Day: February 27, 2023

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Conclusion from Ben Pile’s Climate Resistance Video above:

Experts have used the authority of institutional science and medicine to convince people that a climate crisis is happening despite there being no scientific observational evidence for it. 

And this misuse of institutional authority has in turn been used to close down public democratic debate about far-reaching policy and to silence critics of the Green agenda.

But computer simulations and hypothetical worlds are not reality and not evidence. They are science fiction and they are used to mislead people into believing that there is a climate crisis so that they may support radical climate policies.

(Question to then IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri) “What do you see as the next tools you could utilize to create change?
(Pachuri Response) “Children. I think we have to sensitize the young and tell them how their future is going to be affected if we don’t take action today. I think if we can get them to understand the seriousness of the problem they would probably shame adults into taking the right steps.”

Global warming and climate change are real, but climate policy is the far more real and more dangerous threat than climate change. The world has seen unprecedented progress in recent decades and much more needs to be done to eliminate problems such as poverty and disease.

But by failing to confront green scare mongering, Global agencies, world leaders, politicians, scientists and the media have allowed a dark and dangerous ideology to fester. By causing a widespread ignorance of this progress which it now threatens to reverse, green scare mongering will turn the clock back for Humanity and civilization.

Ben Pile exposes how climate radicals are using media messaging to advance the climate crisis mass delusion in his substack article Behind the ‘climate crisis’ myth: green ideology.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The world is healthier, wealthier, and safer than it ever has been.
And most of this progress has been achieved in the era of global warming.
The green story does not add up.

In the eighties and nineties, Adherents of the precautionary principle argued that a hypothesis of a potentially civilisation-ending catastrophe merely needs to be plausible to be sufficient to compel action, and that the world cannot afford to wait for scientific knowledge to verify the threat with any certainty.

This urgency was the basis of the Montreal Protocol on limiting ozone-depleting substances, and it was the hope of many greens that the same formulation could be used again to drive global agreements on climate change.

The problem for adherents of the precautionary principle is that, as is the case with all green ideologues’ prognostications, too much time passed without the events they were sure would befall us, undermining the original hypothesis. In the 1970s, before global warming had been invented, environmentalists proclaimed that civilisation stood on the brink of collapse. 

Limits to Growth and The Population Bomb were global best sellers, putting green politics at the top of the global political agenda, and cementing the end of post-war optimism with a terminally negative outlook that the West has not shaken off, despite the books’ manifest failures.

The precautionary principle (and many $billions of ersatz ‘philanthropic’ generosity) saved the greens and their ideological project the humiliation they deserved by adding an unending not-if-but-when caveat to their soothsaying. . . 

The precautionary principle is an article of faith, and work both ways when fully considered. Progress towards a global climate lockdown agreement has been slow in significant part because many countries have been unwilling to undermine the certain benefits of economic growth on the basis of uncertain speculation. The precautionary principle, has thus been of decreasing value towards advancing the climate agenda as time has passed.

There are only so many times even the most faithful are willing to climb the mountain
to wait for salvation from doom before doubt creeps in.

The new claim, intended to overcome the global climate policy agendas’ inertia, is that certainty has been achieved by science, and that scientists have shown that the world is in the grip of the very catastrophe that environmentalists had predicted: people are starving, diseases are rampant, storms, floods, wildfires and heatwaves kill thousands by the day, forcing millions from their homes and into poverty.

The problem, of course, is that it is not true. In every region of the world, and at every level of economic development, people are living healthier, wealthier, longer, and safer lives. In the few places where this trend of continued progress does not hold, other reasons better account for the failure than slightly different weather: failed states, corruption and conflict.

The problem for the green narrative then, as now, is that deaths from these diseases of poverty were falling, and have continued to fall, radically.

Between 2000 and 2019, the number of deaths from malaria in the world fell from 900 thousand to 560 thousand – given the world’s population increase, this is equivalent to a halving of the mortality rate. Over the same time, the number of deaths caused by diarrheal diseases fell from 2.4 million to 1.5 million. And deaths from malnutrition fell from 506 thousand to 212 thousand. What this means is not merely that there is no evidence of a climate crisis, there extremely good evidence of the opposite: humanity is thriving.

Many other metrics of human welfare bear out the same picture of reality. But try to explain this indubitable progress to the protestors who, on the words of UN chiefs, nonagenarian BBC voice-over artists and degenerate green ideologues of the Guardian and green blob, block roads and demand nothing less than the cancellation of industry and the economy and the immiseration of the entire world, to make certain that all of humanity’s development is undone. The good news provokes an angry and uncomprehending rage in green activists.

To compare the story of the climate crisis with the facts is
to betray one’s own children, country and world,
and to condemn future generations to an ‘unliveable planet’.

The facts and stats of the world are in contradiction to the ideological conception of nature held by the global green Great and Good and by the street-level environmentalists, but not the broader public. So what is this ideology, and how does it overwhelm its victims’ capacity for reason and facts?

As David Attenborough explains, it,

Our economies and political systems are unconsciously predicated on the belief that nature will continue to be a benign and regular provider of the conditions we need to thrive. […] Our stable and reliable planet no longer exists. The impacts of this destabilisation will profoundly impact every country on Earth.

We can know that this is a false belief, because it is a myth that nature has ever been anything but extremely hostile, rather than a benign ‘provider’. Hence, until the end of the 1880s, a quarter of all British children died before reaching their fifth birthday.

