases and then to the media. This progression, as Steven Koonin correctly discerns, provides ample opportunities for the message to be distorted, either willfully or not. The hockey stick, which reappears in the AR6 SPM, and which has been trumpeted in the press, clearly illustrates the accuracy of Koonin’s conjecture. By excising the MWP and LIA from the global temperature record, the assessment report’s fairly impartial stance on the existence of both becomes warped to the point where the SPM can declare modern warming to be unprecedented. The IPCC’s discussion of marine heatwaves also backs up Koonin’s Chinese Whispers or Telephone analogy, showing how the popular perception that marine heatwaves are now twice as common as they were just 40 years ago is wrong.”
See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy, TWTWs from Aug 14 to Nov 6, 2021, and multiple posts in https://climateaudit.org/ from August 11 to November 2, 2021.
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From a Climate Modeler’s Perspective: On her blog, Judith Curry reviews the book “The Primacy of Doubt” by Tim Palmer, who:
“…is a Royal Society Research Professor in the department of physics at the University of Oxford. He pioneered the development of operational ensemble weather and climate forecasting. Palmer is a Commander of the British Empire, a fellow of the Royal Society and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Institute of Physics’ Dirac Gold Medal.”
Curry begins her review:
“This is a beautifully written book: eloquent while at the same time approachable, spiked with anecdotes and occasional self-deprecating humor. Some quotes from the Introduction, that give a flavor of the book, including the style of writing.
“’I will be elevating the notion of uncertainty, or doubt, to a status it is not usually given: not as an “Oh, I suppose we’d better do a risk analysis” afterthought, but as a matter of primal importance and focus. There are two reasons for doing this. First, there is the practical reason that we are liable to make lousy decisions if we base them on predictions with unreliable estimates of uncertainty. But just as important, at least for me as a scientist, we may be able to understand better the way systems work by focusing on the ways in which they are or can become uncertain.”
“’In short, the scope of this book is quite unique. On the one hand we cover the loftiest questions that philosophy has ever addressed and attempt to answer them in novel ways. On the other we’ll describe practical techniques that have transformed the way we go about predicting how our world will evolve over the coming days, years and decades ahead. Some readers, I hope, will be exhilarated by the discussion of long-standing conceptual problems like free will, consciousness and the puzzling nature of quantum physics. Others may be thrilled to see the science of chaos applied for the benefit of society (and some of the poorest parts of society in particular). For yet others, reading this book may help them understand themselves better. Not least they may come to realize that some of our apparent shortcomings are not signs of irrationality or failure, but manifestations of our unique ability to cope with the enormous uncertainties of life. There is, I hope, something for everyone.’”
Before discussing a review in Scientific American, not discussed here, Curry concludes her review with:
“The more interesting part of the Chapter [Chapter 6 on Climate Change] addresses the question in the chapter subtitle: “Catastrophe or Just Lukewarm?” Palmer addresses how we should view climate change from a perspective that is consistent with the “primacy of doubt,” treading carefully around the “merchants of doubt” meme. Both sides of the argument are reviewed, which are referred to as the “maximalist” and “minimalist” positions. In Chapter 6 he concludes:
“’Let’s summarise. Taking a specific position—minimalist, maximalist or indeed any specific point in between—is simply inconsistent with the science. The key message of this chapter is that one’s attitude to climate change, like to weather prediction, should be framed in terms of risk: Is the risk of undesirable changes to climate high enough to warrant taking precautionary action now?’
“Palmer takes on this question more directly in Chapter 10 Decisions! Decisions! Palmer introduces the concept of a Statistical Life (which, when expressed in terms of GDP per capita) can be applied to both developed and developing country inhabitants. His conclusion is that it is overwhelmingly worthwhile to take action now to reduce the risk of a 4 degree “hell on earth” warmer world at an assumed 30% probability.
“Hard to disagree with that conclusion related to 4C warming, but the devil is in the assumption of 30% probability of 4 C warming. With RCP8.5 increasingly being regarded as implausible, and with the IPCC AR6 putting the upper likely bound of equilibrium climate sensitivity at 4C, the chances of 4C warming are now generally regarded as quite small.
“Something here for both the maximalists and minimalists to find unsatisfactory.”
