Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
h/t strativarius; The researchers appear to be effectively predicting five events of the same severity as Australiaโs 2019-20 โBlack Summerโ, over the next seven years.
More than 2,400 lives will be lost to bushfires in Australia over a decade, experts predict
Exclusive: Healthcare costs from smoke-related deaths tipped to reach $110m, new modelling led by Monash University suggests
In the decade to 2030, more than 2,400 lives will be lost to bushfires in Australia, with healthcare costs from smoke-related deaths tipped to reach $110m, new modelling led by Monash University suggests.
The lead health economist with the universityโs Centre for Medicine Use and Safety, Associate Prof Zanfina Ademi, who headed the analysis, said it was important to get a predictive picture of the bushfire situation in Australia and its impact on health and the economy.
โThis will underline preventive investment strategies to mitigate the incidence and severity of future bushfires in Australia,โ she said.
โHuman-induced climate change is increasing the likelihood of catastrophic wildfires. This underscores the importance of actions to mitigate bushfire risk.โ
The Hospitalizations for Cardiovascular and Respiratory Conditions, Emergency Department Presentations and Economic Burden of Bushfires in Australia Between 2021 and 2030: A Modelling Study
The health and environmental impacts of bushfires results in substantial economic costs to society. The present analysis sought to estimate the burden of bushfires in Australia over 10 years from 2021 to 2030 inclusive. A dynamic model with yearly cycles was constructed to simulate follow-up of the entire Australian population from 2021 to 2030, capturing deaths and years of life lived. Estimated numbers of bushfire-related-deaths, costs of related-hospitalizations, and broader economic costs were derived from published sources. A 5% annual discount rate was applied to all costs incurred and life years lived from 2022 onwards. Over the 10 years from 2021 to 2030, the modelled analysis predicted that 2418 [95% confidence interval (CI) 2412 โ 2422] lives would be lost to bushfires, as well as 8590 [95% CI 8573 โ 8606] years of life lost (discounted). Healthcare costs arising from deaths for smoke-related conditions, hospitalizations amounted to AUD $110 million [95% CI 91-129 million] (discounted). The impact on gross domestic product (GDP) totaled AUD $17.2 billion. A hypothetical intervention that reduces the impact of bushfires by 10% would save $11 million in healthcare costs and $1.9 billion in GDP. The health and economic burden of bushfires in Australia looms large during 2021 and 2030. This underscores the importance of actions to mitigate bushfire risk. The findings are useful for the future design and delivery and help policy makers to make informed decisions about investment in strategies to reduce the incidence and severity of future bushfires.Read more: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0146280622003139?via%3Dihub
Sadly the full paper isnโt available. But the prediction seems absurd.
From the study summary;
โฆ In 2019-20, Australia recorded one of the most severe bushfire seasons, with extensive areas of south-eastern Australia affected. Termed the โBlack Summerโ bushfires, almost 20 million hectares of land were burnt, resulting in over 3000 homes lost, and 34 lives lost directly (including nine firefighters).2,3 Borchers-Arriagada et al estimated there were an additional 417 excess deaths resulting from longer-term consequences of the fire. โฆ It is estimated that the smoke-related healthcare costs of the Black Summer bushfires totaled AUD $1.95 billion.8This is more than 9 times the median annual cost of bushfires for the previous 19 years (AUD $211 million) โฆRead more: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0146280622003139?via%3Dihub
Unfortunately the full details of their model are paywalled. But going by their own numbers, 2412 deaths over the next 7 years is:
They are predicting FIVE bushfires in the next seven years or the equivalent in smaller fires. Five fires which are predicted to cause as much harm as a single noteworthy event, the 2019-20 Black Summer fires, which according to their own numbers was nine time as bad as the median severity of events in the previous 19 years.
I donโt have access to their calculations, but given the apparent magnitude of the departure from business as usual, Iโm guessing someone mixed up a decimal place in one of their model parameters.
At 39 degrees Fahrenheit, Indiaโs capital of Delhi experienced one of the coldest winter nights this year on December 27. The region is home to 32 million people, with millions of them having no access to heating in their homes. Neighboring states recordedย below-freezingย temperatures.
At 39 degrees Fahrenheit, Indiaโs capital of Delhi experienced one of the coldest winter nights this year on December 27. The region is home to 32 million people, with millions of them having no access to heating in their homes. Neighboring states recorded below-freezing temperatures.
In contrast, nearly all of metro New Yorkโs population of 18 million has home heating. Delhiโs situation would be considered a humanitarian crisis in the U.S.
The Indian mediaโs attitude generally is to shrug off such winter events as an aberration of weather while treating high summer temperatures as proof of catastrophic climate change. You see, Delhi, an ancient city that has been subjected to many invasions over the last thousand years, has recently been invaded by climate alarmism.
Every year, media outlets are quick to jump on summer hot spells. Even news outlets in the U.S. have begun reporting to audiences ignorant of Indian realities the occasionally extreme heat of the subcontinent as proof of dangerous global warming.
While city thermometers do at times record exceedingly high temperatures, the usual cause is the well-known urban heat island โ a phenomenon that gets a boost even from the exhausts of air conditioning units in densely packed residential areas.
Usually ignored by the media is that summer heat is generally less dangerous than winter cold. There are multiple ways to adapt to heat. Increasing water consumption, limiting exposure to heat, weather proofing roofs and increasing green spaces are among them. However, adaptation to cold usually requires a reliable heating source, something that is not readily available to the poorest in developing countries.
Delhi has been witnessing historically cold winter temperatures during the past five years. Lacking access to proper heating, millions of people in the city suffer from cold-induced morbidities. Like any other place, cold kills more people than heat in India. Many burn wood and waste together in open spaces, a common sight even in the cityโs wealthiest pockets.
Observers like me have been pointing out record-breaking cold weather in the countryโs capital year after year. A 100-year-old record for low temperatures was registered in recent years. Yet, the media in India and around the world seldom recognize these cold spells as contradictions to the dominant climate-change narrative.
The lack of logic in media reports is often stunning. Not long ago, alarmists claimed that snow would be a thing of the past. Today, many of them say global warming will cause excessive snowing. Excuse me while I scratch my head.
Consider the current winter in the U.S.: Climate commentator Tony Heller points out that the media change their logic to suit the alarmist narrative. New York Times, for example says โthe polar vortex is caused by global warming and melting Arctic sea ice.โ However, in 1978, the same paper โblamed the polar vortex on global cooling and expanding Arctic sea ice.โ
Expect the contradictions of alarmistsโ pronouncements and media reports to increase in the coming days. Weather events of virtually all manner will be presented as evidence for a coming apocalypse spawned by man-made global warming. The objective is not to shed light on the actual cause and effects of weather or climate but rather to add to a ridiculous doomsday vision.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a masterโs degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, UK and resides in India.
All Iโve seen are photos ofย fat bearsย andย fat cubs,ย even a triplet litterย in fall 2020. The shore of WH near Churchill should have been abounding with starving bears in 2020 (and in 2015), if the experts were right about starving bears preceding a population decline.
So, if the Western Hudson Bay (WH) subpopulation had indeed dropped by 27% by late summer 2021 as researchers claimed, where are all the photos of starving bears in the fall of 2020, the year before the count? The photo below of a thin female and cub was taken in late fall of 2021 (the year of the count) by a stationary web cam.
In other words, some bears came off the ice without an optimal amount of fat because of poor hunting conditions over the winter but they were still alive. We know that 2020 had the shortest ice-free season in at least 20 years (and no similar images were captured), so bears went into the winter of 2020/2021 in good condition. Ditto for 2017-2019.
In contrast to 2021, in 2016 (the year of the previous survey that also indicated a declining population size), bears reportedly came off the ice in good condition.
All Iโve seen are photos of fat bears and fat cubs, even a triplet litter in fall 2020. The shore of WH near Churchill should have been abounding with starving bears in 2020 (and in 2015), if the experts were right about starving bears preceding a population decline.
More importantly, where are the studies on food-deprived bears onshore, as were done in the 1980s when WH bears were emaciated and cub survival poor (e.g. Ramsay et al. 1988)? WH bears are being used exclusively to model an implausibly pessimistic future for polar bears across the entire Arctic (Molnar et al. 2010; 2020), which means lack of good science for WH polar bears has big consequences. Covid restrictions in two of those ten years donโt excuse lack of study on this phenomenon.
Condition of bears since 2017
If adult females with cubs and young bears on their own for the first time actually starved to death over the winter of 2020/2021โaccounting for a 27% decline in numbers documented in the fall of 2021โat least a few of those bears should have been come ashore in the summer of 2020 in poor condition. As a result of not eating over the summer months, those bears should have been skin and bones by late October/early November 2020 and died over the winter of 2020/2021.
Yet as far as I know, not a single photo of a lean or truly starving polar bear was shared on social media by locals or captured on the Explore.org stationary or buggy-mounted web cams in 2020 (which werenโt affected by Covid restrictions in 2020). There was certainly nothing in the media or shared by Polar Bears International. If Iโve missed any, please let me know.
The two lean bears below (probably youngsters) were photographed be the Explore webcam on 26 November 2021 just as ice formation had begun that fall. The photos of these bears, and of the thin female with cub above, indicate that some bears came off the ice that summer in less-than-ideal condition but were still alive. Itโs what we should have seen in 2020 (and in years before that) but didnโt.
By 2022, Andrew Derocher said the bears his team out tagging bears in April were in good condition (by โpast yearsโ, he meant many years past, not the recent past, since he said bears were in good condition in 2019).
Dr. Nick Pilfold (left) PhD from @ualbertaScience & now with @sandiegozoo attaching an eartag satellite radio on an adult male in Hudson Bay today. A really big male about 80 km offshore. The bears are in good condition this spring compared to past years. pic.twitter.com/zShn4DerzO
Although researchersย werenโt out in fall 2020ย because of Covid restrictions, the Tundra buggies of Frontiers North were out watching and photographing the bears even if they werenโt taking tourists (see photo below, taken 4 November 2020). Very good sea ice conditions in 2020 (late breakup, early freeze-up compared to early 2000s) and photos of fat bears taken by the webcams suggest the animals did very well that year.
More photos of fat bears below, most from the fall of 2020 and one from 2017, captured by stationary Explore.org web cams or those mounted on Tundra buggies (which I have monitored since 2017).
Below, bears on a fresh seal kill, 5 November 2020:
Below, female and yearly cubs on a seal kill, 31 October 2020:
Below, female with two cubs in good condition, 24 August 2020:
Below, big male in excellent condition, 10 November 2017:
The purported 27% population decline between 2017 and September 2021 would have required a large number of bears to have died very quickly of starvation over the spring of 2021, even though they were in good shape beforehand. That premise is hard to swallow without some kind of corroborating evidence.