In Germany, half of children did not survive that long. Globally, infant mortality was 22.4 per cent in 1950. In 2021, it was 3.7 per cent. 

The ‘planet’ is manifestly far less hostile to humanity than it was just a lifetime ago. And this is thanks to industries, to expanding access to markets, and to technological and scientific development – sheer artifice – not to Natural Providence. David Attenborough is as misled and misleading as he is a ‘national treasure’.

My Mind is Made Up, Don’t Confuse Me with the Facts. H/T Bjorn Lomborg, WUWT

“There’s only one world”, a girl explains to the interviewer. “If we destroy it all, then we have no other place to live”. “Right now, we are not acting”, adds her little friend. “We should act now.”

If the words of global climate technocrats, so earnestly spoken by such innocent faces
is not an abomination, then nothing is.

Tiny children’s view of the world and their own futures have been poisoned by an ideology that has no care for facts, much less the children and their prosperity. 

Their heads have been deliberately filled by the false idea of a ‘climate crisis’ in order to make them instruments of a political agenda, against their own interests, far before they are equipped to understand the claims they reproduce.

Society needs to confront green ideology urgently.
It is the greatest threat to our safety and prosperity.

Please watch and share our film: Why There Is No Climate Crisis (and why people believe that there is)

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… Britain … reduced how many crops they have planted over the winter, … energy required to light and heat greenhouses and the cost of the fertiliser …”

Why are UK supermarkets facing fresh food shortages?

Three big retailers are placing limits on shoppers on some produce lines. What is behind the rationing?

Joanna Partridge and Sarah ButlerThu 23 Feb 2023 01.34 AEDT

…

How big is the problem?

Morrisons has announced limits of two an item on packs of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and peppers, while Asda is restricting shoppers to three items each on eight fresh produce lines – including broccoli, cauliflower, raspberries and lettuces.

On Wednesday, Tesco and Aldi joined them, each limiting purchases of peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes to three packs a person.

…

What is behind the shortages?

Certain fresh vegetables and fruits are hard to come by in the UK as a result of an unfortunate combination of poor weather reducing the harvest in Europe and north Africa, as well lower supplies from UK and Dutch producers hit by the jump in energy bills to heat glasshouses.

…

Meanwhile, Britain and other northern European countries – particularly the Netherlands which is a big vegetable producer – have reduced how many crops they have planted over the winter, after the Ukraine war sent bills soaring for the energy required to light and heat greenhouses and the cost of the fertiliser used on plants.

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/22/problem-shortage-fresh-food-uk-supermarkets

Who thinks Britain is ready for a climate friendly plant based diet, like the Guardian’s George Monbiot and other green radicals keep pushing, when supermarkets can’t even reliably supply the basics? There doesn’t seem to be much point pushing people to switch to a vegetable based diet, if nobody can buy any vegetables.

Of course, the Guardian blaming the Ukraine war for energy shortages a nonsensical copout. The root cause of the problem is the insane pursuit of Net Zero, and neglect of domestic British energy resources, which has exposed Britain to the geopolitical games of unreliable energy suppliers like Russia.

Putin simply supplied the final push, which toppled the rotten edifice of British and European energy policy.

Everything leads back to Britain’s lack of access to affordable energy.

Russia and Ukraine produced fertiliser and gas because they had lots of gas. They allowed their oil and gas fields to be developed.

Britain has large deposits of coal and frackable gas, but is suffering high energy costs and shortages, because British politicians refuse to allow significant domestic energy deposits to be developed. They refuse to allow fracking entrepreneurs like Caudrilla CEO Francis Egan to frack.

Britain is not alone in pursuing green energy insanity. The following video is Putin in 2010, laughing with an audience of supporters in Russia about the foolishness of German politicians, about how their energy policies were making Germany utterly dependent on Russia.

In 2010, Putin made a joke about Germany's apparent disdain for the nuclear power and gas industries, proposing that the only alternative they'd have left for heating their homes is firewood. Fast forward to 2021, and the joke may have turned into an unfortunate prophecy. pic.twitter.com/oejgWfPVG1

— RT (@RT_com) October 2, 2021

President Trump tried to warn Germany in particular against dependence on Russia, it was totally obvious to everyone Putin would one day use this dependency as a lever. The German delegation laughed at Trump, and the German political class ignored Trump’s warning.

Despite the utter failure to deliver energy stability, and the humiliation of Putin calling the shots on energy prices, the British and European political classes still haven’t learned their lesson. Even now, Britain and Europe’s energy policy, in my opinion, consists of trying to engineer regime change in Russia, so they can return to propping up their Net Zero fantasy with cheap imports of Russian gas.

Why else is Britain at the forefront of supporting arms for Ukraine, to such an extent they are jeopardising the British military’s own operational readiness? Idealism and sympathy for Ukraine might explain a level of support, but in my opinion the level of support Britain is providing goes well beyond a little help for a friend.

Perhaps I am reading too much into this. Perhaps the explanation for the radical depletion of Britain’s military inventory, is that the British political classes are as clueless about military operational readiness requirements as they are clueless about energy issues.

Whatever lunacy is running through the minds of British politicians, the British people are the only group who can force a resolution to the mess created by their political class. Write to your MP, and demand the restoration of affordable energy by any means available, including fracking.