After discussing the position in Scientific American, Curry concludes the essay:
“JC recommendation to readers: Don’t waste your time reading this book if all you are looking for is confirmation of your predilection for (or against) urgent reductions of fossil fuel emissions. Read this book if you have an intellectual curiosity about physics, chaos, uncertainty and their applications across the sciences. This remarkable book will surely satisfy and stimulate your curiosity. Further, such understanding will lead to better understanding of how we think and make decisions. Most refreshingly for a book that is at least partly in the climate space, this book does NOT attempt to tell us what to think or which decisions to make.”
As stated above, TWTW plans to review the book from the perspective of Richard Feynman’s essays on physical science and report back. See link under Defending the Orthodoxy.
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Not Roasting? The press uses the poor science in the IPCC reports, particularly the Summary for Policymakers and the carnival barkers of the UN, to dream up horror stories of extreme warming based on what “scientists say.” In the transcript provided by Ron Clutz, Ross McKitrick states:
“People need to understand that for the 20th century as a whole there’s temperature data for less than 50 percent of the Earth’s surface. And a lot of stuff is just being filled in with assumptions or modeling work, so it’s really the output of models. And so, as you go back in time back to the 1920s for instance, here in Southern Ontario we have great temperature records back to the 1920s. Here in Guelph, we have temperature data that goes back to the late 1800s.
“One of the first assignments I have my students do in my environmental economics courses is just to take a few locations in Ontario that have more than 100 Years of temperature data and plot the records for average daily highs back 100 years or more. That always surprises them because they just don’t see what they’re expecting to see in terms of an upward trend. There’s a visible trend up to the 1930s or so. And then after that it’s kind of up and down flat.
“Summertime temperatures especially, have gone down, they’ve gone up, but haven’t really changed much since the 1930s.”
McKitrick explains that since about 1960 adjustments to surface temperature trends have lowered previous temperature trends and increase recent temperature trends
“When you look at the post-1960 U.S record the adjustments are as large as the warming itself.”
Later, McKitrick discusses a core issue:
“The burden of proof here is on the people making the adjustments. For a long time, they would refer back to a paper that was done in the 1980s for the Department of energy by Tom Wigley as the scientific basis of the adjustments. Eventually I got a hold of that document (because it’s hard to find). It turned out it was really just a lot of: Okay we think this record here moved around 1925, they moved the station from here to there, so we’re gonna make a little few changes here and we’ll bump this stretch of the data set up by this amount. And so it wasn’t like a detailed scientific methodology that you could subject to some testing and validation.”
McKitrick gives evidence that most people are ignoring the false claims of the IPCC and its promoters. They are not choosing energy poverty “to save the world.” McKitrick demonstrates the great increase in wealth, life expectancy, and population that have come from fossil fuel use. [As shown elsewhere in TWTW, China and South Asia are not going along with the altered “science.”] The transcript closes with:
“It was the development of industrial civilization, a net benefit to the world, and the proof is that the places where they didn’t experience that development are doing everything they can to experience it.
“And all the supposed harms that people talk about, getting back to extreme weather which we talked about at the beginning: Where are people in the United States moving to? They’re all moving to the extreme weather areas, to the Florida coast and California coast and leaving behind the areas like the Midwest which have the four seasons but not exactly subject to tornadoes and hurricanes. As soon as they can retire, they leave those places and go to where they they’ll either have heat waves in the desert or droughts in California or hurricanes on the Florida coast. And that’s where they want to retire to. And then when they get there, they can become climate activists and protest greenhouse gases.” See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Censorship Is Real: Some TWTW readers expressed skepticism over last week’s statement: Professors William van Wijngaarden and William Happer are too busy developing an acceptable hypothesis on the formation and dissipation of clouds that they do not have time to fight with journal editors. The statement of “too busy” is speculation, but the censorship is real. In his interview, discussed in last week’s TWTW, Willie Soon discussed the censorship and how it was difficult to publish any papers questioning the official line after the discredited “hockey-stick” was featured in IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers in (AR3, 2001).
John Christy had to seek publication in a journal published by the Korean Meteorological Society, Richard Lindzen published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences also by the Korean Meteorological Society. These are peer-reviewed journals largely ignored by the IPCC and US journals.