That leads to an even bigger question. How does a population of polar bears supposedly decline by 40% over 10 yearsโfromย about 1030 in 2011ย toย about 618 in 2021โwithout significant numbers of bears in poor or very poor condition being documented in the years immediately before the counts were done, especially for theย most-studiedโand probably theย most photographedโsubpopulation in the world?
In the 1980s, when it was known from yearly detailed studies that WH polar bears were really struggling (Calvert et al. 1986:19,24; Ramsay et al. 1988), polar bear specialists Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher suggested that there might be too many bears in Hudson Bay (i.e., more bears than food to eat). Alternatively, it was suggested that something might have happened out on the ice during the winter that made it difficult for the bears to find ringed seals, their primary prey, although lack of data meant the possibility could not be confirmed (Derocher and Stirling 1992, 1995).
There was no apparent population decline in WH during the 1980s (1983-1990) as there had been in the Southern Beaufort between 1974 and 1976, when thick spring ice drove seals out of the region and left many bears to starve or move elsewhere themselves (Burns et al. 1975; Lentfer 1976:187, 192; Stirling 2002; Stirling et al. 1975a, 1975b, 1980, 1982, 1993, 2008), because compared to everywhere else, WH bears overall had been doing exceptionally well even when some bears were clearly starving (Stirling and Lunn 1997).
Regardless of the cause, the result for several years during the 1980s, some WH bears were in poor condition during the summer but no population decline occurred. These starving bears were impossible to ignore, as the details below show.
1983
Polar bear researchers Ian Stirling and Malcolm Ramsay emphasized that the mean weight of pregnant females they encountered in 1983 was 37kgs lighter than in other years (Ramsay and Stirling 1988:615). These authors stated:
โ...bears of all age and sex classes in the summer and autumn of 1983 appeared to us, at the time of capture, to be, on average, in poorer condition than at equivalent seasons in the years previous and subsequent. Some qualitative behavioural observations corroborated this view. During autumn, 1983, the town of Churchill recorded a larger number of bears feeding at its dump (Lunn & Stirling, 1985) than in the previous three years and a higher number of human-bear incidents than in any year of the previous decade. Three cubs-of-the-year were found abandoned by their mothers in autumn and near starvation, something seen in no other year.โ[my bold]
In one extreme example, a female they encountered with three cubs-of-the year in November 1983 weighed only 99 kg (218 lb). As thin as she was then, she survived and by the following July she was pregnant again and weighed a remarkable 410 kg (904 lb).
Lunn and Stirling had this to say about polar bears feeding at the Churchill dump in 1983:
โIn 1983, bears came into the dump more than a month earlier (late August compared with early October) and there were about twice as many (20 vs. 10-11) as in the previous 2 years.โ
In other words, in 1983 the bears arrived onshore in WH leaner than usual after a poor spring feeding seasonโwe probably wonโt ever know why but it could have been thicker-than-usual sea ice or deeper-than-usual snow pack over the ice that year. This was clearly an issue that bothered Ian Stirling, before he moved on to worrying about global warming.
However, we know the poor feeding opportunities in 1983 werenโt due to lack of summer ice because the bears came ashore in August as usual. Coming ashore leaner than usual meant they got hungry earlier and many turned to the dump. Having found food there, it appears they were not in any hurry to leave at the first opportunity when sea ice appeared โ exactly what seems to have happened with the bears atย Belushya Guba in 2019.
1989
From Derocher and Stirling (1992:1153):
โThe proportion of females with yearlings varied annually between 6% and 25% of all adult females sampled over the study, but did not demonstrate any trend. The low proportion of females with yearlings in 1990 appeared to be due to very low survival in the cohort of cubs from 1989.โ
What was happening with sea ice in 1989 in WH? Breakup was a bit early in 1989 but not especially so, and the date of freeze-up was about average (Castro de la Guardia et al. 2017). As a consequence, like a recent decline in proportion of females with yearlings cubs documented in Southern Hudson Bay (Obbard et al. 2018)โas well as the purported 2017-2021 decline in WH numbersโa decline in the length of the ice-free season could not have caused the low survival of WH cubs in 1989.
Average weights of females in the fall declined from about 230 kg (1965-1982) to about 190 kg (1983-1990)(Derocher and Stirling 1992:1154), but there was no apparent population decline. The authors state later in that paper:
โTypically, density dependence in large mammals is expressed by changes injuvenile survival, birthrate, age of first reproduction, and body size, all of which have been documented in this study. Invoking an argument of density-dependent changes is difficult to support without accurate population estimates, and other explanations for the observed patterns in our study cannot be dismissed as alternatives. For example, climatic fluctuations and variation in ice conditions could impact polar bear populations by increasing or decreasing the availability of prey. The observed decreases in reproduction and weight could be a function of a reduction in the seal population or their availability to polar bears.
Variation in the abundance of a prey base is usually reflected in changes in weight and subsequently in reproduction of predators. For example, the weights and reproductive output of polar bears in the Beaufort Sea decreased markedly following a decline in ringed and bearded seal populations.
In contrast to the Beaufort Sea studies, where the decline in body size andreproduction was sudden and then evident for only 2 or 3 years, the trend in the western Hudson Bay population has been of much longer duration. [my bold]
Conclusion
On the two notable occasions when starving polar bears were studied (1974-76 in the Southern Beaufort Sea, and the 1980s in Western Hudson Bay), lack of summer sea ice was not the cause and in only one case (the SB example) did significant numbers of starving bears result in a documented population decline.
However, on both previous occasions, bears in poor condition were noted by researchers in studies dedicated to documenting the phenomenon. If a polar bear population decline of 40% between 2011 and 2021 indeed occurred in WH because of starvation caused by climate change, where is the evidence? Why has there not been a single scientific study documenting bears in poor condition onshore during the summer and fall over the last 10 years (2020โand perhaps 2021โexcepted, due to Covid restrictions)?
The stakes for polar bear researchers couldnโt be higher. This makes it all the more significant that they have provided no actual evidence that WH bears are indeed starving to death in sufficient numbers to substantiate a 40% decline over 10 years. If the claimed population decline of 2011-2021 is real and not an artifact of some other phenomenon (likeย females moving north of Churchill to have their cubs), we should have been seeing numerous photos of starving bears in the summer/fall of 2016 and 2020 at the very least, as well as a peer-reviewed paper or two describing the situation. So far, neither has been presented and there is stillย no publicly-available copyย of the 2021 population count report.
References
Burns, J. J., Fay, F. H., and Shapiro, L.H. 1975.The relationships of marine mammal distributions, densities, and activities to sea ice conditions (Quarterly report for quarter ending September 30, 1975, projects #248 and 249), pp. 77-78 in Environmental Assessment of the Alaskan Continental Shelf, Principal Investiagorsโ Reports. July-September 1975, Volume 1. NOAA, Environmental Research Laboratories, Boulder Colorado. pdf here.
Calvert, W., Stirling, I., Schweinsburg, R.E., Lee, L.J., Kolenosky, G.B., Shoesmith, M., Smith, B., Crete, M. and Luttich, S. 1986. Polar bear management in Canada 1982-84. In: Polar Bears: Proceedings of the 9th meeting of the Polar Bear Specialists Group IUCN/SSC, 9-11 August, 1985, Edmonton, Canada. Anonymous (eds). Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge UK, IUCN. http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/meetings/ pg. 19-34.
Castro de la Guardia, L., Myers, P.G., Derocher, A.E., Lunn, N.J., Terwisscha van Scheltinga, A.D. 2017. Sea ice cycle in western Hudson Bay, Canada, from a polar bear perspective. Marine Ecology Progress Series 564: 225โ233. http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v564/p225-233/
Derocher, A.E. and Stirling, I. 1992. The population dynamics of polar bears in western Hudson Bay. pg. 1150-1159 in D. R. McCullough and R. H. Barrett, eds. Wildlife 2001: Populations. Elsevier Sci. Publ., London, U.K.
Abstract: Reproductive output of polar bears in western Hudson Bay declined through the 1980โs from higher levels in the 1960โs and 1970โs. Age of first reproduction increased slightly and the rate of litter production declined from 0.45 to 0.35 litters/female/year over the study, indicating that the reproductive interval had increased. Recruitment of cubs to autumn decreased from 0.71 to 0.53 cubs/female/year. Cub mortality increased from the early to late 1980โs. Litter size did not show any significant trend or significant annual variation due to an increase in loss of the whole litter. Mean body weights of females with cubs in the spring and autumn declined significantly. Weights of cubs in the spring did not decline, although weights of both female and male cubs declined over the study. The population is approximately 60% female, possibly due to the sex-biased harvest. Although estimates of population size are not available from the whole period over which we have weight and reproductive data, the changes in reproduction, weight, and cub mortality are consistent with the predictions of a densitydependent response to increasing population size. [my bold]
Derocher, A.E. and Stirling, I. 1995. Temporal variation in reproduction and body mass of polar bears in western Hudson Bay. Canadian Journal of Zoology73:1657-1665. http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/z95-197
Lentfer 1976. Polar bear management and research in Alaska 1974-76. Pg. 187-197 in [Anonymous]. Polar Bears: Proceedings of the 6th meeting of the Polar Bear Specialists Group IUCN/SSC, 7 December, 1976, Morges, Switzerland. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge UK, IUCN. http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/meetings/
Molnรกr, P.K., Bitz, C.M., Holland, M.M., Kay, J.E., Penk, S.R. and Amstrup, S.C. 2020. Fasting season length sets temporal limits for global polar bear persistence. Nature Climate Change 10:732-738. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0818-9
Obbard, M.E., Stapleton, S., Szor, G., Middel, K.R., Jutras, C. and Dyck, M. 2018. Estimating the abundance of the Southern Hudson Bay polar bear subpopulation with aerial surveys. Arctic Science https://doi.org/10.1139/AS-2018-0004
Stirling, I. and Lunn, N.J. 1997. Environmental fluctuations in arctic marine ecosystems as reflected by variability in reproduction of polar bears and ringed seals. In Ecology of Arctic Environments, Woodin, S.J. and Marquiss, M. (eds), pg. 167-181. Blackwell Science, UK.
Stirling, I., Andriashek, D., and Calvert, W. 1993. Habitat preferences of polar bears in the western Canadian Arctic in late winter and spring. Polar Record29:13-24. http://tinyurl.com/qxt33wj
Stirling, I., Andriashek, D., Latour, P.B. and Calvert, W. 1975a. Distribution and abundance of polar bears in the Eastern Beaufort Sea. Beaufort Sea Tech. Report #2, Dept. Environment, Victoria, B.C.
