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.
The German Advisory Council on the Environment is a body of experts convened by the Federal Republic of Germany to advise the state on matters of environmental policy. I’m grateful to @tomdabassman on Twitter for drawing attention to its recent and deeply creepy 200-page report on ‘The obligation of policymakers: facilitating environmentally friendly behaviour‘.
Police uses water canons to clear a blocked a road between the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag building, home of the German federal parliament, as people attend a protest rally in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2020 against the coronavirus restrictions in Germany. Police in Berlin have requested thousands of reinforcements from other parts of Germany to cope with planned protests by people opposed to coronavirus restrictions. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
The German Advisory Council on the Environment is a body of experts convened by the Federal Republic of Germany to advise the state on matters of environmental policy. I’m grateful to @tomdabassman on Twitter for drawing attention to its recent and deeply creepy 200-page report on ‘The obligation of policymakers: facilitating environmentally friendly behaviour‘. It abounds in remarkable and revealing statement, and I’ve spent a good part of the day studying it for a longer post that I hope to write in the coming weeks.
For now, I want to draw your attention to the introduction, which is bad enough. Its authors depart from the premise that the state currently lacks “policy measures… targeting environmentally relevant behaviour”, and join others in affirming that it is the job of the state to nudge individual decisions in the right direction. Tellingly, both the pandemic and the sanctions-induced European energy crisis play a very large role in their thinking:
Although the key environmental crises, such as loss of biodiversity and climate change, are less directly visible and tangible than the energy crisis and the pandemic, environmental policymakers can learn from the sometimes painful but also important experiences of recent years: Behavioural changes in the population can be a part of the solution to crises such as these, and it is possible to adopt and implement policies aimed at changing behaviours.
For example, Germany introduced a series of measures in mid-2022 to alleviate the energy crisis. … These measures targeted the behaviour of citizens. In addition to general calls to save energy, building owners were obliged to optimise their heating systems, employees had to accept lower room temperatures at work and it was forbidden to heat private swimming pools. …. Earlier, Germany imposed far-reaching pandemic measures to contain the spread of Corona. For example, since 2020, the stated adopted and imposed various lockdowns and social contact limitations. Both highlight the contribution of behavioural changes, whether in energy consumption or social behaviour, to the project of combating a collective problem…
The aforementioned measures doubtless demanded a lot from people and in the specifics of the necessary extent of the restrictions, they proved controversial, as also in their unequal impact on different social groups. Nevertheless, the two crises show that political measures to carefully restrict the behaviour of citizens are possible if the threat is correspondingly great and the importance of the protected good – in these examples, health and energy – is recognised. The state has succeeded (even if not in every individual case) in devising measures such that it achieves its goal while maintaining proportionality. It is also clearly possible for these policies to be designed and communicated in such a way that the majority support them.
Emphasis mine. All of this speaks for itself, and I don’t have much to add, except to observe that the only way for restrictions to be “communicated” such that “the majority support them,” is by renewed forays into state media-fuelled mass panic and hysteria. Corona has taught our rulers that a great deal more is possible than they ever imagined, and they will spend the coming years exploring the limits.
This article originally appeared on Eugyppius’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
The campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is sometimes presented as a global undertaking in which Canada is “allied” with all other countries. Allegedly, we must not shirk our duty to our allies. This view rests upon a mistaken understanding of past and present trends in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is sometimes presented as a global undertaking in which Canada is “allied” with all other countries. Allegedly, we must not shirk our duty to our allies. This view rests upon a mistaken understanding of past and present trends in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Conservatives don’t get why we should lower emissions.
From 1992 to 2014, the countries participating in international climate conferences set a series of increasingly stringent emissions reduction targets. With few exceptions, no country met the targets. In 2015, in Paris, the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed instead to adopt a global goal of restraining the growth in emissions so as to avoid an increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels by 2100, with the aspirational goal of restraining temperature increases to less than 1.5 degrees C. In 2018 and after, influenced by the European Union, countries began to set political targets with the objective of attaining “net-zero” emissions by 2050 for developed countries and 2070 for developing countries.
Despite these agreements, global GHG emissions rose by almost 60% from 1990 to 2019.
The OECD countries reduced their emissions slightly, but the non-OECD countries did not. By 2019, emissions in the non-OECD accounted for two-thirds of the emissions and all of the growth.