British politicians created this disaster, through their ignorance, carelessness, ineptitude and conceited refusal to listen to advice, from friends and enemies alike. But even the dumbest British politician knows what a big sack of angry letters means.

From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

 February 9, 2023 by oldbrew

Big oil has grown tired of the threats and accusations of activists and governments alike, and in recent months, the executives of large oil companies are starting to fire back. Trying to appease climate obsessives has got them nowhere and some of the big players have had enough.
– – –
Constant accusations of knowing the effects of their products on the environment and lawsuits have become constant companions of oil companies in the last few years, says OilPrice.com.

The successes that activists have had—such as Friends of the Earth’s court win that obliged Shell to cut its emissions by 45 percent—have been celebrated loudly and globally.

Naturally, Big Oil tends to be the target of choice because of its size, but with governments in Europe and much of North America pledging their total support for an energy transition, the whole industry has become a target. And has been quiet about it all, probably on the assumption that trying to defend itself would make things worse. Until recently.

Perhaps the first highly public retaliatory shot came in 2021 when the chief executive of Liberty Energy made a YouTube video attacking North Face for its refusal to sell branded apparel to an oil company because of what it did. In the video, Chris Wright accused North Face of hypocrisy, noting the fact that the synthetic fibers they used in their products were a product of the oil industry.

The video made quite a splash at the time, with North Face’s defense coming down to an admission that associating with an oil company would make it look bad and a promise to make all its products recyclable by 2030.

But Wright didn’t stop there. Just this month, the chief executive of Liberty posted a video on LinkedIn challenging the climate crisis narrative. LinkedIn took the video down. Wright challenged the decision. LinkedIn first said the video violated its misinformation policies but a day later restored it. And the Wall Street Journal wrote a long article about it.

In his disputing the alleged scientific consensus on climate change, Wright is still an exception. Yet Liberty’s bigger sector players are challenging the energy transition in other ways. They may well have had enough of bearing the attacks silently and making emission-reduction pledges in hopes that everyone starts liking them better.

Last year, for instance, the chief executive of Chevron, Mike Wirth, countered accusations by the Biden administration that the oil industry was raking in inordinate profits, saying that from a longer-term perspective, these were in fact modest returns on investments that oil companies made.

Industry insiders have noted, only half-jokingly, that if the federal government wants to tax the excess profits of Big Oil, then it should have provided financial support to the industry when it struggled during the worst of the Covid crisis. Or that it should have also taxed Big Tech, which made billions during the two pandemic years.

Exxon went further, attacking the windfall tax the European Union recommended to all its members in court. The supermajor said that the windfall tax was counter-productive, it discouraged investments, and the European Union had exceeded its legal authority in imposing the tax on oil companies. It noted the $3 billion it had invested in refineries in Europe in the past 10 years, ensuring the security of fuel supply for the continent, suggesting that such investments would not be forthcoming in a windfall tax environment.

The U.S. company wasn’t the only one. French TotalEnergies was quick to take legal action against none other than one of the icons of the environmental movement: Greenpeace. After the organization issued a report claiming that TotalEnergies was underreporting its emissions, the supermajor acted swiftly and slammed Greenpeace for spreading misinformation, filing a lawsuit against the organization.

“The Greenpeace report follows a methodology that is dubious, to say the least,” TotalEnergies said at the time, adding that “the dissemination by Greenpeace of misleading information in this matter is serious.”

Full article here.

From CFACT

By Adam Houser 

CFACT President Craig Rucker presents Jo Nova with the Dauntless Purveyor of Climate Truth Award as she tunes in remotely from Australia.

At the Heartland Institute’s 15th International Conference on Climate Change in Orlando, FL, CFACT presented Joanne Nova with its Dauntless Purveyor of Climate Truth Award for 2023.

Hailing from Australia, Joanne Nova is a world-renowned climate change blogger, author, speaker, activist, scientist, and television personality. She won CFACT’s Dauntless Purveyor of Climate Truth Award for 2023 for her tireless work in exposing the truth. The winners of the Dauntless Purveyor of Climate Truth Award do not necessarily have to be scientists, but they bring the climate truth to the public in a dynamic way.

The award was presented by CFACT president Craig Rucker to Joanne Nova virtually. Prior winners of the award have been Lord Christopher Monckton, Col. Walter Cunningham, Dr. Fred Singer, Dr. Jay Lehr, and Marc Morano.

Watch this tribute video to learn more about Nova’s background and impressive work. Congratulations Joanne Nova!

The live presentation of the award at the conference can be seen by skipping to the 06:50:00 mark via this link here.

A collection of the excellent articles Jo Nova has published with CFACT can also be found here.

Author

• Adam Houser
• Adam Houser coordinates student leaders as National Director of CFACT’s collegians program and writes on issues of climate and energy.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

The war on car drivers goes on; no doubt it won’t take long for Sadiq Khan to join in:

 

In the UK, the rising tide of scooters was slowed by arcane rules that effectively banned their use on public roads. But after initial trials starting in 2020, rented e-scooters hired through smartphone apps have begun popping up in cities across the country.

A backlash has followed, with some pedestrians complaining the high-powered scooters are antisocial and clog up pavements when left lying around.

Fears have also been raised about their safety, with 12 fatalities in the year to June 2022. Last June, a 71-year-old grandmother became the first pedestrian killed by an e-scooter in the UK when she was hit by a rider.