Stirling, I., Archibald, R. and DeMaster, D. 1975b. Distribution and abundance of seals in the Eastern Beaufort Sea. Beaufort Sea Tech. Report #1, Dept. Environment, Victoria, B.C.
Stirling, I, Kingsley, M. and Calvert, W. 1982. The distribution and abundance of seals in the eastern Beaufort Sea, 1974โ79. Canadian Wildlife Service Occasional Paper 47. Edmonton.
Stirling, I., Richardson, E., Thiemann, G.W. and Derocher, A.E. 2008. Unusual predation attempts of polar bears on ringed seals in the southern Beaufort Sea: possible significance of changing spring ice conditions. Arctic61:14-22. http://arctic.synergiesprairies.ca/arctic/index.php/arctic/article/view/3/3
Stirling, I., Schweinsburg, R.E., Kolenasky, G.B., Juniper, I., Robertson, R.J., and Luttich, S. 1980. Proceedings of the 7th meeting of the Polar Bear Specialists Group IUCN/SSC, 30 January-1 February, 1979, Copenhagen, Denmark. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge UK, IUCN., pg. 45-53.http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/meetings/ pdf of except here.
On March 19, 2020, the State of California became the first state to issue a stay-at-home order, mandating all residents stay at home except to go to an essential job or shop for basic needs.ย Within weeks most of the world followed.
On March 19, 2020, the State of California became the first state to issue a stay-at-home order, mandating all residents stay at home except to go to an essential job or shop for basic needs. Within weeks most of the world followed.
For the next three months total energy use across all sectorsโฆtransportation, industrial, commercial, and residentialโฆplummeted by over 15% thereafter rising slowly in bursts and spats.
As an avid studier of all things โclimate changeโ related I tracked the impact this significant fuel use reduction had on the Keeling Curve. The Keeling Curve is the chart tracking carbon dioxide in the atmosphere based on near-daily measurements at the Mauna Lao observatory located on the big island of Hawaii.
The effect was both shocking and predictable.ย The marked reduction of fossil fuel use had no effect on the Keeling Curve which continued its virtual 45% upward slope on the highly exaggerated chart expressed as parts per million per year.ย This was wholly consistent with our findings over the previous 10 years as developing countries increased fossil use with no corresponding change of CO2 as reflected in this curve.
Notice on the upward-slopping blue bar line of the Keeling curve in figure 2, the jagged โsawtoothโ line. This jagged sawtooth waveform represents the seasonal variations of CO2 as affected by plant growth on land and sea. This is a function of the Earthโs elliptical orbit around the Sun and its 23.5-degree axial tilt.
Close inspection of this saw tooth-like variance in CO2 shows roughly 10 parts per million (ppm) variation between the minimum and maximum as affected by sunlight and plant life distribution. This is far more than the 3 ppm increase in CO2 that the climate alarmist community claim is caused by manโs use of fossil fuels. To me, this was the โsmoking gunโ showing that these claims of fossil fuel increasing total CO2 were false and without merit!
In collaboration with Mr. Bud Bromley, and with the kind financial support of actor/singer Pat Boone, we engaged two Stanford-educated Ph.D.s, Dr. Shahar Ben-Menahem a physicist, and Dr. Abraham Ishihara, a high-level mathematician and control theory expert, to design an experiment using the Mauna Lao Keeling data which is considered by all leading scientists as the โgold standardโ of the available CO2 monitoring data sets.
Our scientists took the raw NOAA Mauna Loa data for daily CO2 tests and filled in data points for days with missing data using standard interpolation methods.
Then they transformed the CO2 ppm concentration versus time data into the frequency domain, like a continuous spectrum of light or radio frequencies. This provides nearly unlimited resolution.
Then they notch filtered to remove resonances and seasonal cycles such as the sharkโs teeth.
Then they low-pass filtered out all frequencies above a specified frequency to remove random noise spikes.
Then they reconstructed the data again as CO2 ppm concentration versus time and cleaned the CO2 time signal.
They calculated these data as the time derivative of CO2 concentration. This is the rate of change of CO2 ppm concentration. It is like the speed or velocity of a car.
Then, they drilled into this data to look at the time window beginning about a year before the Pinatubo volcano eruption of June 15, 1991, and a few years after the eruption.
What we proved was that:
The NOAA-Scripps โKeeling curveโ dataset from Mauna Loa is responsive to CO2 changes even though the event causing those changes is physically remote, thousands of miles away from the NOAA measurement site on Mauna Loa in Hawaii. We now know this NOAA data will be sufficient for further data science. Confirming this was one of the primary purposes of our first phase of work.
Our results confirm that human CO2 emissions are insignificant compared to the net global average CO2 concentration. We demonstrate this by simple calculations in our written publication of the results of this Pinatubo study and 2 addenda.
The software and method we used is sensitive to changes in the CO2 daily records from Mauna Loa and well suited for further research.
This first phase of our study is consistent with Henryโs Law in conjunction with the Law of Mass Action, Le Chatelierโs Principle, Grahamโs Law, and Fickโs Law. CO2 concentrations in air, ocean, soil, and biosphere began to rapidly re-equilibrate to the cooler Earth surface caused by reduced insolation due to the cloud belt. As the cloud belt dissipated and the surface warmed, CO2 concentrations rapidly re-equilibrated.
Following Henryโs Law, human-produced CO2 can only temporarily change CO2 concentration in the air and ocean surface. Our results, confirming NOAA-Scripps results, suggest that human CO2 emissions are a temporary perturbation to an ongoing CO2 trend, like the perturbation caused by the Pinatubo volcanic eruption and its aftermath, but much smaller. Perturbation by human emissions will be rapidly returned to the CO2 trend. CO2 concentration in air is controlled by the CO2 solubility on the waterโs surface. More than 90% of Earthโs water is in the ocean, and the ocean is 70% of earthโs surface.
The solubility of any gas in any liquid is an intensive property of matter, like a boiling point, or a specific heat. Intensive properties of matter are not a function of the amount of material present. Instead, the solubility and diffusivity of a gas in a liquid are a property of the matter itself; in this case, the diffusivity of CO2 is a function of the molecular weight of CO2. Adding more CO2 to the air, whether done by a volcano, humans, or decaying biological material, does not change the ratio of CO2 gas concentration on the oceanโs surface versus CO2 gas concentration in the air above that surface, this is Henryโs Law. Surface temperature does change that ratio.
Solubility or diffusivity of a gas in a liquid depends on the surface temperature and the molecular weight of the gas, not on the amount of the gas or the source of the gas. The diffusivity of a gas in a liquid is inversely proportional to the square root of the molecular weight of the gas; this is Grahamโs Law.
Many variables affect surface temperature, some are systematic like Earthโs orbital distance from the sun, and other variables may be chaotic, such as ocean and air currents, storms, humidity and clouds.
The bottom-line results of our experiment and analysis of the NOAA Scrips Keeling data conclusively proves that โthe net amount of equilibrated carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is the same as if human beings never existed.โ Climate Change is a natural phenomenon, and not manmade.
Let that sink in. The total net amount of CO2 in our atmosphere today is no more or no less than if humans never existed on our planet.
Why does the Keeling curve show an increase of roughly 3 parts per million (ppm) per year?
The causes of such a small annual increase in CO2, if true, are unknown and theoretical. There are several possible causes, but 3 ppm is an annual increase in CO2 of only 0.0003% of the total CO2 in the atmosphere, an amount so small it cannot be distinguished in the open air from random measurement noise. Your exhaled breath is about 4% CO2, and higher if you are exercising. Systematic or random perturbations in sea surface temperature and/or humidity, underwater volcanoes, cyclical deep ocean currents dense with CO2 rising to the sea surface, movements of planetary bodies including the Sun and large planets, destruction of photosynthesizing plants and plankton, are among possible causes, and each of these has multiple possible causes.
And yet only today the New York Times writes Hurricane Ian โrapidly transformed from a relatively weak storm into a strong one, a phenomenon that has become more common due to climate change. Ian embodies several of the major hurricane trends in recent years, as the world copes with the effects of climate change.โ
Indeed, Ian was devastating, but well within the bounds of natural variability.
Two days ago, the Vatican released a new documentary on climate change based on what it calls the โreckless new use of fossil fuels.โ through Cardinal Czerny, and calls for โzero emissionsโ by 2050.
Only a few weeks ago, Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib tried to browbeat the nationโs largest bank CEOs into not lending to oil and gas companies. Thankfully, and correctly, JP Morgan Chaseโs CEO, Jamie Dimon, responded to the Congresswomen when asked if Chase would cease lending to energy companies as follows:
โAbsolutely not. That would be the road to hell for America.โ
In a recent private exchange with Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Professor Emeritus, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of over 200 scientific papers and books on the atmosphere, I pointed out that the climate change farce drivers are purely financial and political. The science is clearly on our side. Of course, I was preaching to the Choir.
Dr. Lindzen points out: โโฆthe importance in the propaganda of establishing the narrative (i.e., the accepted storyline). One of the more subtle techniques is to pepper the narrative (climate change is caused by man) with many dubious features. This may seem counterintuitive. However, by doing so, one diverts attention from the narrativeโs larger framework. People immediately attack these dubious features while leaving the larger narrative untouched. He offers us this sage advice: โStop treating AGWโฆhuman-caused global warming/climate changeโฆas a worthy opponent. Do not ascribe reasonableness to the other side. It is not reasonable, not true, and not even plausible.โ
This message and these facts must be brought to the people. Only then can the political establishment be jarred into reality.
About the Author: In 1971 Tom received the nationโs highest honor for high school students in the field of physics for his work in nuclear magnetic resonance. He did his undergraduate studies in physics, with a dual minor in math and chemistry, at N A U in the 1971-75 timeframe. He has been in the energy generation and utility industry since 1985. Tom was the inventor of electric utility energy conservation instrumentation and measurement devices. He has been granted seven patents in the U.S., Israel, Europe, & China. In the U.S. alone his patents are practiced by the nationโs largest utility companies on over 90 million installed devices.
Tom spends roughly ยฝ of his โworking timeโ lecturing, writing articles, and working with prominent Ph.D. level scientists on what he calls the greatest deception and fraud ever created by man against mankind; AGW climate change.
In 2019 Tom formed ClimateCite, Corp., a U.S. IRS 501(c)(3) compliant not-for-profit company to further his efforts in defeating the climate hoax worldwide.
Tom married his wife, Emily J. Tamarkin in 1982 and the two of them live together in Carmichael, California. They have one son, Jeremy A. Tamarkin.