This article examines the trends in the ten non-OECD countries that by 2021 accounted for about 55% of global emissions: China, India, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, Vietnam and Thailand. Carbon Action Tracker is an organization of climate activists that closely monitors the targets that countries set for themselves and the progress, if any, they make towards the net-zero goal.
According to Carbon Action Tracker, no country in the world is “1.5 degrees C. Paris Agreement compatible”. Six countries are rated “almost sufficient”: the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, Nepal, Ethiopia, Morocco and Nigeria. The ratings for the 10 largest non-OECD countries are also revealing. China, India, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia are rated “highly insufficient” and Russia, Iran and Vietnam are rated “critically insufficient”. Only South Africa and Brazil are rated “sufficient”.
Further, if every one of these countries met the targets that they have set for themselves in the emissions plans submitted to the United Nations, in every case but one (Brazil), their emissions by 2030 would be higher than they were in 2010. It is unlikely that they will even meet their own commitments.
Despite immense promotion and propaganda, the countries of the world are not on track to meet the net-zero goals. There is no global climate campaign, and Canada could not influence its outcome either way if there were.
During the last few weeks, large fires have initiated and grown over northern Alberta, resulting in massive smoke plumes (see the image below from one week ago). Here in Washington State, we experienced a few days of smoke aloft from these fires last week.
During the last few weeks, large fires have initiated and grown over northern Alberta, resulting in massive smoke plumes (see the image below from one week ago). Here in Washington State, we experienced a few days of smoke aloft from these fires last week.
I have received a number of emails asking whether such Alberta fires are unusual for this time of the year and whether global warming (climate change) could be the cause.
In addition, several media outlets have published headline articles about the topic, suggesting that human emissions of greenhouse gases were the main cause.
It turns out that reality is more complicated.
May is typically the biggest month for Alberta wildfires, there is little upward trend in Canadian wildfires, and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are a very small part of the story.
Canadian Wildfire Statistics
Based on an official Canadian government wildfire database, here is a map of Canadian wildfires from 1980-2020. Alberta wildfires are generally found over the northern half of the province, which includes large areas of boreal forest and grassland.
What is the long-term trend of Canadian wildfires? Increasing due to global warming?
Perhaps surprising to some, the answer is no (see below).
For all of Canada, the number of fires is DECREASING, and there is no obvious trend in the area burned.
What about Alberta, where the current batch of wildfires are burning?
Lots of variability but little upward trend (see below). The biggest fire was in the early 1980s.
The lack of a long-term trend in wildfires is important: one WOULD expect an upward trend if global warming/climate change was a significant contributor.
Some folks have argued that having big Alberta fires in May points to global warming. They suggest that it is warming so fast that wildfires are occurring early!
But folks making such claims need to look at the data. Historically, May is the month of the most frequent wildfires in Alberta. (a graphic from a paper on trends in Alberta wildfire below).
Furthermore, many of Alberta’s great wildfires occurred in May, such as the huge Fort McMurray fire in early May 2016 and 2011 Great Slave Lake fire of 2011.
But why is May such a big month for northern Alberta wildfires?
It has to do with surface fuels. After a long, cool/wet winter, there are a lot of dead fuels (e.g., dried grass, annuals) from the previous year that are on the ground after the snow has melted. Such light fuels dry very quickly during the first warm weather and are ready to burn in early May.
But the optimal burn season is limited in time. Only a few weeks later, there is a greening of the surface vegetation (grasses start to grow, annuals sprout leave) and such greening REDUCES the flammability of the surface fuels. Which side would you expect to burn in the picture below?
There is a short favorable May window for large Alberta fires before the greening. But to take “advantage” of it you need favorable drying conditions, which are associated with a strong, upper-level ridge of high pressure over the region. And strong winds and lightning are favorable as well.
Furthermore, rainfall peaks during the summer (see monthly precipitation in Edmonton below).
The setup for the fires earlier this month was nearly perfect. In early May, an intense ridge of high pressure developed over southern Canada (see a plot of the difference from normal heights at 500 hPa pressure below for 1-15 May). Red and orange indicate MUCH higher than normal pressure in the lower atmosphere (around 18,000 ft).
Such high pressure resulted in intense drying and warming that helped dry the surface vegetation before greening occurred. There is no evidence that such a pattern is the result of climate change.
There were periods of strong, dry winds in early May due to the large pressure gradient at the edge of the high pressure at lower elevations (see example below on May 6). Strong wind is a primo accelerator of fire.