Most deaths have been scooter users involved in road accidents, however.

An analysis by the Department for Transport found that scooter users were about three times more likely to get hurt compared to cyclists – with 13 “casualties” every million miles.

Wayne Ting, chief executive of Lime, the world’s largest e-scooter and e-bike rental company, believes it is not his transport that is to blame.

Ting, a former Uber executive and Obama adviser, says: “We know how to make riders safer and it is not by blaming modes of transport that are not creating serious accidents.

“The question is what is actually causing these accidents?”

For Ting, the answer is clear: cars. The solution? Make drivers go slower.

“We know how to improve safety, you slow down cars… in London, where they slowed the average car to 20 [miles per hour] they saw accidents go down.

“One accident is too many,” he adds, “but some people say we should ban scooters or e-bikes – imagine if a person gets hit by a car and people say we should ban walking?”..

The only road legal scooters are ones hired from an app such Lime and its rivals, including German-founded Tier and French start-up Dott. Speed limits are capped at 15.5 miles per hour.

The same is not true for most privately bought scooters, which can go much faster. Private e-scooters are still banned from public roads and pavements – although that does not stop some anti-social users clogging up walkways with scooters.

A government-backed study into e-scooters in the UK, published in December, found widespread examples of anti-social scooter use.
More than one in five scooter riders reported using them on the pavement, which is illegal, while 44pc of pedestrians reported having their path blocked by a badly parked scooter….

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/02/26/cars-should-limited-20mph-avoid-e-scooter-ban/

In my view, e-scooters are fundamentally unsafe, both for their riders and pedestrians. They cannot be compared to bicycles, which are much easier to control, and must be pedalled (even electric ones!). I cycle hundreds of miles every year, and have never felt unsafe. I certainly would not feel the same on an e-scooter.

If it had not been for the climate agenda they never would have been allowed on the roads in the first place.

From a personal standpoint, I have frequently seen e-scooters being used in an inappropriate and unsafe way, often by clearly underage riders.

According to the Department for Transport, it is illegal to use privately-owned e-scooters on pavements, footpaths, cycle tracks and cycle lanes on roads. Riders must have a driving licence.

To be used on public roads and in public spaces lawfully, they must conform to a number of requirements, including being insured, taxed, and used with relevant safety equipment and other conditions.

However, the DfT website states that “it is likely that they (riders) will find it very difficult to comply with all of these requirements”, meaning their use on public roads would effectively be a criminal offence.

If they must be on our roads, they should be speed limited to, say, 5 mph and only allowed in cycle lanes.

From Climate Etc.

by David M. Barnett

Synopsis of  Global Warming as a System Response Theory Problem

The weather noise problem—how much warming?

Changes in weather can cause temperature changes from day to day by as much as 20°C.  The coldest day in mid-summer can be colder than the warmest day in mid-winter.  That is weather.  Yet we all know the difference between summer and winter, and that summer days typically are warmer than winter days.  That is our experience of climate.

It is said that the climate has warmed by a degree or so in the last 200 years. That is a very small number to extract from the day-to-day noise which can be an order of magnitude larger.  How can one extract that small secular temperature trend reliably? Even thermometer measurements at a single location are subject to perturbation by non-global-climate factors such as growing urbanisation or even the growth or removal of a stand of trees.

The warming attribution noise problem—is it CO₂?

Many people believe that CO₂, added to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels since the industrial revolution, has increased the effective thermal resistivity between the earth’s surface and outer-space—the “greenhouse warming”—forcing a temperature rise to compensate.  But how does one disentangle this “greenhouse” hypothesis from other possible contributing causes such as land use changes or changes in insolation?  True ab initio modelling of the climate system is impractical due to the huge ranges of time and space scales that are important. How does one extract an attribution signal from the parametric noise?

Signal processing with a carrier wave

Ever since the invention of the magnetic tape-recorder signal engineers have known that it is much easier to extract a wanted signal from the noise, if the signal modulates a known high-frequency carrier wave.

As it happens, the seasonal shifts caused by the tilt of the earth’s axis and the earth’s orbit around the sun have a known period of one year, and the sun’s stimulation at any given location has a known phase.  The climate system processes this “carrier” signal input and produces a temperature output that can be measured.  For example, daily temperature measurements have been recorded at a location in Central England for more than two centuries.  The time series is available from BADC in the UK.

The climate signal

So what signal can we extract with period of one year?  Figure 1 shows a cosine of period 1-year fitted to the 4-year block 1772 to 1776. The blue cosine curve is the climate signal while the black curve is the daily weather noise. Unsurprisingly, the coldest time of year, according to climate, occurs in the last half of January. However, the day-to-day weather can vary greatly.  For example, late January 1773 had an unseasonably warm spell with mean daily temperatures as high as 9°C, despite this being the latter part of the “little ice age”.

Figure 1: Least Squares fit of cosine with a period of one year to daily mean temperature data in a block of four-years

Seasonal lag and climate change

I have always been fascinated by the fact that the shortest day of the year is around 20th December, while the coldest time is typically towards the end of January.  The difference is the seasonal lag. In the case of 1772 to 1776 that coldest date (according to climate) was 19.5 days into January. That represents a lag of about 30 days which is close to  radians.