Cold weather can also permanently damage EV batteries. If you own an EV, my understanding is somewhere in the fine print youโll see a warning to park indoors at night in winter, or at least keep the vehicle plugged in.
Tesla is facing a new $2.2 million fine for apparently misleading consumers about the range of its vehicles in cold weather, a report says.
South Koreaโs Fair Trade Commission alleged Tuesday that the electric automakerexaggerated the โdriving ranges of its cars on a single charge, their fuel cost-effectiveness compared to gasoline vehicles as well as the performance of its Superchargersโ on its Korean website from mid-2019 until recently, according to Reuters.
The actual driving range of Tesla vehicles drops in cold weather by up to 50.5% compared to what was being advertised online, Reuters also reported, citing the Korean agency.
I visited South Korea once in winter, temperatures in Seoul were mostly in the low 30s โ so not bone chilling cold, but I was glad I packed my hat and gloves. Up in the mountains of course it gets a lot colder. Both North and South Korea have plenty of mountains.
Cold weather can also permanently damage EV batteries. If you own an EV, my understanding is somewhere in the fine print youโll see a warning to park indoors at night in winter, or at least keep the vehicle plugged in.
The transition to low-carbon world? โ is a very topical global concern.
In order to improve the conditions for the transition to low carbon energy system The Geological Survey of Finland GTK has been exploring the link between materials and energy systems.
First findings were released in a report by Associate Research Professor Simon P. Michaux in the fall of 2021. It brings up preliminary calculations and systemic interdependencies of this broad entity. Discussion and cooperation with actors in different fields and the refining of observations into scientific publications is continuing.
Report arose a great deal of discussion and comments. Here are answers to the most common questions asked, which will be explained in more detail in the accompanying video.
The report provides scenarios for how a fossil energy based system would be transposed as such to low carbon without, for example, reduction in consumption. Report does not propose that energy system should be replaced as such, because our energy future is a much larger issue than renewable energy production capacity.
The scales of the calculation outcomes are greatly influenced by the assumptions used in the calculations, as well as adoption of technology options, the share of nuclear power, the development of synthetic fuels, among many other factors.
โIn building the overall picture, how the material system and the energy system are intertwined remains to be worked out, particularly when approaching the concrete of supply issues of raw materials, which would cover the entire arc of manufacturing, from excavation, enrichment, through processing, intermediates or the manufacture of intermediate and finished products to recycling.โ says Saku Vuori, Director of Science and Innovation.
โFor example, only less than half of Finlandโs known cobalt resources are recoverable since cobalt is bound to the wrong minerals, so to say. Recycling of complex compounds speaks of similar challenges and therefore emphasises the importance to pursue recyclability in product design. In natural minerals, this option does not exist,โ he continues.
Do we have enough raw materials? Yes and No
The Earthยดs crust contains great abundancy of various elements. As such, we are not running out minerals and metals from the geological point of view. The problem is their exploitability and availability. The development of circular economy is important, but in some cases, there is still not enough materials to recycle. With the current operations, production cannot meet fast enough to the evolving and growing raw material needs. This concern is shared by e.g. European Commission, World Bank and International Energy Agency IEA.
โHowever, there is no ambiguity about the connection between energy transition and growing material needs (including various minerals extracted from bedrock and other raw materials and secondary raw materials), and addressing challenges requires a systemic global perspective. These needs to be solved, ther is no other alternative,โ says Associate Research Professorย Simon P. Michaux.
Is there one replacement for fossil fuels?
There are several options for solutions โ and they need to be sought from a variety of sources. There is reason to assume that no single technology solves the whole challenge; many different ones are needed. Technology is constantly evolving and thus new solutions can be found.
What would be the solution for storing wind and solar energy and why is a buffer needed?
There are uncertainties, but based on the calculation, batteries are not the solution for long-term energy storage. Computationally, material needs, not to mention cost, would exceed any conceivable possibilities. A good example of other solutions needed is the Power to X (P2X) thinking and technologies.
Work to outline the energy and materials system of the future continues โ and will be further refined based on feedback. We are constantly working to identify preconditions. We will continue to engage in dialogue with the various actors working together.
The Key Findings of Simon P. Michaux Research Report
In the video, Simon P. Michaux shows the key findings of his research report โAssessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuelsโ. He will also shed light on the bottlenecks in the supply chain and why we need a new plan.
Answers to hot topics around Simon P. Michauxโs report
In this video Simon P. Michaux answers the following questions:
Is there one technology solution to replace fossil fuels?
What battery chemistries were used?
How does this work compare to other studies done?
How big should the power buffer for wind & solar be?
What is the role of ERoEI in calculations?
Comment and discussion Peter Handley, Jukka Leskelรค, Simon Michaux and Saku Vuori
At the webinar comments were given by
Peter Handley, Head of the Energy-Intensive Industries and Raw Materials Unit, DG GROW at European Commission
Jukka Leskelรค, Managing Director, Finnish Energy.
This video features their commentary on the subject and a discussion between them and Saku Vuoren and Simon P. Michaux, as well as answers to questions posed by the audience. In the beginning there is a presentation by Research Professor Tommi Kauppila on how GTK currently contributes to the green transition.
In the Commonwealth of Kentucky, GOP leaders are not messing around when it comes to woke ESG โ environmental, social, and governance โ policies that endanger the Bluegrass State’s economy and the well being of its citizens.
In addition to joining investigations against companies over their use of ESG in attempts to “decarbonize” the global economy and fighting to keep woke asset management firms from scooping up shares of publicly traded utilities, Kentucky is putting the companies that boycott reliable and affordable energy on notice.ย
On Tuesday, Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball named 11 such financial companies currently boycotting energy companies, following the passage of a 2022 law that directed Ball’s office to publish a list of companies actively engaged in energy boycotts, which then puts said companies on a path toward divestment by the Commonwealth.
Tuesday’s notice is just the latest step in Ball’s leadership against ESG policies that put political aims before financial success.
“When companies boycott fossil fuels, they intentionally choke off the lifeblood of capital to Kentuckyโs signature industries,” Treasurer Ball explained in a statement. “Traditional energy sources fuel our Kentucky economy, provide much needed jobs, and warm our homes. Kentucky must not allow our signature industries to be irreparably damaged based upon the ideological whims of a select few,” Ball warned.
As Treasurer Ball’s office noted, Kentucky’s energy sector makes up 7.8 percent of total state employment, or nearly 144,000 jobs.
It also accounts for close to 95 percent of the Bluegrass State’s power generation used by more than half of residents to heat their homes.
Still, the Office of the Treasurer noted that Kentucky boasts the 12th-lowest average electric prices in the United States.ย
The updatedย listย of companies engaged in energy boycotts was based on “careful review of publicly available statements and commitments made by the companies” and includes the following entities:
BlackRock, Inc.
BNP Paribas SA
Citigroup Inc.
Climate First Bank
Dankse Bank A/S
HSBC PLC
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Nordea Bank ABP
Schroders PLC
Svenska Handelsbanken AB
Swedbank AB.
Those institutions are now considered “Restricted Financial Institutions” under Kentucky law, and state government entities now have 30 days in which they must notify Treasurer Ball’s office of any direct or indirect holdings owned by the government and submit a written notice to the restricted institution.
Within 90 days of that notice, the restricted institution is required to end its energy boycott if it wants to avoid becoming subject to divestment.
In the last article I quoted a portion ofย Dr. Robert Howarthโs statementย in which he more or less claimed credit for the Climate Act.ย ย This post uses two childrenโs tales to illustrate my concerns about his claimed basis for the Act.
I recently noted that the New York Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) Scoping Plan framework for the net-zero by 2050 transition plan was approved by the Climate Action Council on December 19, 2022. In the last article I quoted a portion of Dr. Robert Howarthโs statement in which he more or less claimed credit for the Climate Act. This post uses two childrenโs tales to illustrate my concerns about his claimed basis for the Act.
Climate Act Background
The Climate Act established a โNet Zeroโ target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlines how to โachieve the Stateโs bold clean energy and climate agenda.โ In brief, that plan is to electrify everything possible and power the electric gride with zero-emissions generating resources by 2040. The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the electrification strategies. That material was used to write a Draft Scoping Plan that was released for public comment at the end of 2021 and approved on December 19, 2022.
Childrenโs Stories
I believe that two childrenโs fables illustrate the false presumptions of the Climate Act. According to Wikipedia, the Pied Piper of Hamelin is a Middle Ages tale from the town of Hamelin, Germany. The pied piper, dressed in multicolored (โpiedโ) clothing, was a rat catcher hired by the town to lure rats away with his magic pipe. When the citizens refuse to pay for this service as promised, he retaliated by using his instrumentโs magical power on their children, leading them away as he had the rats. The phrase โpied piperโ has become a metaphor for a person who attracts a following through charisma or false promises.
The other fable is the Emperorโs New Clothes. This Danish fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen was first published in 1837. In this story, swindlers convince the emperor, who spends lavishly on clothing at the expense of state matters, that they can provide magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are stupid or incompetent. The emperor and his court donโt see any clothes but pretend otherwise to avoid being thought a fool. When the emperor marches through the city to show off his new clothes the townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all. The people then realize that everyone has been fooled. The phrase โThe Emperor Has No Clothesโ is often used in political and social contexts for any obvious truth denied by the majority despite the evidence of their eyes, especially when proclaimed by the government.
The Pied Pipers of the Climate Act
The statement of Robert W. Howarth, Ph.D., the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology at Cornell University was very illuminating relative to the motives of the Climate Act authors. He reiterated his claim that he played a key role in the drafting of the Climate Act, developed the irrational methane requirements, and credited one politician for getting the Act passed:
Assembly Person Steven Englebright was hugely instrumental in the passage of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act that established the Climate Action Council. I thank him for his leadership on this, and particularly for his support of the progressive approach on greenhouse gas emissions that is a central part of the CLCPA. I originally proposed this to Assembly Person Englebright in 2016, and he enthusiastically endorsed and supported it through multiple versions of the bill that finally led to passage of the CLCPA in 2019. In this accounting for greenhouse gases, a major government for the first time ever fully endorsed the science demonstrating that methane emissions are a major contributor to global climate change and disruption. Further, in passing the CLCPA New York recognized that consumption of fossil fuels (and not simply geographic boundaries) is what matters in addressing the climate crisis. New York wisely banned the use of high-volume hydraulic fracturing (โfrackingโ) to develop shale gas in our State. But since the time of that ban, the use of fossil natural gas has risen faster in our State than any other in the Union. Methane emissions from this use of shale gas are high, but much of that occurs outside of our boundaries in the nearby states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. Through the CLCPA, the citizens of New York are taking responsibility for these out-of-state emission caused by our use of fossil fuels, particularly for fossil natural gas. The way to reduce these emissions is to rapidly reduce our use of fracked shale gas.