You can understand the situation by looking at the observed weather at Edmonton Airport from late April to early May (below). Rainy and around 60F in late April, then rapid warming and wind on April 30th with a jump to 85F on May 1, followed by 86 and 88 on May 3-4.
Perfect weather to dry out the surface fuels, followed by lightning at the high pressure shifted eastward. Human ignitions are also distinct possibilities.
In summary, there is little evidence that the Alberta wildfires represent a climate event.
Intense drying weather occurred exactly when the surface fuels were most vulnerable before greening. May is typically the month of the biggest Alberta fires for a reason and the smoke that reached the Northwest aloft from the fires was simply the result of a favorable wind pattern aloft (easterly flow), not the results of a slowly warming planet.
Note: I will do a special online Zoom session this Saturday (May 27th for my Patreon supporters). Will talk about wildfire meteorology and answer your questions.
France is scared of the vital trace gas carbon dioxide, or so its government leads us to believe. – – – France has banned domestic short-haul flights where train alternatives exist, in a bid to cut carbon emissions, reports BBC News.
The law came into force two years after lawmakers had voted to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.
The ban all but rules out air travel between Paris and cities including Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux, while connecting flights are unaffected.
Critics have described the latest measures as „symbolic bans“.
Laurent Donceel, interim head of industry group Airlines for Europe (A4E), told the AFP news agency that „banning these trips will only have minimal effects“ on CO2 output.
He added that governments should instead support „real and significant solutions“ to the issue.
Airlines around the world have been severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with website Flightradar24 reporting that the number of flights last year was down almost 42% from 2019.
The French government had faced calls to introduce even stricter rules.
This list could be closer to 50 but let’s just stick to a handful of them. I live in this business every day, and I’m just so confused.
1. In a world that is apparently getting both warmer and colder because of global warming, how is it that we can increasingly rely on non-dispatchable (i.e., intermittent, usually unavailable), weather-dependent electricity from wind and solar plants to displace, not just supplement, dispatchable (i.e., baseload, almost always available) coal, gas, and nuclear power? In other words, if our weather is becoming less predictable, how is it that a consuming economy like ours can, or should even try, predictably rely on weather-dependent resources? ERCOT exemplifies this: the Texas grid operator has around 31,000 MW of wind capacity but goes into winter expecting only 6,000 MW (just 20%) of wind farms to be available to generate electricity.
[…]
2. Climate change is a global issue, so how is it that we can claim climate benefits for unilateral climate policy. For example, U.S. gasoline cars constitute just 3% of global CO2 emissions, so how will getting rid of them impact climate change? But this dose of real science doesn’t stop California leaders, a state responsible for just 1% of global CO2 emissions, from telling us that energy policy in the nine-county region of Northern California alone is “responsible for protecting air quality and the global climate in the nine-county Bay Area.” No wonder then that a Biden administration official was incoherent when asked how $50 trillion in climate spending in the U.S. will lower any global temperature rise.
[…]
3. Back to electric vehicles. Green-tinted but surely practical Bloombergadmits that more than 85% of Americans can’t afford an electric car, since they are well more than double the price of oil-based cars.
[…]
4. How on Earth could anybody expect those in Africa and the other horrifically poor nations to “get off fossil fuels” when the rich countries haven’t come close to doing it.
[…]
5. But, perhaps I’m most confused about the whole air quality thing. The obsession over it gets attached to all energy policies. But there’s clearly a strawman to the “we need cleaner air now” demand. First, the air quality conversation in the U.S. reminds me of Voltaire’s “the perfect is the enemy of good.” Americans seem completely unaware how drastically our air quality has improved. Check data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), our criteria pollutants have been plummeting over the past many decades.
I am Principal at JTC Energy Research Associates, LLC. I hold a B.A. in International Relations from Penn State University, with a minor in Statistical Analysis. I got my M.S. in Homeland Security from San Diego State University, with a focus on Energy Security, and an MBA from St. Francis University, with a focus on Energy Economics. My research specialization includes North American and international trends in liquid fuels, natural gas, coal, renewables, electricity and GHG emissions – and their connection to human development. I have over 400 professional publications in a variety of energy-related media, notably Pipeline & Gas Journal, Carbon Capture Journal, Journal of Energy Security, Power, World Oil, Public Utilities Fortnightly, and the Journal of Energy and Development. I have also been a writer and editor for reports commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, International Energy Agency, and other major energy research organizations.Forbes
Point #1
While wind power in Texas works fairly to very well in spring and fall, it doesn’t work that well in winter and summer. Nearly all of ERCOT’s capacity additions since the February 2021 deep freeze have been renewables, about half of which were solar PV installations. On sunny days, solar does a fairly good job of offsetting wind’s mid-day doldrums… However, the Duck Curve isn’t limited to the Peoples Republic of California.