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Path to Nowhere: Writing on the energy policy of New York, columnist Holman Jenkins sums up western energy folly. In part, he writes:
“The latest report from New York state’s grid operator is a master class in everything wrong with the Western world’s approach to climate change.
“That is: everything wrong with an approach that consists of throwing money at green business interests in defiance of any practical consideration. If you think something else is going on, such as abating climate change, think again.
“To meet a legislated goal of emissions-free electricity by 2040, New York will need up to 45 gigawatts of what it delicately calls DEFRs, or dispatchable emissions-free resources. Not only is that more than the state’s total current generating capacity of 37 gigawatts, these DEFRs, which are carbon-free like wind and solar yet not interruptible like wind and solar, don’t exist and have no prospect of existing in the next decade. Starting very much sooner than 2040, New York’s real choice will be Third World electricity reliability vs. paying fossil-fuel operators large fees to keep their plants up and running in a highly inefficient part-time fashion.
“Many involved in the state’s energy ‘transition’ might question whether purging the last 10% or 5% of fossil fuels from the system is worth the exorbitant cost. Don’t expect anyone to admit the bigger problem: The transition won’t likely do much to reduce global emissions.
“This is the great unmentionable. When New Yorkers use less coal, oil or gasoline because of environmental mandates, the market price transmits the benefit to other global users, who then use more. Even more unspeakable is the corollary: Emission-spewing activities simply relocate from one part of the world to another. China’s emissions growth, from half the U.S.’s to almost 300% of the U.S.’s in 30 years, is partly the product of a transplant of emissions from the U.S. and Europe
“If pressed, Biden officials will privately revert to gobbledygook about carbon taxes that appear immaculately without anyone having to advocate them. The media fill the gap with wishful thinking and Soviet econometrics, confusing inputs with outputs. Yes, world-wide investment in renewables in the past two years has exceeded investment in fossil fuels. Supposedly this proves fossil fuels are on their way out. No, it proves fossil fuels are a better deal, consuming less investment to meet their share of the world’s growing power needs.” [Boldface added]
Decades of subsidies for politically favored industries that would fail without them is not the path for economic growth, only destruction. See Article # 1, Problems in the Orthodoxy, and Change in US Administrations.
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Number of the Week: Down 36.5%. According to the US Energy Information, Petroleum & Other Liquids website on Weekly US Ending Stocks of Crude Oil in SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserve), on January 22, 2021, the stocks were 638,086,000 barrels. On October 14, 2022, the stocks were 405,135,000 barrels, the lowest since June 1, 1984, when the reserve was still expanding. The decline is 36.5%, the greatest ever; with no war, no embargo or no real crisis, except Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which does not threaten US petroleum production or limit US petroleum use. See https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WCSSTUS1&f=W
Science: Is the Sun Rising?
Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis: New support for the effect of solar activity on lower atmospheric circulation
By Javier Vinós, Climate, Etc. Oct 20, 2022
Challenging the Orthodoxy — NIPCC
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science
Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2013
Summary: https://www.heartland.org/_template-assets/documents/CCR/CCR-II/Summary-for-Policymakers.pdf
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts
Idso, Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2014
http://climatechangereconsidered.org/climate-change-reconsidered-ii-biological-impacts/
Summary: https://www.heartland.org/media-library/pdfs/CCR-IIb/Summary-for-Policymakers.pdf
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels
By Multiple Authors, Bezdek, Idso, Legates, and Singer eds., Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, April 2019
http://store.heartland.org/shop/ccr-ii-fossil-fuels/
Download with no charge:
Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming
The NIPCC Report on the Scientific Consensus
By Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), Nov 23, 2015
http://climatechangereconsidered.org/
Download with no charge:
Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate
S. Fred Singer, Editor, NIPCC, 2008
http://www.sepp.org/publications/nipcc_final.pdf
Global Sea-Level Rise: An Evaluation of the Data
By Craig D. Idso, David Legates, and S. Fred Singer, Heartland Policy Brief, May 20, 2019
Challenging the Orthodoxy
50-Year U.S. Summer Temperature Trends: ALL 36 Climate Models Are Too Warm
By Roy Spencer, His Blog, Oct 20, 2022
“As seen in the accompanying plot, 50-year (1973-2022) summer (June/July/August) temperature trends for the contiguous 48 U.S. states from 36 CMIP-6 climate model experiments average nearly twice the warming rate as observed by the NOAA climate division dataset.”