Why do the seasons lag behind the cycle of the length of daylight? The short answer is that the oceans store the heat.  It is analogous to an electrical RC filter (see Figure 2) where C is the ocean’s ability to store heat, and R is the effective resistance to heat escaping into space.  The larger R or C, the longer the phase lag.

Now comes the magic.  The CO₂ “greenhouse” hypothesis is that adding CO₂ increases the effective thermal resistance, R.  In which case, the seasonal lag ought to increase along with the CO₂.  The CR-filter theory also predicts that the difference between summer and winter should also increase, if thermal resistance is the sole cause of the increase in lag.

How seasonal lag changed between 1772 and 2005 in Central England

The daily mean temperature time series for Central England was divided into blocks of 4 years duration.  A cosine climate curve, with period one year, was fitted to each block (as in Figure 1, for example). The parameters for each block are Temperature Amplitude (i.e half the summer to winter temperature change), the temperature phase (expressed as the date in January of minimum climate temperature), and the Mean Temperature for the block.  These three parameters have been plotted on a graph whose abscissa covers the years 1772 to 2005.

There are considerable fluctuations in the parameters from 4-year block to 4-year block. I have therefore provided an “eye-guide” to the trends in the form of cubic curves least-squares fitted to each parameter series.  The results are summarised in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Phase lag (date in January), temperature amplitude, and mean temperature of the 4-year blocks plotted for years 1772 to 2005, together with cubic trend lines fitted to the data.

Discussion of trends in the Central England temperature

First consider the seasonal phase lag.  The lag can vary quite wildly in a short interval.  Nevertheless, there seems to be a secular trend for the coldest period, from around 20 January in 1800 to around 25 January in 2005.

Note that while I have been expressing the phase in terms of the coldest period, the fit to the data is going to be dominated by what happens in spring and autumn when the temperature is changing most rapidly from week to week. Thus while the phase fit implies a climate coldest around 20 January, there could easily be an “unseasonal” warm spell then (as happened in 1773—see Figure 1).

Depth of cold at 20 January 1800 is a 31 day lag (approximately π/6 radians) from 20 December 1799 (shortest day). 200 years later the lag seems to have increased to about 36 days (approximately π/5 radians) by 2004. That is an apparent increase lag of about 5 days (approximately π/30 radians) in 200 years.

If the data can be modelled by Figure 2, then the phase lag trend is consistent with a combination of an increasing “insulation” effect, R, and the storage effect, C.

Can the phase lag be attributed solely to an increase in insulation?

Let us examine the hypothesis that the phase lag is due entirely to increasing insulation, and that the input flux amplitude, J, remained constant.

Between 1772 and about 1870, temperature amplitude between summer and winter had a declining trend from about 7.2 °C to about 6.4 °C. It was more-or-less constant after 1870.  The all-CO₂ hypothesis would predict increasing temperature amplitude.  In fact, the decline in the early period cannot be matched assuming constant input flux, J.

What is surprising is that matching the temperature amplitude history requires J to decline between 1772 and 1870.

The contribution of changes in R to the change in seasonal lag is about 30%, while storage, C, must contribute the rest. One can speculate that the increase in C is due to an increase in the amount of ice-free sea during the summer.

Inferring other global warming parameters and sanity check 1870–2005.

It is also possible to estimate the maximum contribution R can make to warming and the maximum sensitivity of the temperature to CO₂ (2°C per doubling).  However you will have to look at the mathematical reasoning in the full exposition: “Global Warming as a System Response Theory Problem” .

Robustness of the system response theory approach to limited geographical data

As a teenager I was an electronics hobbyist.  I would test an amplifier, say, by injecting a periodic signal at the input and then sample the response of the system at various points which did not necessarily have to be in the main signal path.  Often one could detect signal, even on the DC supply rails (which is one reason why large capacitors across the supply were needed to prevent feedback oscillations).  I mention this to highlight the fact that monitoring just a single point of a responsive system can provide useful information about the whole system.

Consider one of the pitfalls of the traditional approach which requires one to have good representation of the atmospheric temperature field over the whole globe and over extended periods of time.  Yet the sampling is heavily biassed to densely populated areas, only a few places have time series going back more than a few decades.  Even in those places that have extended time series, there is potential for inconsistencies between measurements taken decades apart (for example the growth of a stand of trees near the measuring station).

By contrast, a time series can yield seasonal phase data which is impervious to the inconsistencies in temperature base line across the decades. Further, even a single location may be representative a wide geographical area with varying terrain.

Concluding remarks

This is proof of concept discussion, using a single location’s dataset, with an unsophisticated analysis.  The inferences, such as maximum possible temperature sensitivity to CO₂ are far from rigorous, but indicate some of the power of system response theory to tease out valuable climate physics from even limited observations.

Any serious attempt to model the climate should make use of as many features of the data as possible so as to reduce the danger of undetected hidden assumptions.  The systems response approach, and seasonal lag in particular, is a promising tool in this regard.  I note that some workers are beginning to use this approach in meteorology[1].  It does not seem too much of a leap to extend systems response theory to the global climate system.

Link to full manuscript Global Warming as a System Response Theory Problem

Biosketch:   Dr Barnett received a PhD in Physics in 1995 from the University of Texas at Austin.  His thesis: “Lyapunov Exponents of Many-Body Systems”.  He is presently and independent consultant based in the UK, and an Affiliate of the Institute for Advanced Physics.  His areas of research include:  The emergence of entropy and the arrow of time, The structure of water,  System response theory, Varying ways to idealise useful independent subsystems.