The first week of February 2023 was extremely cold, with much of Texas getting hammered by an ice storm. Wind and particularly solar took the week off.
The mindless renewables unreliables cheerleading went FR in this Texas Monthly article:
Solar Power Is Bailing Texas Out This Summer
Enjoying that AC? Thank the mighty power of the sun and the renewable energy source keeping the grid afloat.
By Dan Solomon July 12, 2022
On Monday the good people of Texas, many still suffering from lingering trauma as a result of the February 2021 failure of the state’s power grid, braced for bad news. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the much-maligned entity that manages Texas’s famously independent grid, warned that the situation was dire because of “a projected reserve capacity shortage with no market solution available.” If things got worse, rolling blackouts might be needed. Not great!
Fortunately, the worst didn’t happen. There are a few reasons why. To reduce demand, many Texans turned up the thermostat by a few degrees to help save power, and ERCOT’s emergency response program paid some large energy customers to scale back usage during peak times. And significantly, solar power, which has been the star of the Texas grid so far during this interminable summer, continued to set records for energy production. If your air conditioner has been steadily running all summer long, you can thank the mighty power of the sun.
[…]
The two key renewable energy sources contributing to the Texas power grid are solar and wind power; solar accounts for roughly 25 percent of the renewable resources on the grid, while wind represents the other three quarters, according to Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies at Texas A&M.
It’s not all that difficult to understand how and why certain energy sources perform well under various grid conditions. Is the grid struggling to keep up with demand for air conditioning? Odds are it is bright and sunny outside, which explains why solar is performing well and also why wind would be less productive (go outside at noon on a summer day and wish for a breeze!). “The good thing about solar is it really does match AC demand,” Dessler said. “Days that are really hot and sunny are the days you’re making the most power from solar energy.”
While wind produced a low amount of energy relative to its total potential on Monday (and ERCOT put out a release blaming the energy source for the grid’s struggles), both Dessler and Lewin said that was to be expected, and that the amount of electricity being generated by wind was within state projections for a summer day. (Thermal energy sources—gas, coal, and nuclear—also underperformed on Monday.) While the wind farms of West Texas don’t generate as much power as we might like on stultifying summer days, wind farms along the Gulf Coast tend to do well during those hours. “If you’ve been down to the beach in the summertime, there’s usually a pretty good afternoon breeze,” Lewin said.
[…]
Dan Solomon
Dan Solomon writes about politics, music, food, sports, criminal justice, health care, film, and business.Texas Monthly
Unmitigated horst schist! Here’s the EIA Hourly Grid Monitor for ERCOT daily generation output by source for July 2022:
The only evidence cited for thermal energy sources underperforming was a moronic Tweet by… drum roll, please… Andrew Dessler. Had the article been titled, “Solar Power Is Bailing Texas Wind Power Out This Summer on Some Afternoons,” it would have been sort of accurate. The author of the Texas Monthly article evidently derived his energy expertise by writing “about politics, music, food, sports, criminal justice, health care, film, and business.”
Wind and solar can’t respond to demand. They can only respond to supply because they are weather-dependent.
The flip side of the coin is that wind and solar often over-generate when they aren’t needed.
Wind and Solar Curtailments in ERCOT (BTU Analytics)
Relying on weather-dependent energy sources for an energy transition, ostensibly needed to fix the weather…
Point #2
Mr. Clemente was referring to Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) in this passage:
No wonder then that a Biden administration official was incoherent when asked how $50 trillion in climate spending in the U.S. will lower any global temperature rise.Forbes
Point #3
The Bloomberg article is pay-walled… Here’s the Nitwit Pinko Radio version:
The people most interested in electric vehicles can’t afford to buy them
November 10, 2022
Studies show a generational gap in electric vehicle purchases: younger people tend to be more excited about them, but less able to afford them. (Story aired on All Things Considered on Nov. 8, 2022.)