Based on the work of David Zaruk I recently wrote an article describing his analysis of the motives of people like Englebright and Howarth who insist on reducing their perceived priority risks to zero. One of Zarukโs articles explained that the use of definite articles is โabused by activists needing definite truths to win policy debates on complex problems.โ Dr. Howarthโs monomaniacal vilification of natural gas is well described by that statement. During the discussions at the Climate Action Council meetings, he constantly referred to the science and his background as a scientist. Zaruk writes:
In declaring: โThis is the science on XYZโ an activist is attempting to own the issue and shut down any discussion or analysis. In a policy framework where there may be uncertainty or grey areas, imposing a โtheโ provides a wedge between othersโ false opinions and โtheโ truth.
With all due respect to Dr. Howarth, it is appropriate to consider why a โProfessor of Ecology & Environmental Biologyโ is qualified to be an expert on methane emissions from fracking. In my opinion, scientists getting paid to deliver a specific result from trust fund philanthropic organizations, no matter how noble the perceived motive, is the same as the much vilified โtobacco industryโ scientists. The funding stream ends when the results donโt match the funderโs requirements so their arguments are biased. They may be right but the arguments must be considered in that context and debated.
As a member of the Climate Action Council, Howarth was considered a saint and most unquestioningly accepted whatever he said as gospel. This deference to his concerns is also apparent in the Integration Analysis and Scoping Plan. However, his views are not universally accepted. For example, the Climate Act requires New York to account for upstream emissions from fossil fuel used in the state because Howarth has claimed in a 2020 paper that โSome evidence indicates that shale-gas development in North America may have contributed one-third of the total global increase in methane emissions from all sources over the past decade (Howarth 2019).โ This paper and other similar papers claim that โmethane emissions can contribute significantly to the GHG footprint of natural gas, including shale gasโ and form the rationale of the Climate Act vilification of natural gas.
Despite the Climate Act mandate to provide a โdetailed explanation of any changes in methodology or analysis, adjustments made to prior estimates, as needed, and any other information necessary to establish a scientifically credible account of changeโ any contradictory information has been ignored. No comments on the Integration Analysis numbers that formed the basis for the Scoping Plan were mentioned at any of the Climate Action Council meetings. For example, I noted that there is a high quality, long-term monitoring network that measures methane (Lan et al., 2019) over the period when Pennsylvania shale-gas production increased tremendously. According to the plain language summary for the report:
In the past decade, natural gas production in the United States has increased by ~46%. Methane emissions associated with oil and natural gas productions have raised concerns since methane is a potent greenhouse gas with the second largest in๏ฌuence on global warming. Recent studies show con๏ฌicting results regarding whether methane emissions from oil and gas operations have been increased in the United States. Based on longโterm and wellโcalibrated measurements, we ๏ฌnd that (i) there is no large increase of total methane emissions in the United States in the past decade; (ii) there is a modest increase in oil and gas methane emissions, but this increase is much lower than some previous studies suggest; and (iii) the assumption of a timeโconstant relationship between methane and ethane emissions has resulted in major overestimation of an oil and gas emissions trend in some previous studies.
The fact that the relevant high quality, long-term monitoring network does not show a trend consistent with the work of Howarth is a fatal flaw in his claims. In addition, those measurements unequivocally support another contradictory analysis by Lewan that concludes his ideas, perspectives, and calculations on methane emissions from shale gas are invalid. The bottom line is that two pied pipers are responsible for the Climate Actโs irrational war on natural gas. The Climate Actโs elimination of natural gas is based on the false promises of one biased individual supported by one charismatic motivated politician. These pied pipers are going to lead New York over an energy cliff.
The Climate Act Has No Clothes
Howarthโs statement went on to claim that the Scoping Plan development process โbrought in a large number of experts and key stakeholders who worked diligently to advise the Council on our Scoping Planโ. After extolling the success of the stakeholder process and the staff members who contributed, he explained why everything will work out:
I further wish to acknowledge the incredible role that Prof. Mark Jacobson of Stanford has played in moving the entire world towards a carbon-free future, including New York State. A decade ago, Jacobson, I and others laid out a specific plan for New York (Jacobson et al. 2013). In that peer-reviewed analysis, we demonstrated that our State could rapidly move away from fossil fuels and instead be fueled completely by the power of the wind, the sun, and hydro. We further demonstrated that it could be done completely with technologies available at that time (a decade ago), that it could be cost effective, that it would be hugely beneficial for public health and energy security, and that it would stimulate a large increase in well-paying jobs. I have seen nothing in the past decade that would dissuade me from pushing for the same path forward. The economic arguments have only grown stronger, the climate crisis more severe. The fundamental arguments remain the same.
I believe that this is the fundamental basis for the Climate Actโs aggressive schedule. The Jacobson analysis approach unfortunately is pretty much the same as the Integration Analysis modeling approach for the Scoping Plan. Both modeling efforts project future load requirements, then list a bunch of control strategies, estimate the energy they could produce, and presume everything will work together if we cross our fingers. Neither includes a feasibility analysis that considers reliability, affordability, or cumulative environmental impacts.
Howarth appeals to the authority of peer-reviewed science to provide credibility to the Jacobson analysis. However, science is a continuous process where hypotheses are constantly challenged and confirmed. In this instance Howarth neglects to mention the analyses that discredit the Jacobson work.
The Jacobson analysis cited was a continuation of previous work. For example, in a widely publicized November 2009 Scientific American article, Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi, suggested all electrical generation and ground transportation internationally could be supplied by wind, water and solar resources as early as 2030. However, other contemporary projections were less optimistic. Two examples: the2015 MIT Energy and Climate Outlook has low carbon sources worldwide as only 25% of primary energy by 2050, and renewables only 16% and the International Energy Agencyโs two-degree scenario has renewables, including biomass, as less than 50%.
Howarthโs statement cites a specific plan for New York (Jacobson et al. 2013) that he and Jacobson laid out a decade ago.ย He says that โIn that peer- reviewed analysis, we demonstrated that our State could rapidly move away from fossil fuels and instead be fueled completely by the power of the wind, the sun, and hydro.โย ย Table 2 from that report follows.ย This analysis includes power from exotic resources such as waves, geothermal, tidal turbines, and concentrated solar power but no energy storage.ย It is significantly different than the projections in the Integration Analysis and theย New York Independent System Operator (NYISO)ย 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlookย that exclude all the exotic renewable generating capacity, contain significant amounts of energy storage, and include a new dispatchable, emissions-free resource for a set of resources that they think can provide sufficient electrical power for the future. ย Furthermore, it claims that end-use power demand can be decreased by 37%.ย ย In my opinion, any analysis that suggests that concentrated solar power is a viable source of energy in New York is simply not credible because that resource would never work in New York.ย It is too cloudy to operate enough to cover costs and the environmental impacts would be too great.
There was a formal rebuttal paper to this analysis. The rebuttal paper argued that:
The feasibility analysis performed by Jacobson et al. (2013) is incomplete and scientifically questionable from both the technical and economic perspectives, and it implicitly assumes, without sufficient justification, that social criterion would not produce even larger feasibility barriers.
Jacobson et al. responded to that rebuttal claiming that โThe main limitations are social and political, not technical or economic.โ Given the significant differences between that analysis and the most recent projections by the organization responsible for keeping the lights on, I agree with the conclusion cited above. I do not believe that the 2013 analysis includes a defensible feasibility analysis.
Using Jacobson as the basis for the Climate Act transition gets worse. Unmentioned by Dr. Howarth is that in a 2015 article for a different iteration of the wind, water, and solar roadmap Clack et al, 2017 discredited the Jacobson approach:
In this paper, we evaluate that study and find significant shortcomings in the analysis. In particular, we point out that this work used invalid modeling tools, contained modeling errors, and made implausible and inadequately supported assumptions. Policy makers should treat with caution any visions of a rapid, reliable, and low-cost transition to entire energy systems that relies almost exclusively on wind, solar, and hydroelectric power.
In the scientific process, when issues with your work are noted, the proper response is to provide more evidence supporting your modeling tools, explain why the claimed errors are not errors, and defend your assumptions. Instead, Jacobson filed a lawsuit, demanding $10 million in damages, against the peer-reviewed scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the authors for their study showing that Jacobson made improper assumptions in order to make his claims that he (and by extension Howarth) had demonstrated U.S. energy could be provided exclusively by renewable energy, primarily wind, water, and solar. In my opinion this is an appalling attack on free speech and scientific inquiry but want to emphasize that the bad actions by Jacobson in no way should be attributed to Howarth.
In my opinion Jacobsonโs attempted lawsuit was because his work could not stand on its own. Therefore, it is unsettling that it is claimed to be the basis of the Climate Act. Howarthโs statement explicitly lays out his position for the Jacobson analysis:
We further demonstrated that it could be done completely with technologies available at that time (a decade ago), that it could be cost effective, that it would be hugely beneficial for public health and energy security, and that it would stimulate a large increase in well-paying jobs
Unfortunately, Howarthโs technology demonstration is not supportable. Nonetheless, it forms the basis for the Climate Act schedule and zero-emission electric system by 2040 mandate. The Climate Action Council has embraced it despite the projections in the Integration Analysis and the NYISO Resource Outlook that reject it. The Council is denying the majority opinion despite the evidence presented in their own analysis. The Climate Act has no clothes.
Conclusion
Pied piper Dr. Robert Howarth stated that โOur final Scoping Plan from the Climate Action implicitly endorses the vision of the Jacobson et al. paper and is quite clear: we can meet the goals of the CLCPA and we can and will do so in way that is affordable and that will benefit all New Yorkers.โ Unfortunately, that vision has no clothes. The implementing regulations and additional legislation necessary to implement this vision must include independent, unbiased feasibility analyses to determine if the proposed plans can maintain current standards of reliability, will preserve the affordability of energy, and not create environmental impacts to New York State that are greater than the alleged impacts of climate change. Failure to do so will ensure that the state ends up as badly as the childrenโs stories.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. More details on the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act are available here and an inventory of over 250 articles about the Climate Act is also available. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
Benny Peiser of Net Zero Watch – Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in DC
Peiser: “In Europe, we are degrading our own economy and degrading our nations, in the name of saving the planet without doing anything about CO2 emissions because we are just shifting them abroad, we’re just exporting them. That is at the core of all these 27 COPs we’ve seen over the last 30 years. It’s always the same old, it’s always the same outcome. The developing world, China, India, etc. are not going to risk their own economies, the well-being of their people, their energy security, their national security. We’re doing it and we’re paying the price for it.” ย Peiser: “And this is the biggest warning to Americans: If you want to avoid your energy bills going up fourfold, don’t do what we are doing.”