[1]. Milan Palusˇ, Dagmar Novotna ́ & Petr Tichavsky ́, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, 32, L12805 (2005) “Shifts of seasons at the European mid-latitudes: Natural fluctuations correlated with the North Atlantic Oscillation“

From polarbearscience

The Polar Wildlife Report is a peer reviewed summary of the most recent information on polar animals, relative to historical records, based on a review of 2022 scientific literature and media reports. It is intended for a wide audience, including scientists, teachers, students, decision-makers and the general public interested in animals that live in Arctic and Antarctic habitats, including polar bears, killer whales, krill, and penguins.

Polar wildlife was thriving in 2022

London, 27 February: 

A prominent Canadian zoologist says that Arctic and Antarctic wildlife continued to thrive in 2022 despite predictions of impending catastrophe.

In the Polar Wildlife Report 2022, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) on International Polar Bear Day, zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford explains that ice-dependent species in the Arctic and Antarctic show no sign of impending population crashes due to lack of sea ice.

Crockford’s report reveals that there were no reports in 2022 that would suggest that polar wildlife is suffering as a result of reduced sea-ice extent: no starving polar bears or walrus, no beach-cast dead seals, no marked declines in great whale numbers, no drowned penguin chicks.

While a few Antarctic penguin species and the Antarctic minke whale appear to have suffered a recent decline in abundance, these were unrelated to sea-ice cover in the Southern Ocean. Similarly, in the Arctic, a recent 27% decline in polar bear numbers in Western Hudson Bay was found to be unrelated to sea-ice conditions over the last five years.

Indeed, contrary to all expectations, critical Antarctic winter sea ice has been increasing since 1979. While sea-ice experts have long voiced concerns that computer models of future Antarctic sea ice coverage are seriously flawed, biologists concerned about the future of ice-dependent emperor penguins and Antarctic krill have continued to use them to justify alarmist predictions.

Crockford concludes: “In both the Arctic and Antarctic, less summer sea ice has meant increased primary productivity, which in turn has meant more food for all animals. This explains in part why polar wildlife continues to thrive, even in areas with much reduced summer sea-ice coverage.”

Crockford, S.J. 2023. The Polar Wildlife Report. Global Warming Policy Foundation Briefing 63, London. pdf here.

Key Findings

• There were no reports in 2022 that would suggest polar wildlife is suffering as a result of reduced sea-ice extent; in both the Arctic and Antarctic, less summer sea ice and increased primary productivity over the last two decades has meant more food for all animals, which explains in part why polar wildlife has been thriving.
• Arctic sea ice in summer has declined since 1979, but has had an overall flat trend since 2007; coverage was again well below average in the Barents and Chukchi Seas in 2022, where continued high primary productivity has provided abundant food resources for wildlife; winter ice coverage in 2022 was slightly lower than 2020 but overall has shown a relatively flat trend since 2011.
• Ice-dependent polar bears worldwide probably now number about 32,000, with a wide range of potential error; a survey of Western Hudson Bay polar bears in 2021 generated a population decline of 27% since 2016, but this did not correlate with lack of sea ice. A genetically-distinct subpopulation of polar bears was discovered thriving in SE Greenland, and western Barents Sea bears (Norway) are still doing well despite the most profound summer sea-ice loss of all Arctic regions.
• Atlantic walrus numbers are still low, but recovering in the Barents Sea and eastern North America. A new population estimate of Pacific walrus in 2019 reveals more than 200,000 exist in the Chukchi/Bering Sea area. More killer whales were reported visiting the Eastern Canadian Arctic, and in Alaska and the Western Canadian Arctic, bowhead whales are thriving.
• Antarctic sea ice extent has barely changed since 1979: vital winter ice has slightly increased overall while summer ice has slightly declined (with its lowest extent in December 2022), all while overall primary productivity has increased. A new sea ice predictive model acknowledges previous flaws and does not predict a future decline until 2050 at the earliest.
• Krill are crucial prey for many species of wildlife (especially huge numbers of great whales and penguins) that live or feed in the Southern Ocean. Future intensification of commercial fishing of krill (largely to feed farmed fish) is likely the largest conservation threat to local wildlife, given recent geopolitical tensions over effective fisheries management.
• Numbers of fin, blue, humpback, and southern right whales feeding in Antarctic waters in summer have increased in recent years, and while minke whale numbers appear to have declined, an estimated 500,000 individuals still frequent the region.
• Killer whales (orcas) are the top predator in the Southern Ocean and most populations appear to be thriving. The IUCN lists all ice-dependent seals in Antarctica as ‘least concern’.
• Several albatross and large petrel species are considered ‘vulnerable’ by the IUCN due to deadly interactions with long-line trawlers fishing for Antarctic toothfish (Patagonian sea bass), while over-fishing of this cod-like species and the herring-like Antarctic silverfish is also a concern.
• Emperor penguins, the largest and most ice-dependent penguin species, were classified as ‘Threatened’ on the US Endangered Species List in 2022 but remain ‘Near Threatened’ according to the IUCN Red List because of the large size of their breeding population and the acknowledged uncertainty of future sea-ice predictions.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

London, 27 February:

A prominent Canadian zoologist says that Arctic and Antarctic wildlife continued to thrive in 2022 despite predictions of impending catastrophe.