Mr. Clemente features this graph in point number 4:
California’s climate policies have been surging electricity prices way more than originally promised, but because residents use less electricity because of mild weather bills are lower. DATA SOURCE: EIA; JTC
Anyone who thinks California is the example to follow, missed this:
Point number 5, the incessant demand for cleaner air is truly incomprehensible. Lead (Pb) is one of the deadliest air pollutants So deadly, that the inventor of leaded gasoline suffered from lead poisoning. The EPA’s page for lead as a criteria pollutant only shows a graph going back to 2010.
Five years ago, when I authored Putting the Clean Air Act on Ice, the EPA data went back to 1970 and I tied it into the ACT2 Greenland ice core lead concentration data. I determined a “geological background” (the Earth puts a lot of schist in the air without any human assistance) by calculating the 1772-1850 average ± two standard deviations. The ice core lead (ng/g) correlated very well with the overlapping EPA lead (ppb) data:
Current US atmospheric lead (Pb) levels appear to fall well within the geological background. Data from McConnell, J.R. and R. Edwards. 2008 and US EPA.
Atmospheric lead in the US is clearly at or near an irreducible level.
There has never been an energy transition
Nor will there ever be an energy “transition” before we harness nuclear fusion power… And that’s a good thing.
On a per capita basis, we consume as much “traditional biomass” for energy as we did when we started burning coal. We have just piled new forms of energy on top of older ones. Now, we have changed the way we consume energy sources. In the 1800’s the biomass came from whale oil and clear-cutting forests. Today’s biomass is less harmful to whales and forests.
From 1800 to 1900, per capita energy consumption, primarily from biomass, remained relatively flat; as did the average life expectancy. From 1900 to 1978, per capita energy consumption roughly tripled with the rapid growth in fossil fuel production (coal, oil & gas). This was accompanied by a doubling of average life expectancy. While I can’t say that fossil fuels caused the increase in life expectancy, I can unequivocally state that everything that enabled the increase in life expectancy wouldn’t have existed or happened without fossil fuels, particularly petroleum.
The CNN article references a questionable study from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) – a politically oriented climate activist organization who by their own admission, say “We use science to make change happen.” For the UCS science is not a tool to produce knowledge, but rather a lever political change.
Unfortunately, CNN was unable to discern this difference and treated the UCS press release as if it was actual science, rather than politically motivated climate activism disguised as science.
Reporting from the press release, CNN wrote:
The study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that 37% of the area burned by wildfires in the West since 1986 — nearly 19.8 million acres out of 53 million — can be blamed on the planet-cooking pollution from 88 of the world’s major fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers, the latter of which have been shown to produce around 7% of all carbon dioxide emissions.
The amalgam of megadrought and record-breaking heat that’s drying out vegetation due to climate change has stoked the West’s wildfires. And researchers found that since 1901, the fossil fuel activities of these companies, including ExxonMobil and BP, among others, warmed the planet by 0.5 degrees Celsius — nearly half of the global increase during that period.
The UCS “study” used a novel and little-known approach to link the so-called megadrought and heat to fossil fuel emissions: Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD). The VPD is similar to, but not the same as, the more commonly known relative humidity seen in daily weather reports. In layman’s terms, VPD measures how much water is in the air versus the maximum amount of water vapor that can exist in that air. This atmospheric metric is hardly ever used.
In the study published by UCS, the authors claim::
Increases in burned forest area across the western United States and southwestern Canada over the last several decades have been partially driven by a rise in vapor pressure deficit (VPD), a measure of the atmosphere’s drying power that is significantly influenced by human-caused climate change.
…
We use a global energy balance carbon-cycle model, a suite of climate models, and a burned area (BA) model to determine the contribution of emissions traced to the major carbon producers to the long-term increase in VPD during 1901–2021 and to cumulative forest fire area during 1986–2021 in the western US and southwestern Canada.
In other words, rather than using real-world measured data, they used computer climate models to make an estimate based on assumptions about changes in vapor pressure deficits, which haven’t been actually measured, as such, across the time period claimed. As Climate Realism has repeatedly shown, model outputs are not the same as reality, and much-hyped climate models have been proven to run hot, projecting rising temperatures that are, in the words of the scientists who work on the models, “implausibly fast.” The UCS paper claims that VPD in the western U.S. and Canada is showing a long-term drying, thus contributing to wildfires. This drying via the VPD metric would be an indicator of increased drought conditions, yet no causation or even correlation has been shown between recent climate changes and wildfires.