McKitrick: Reckoning Coming for Climate Alarmists
By Ron Clutz, Science Matters, Oct 20, 2022
Video and Transcript by Clutz
Chinese Whispers & The IPCC
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 20, 2022
Link to paper: Chinese Whispers: How climate science gets distorted in translation
By Ralph Alexander, GWPF, 2022
A Hidden Universe of Uncertainty
By Kip Hansen, WUWT, Oct 18, 2022
Climatism is a Logic Fail
By Ron Clutz, Science Matters, Oct 17, 2022
The Primacy of Doubt
By Judith Curry, Climate Etc. Oct 18, 2022
Scientists discover mechanism that can cause collapse of great Atlantic circulation system
By José Tadeu Arantes, FAPESP, Oct 18, 2022 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
By Link to paper: ubsurface ocean warming preceded Heinrich Events
By Lars Max, et al. Nature Communications, July 21, 2022
From the press release: “The most recent collapse played a key role in the last deglaciation. AMOC is now threatened by global warming, scientists have shown, and a new study has discovered the sequence of past breakdown events.”
“This latest discovery suggests the weaker AMOC will cause anomalous subsurface warming at high latitudes of the North Atlantic, which will melt glacier sea snouts in Greenland. Ultimately, this could lead AMOC to collapse, exacerbating the climate crisis with major repercussions.”
[SEPP Comment: A weaker circulation would mean less heat flow from the tropics to the Arctic. How would that cause a warming of the Arctic? The issue is Heinrich events of large discharges of icebergs that occur about 60,000 to 16,800 years. They are thought to be related to Dansgaard-Oeschger events and Bond cycles. The causes are unclear.]
Questioning the Orthodoxy
Detection Of A CO2 Climate Signal In Radiative Forcing Is Again Foiled By Clouds
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Oct 20, 2022
Link to paper: Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) FluxByCldTyp Edition 4 Data Product
By Moguo Sun, et al, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, Mar 17, 2022
From the abstract: “Instead of relying on radiative transfer models, the FBCT [The CERES Flux By Cloud Type] product utilizes Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) radiances partitioned by cloud type within a CERES footprint to estimate the cloud-type broadband fluxes. The MODIS multichannel derived broadband fluxes were compared with the CERES observed footprint fluxes and were found to be within 1% and 2.5% for LW and SW, respectively, as well as being mostly free of cloud property dependencies.”
Myth and ‘Following the Science’
The real nature of the apocalypse we’re facing.
By Bruce Thornton, Front Page, Oct 20, 2022
“As authors S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery summarized this research, ‘The earth is warming but physical evidence from around the world tells us that human-emitted CO2 (carbon dioxide) has played only a minor role. Instead, the mild warming seems to be part of a natural 1,500-year [later revised to 2500 years] climate cycle (plus or minus 500 years) that goes back at least one million years.’”
New Study Claims The CO2 Increase Since 1850 Can Account For Only Half Of Modern Global Warming
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Oct 17, 2022
Link to latest study: Modeling the Carbon Cycle Dynamics and the Greenhouse Effect
By Soo Hyoung Choi &Vasilios I. Manousiouthakis, Part of special issue: 13th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems, June 14-17
The real transition of the last 700 years was *to* fossil fuels
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 17, 2022
Alex Epstein is Winning (humanism, progress = mineral energies)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Oct 21, 2022
After Paris!
COP27 It is All About the Money says Friends of Science; Be Glad the Climate Emergency is Over
Press Release, Friends of Science, Oct 20, 2022
IPCC: We Call Your Bluff (COP 27 alarmism in the air)
By Robert Bradley Jr. Master Resource, Oct 17, 2022
Biden to drain more oil from SPR… Expects oil industry refill it for $68-72/bbl
By David Middleton, WUWT, Oct 20, 2022
Expensive Energy Is a Core Feature, Not a Bug, of Biden’s Climate Agenda
By Marlo Lewis, Real Clear Energy, Oct 16, 2022
President Biden Is Planning To Release More Oil From The SPR
By Irina Slav, Oil Price.com Oct 18, 2022
Problems in the Orthodoxy
China says cheap energy is more important than climate wish list
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 21, 2022
“The scariest thing is that a communist dictator seems more sensible than any democratic one.”