In the Polar Wildlife Report 2022, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) on International Polar Bear Day, zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford explains that ice-dependent species in the Arctic and Antarctic show no sign of impending population crashes due to lack of sea ice.

Crockford’s report reveals that there were no reports in 2022 that would suggest that polar wildlife is suffering as a result of reduced sea-ice extent: no starving polar bears or walrus, no beach-cast dead seals, no marked declines in great whale numbers, no drowned penguin chicks.

While a few Antarctic penguin species and the Antarctic minke whale appear to have suffered a recent decline in abundance, these were unrelated to sea-ice cover in the Southern Ocean. Similarly, in the Arctic, a recent 27% decline in polar bear numbers in Western Hudson Bay was found to be unrelated to sea-ice conditions over the last five years.

Indeed, contrary to all expectations, critical Antarctic winter sea ice has been increasing since 1979. While sea-ice experts have long voiced concerns that computer models of future Antarctic sea ice coverage are seriously flawed, biologists concerned about the future of ice-dependent emperor penguins and Antarctic krill have continued to use them to justify alarmist predictions.

Crockford concludes: “In both the Arctic and Antarctic, less summer sea ice has meant increased primary productivity, which in turn has meant more food for all animals. This explains in part why polar wildlife continues to thrive, even in areas with much reduced summer sea-ice coverage.”
The Polar Wildlife Report

 
Key Findings
• There were no reports in 2022 that would suggest polar wildlife is suffering as a result of reduced sea-ice extent; in both the Arctic and Antarctic, less summer sea ice and increased primary productivity over the last two decades has meant more food for all animals, which explains in part why polar wildlife has been thriving.

• Arctic sea ice in summer has declined since 1979, but has had an overall flat trend since 2007; coverage was again well below average in the Barents and Chukchi Seas in 2022, where continued high primary productivity has provided abundant food resources for wildlife; winter ice coverage in 2022 was slightly lower than 2020 but overall has shown a relatively flat trend since 2011.

• Ice-dependent polar bears worldwide probably now number about 32,000, with a wide range of potential error; a survey of Western Hudson Bay polar bears in 2021 generated a population decline of 27% since 2016, but this did not correlate with lack of sea ice. A genetically-distinct subpopulation of polar bears was discovered thriving in SE Greenland, and western Barents Sea bears (Norway) are still doing well despite the most profound summer sea-ice loss of all Arctic regions.

• Atlantic walrus numbers are still low, but recovering in the Barents Sea and eastern North America. A new population estimate of Pacific walrus in 2019 reveals more than 200,000 exist in the Chukchi/Bering Sea area. More killer whales were reported visiting the Eastern Canadian Arctic, and in Alaska and the Western Canadian Arctic, bowhead whales are thriving.

• Antarctic sea ice extent has barely changed since 1979: vital winter ice has slightly increased overall while summer ice has slightly declined (with its lowest extent in December 2022), all while overall primary productivity has increased. A new sea ice predictive model acknowledges previous flaws and does not predict a future decline until 2050 at the earliest.

• Krill are crucial prey for many species of wildlife (especially huge numbers of great whales and penguins) that live or feed in the Southern Ocean. Future intensification of commercial fishing of krill (largely to feed farmed fish) is likely the largest conservation threat to local wildlife, given recent geopolitical tensions over effective fisheries management.

• Numbers of fin, blue, humpback, and southern right whales feeding in Antarctic waters in summer have increased in recent years, and while minke whale numbers appear to have declined, an estimated 500,000 individuals still frequent the region.

• Killer whales (orcas) are the top predator in the Southern Ocean and most populations appear to be thriving. The IUCN lists all ice-dependent seals in Antarctica as ‘least concern’.

• Several albatross and large petrel species are considered ‘vulnerable’ by the IUCN due to deadly interactions with long-line trawlers fishing for Antarctic toothfish (Patagonian sea bass), while over-fishing of this cod-like species and the herring-like Antarctic silverfish is also a concern.

• Emperor penguins, the largest and most ice-dependent penguin species, were classified as ‘Threatened’ on the US Endangered Species List in 2022 but remain ‘Near Threatened’ according to the IUCN Red List because of the large size of their breeding population and the acknowledged uncertainty of future sea-ice predictions.

The Polar Wildlife Report (pdf)

From STOP THESE THINGS

So-called wind power ‘constraint payments’ are more like a kidnapper’s ransom, than a genuine commercial transaction. There aren’t many exchanges that involve a producer claiming a fee for producing absolutely nothing, at all.

But when your product is only available in random, chaotic spurts (or not at all), apparently the rules change.

Up to December 2019, British wind power outfits had collected over £650,000,000 for doing nothing at all; the cost to power consumers was almost £1bn over the last five years and that figure is expected to soar to over £500m a year, or even more.

Wind farms backed by green subsidies could be paid more to switch off
The Telegraph
Emma Gatten
28 January 2023

Wind farms backed by government subsidies could be paid more to switch off than to generate power, The Telegraph has learnt.

At particularly windy times, the National Grid pays producers to switch off rather than overload the local system, with the costs passed on to household energy bills.

Producers offer the price at which they are willing to switch off, which is normally around the market rate for electricity, currently at record highs because of the energy crisis.