Benny Peiser: โI remember giving evidence to a Senate hearing here some years back, and I was saying: โLook, as long as these [climate] policies are unilateral, as long as you do this on your own, this is not going to address your main concern, which is CO2 emissions, because the rest of the world will not follow.โ
And the rest of the world will definitely not follow Europeโs green experiment which is going so badly. No one wants to do what the Europeans are doing, because they can see the damage we are doing to ourselves.
Unless โ and this is the whole point โ unless you can come up with an energy policy that is attractive to other countries, in particular to poorer countries, they will not follow your lead.
And thatโs the real problem: In Europe, we are degrading our own economy and degrading our nations, in the name of saving the planet without doing anything about CO2 emissions because we are just shifting them abroad, weโre just exporting them. That is at the core of all these 27 COPs weโve seen over the last 30 years. Itโs always the same old, itโs always the same outcome. The developing world, China, India, etc. are not going to risk their own economies, the well-being of their people, their energy security, their national security. Weโre doing it and weโre paying the price for it.
Europe faces a much tougher task to rebuild gas stocks next year compared with this winter, meaning energy bills are likely to stay high and governments could have to implement painful rationing measures they have so far avoided.
Previously dominant, gas supplies from Russia have since late August been greatly reduced, meaning the task of refilling storage will be much harder when levels are depleted by early next year.
The expense of buying gas on the open market rather than through contracts negotiated at favourable prices will also be harder to bear for governments weakened by months of steep energy costs that have driven inflation to multi-decade highs.
This year, the European Union successfully filled reserves to a peak of 96%-full in November to try to ensure sufficient winter supplies.
Countries also managed to restrain use during unusually mild weather but a prolonged cold snap this month has focused minds on the scale of the task ahead.
โMany of the circumstances that allowed EU countries to fill their storage sites ahead of this winter may well not be repeated in 2023,โ Fatih Birol, Executive Director of Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) said last week.
The IEA said Europe could face a shortfall of almost 30 billion cubic metres (bcm) next winter, equivalent to nearly 7% of 2021 demand.
While Europe managed to fill its gas storage ahead of winter this year, it will have to import huge amounts of LNG in a competitive market to survive next winter. The next 12 to 24 months will be critical in establishing whether Europe can stave off a long-term energy crisis.
According to the IEA, if Russian gas supply drops to zero and Chinese LNG demand hits 2021 levels, the EU could have a supply-demand gap of 27 billion cubic meters in 2023.
Despite successfully filling its gas storage ahead of winter this year, Europeโs energy crisis is far from over. The situation for Europe could, in fact, be worse next winter when Russian pipeline gas supply will be down to a trickle, at best.
European households and businesses have already seen a rise in total energy costs by $1.06 trillion (1 trillion euros), according to estimates by European economic think-tank Bruegel published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). According to Bruegelโs analysts, if governments in Europe do nothing except offer financial support, and if they cover the price increases, this sum would represent a massive 6% of the annual GDP of the EU.
โMassive government support could delay adjustment to a new price equilibrium and create the need for even more support,โ Bruegelโs experts say.
Instead, the EU needs a โgrand bargainโ to encourage savings and increase supply at the same time.
The next 12 to 24 months will determine whether Europe will be able to cope with the energy crisis without having to resort to mandatory rationing or without losing too much industry competitiveness.
Europeโs energy systems were already put to the first real test this month amid an Arctic blast that swept through most of northwestern Europe, bringing freezing temperatures, snow in the UK, and depressing wind speeds in Germany.
Natural gas storage sites in the EU started to drain, with storage at 84% as of December 17, according to Gas Infrastructure Europe. Inventories are higher than at this time last year, but the true test for Europe will come next year when it will have to refill gas storage sites adequately enough to meet the 2023/2024 winter demand.
This is where the planning becomes trickier, depending on how low inventories will be after this winter and whether the EU has the capacity to haul in continued record volumes of LNG and continue outbidding Asia, especially if demand in China rebounds after a reopening from strict Covid curbs.
With lower gas consumption and not much Russian gas flowing via pipelines, the EU has continued to cut its dependence on Russia, from around 40% of imported gas supplies before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to less than 9%, according to EU figures from September.
However, the significant drop in Russian gas supply this year occurred only in June.
Ahead of winter 2023/2024, the gap in gas supply in Europe will be much wider without Russian gas. Europe will not be importing much Russian gasโor none at all if Russia cuts off deliveries via the one link left operational via Ukraine and via TurkStreamโcompared to relatively stable imports from Russia in the first half of this year before Moscow started gradually cutting volumes via Nord Stream in June and then shut down the pipeline in early September.
According to a recent report from the IEA, if Russian gas supply drops to zero and Chinese LNG demand rebounds to 2021 levels, the EU could have a gas supply-demand gap of 27 billion cubic meters in 2023.
With the plunge in Russian pipeline gas deliveries, Europe will need โhuge volumesโ of LNG next year, commodity trader Trafigura said earlier this month.
โLooking forward, we expect gas and LNG markets to remain volatile,โ Trafigura said in its annual report for the year to September 30.
โWhile Europe should avoid a blackout this winter by drawing on inventories and cutting demand, it will need to import huge volumes of LNG in 2023 given the massive reduction in flows from Russia,โ Trafigura said.
Natural gas prices in Europe will have to remain elevated so that the continent can continue to attract most of the LNG cargoes in competition with the other key demand centers, according to Trafigura. The commodity trader expects Europe to prioritize the security of supply โthrough next winter and beyond.โ
Huge uncertainties with weather and the EUโs ability to compete with a potential increase in LNG demand in Asia will determine how Europe will fare next winter.
โBehind us now are two months of โbuyerโs marketโ with peak inventories, warm weather, a long queue of LNG ships, and depressed TTF prices,โ commodity analysts Ole Hvalbye and Bjarne Schieldrop of SEB Bank said in early December.
โAhead of us is the huge Q1 uncertainty and at least 12 months of โsellerโs marketโ as the race is on to fill EU nat gas inventories to a satisfying level by October 2023.โ
Benny Peiser: โI remember giving evidence to a Senate hearing here some years back, and I was saying: โLook, as long as these [climate] policies are unilateral, as long as you do this on your own, this is not going to address your main concern, which is CO2 emissions, because the rest of the world will not follow.โ
And the rest of the world will definitely not follow Europeโs green experiment which is going so badly. No one wants to do what the Europeans are doing, because they can see the damage we are doing to ourselves.
Unless โ and this is the whole point โ unless you can come up with an energy policy that is attractive to other countries, in particular to poorer countries, they will not follow your lead.
And thatโs the real problem: In Europe, we are degrading our own economy and degrading our nations, in the name of saving the planet without doing anything about CO2 emissions because we are just shifting them abroad, weโre just exporting them. That is at the core of all these 27 COPs weโve seen over the last 30 years. Itโs always the same old, itโs always the same outcome. The developing world, China, India, etc. are not going to risk their own economies, the well-being of their people, their energy security, their national security. Weโre doing it and weโre paying the price for it.
And this is the biggest warning to Americans: If you want to avoid your energy bills going up fourfold, donโt do what we are doing.โ
Brussels negotiations continue as world-first levy faces criticism from US, China and African nations
The EUโs trading partners have hit out at the blocโs plan to introduce the worldโs first carbon border tax, saying it is protectionist and puts export industries at risk, as negotiations to complete the deal stretch into the weekend.
According to two people familiar with the discussions, several developing nations have already begun to negotiate with Brussels for more flexibility in the proposals, including potential waivers.
The plan is provisional until a final set of talks conclude this weekend. After that the agreement must be approved by EU ambassadors. Issues outstanding include the specific dates for its gradual phase-in.
German lawmaker Michael Bloss, a European parliament negotiator, said on Saturday that โa lot was negotiatedโ on Friday but โlittle was decidedโ. The talks โwill continue and hopefully conclude the negotiations on Europeโs largest climate protection packageโ, he told Reuters.
Swedish lawmaker Emma Wiesner said Fridayโs talks had achieved a โsurprisingly big amount of progressโ. Other EU officials told Reuters that deals had not yet been found on the most divisive issues.
The tax will require importers to buy certificates to cover their emissions based on calculations linked to the EUโs own carbon price. Iron, steel, cement, aluminium, fertilisers, hydrogen and electricity generation will all be covered by the deal. A trial period is set to start in October 2023.
If it is considered a success, the EU plans to expand the scheme to other sectors, including cars and organic chemicals.
The plan has attracted criticism from countries including the US and South Africa, which said that the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) will unfairly penalise their manufacturers.
โWe are particularly concerned about things like border adjustment taxes, and regulatory requirements that are imposed unilaterally,โ Ebrahim Patel, South Africaโs trade minister, told the Financial Times. โIf it gets to be an enormous defining thing between north and south, youโre going to have a lot of political resistance.โ
โThere are a lot of concerns coming from our side about how this is going to impact us and our trade relationship,โ US trade representative Katherine Tai said at a conference in Washington this week.
The EU views the CBAM as a core part of its efforts to reach net zero emissions by 2050, arguing that it will simultaneously encourage countries outside the bloc to decarbonise their industrial sectors.
โCBAM is just a way to threaten third countries that they should also update their ambitions when it comes to climate,โ said Mohammed Chahim, a Dutch socialist politician who has led negotiations on the law for the European parliament.
Before Russiaโs invasion of Ukraine, it was set to be the country that was most affected by the CBAM. Russian exports made up the biggest proportion of imports from CBAM-affected sectors, according to an analysis by the Berlin-based think-tank Adelphi based on data for EU imports between 2015 and 2019.
The substantial fall in imports from Russia due to the EUโs sanctions regime and the destruction of Ukrainian industry has pushed the burden on to other countries.
China makes up around a tenth of affected imports, according to Adelphi, with Turkey and India also hit. China has frequently attacked the tariff since it was first proposed in July last year.
Developing nations with less economic heft and no systems in place for measuring emissions were more likely to suffer the most from the introduction of the levy, said Faten Aggad, senior adviser on climate diplomacy at the African Climate Foundation.
โThe countries that are most likely to mitigate the risk of CBAM are the ones that already have proper carbon counting,โ she said. The result could be a โdeindustrialisationโ in African nations that export to the EU.