Net Zero by 2070: India still has 99 coal projects in pipeline
India has a 36% underutilised coal capacity in existing mines
By Seema Prasad, Downtoearth, Oct 14, 2022
Vietnam’s U-Turn on Coal Reflects Inevitable Energy Reality
By Vijay Jayaraj, Real Clear Energy, Oct 17, 2022
Thailand bets on coal despite long losing streak for communities
By Kannikar Petchkaew, Mongabay, Oct 13, 2022
Under a photo of a power plant: “Researchers say the ultra-supercritical steam generators like the ones planned for Mae Moh are more efficient than older technologies, but will still emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Image courtesy of The Network for the Rights of Mae Moh Patients.
[SEPP Comment: And carbon dioxide harms agriculture?]
Seeking a Common Ground
Green Davos: Climate sceptics charm investors
By David Whitehouse, Net Zero Watch, Oct 21, 2022
“This is not a conference about climate science, it’s a conference for investors. This is not scientists presenting papers and building their profiles, this is about something that requires a deeper intelligence. Money.”
Science destroys its credibility by embracing critical theory
The acceptance of fashionable nonsense is a threat to Enlightenment values and public health.
By Cameron English, Big Think, Oct 12, 2022
Why The Woke Create The Disasters They Warn Of
My conversation with Will Cain on energy nihilism, climate narcissism, and why the WEF wants you to eat bugs.
Video by Michael Shellenberger, His Blog, Oct 17, 2022 [H/t WUWT]
Yes, climate change is bad — but scientists must ‘chill’ when it comes to doomsday scenarios, experts say
By Chris Melore, Study Finds, Oct 17, 2022
Link to letter: Catastrophic climate risks should be neither understated nor overstated
By Matthew G. Burgess, Roger Pielke Jr., and Justin Ritchie, PNAS, Oct 10, 2022
According to the article: ‘Right now, not as many climate models focus enough attention on middle scenarios. That should change.’
[SEPP Comment: Actually, all the models overestimate current trends, and should not be used for policy.]
Science, Policy, and Evidence
EU Members Disagree On How To Ease The Energy Crisis
By Tsvetana Paraskova, Oil Price.com, Oct 18, 2022
[SEPP Comment: Stop pretending there is a climate crisis.]
Moooving right along
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 19, 2022
Models v. Observations
Even when they know the answer the models warm too much
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 19, 2022
“Clearly only the low-ECS models get the warming anything close to right. The medium- and high-ECS models do not describe the climate we live in, they describe some hothouse alarmist dystopia. But those are the models that governments look to when conjuring up images of what the future will bring, which is why gullible young people have taken to throwing soup at van Gogh paintings.”
Changing Weather
Typhoon Frequency Has Fallen Since 1950, Contradicting Alarmist Global Warming Claims
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Oct 18, 2022
Charts by Kirye, using data from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) [Pacific typhoons]
Scientists Warn of a Rare Third Year La Nina
Press Release by institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Via WUWT, Oct 21, 2022
Link to paper: Will the Historic Southeasterly Wind over the Equatorial Pacific in March 2022 Trigger a Third-year La Niña Event?
By Xianghui Fang, et al. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, July 26, 2022
Alarmist Scientist Tim Flannery’s Drought Prediction Contradicted… “Heavy Rainfalls” 3 Years In a Row
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Oct 21, 2022
The forgotten floods of Victoria from 150 years ago… when Melbourne become “Venice”
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 18, 2022
Everybody knows: BC droughts are worse than ever
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 19, 2022
“A 2015 study by Bethany Coulthard of the University of Arizona and Dan Smith of the University of Victoria used tree ring widths on Vancouver island to reconstruct estimates of streamflow depth over 477 years from 1520 to 1997, which they compared to recent instrumental measurements of drought events including those in 2003 and 2009. Their findings? Drought is not new in BC:”
Study Finds Climate Change Means Less Drought In US
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 15, 2022
Faster-developing, wetter hurricanes to come
By Brendan Bane, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Oct 17, 2022 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Increasing Hurricane Intensification Rate Near the US Atlantic Coast
By Karthik Balaguru, et al. Geophysical Research Letters, Oct 17, 2022
See link immediately below
Is Global Warming Responsible for Hurricane Ian? The Evidence Says No
By Chris Martz, WUWT, Oct 16, 2022
[SEPP Comment; If there is any generalization one can make, it is that hurricanes hitting the US have become smaller, not more intense.]