Wind producers on newer government subsidy contracts are paid a fixed price, generally below current market rates, to generate electricity.

By switching off, producers may therefore be able to make rates well above their fixed prices.

Although the loophole only applies to about seven per cent of wind farmer producers on so-called “contracts for difference” (CfD) – the newer subsidy system – the issue could grow as new wind farms come online.

Developers of the newest wind farms have offered to produce power for a guaranteed price of as little as £37 per megawatt-hour (MWh).

That compares to wholesale electricity prices currently around £150/MWh, which are expected to stay at record-high levels for years to come.

Meanwhile, the National Grid forecast that levels of curtailment will grow fourfold in the next decade, from 3.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2022 to 15TWh in 2030, with costs forecast to reach £2.5 billion a year

In 2022, consumers paid £215 million to turn wind farms off, and £717 million to buy gas-powered electricity to make up the difference, according to figures from the UK Wind Curtailment Monitor.

The Telegraph revealed this week that wind farms could be paid to switch off even at times when the National Grid is paying households to turn off their gadgets because of blackout fears.

However, Craig MacKinlay, a Tory MP and chairman of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, said: “The fact that hundreds of millions of pounds are being paid annually to wind farms not to generate, with these costs added to consumer bills, is a national scandal.”

Mr MacKinlay said the issue highlighted that “the intermittency of renewables with gas having to be used as the reliable balancer means wind companies are reaping the cream but doing nothing to help energy security”.

He added: “BEIS [Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy] lawyers who drafted these appalling contracts are responsible for billions of pounds of additional costs to consumers.

“The complexity of the energy system and its pricing is a direct result of distorting a functioning market on the altar of net zero.”

A government spokesman said: “The Government is currently undertaking a review of electricity market arrangements. Curtailment payments are used by the National Grid ESO, as well as in other nations around the world, to safely manage electricity supply on a day-to-day basis.”
The Telegraph

What a ‘safely’ managed electricity supply looks like in 2023.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratby

When will Western leaders realise they have been hoodwinked by China?

China approved the construction of another 106 gigawatts of coal-fired power capacity last year, four times higher than a year earlier and the highest since 2015, research shows.

Over the year, 50GW of coal power capacity went into construction across the country – up by more than half compared with the previous year – driven by energy security considerations, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM) said on Monday.

“The speed at which projects progressed through permitting to construction in 2022 was extraordinary, with many projects sprouting up, gaining permits, obtaining financing and breaking ground apparently in a matter of months,” said GEM analyst Flora Champenois.

The amount of new capacity connected to the grid had slowed in recent years after a decline in new approvals over the 2017-2020 period, but it is set to rebound over the next few years, driven by concerns about power shortages.

Many of the newly approved projects were identified as “supporting” baseload capacity designed to ensure the stability of the power grid and minimise blackout risks, the CREA-GEM report said.

However, many were being built in regions that already had a clear capacity surplus, and power supply problems would be better addressed by improving grid reliability and efficiency, the authors said.

China suffered a wave of blackouts in September 2021 as a result of coal supply shortages, cutting off thousands of homes and factories. A long drought last year also saw a dramatic drop in hydropower generation and the rationing of electricity.

Beijing has been trying to rejuvenate its economy after growth and employment were hit badly by stringent zero-Covid measures last year, raising concerns that its low-carbon efforts would be sidelined.

However, renewable power capacity additions have remained at record levels, with solar installations at 87GW in 2022 and expected to rise further in 2023.

The country aims to bring its climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions to a peak by 2030, but it remains unclear what level they will reach.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/27/china-approves-biggest-expansion-in-new-coal-power-plants-since-2015-report-finds

At the end of 2021, China had 1296 GW of thermal capacity, nearly all of which is coal. In other words, these new projects will add an extra 8%. It is possible that some of the projects not yet put into construction may end up being cancelled, but even 50 GW already started will substantially increase coal power output.

A look at coal power capacity over the years shows just how steady the rise has been:

https://chinaenergyportal.org/en/2021-electricity-other-energy-statistics-preliminary/

I do have to laugh at these “experts” who think they know better than the Chinese themselves!

For instance:

Many of the newly approved projects were identified as “supporting” baseload capacity designed to ensure the stability of the power grid and minimise blackout risks, the CREA-GEM report said.

However, many were being built in regions that already had a clear capacity surplus, and power supply problems would be better addressed by improving grid reliability and efficiency, the authors said.

And then there’s this gem:

Beijing has been trying to rejuvenate its economy after growth and employment were hit badly by stringent zero-Covid measures last year, raising concerns that its low-carbon efforts would be sidelined.

Translation – China would rather have economic growth than reducing emissions and the two things are not compatible.

The Guardian tries to reassure its gullible readers that solar power capacity continues to grow “at record rates”. They say 87 GW was added last year, but as solar only produces at about 12% of its nameplate capacity, the contribution from this additional tranche will be dwarfed by the new coal power coming on stream. In 2021, solar power only produced 4% of China’s electricity, and it is unlikely that this will change much over the next few years.

What is certain is that China is not going to ditch any of its modern coal power plants anytime soon, although obviously older, inefficient ones will gradually be phased out.

In the last ten years, China has added 587 GW to its thermal power base, virtually half of the total. And at the current rate, this figure could double by 2030.

China is committed to coal in the long term, regardless of what gullible western liberals may think.