โA lot of these sectors risk losing business unless we pump money into their sustainability and itโs very difficult to rebuild.โ
Steelmakers in Brazil are concerned that the CBAM will put domestic producers at risk. Instead of shipping their goods to Europe, exporters might target less protected steel markets such as South America.
โOur big worry isnโt exports to [Europe],โ said Marco Polo de Mello Lopes, executive president of the Instituto Aรงo Brasil, but rather that more material is diverted to the region, leaving domestic industry โvulnerableโ.
Anger at the measure has been exacerbated by the EUโs insistence that the CBAM will encourage others to decarbonise, while not providing funds to help poorer countries invest in clean technologies.
Revenues from the CBAM are intended to go into the EUโs internal budget with a loose commitment to provide climate finance to countries outside the bloc, according to those familiar with the draft text.
Baran Bozoฤlu, chair of the Climate Change Policy and Research Association, a non-profit research outfit in Ankara, said that it would be โbeneficial [for the EU] to provide various incentives, supports and technologies so that the Turkish economy is not adversely affectedโ.
He added that exporters would have to pay to calculate their carbon emissions and have that validated in order to report to the EU. It was a โgreat injusticeโ that they had to cover that cost as well as pay the CBAM, he said.
5) Green Britain: Brits face forced entry to their homes by energy firms to fit prepayment meters iNews, 20 December 2022
Energy firms are being handed the right to force their way into thousands of customer homes without justice officials knowing why the warrants are being granted, it can be revealed.
An investigation by i has discovered how magistrates are batch-processing hundreds of warrants in just minutes to allow debt agents acting on behalf of suppliers to force entry into homes to fit controversial prepayment meters.
The Ministry of Justice has now admitted it has no record of why access to homes has been sought, whether to forcibly install the meters or for other reasons.
It also said that, once inside a customerโs home, the energy firm could โexercise any other right of entry while thereโ.
The admission has raised further doubts about the level of oversight for warrants being issued by courts to energy firms to force entry into properties. It has also prompted accusations of a legal โwild westโ leaving some of the UKโs poorest families at risk of having no gas or electricity this Christmas.
MPs have urged the Government to halt the forced installations this winter, telling the Commons in a two-hour debate they fear a โconveyor beltโ of warrants is leaving vulnerable customers in the cold and dark โ including terminally ill people returning home to die.
Caroline Lucas MP said: โThese court warrants on masse are being carried out with disgraceful lack of due diligence and care.
โMinisters have serious questions to answer. What specific reasoning is behind each of these forced-entry warrants, why theyโre being rushed through at breakneck speed without proper verification and how on earth they have been allowed to happen in the first place?
โThese court warrants amount to a mass exploitation of the vulnerable and the voiceless โ and they must be banned immediately.โ
Global Disasters in 2022, a Preliminary Assessment
In September, United Nations Secretary-General Antรณnio Guterres made the following claims upon the release of a report โ titled ironically enough โ United in Science:
โFloods, droughts, heatwaves, extreme storms and wildfires are going from bad to worse, breaking records with ever alarming frequency. Heatwaves in Europe. Colossal floods in Pakistan. Prolonged and severe droughts in China, the Horn of Africa and the United States.
There is nothing natural about the new scale of these disasters. They are the price of humanityโs fossil fuel addiction. The number of weather, climate and water-related disasters has increased by a factor of five over the past 50 years.โ
As I and others have documented, Guterres claim of an 500% increase in disasters is pure misinformation. You will never find a more obviously and egregious wrong claim in public discussions from a more important institution. Making matters worse, the false notion of a massive increase in disasters is legitimized by none other than the World Meteorological Organization, one of the founding bodies of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Iโve spend almost 30 years working to understand trends in disasters, and the roles played by (a) societal vulnerability and exposure and (b) climate variability and change. Along the way Iโve observed a concerted and successful effort by climate advocates to create and spread disinformation about disasters, knowing full well that virtually all journalists and scientists will stay silent and allow the false information to spread unchecked โ and sometimes they will even help to amplify it.
Readers here will well know that the actual science of weather and climate extremes and disasters that may be associated with them is far more nuanced and less apocalyptic than typically found in much of the public discourse. The scientific reality does not diminish the importance of climate mitigation policy, but it does say something about standards of scientific integrity.
In todayโs post, I share some preliminary information related to global disasters of 2022. The information available today is incomplete โ the year isnโt quite over and not all data analyses have been done and those that have are just a first cut. However, the information that is available today allows us to get a pretty good initial look at disasters of 2022 in historical perspective.
To be sure, 2022 saw some notable weather and climate-related disasters, including among them:
* flooding in Pakistan, South Africa, Nigeria, India, United States, and Brazil
* drought in Europe, Eastern Africa and China
* Hurricane Ian in Florida
Preliminary estimates are that as many as 11,000 people died around the world in weather and climate-related disasters in 2022, which is just about the average of the previous decade, according to data of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. The overall 2022 death rate for weather and climate disasters was about 0.14 people per million, representing one of the 5 lowest annual death rates since data is available (dating to more than a century ago) โ and Iโd venture in all of recorded human history. The years with lower death rates are all recent: 2021, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2014. It was just 30 years ago in 1992 that the global death rate from weather and climate disasters was more than 20x greater, at 2.90 per million. The diminishing human impact of disasters is a science and policy success story that is widely underappreciated.
Letโs take a look at some high-level initial data on disasters of 2022 to help get a sense of how the year fits into recent history. Here I focus on the total number of weather and climate disasters and their aggregate economic impacts. In a future post, Iโll discuss some specifics in more detail, including well-below average global tropical cyclone activity of 2022 and record-low emissions from forest and other fires. Detailed information on global floods and drought of 2022 will need to await further data and analyses. You can see my recent post with a detailed look at the U.S. specifically here.
Total Count of Global Disasters
Source:ย CRED. The estimate of 325 for 2022 is based on 300 weather, climate and water disasters through November, plus 27 estimated for December (=300/11).
The graph above shows that according to CRED EM-DAT โ which is the same database that WMO and Guterres based their false claims on, but I digress โ 2022 will see about 330 total disasters, under the EM-DAT criteria for inclusion. The 2022 count will be just about the average of the past decade and about 10% less than annual disaster counts of the first decade of this century. The broader impacts of these disasters (deaths, economic losses) are consistent with these trends as well.
Based on these data, which are viewed by CRED to be reliable since 2000, there is no indication that the number of global weather and climate disasters are increasing. That means that โ undeniably โ there is no evidence to support another false claim by the U.N that, โThe number of disaster events is projected to reach 560 a year โ or 1.5 each day, statistically speaking โ by 2030.โ (Have a look here.)
I am curious: When are journalists going to start reporting the facts about disasters and call out misinformation?
Global Losses from Disasters
Updated fromย Pielke 2019. Note: 2022 losses are estimated based on preliminary estimates fromย Swiss Reย and 2022 GDP growth estimated based onย IMF. Final numbers may be higher or lower, and more losses may yet occur in the remaining days of 2022.
The global reinsurance giant, Swiss Re, has projected that 2022 will see a total of $260 billion in total catastrophe losses. Based on this estimate, and an estimate of the IMF for 2022 global GDP growth, we can project that 2022 global weather and climate disaster losses will be about 0.2% of global GDP. That is just about the same as the median of 1990 to 2021. However, over that time period, losses have decreased (as a proportion of GDP) as you can see in the figure above, which updates a peer-reviewed analysis that I first published in 2019.
The past 6 years have seen a higher level of loss/GDP as compared to the previous decade, which can be attributed in large part to the โdroughtโ of major hurricanes striking the United States over that period, 2005-2017. Of note, U.S. hurricane losses historically comprise more than 60% โglobalโ disaster losses. There is also no indication of a dramatic acceleration in disaster losses as a percentage of global GDP that was forecast in the Stern Review more than 15 years ago. So whenever you read about โbillion dollar disastersโ and their purported association with climate change, I want you to think of just one word โ disinformation.
Bottom Line at the Global Level
Disasters are awful โ people die and are displaced, property and infrastructure is damaged and destroyed, and economies can be compromised. Planet Earth is a place of extremes. Hurricanes, floods, drought, heat waves and other types of extreme events are normal and always have been.
But to be sure, the prospect of human-caused climate change holds the potential for making extreme events more common or worse. For instance, there is already good evidence that heat waves have become more intense in many places and that increase is attributable to increasing greenhouse gases. However, for most types of weather and climate extremes neither detection of trends nor attribution of trends to human climate forcings has been achieved.
At the same time, the ability of societies to prepare for and recover from extreme events is a remarkable story of policy success โ deaths related to disasters have plummeted from millions per year a century ago to thousands per year over the past decade. That is still too many, but we should recognize that it also represents an enormous accomplishment. We can and should do more.
Unfortunately nowadays, every weather and climate disasters becomes enlisted as a sort of โposter childโ for climate advocacy. Every extreme event and associated human impact is quickly turned into a symbol of something elseโ such as failed energy policies, rapacious fossil fuel companies, evil politicians, or callous jet-setting billionaires. It is a simple and powerful narrative, and one that is also incredibly misleading.
The popular prints are flooded with climate and weather misinformation. Net Zero, seen by increasing numbers of people as a looming disaster, is lauded to the skies. Few journalists investigate the โunsettledโ science behind unproven claims that humans cause most, if not all, changes in the climate.
To point out that there are not enough minerals in the ground to make batteries to power humanityโs basic transportation needs, let alone store the energy required to keep us all alive in the cold when renewables go on strike, is simply not allowed. Needless to say, as we have seen in a number of recent Daily Sceptic articles, this absurd state of affairs is partly the product of a carefully-curated public discourse targeting cash-strapped news rooms and funded by a vast supply of dark, green money.
Recently I reported that the Mirror had run a nonsense story about much of London disappearing beneath the waves within 80 years. I noted that this was not the handiwork of a crack team of investigative reporters, but rather the placed work of a U.S. green activist group called Climate Central. This operation specialises in ready-to-publish climate change material highlighting local landmarks allegedly due to disappear beneath the waves. Similar tactics are used by another activist group spreading fear and alarm called Covering Climate Now (CC Now). This operation is run out of the Columbia Journalism Review in New York, and is backed by the Nation and the U.K. Guardian. Both operations rely heavily on large gifts from Left-leaning U.S. foundations.
CC Now was started in 2019 and claims to feed over 500 media operations with written stories and climate narratives. Its โpartnersโ include some of the biggest names in news publishing such as Reuters, Bloomberg, Agence France-Presse (AFP), CBS News, ABC News and MSNBC News. Leading journals are said to include Rolling Stone, Huff Post and Teen Vogue. The founders seek a โreframingโ of the way journalists cover climate change. What this means in practice is amplifying an invented โclimate emergencyโ by constant story catastrophisation, while denying any inconvenient science. The political aim is the promotion of the command-and-control Net Zero agenda.