Record Cold in the Midwest While the Northwest is Warm and Dry
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Oct 18, 2022
Changing Cryosphere – Land / Sea Ice
Fake Greenland Melting
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Oct 20, 2022
Fact check: Human-driven global warming increased Larsen ice shelf melt
By Kate S. Petersen, USA Today, Phys.org, Oct 20, 2022 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
“The Larsen C ice shelf of the Antarctic Peninsula is considered to be vulnerable to collapse under certain global warming scenarios, according to researchers.”
[SEPP Comment: Define collapse – 10,000 years?]
Western Hudson Bay polar bears waiting for the sea ice to freeze as tourists flock to watch
By Susan Crockford, Polar Bear Science, Oct 16, 2022
“Those tourists are captive audiences for the global warming propaganda provided by activist organization Polar Bears International: it’s virtually impossible for anyone to escape the climate change doom-mongering in Churchill and that’s a real pity.”
Polar bear in good condition visits small Cree community 130km from coast of W. Hudson Bay
By Susan Crockford, Polar Bear Science, Oct 20, 2022
“[Another] bear was first spotted on Friday 14 October and was captured Tuesday 18 October. Oddly, none of the reports explicitly state the sex of the bear, even those published after it was captured. Is it now politically incorrect to describe the sex of an animal?”
Agriculture Issues & Fear of Famine
Drought-Tolerant Crops: A Success Story The Non-GMO Project Hates
By Cameron English, ACSH, Oct 4, 2022
Lowering Standards
Nutty Academics Demand We Must Cut Our Standard Of Living
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 15, 2022
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
No BBC, There Were No Record Excess Deaths This Summer
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 16, 2022
“Hurricane Ian left 131 people dead in its wake, but according to the BBC that was nothing compared to the death toll which resulted from a few hot days in Britain this summer!”
New Statesman Takes Us All For Fools
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 14, 2022
Attenborough Laments Demise of 800 Penguins “Because Climate Change” – But Fails To Report Discovery of New Colony 1.5 Million Strong
By Chris Morrison, Via WUWT, Oct 18, 2022
Population Crash Cancels Alaska Snow Crab Season – Media Falsely Blames Climate Change
By Anthony Watts, Climate Realism, Oct 18, 2022
[SEPP Link immediately below. The changing biomass of the eastern Bering Sea is a key.]
Expert identifies “key culprit” in mass die-off of Alaska snow crabs
By Staff, CBS News, Oct 30, 2022 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Communicating Better to the Public – Exaggerate, or be Vague?
Turn Your Lights On, It’s Friday!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 17, 2022
“It is of little benefit having renewables supplying all of your power for five hours, if produce little for the rest of the week!”
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
A blessing in deep disguise
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 19, 2022
“’ ‘Renewables give us the freedom to choose an energy source that is clean, cheap, reliable, and ours,’ EU Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans said less than two weeks after Putin’s tanks rolled in.’”
No, Politico Europe, Vladimir Putin Is Not Making Europe “Green”
By Robert Bryce, Real Clear Energy, Oct 19, 2022
“In more than 30 years as a reporter, I have witnessed plenty of media puffery and mendacity. But last week’s inclusion by Politico Europe of Russian President Vladimir Putin on their “Green 28” list ranks as one of the most odious and disgusting examples of media misconduct I have ever seen.”
“Geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan recently summed up Russia’s tactics in Ukraine writing, ‘There is now ample proof from many of the liberated towns of not simply Russian soldiers robbing and killing civilians, but of unit commanders setting up rape clinics and torture chambers for use by the men under their command. War crimes in a tactical sense.’”
Battery Airplanes? Nope! (MIT Technology Review)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Oct 20, 2022
Communicating Better to the Public – Protest
Soup from nuts
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 19, 2022
Under Background in Just Stop Oil: “Allowing the extraction of new oil and gas resources in the UK is an obscene and genocidal policy that will kill our children and condemn humanity to oblivion. It just has to stop.
“If we continue down our current path it will destroy families and communities. We will face the starvation and the slaughter of billions of the poor – and the utter betrayal of our children and their future.”