There is plenty of advice for tame journalists aiming to ramp up climate hysteria. โThe fastest way to catch up is to emulate outlets that are already covering climate change well. You canโt do better than the Guardian,โ CC Now suggests. But what to do about the problem that paying readers tend to disappear when fed a diet of spun political messages? โFoundations like Knight, Ford, McCormick and Emerson Collective are rightly increasing their support for local news organisations,โ it adds.
Relentless catastrophising of individual weather events is the favoured weapon to spread climate fear among the wider population. Using the recent experience of the Covid pandemic, activists have been emboldened to spread panic and alarm in controllable media to achieve their wider political aims. Despite oft-made claims, it is impossible to use models to โattributeโ single weather events to long term changes in the climate. CC Now skirts this obvious problem by providing a number of helpful explanations for gullible journalists to copy-and-paste.
โClimate change isnโt solely to blame for extreme weather, butโฆ it stacks the deck against usโฆ itโs baked in with our weather and often a key ingredient in the outcomeโฆ it supercharges normal weather patterns, like steroids.โ Journalists are told to emphasise the human impacts of extreme weather, noting that it affects โthe poor, communities of colour, and indigenous groups first and foremostโ.
All this sterling work, of course, deserves prizes. The 2022 CC Now Journalism Awards โhonouredโ writers producing the โstrongest coverage of the onrushing climate emergency and its abundant solutionsโ. Winners are said to have come from the Guardian, AFP, Al Jazeera, PBS NewsHour and the Los Angeles Times. Journalist of the Year was Time Senior Correspondent Justin Worland. The judges singled out for particular praise an article he wrote ahead of COP26 titled, โThe Energy Transition in Full Swing. Itโs Not Happening Fast Enoughโ.
Billionaire-run foundations are spending enormous sums promoting junk alarmist science, in addition to funding on-side academic institutions and other influential bodies. Both Climate Central and CC Now are funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, while Climate Central takes support from the Grantham fund. This latter foundation is connected with the green billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham, and also partly funds three U.K. university institutes. At the LSE, this operation provides material that supports the Net Zero initiatives.
Jeremy Grantham is a long-time promoter of Net Zero and a future based on renewables. But it is not only journalists he has in his sights. Speaking in 2019 to a group of business people in Copenhagen about the approaching apocalypse, he asked rhetorically, โWhat should I do, you sayโ? His suggestion: โYou should lobby your Government officials โ invest in an election and buy some politicians. I am happy to say we do quite a bit of that at the Grantham Foundationโฆ any candidate as long as they are green.โ
The science writer and climatologist Dr. Judith Curry has become increasingly concerned about the effect of all this propaganda on children. In a recent essay, she wrote that it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that children are being used as tools in adultsโ political agenda surrounding climate change. This is having adverse impacts on the mental health of children, she warned. The apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding the climate โcrisisโ has numerous victims, she added. โChildren and young adults rank among the victims of greatest concern.โ
John Goodell studied literature at Berkeley, then got an M.F.A. at Columbia. He has edited Zyzzyva, a literary magazine in San Francisco, and been a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. Pretty impressive.
None of that qualifies him as a climate scientist or economist. So itโs surprising that web searches yield hundreds of solemn, even pious, invocations of Goodellโs economic wisdom:
โIn reality, studies show that investments to spur renewable energy and boost energy efficiency generate far more jobs than oil and coal.โ
I have not been able to find a source; the quote itself has become self-recommending, using authority by reference: โstudies showโฆโ My good friend Russ Roberts often inveighs against the โstudies showโ formulation, but I think we have to give Goodell credit here. Studies really do show that dismantling, preferably destroying, the existing energy grid really would create jobs. The question is, why is maximizing jobs something we want to do?
Frederic Bastiat famously showed that destroying wealth creates jobs, in his discussion of the broken window fallacy. But there was a broader context for Bastiatโs observations on the seen and the unseen: a serious proposal that all of Paris should be burned down. Yes, because it would create jobs. Really.
Bastiat referred to research (โstudies show!โ) done by a fellow Frenchman on this score:
โWhat will you say, disciples of good M. Chamans, who has calculated with so much precision how much trade would gain by the burning of Paris, from the number of houses it would be necessary to rebuild?โ (From The Broken Window)
Now, it appears that Bastiat was having a little fun; Auguste Louis Philippe de Saint-Chamans (1777-1860) was a viscount and a high-level French government official.
Viscount de Saint-Chamans had argued that Londonโs โGreat Fireโ (1666) had led to substantial net economic gains; he had not said anything about Paris.
Still, the point was portable: the increased use of resources, and substantial bump in construction employment, had increased economic activity in England by the equivalent of 25 million French francs. France should not be allowed to fall behind on the โdestroy wealth to create jobsโ race. Bastiat was just taking the Viscount at his word, improving the French economy by burning and rebuilding Paris.
โI originally thought that we might base a great deal of hope on fire, without neglecting war or pestilence. To start fires at the four corners of Paris with a good west wind would certainly ensure the population the two major benefits that the protectionist regime has in view: work and high prices, or rather, work by means of high prices.
Do you not see what an immense impetus the burning of Paris would give to national industry? Is there a single person who would not have enough work to last him twenty years? How many houses would there be to rebuild, items of furniture to restore, tools, instruments, fabrics, books, and pictures to replace! I can see from here the work that will move step by step and increase by itself like an avalanche, for a worker who is busy will give work to others, and these employ yet othersโฆ
What constitutes our wealth? Our needs, since without needs there is no wealth; without disease, no doctors; without wars, no soldiers; without court cases, no lawyers and judges. If windows did not break, glaziers would be gloomy; if houses did not crumble, if furniture was indestructible, how many trades would be held up! To destroy is to make it necessary for you to replace. To increase the number of needs is to increase wealthโฆ.
Either you believe that wealth consists in having more while working less, and therefore you allow [goods and products] to enter, or you think that it consists in having less with more work, and in this case, you burn Paris.โ
One wonders what Bastiat would say about the current movement now in vogue among those who propose to increase jobs by destroying all the production, transportation, and power-generation capital devoted to fossil fuels. Burn all the gas-powered cars? Jobs! Tear down all the oil and gas-powered power plants, so we have shortages of electricity? So many jobs!
Once you are duped into believing destruction is productive, almost everything that a rational public policy would label as a cost becomes, by some judo move of seraphic intuition, a benefit. If need is wealth, then it makes sense to outlaw fossil fuels immediately, because of all the jobs created trying desperately to provide basic transport and energy.
The problem is that jobs are not wealth. Wealth is access to the goods, products, and services that make our lives better. It is true that โstudies showโ that wiping out all our productive wealth based on fossil fuels efficiently would create jobs. Those โstudiesโ are among the best arguments against doing anything of the sort.
If my choices are to have wealth but no job, or to have a job but no wealth, Iโd rather have the wealth. But we donโt have to choose: we can have both wealth and jobs, if we donโt go around breaking all the darned windows.
Today was a big day on the way to New Yorkโs energy future: Our โClimate Action Councilโ voted to approve the final โScoping Plan,โ telling us all how we are going to achieve, among other goals, 70% of statewide electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030 and a zero-emission electricity system by 2040.
Taking a look at the Scoping Plan and its Executive Summary, I find that the two biggest elements in getting to this zero-emissions electricity system are supposedly going to be offshore wind turbines and energy storage. Iโve covered the energy storage issues extensively in other posts. But how about this offshore wind thing? Surely, to commit New York to transitioning to using offshore wind as the primary source of electricity only seven years from now, they must have a very solid game plan for how it is going to happen.
Actually, as with everything else here, they have no idea. As of today, there isnโt a single functioning offshore wind turbine in New York State, nor is there a single offshore wind turbine under construction. The climate cultists on the Climate Action Council think that they can just order this up, and then it will happen.
From the Executive Summary, here is what the CAC says will be necessary to achieve its emissions goals:
โ[The Scoping Plan] requires that the State install:
6,000 megawatts (MW) of distributed solar by 2025
3,000 MW of energy storage by 2030
9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035.โ
That 9,000 MW of offshore wind might initially sound like a lot. At 10 MW per turbine (huge), that would be 900 of these behemoths.
But of course wind turbines only generate at about 35% of capacity averaged over the year. So this 9,000 MW of offshore wind turbines will at best give us an average of about 3,000 MW, so well under 20% of our electricity demand for the year. Oh, and theyโre planning to double electricity demand by electrifying cars and home heat, so make that 10%. And peak demand is as much as about 25,000 MW, 50,000 MW after doubling. When the peak hits you canโt count on the 9,000 MW of offshore wind for anything,. So why are we doing this again?
Undoubtedly, if this were being done competently, there must be a working demonstration project to show how the offshore wind will be built and then integrated into the existing system? Wrong. Rather, the plan appears to be to let some gigantic subsidized contracts and then hope that something gets built some day.
Here is a link to the website of the New York Energy Research and Development Agency (NYSERDA). They claim to have 4300 MW of offshore wind projects โunder active developmentโ in the state, which is less than half of the 9,000 MW supposedly coming. Of the 4,300 MW, almost all is in the Atlantic Ocean off New York City and Long Island.
Here is the key piece of their map:
But go to the Empire Wind website, for example, and you find a timeline indicating that they are just about up to the point of submitting applications for permits to federal and state authorities. Construction โ if it ever actually occurs โ is multiple years in the future. Nothing different over at the Beacon Wind website.
And what if well-funded environmental opposition emerges to these projects? That is almost inevitable. As an example, there have already been lawsuits by wealthy homeowners seeking to prevent cables from these windfarms from making landfall in their areas. Here is an example of one such brought in 2021 in the Town of East Hampton.
This column has been making the case that replacing efficient forms of reliable energy with politically favored intermittent power sources is not as easy as it looks.
Some jurisdictions seeking to replace fossil fuels and/or nuclear plants with wind power may not have adequately considered the costs and benefits.
Perhaps no political class outside of California has been as hostile to cost/benefit analysis as the elected officials of Massachusetts. Now Jon Chesto reports for the Boston Globe:
โThe stateโs nascent offshore wind industry suffered a big setback on Friday when Avangrid told state regulators it wants to end its contracts with three major utilities to build a massive wind farm south of Marthaโs VineyardโฆIn September, chief executive Pedro Azagra said Avangrid would postpone construction of Commonwealth Wind, which could eventually provide enough power for up to 750,0
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