“In eight years we need to end our reliance on fossil fuels completely. The transition will require massive investment in clean technology, renewables and energy storage but it cannot be done at current levels of energy consumption.”
“Climate collapse will mean the end of workers’ rights, women’s rights, all human rights. It is already the greatest injustice visited on the global south in human history. If you are not in resistance, you are appeasing evil.”
[SEPP Comment: The product of thirty years of UN IPCC exaggeration.]
Volkswagon solves glue protests by supporting them — no lights, no heating, no attention
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 21, 2022
JSP protests the lack of oil
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 19, 2022
Questioning European Green
They Can’t Make Green Energy Using Only Green Energy
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Oct 17, 2022
Questioning Green Elsewhere
Did Henry Ford’s success come about because he demanded the execution of horses?
By Terry Etam, BOE Report, Oct 11, 2022 [H/t WUWT]
Non-Green Jobs
No growth while Net Zero is in place [UK]
Press Release, Net Zero Watch, Oct 15, 2022
The Political Games Continue
British PM Wins Pyrrhic Victory on Fracking
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 20, 2022
Proposed climate rule is bigger, badder deal than Manchin-Schumer climate bill
By Rupert Darwall, The Hill, Oct 15, 2022
“But if this really were a mere tidying-up exercise, it wouldn’t need more than 500 pages of rule-making.”
“In reality, the proposed rule is about climate policy. Its practical effect would be to facilitate the ability of institutional investors and climate activists to impose, monitor and enforce climate targets on publicly traded companies, without obtaining explicit authorization from Congress.”
Litigation Issues
19 Attorneys General Announce Investigation into Six Wall Street Firms over ESG Investing
By Sean Moran, Breitbart, Oct 19, 2022 [H/t John Dunn]
Clintel seeks your support in the climate case of the century
By Staff, Climategate.NL, No Date
New Jersey sues five oil companies, trade group for allegedly concealing role in climate change
By Zack Budryk, The Hill, Oct 18, 2022
“The lawsuit cites documented instances of implied knowledge of climate change by the defendants dating back decades, such as investments in raised oil platforms to account for sea-level rise and a 1973 Exxon patent for a cargo ship that could break through sea ice. Even further back, the plaintiffs allege, the company that would eventually become ConocoPhillips obtained a patent in 1966 for an early form of carbon sequestration technology.”
[SEPP Comment: Climate has been changing for hundreds of millions of years. Does this AG claim it will stop with no CO2 emissions?]
EPA and other Regulators on the March
EPA takes additional step toward phasing out planet-warming gas used in refrigeration
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Oct 20, 2022
[SEPP Comment; A typical meaningless step by EPA except to make refrigeration more costly and less energy efficient.]
Energy Issues – Non-US
Former Shell boss urges industry to combat ‘energy illiteracy’
A former chief executive of Shell told Energy Voice that the industry needs to focus on educating the public and politicians on the complexities of the sector, and use its people as “ambassadors”.
By Andrew Dykes and Ryan Duff, Energy Voice, Oct 19, 2022
MPs kill UK fracking prospects in huge gift to Putin
Press Release, Net Zero Watch, Oct 20, 2022
Netherlands Shutting Down The Largest Gas Field In Europe
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Oct 20, 2022
And a half-cheer for Freeland
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 19, 2022
Energy Issues — US
A Cold, Dark Winter in New England
By John Hinderaker, Power Line, Oct 17, 2022
New England Facing Blackouts This Winter, As Mad Green Policies Bite
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 20, 2022
Link to report: Natural gas crisis building in New England
By Dustin Stolz, ADI Analytics, Oct 17, 2022
[SEPP Congress: No help from Congress or the administration.]
Green Energy Fail: New England Facing Rolling Blackouts this Winter
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 19, 2022
The Big Bang Theory – Lessons From The RINs Price Spike Of 2013 And Why They Still Apply
By George Hoekstra, RBN Energy, Oct 20, 2022
Nuclear Energy and Fears
Another cheer for Greta
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 19, 2022
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
Is Private Renewable Energy Investment Faltering in Australia?
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 20, 2022
Is Wind Energy Becoming Too Expensive?
By Felicity Bradstock, Oil Price.com, Oct 16, 2022
Solar Farms
Michael Shellenberger, His Blog Oct 16, 2022
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Other
BP Biogas: Greenwashing with the Uneconomic
By Robert Bradley, Master Resource, Oct 18, 2022
Can Green Hydrogen Replace Natural Gas?
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 20, 2022
Gas consumption last year was 860 TWh
Electrolysis typically works at about 60% efficiency. That is, an input of 100 MWh would produce 60 MWh of hydrogen
Electricity input to produce 860 TWh of gas would be 1433 TWh
Assuming this electricity comes from dedicated offshore wind farms, we would need capacity of 364 GW.
Current offshore capacity is 13 GW
“Replacing Natural Gas With Hydrogen Is A Fairy Tale”…”Six Times More Electricity”
Hydrogen as an energy source for powering transport and heating poses colossal technical and cost challenges
By Die kalte Sonne, Via P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Oct 15, 2022
Wood Theft Skyrocketing As Germans Try To Keep Warm. Firewood Tracked By GPS
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Oct 19, 2022
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Storage
Novel Grid Battery Introduced
By Donn Dears, Power For USA, Oct 18, 2022
Link to website: “Battery Technology”
By Staff, Form Energy, Accessed Oct 21, 2022
“Our first commercial product using our iron-air technology is optimized to store electricity for 100 hours at system costs competitive with legacy power plants. This product is our first step to tackling the biggest barrier to deep decarbonization: making renewable energy available when and where it’s needed, even during multiple days of extreme weather, grid outages, or periods of low renewable generation.” Boldface added
[SEPP Comment: It may be a typo, but the 100 hours is not practical for long term storage. The self-discharge of LI-ion batteries is far slower, about 2 to 3% per month.]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
“There’s no such thing as a zero emissions vehicle”
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 19, 2022
Video on mining required to produce EV batteries
Bjorn Lomborg: Electric Car Subsidies Are a Bad Investment
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Oct 19, 2022
Link to article: Electric Car Subsidies Are A Bad Investment Opinion
By Bjorn Lomborg, Newsweek, Oct 18, 2022
Cost of public charging an EV is now more expensive than filling up with diesel–Parkers
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 17, 2022
Fully Electric Vehicles Reached ~6% Of Auto Sales In USA In 3rd Quarter
6% of US auto sales is up from EVs’ 2.2% of US auto sales in Q3 2020.
By Zachary Shahan, Clean Technica, Oct 14, 2022
[SEPP Comment: What would sales be without a $7500 tax credit? The ill named Inflation Reduction Act extended the credit to December 2032 as a discount to the purchaser, the credit going to the dealer. It also removed the 200,000-vehicle cap on manufacturers.]
The Argument For Electric Vehicles Just Got Worse
By Staff, The Congressional Insider, No Date [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
California Dreaming
Robbing Grandma to Pay Gaia
By Thomas Buckley, WUWT, Oct 17, 2022
Environmental Industry
The Green Energy Profiteering Scam
“Green” Profits Can Only Rise if Citizens’ Freedoms Fall
By J.B. Shurk, Gatestone Institute, Oct 20, 2022
Other News that May Be of Interest
California Coastal Commission Approves New Desalination Plant in Orange County
Approval marks reversal of CCC rejection of previous desalination plants
By Evan Symon, California Globe, Oct 14, 2022
“While environmental groups tried to stop the plant due to claims of harm to sea life because of the water intake wells and plant runoff, the CCC noted the projects’ ultimate commitment to avoiding sea life harm. Other opposition groups tried to focus on the price of water going up at 20% to $1,479 per acre foot for those who would receive the water. But, once final costs were calculated to only a $2 to $7 a month rise in water costs per household, that point was moot.”
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
Guardian Readers Are The Most Gullible On The Planet, New Data Shows
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 21, 2022
“Next pandemic may come from melting glaciers, new data shows”
109 Years Of Climate Emergency
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Oct 20, 2022
British Town Council Axes Major Annual Airshow Over Climate Change
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 18, 2022
CO2 Making People Fat
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Oct 20, 2022
ARTICLES
1. Western World’s Energy Folly in a New York Nutshell
Why should Europe have all the fun? The Empire State tries to sabotage its grid with renewables.
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., WSJ, Oct. 21, 2022
2TWTW Summary: Key points presented in the This Week section above.