Most egregious of all, the UCS study itself ignored actual data in a paper they used as a reference to bolster their claim about VPD drying. In the 2020 paper Plant responses to rising vapor pressure deficit, actual VPD data was shown for the western U.S. and Canada. Surprisingly, these areas actually show VPD values that indicate more moisture, rather than less, completely contradicting the claims of drying made in the UCS study. This is seen in Figure 1 below, with both the U.S. and an expanded magnified panel showing the western area of the UCS study. The green colors indicate wetter conditions.
Figure 1 – Figure 1A from the paper Plant responses to rising vapor pressure deficit, magnified and annotated by A. Watts to show the Western U.S. and Canada regions cited in the UCS paper. Green areas in California and Western Canada indicate wetter conditions, yet these are areas where the biggest wildfires occurred.
Not only are the authors of the UCS study ignoring the contradictory VPD evidence contained in the paper they are citing, they also selectively cherry picked the wildfire data, only citing the range of years which seemingly support their assertion that climate change induced VPD deficits are driving wildfires. UCS claims:
This analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) attributes portions of the observed increases in fire-danger conditions and burned forest area across the western United States and southwestern Canada (referred to here as western North America) to the world’s 88 largest fossil fuel companies…
…
The analysis finds that 37 percent of the cumulative burned forest area in western North America since 1986 can be traced to carbon emissions from these companies’ products.
Wildfire data from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) was used in the UCS study. This data goes back to 1926. But even though UCS used VPD data back to 1901, they only used wildfire data from 1986 to the present. As you can see in Figure 2, in the early years of the data, wildfire in the US was much more prevalent. By using only more recent data, they UCS implies wildfires are increasing in relation to VPD.
Figure 2: A comparison of the before and after erasure NIFC dataset showing acres burned. Note the blue trend line goes from a negative trend to a positive one when cherry picked data is used.
Climate Realism covered the blatant disappearance of earlier wildfire data here, noting that it was only disappeared after researchers began to cite it as showing wildfires are not getting worse in the United States. The data was valid enough to be used in the 2001 Update to 1995 Federal Wildland Management Policy. (PDF)
Using the entire NIFC dataset easily disproves the UCS “study”, but even more telling is the fact that when you compare carbon dioxide (CO2) levels between the cherry picked and full NIFC data, the lie by omission becomes clearly evident as seen in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Panel A shows correlation between CO2 levels and wildfire when the UCS cherry-picked data is used, but in panel B, that correlation completely disappears when all of the wildfire and CO2 data is used. Sources: NIFC and NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 data. Graphs originally by Tony Heller, modified, combined, and annotated by A. Watts.
By hiding the data prior to 1986, UCS created the appearance of a false correlation between CO2 emissions and wildfire when none exists in the full data set. In other words, they lied by choosing only the data they wanted to show.
Finally, if that isn’t enough, recent satellite data shows no correlation between wildfire acreage burned and carbon dioxide levels. In fact, while carbon dioxide levels rose, wildfire area burned actually declined from 2000 to 2018. Further, according to a U.S. Forest Service report, fire-scarred California giant Sequoia trees indicate that severe fires occurred there in the years 245, 1441, 1580 and 1797 – well before climate change concerns and fossil-fuel companies ever existed.
As CNN is wont to do, it failed fact check any of the UCS’s claims with reference to available data. Instead, CNN simply regurgitated the claims from a political organization producing “science to make change happen.”
Any doubt that UCS is anything more than a “science for hire” organization is easily dispelled by that fact that my dog, Kenji, became a member of UCS simply by paying a fee. All that is required to become a “concerned scientist” is to provide a valid credit card.
Clearly, the UCS and CNN have gone to the dogs when it comes to scientific integrity and reporting science accurately to the public. Their so-called science doesn’t even pass the “sniff test.”
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute.
Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts.
He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues.
He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
“Specifically, over its lifetime, an EV only has lower emissions than an internal combustion engine vehicle if it travels between 28,069 and 68,160 miles and remains in service for more than 10 years – circumstances which are not being realized today.”
“Specifically, over its lifetime, an EV only has lower emissions than an internal combustion engine vehicle if it travels between 28,069 and 68,160 miles and remains in service for more than 10 years – circumstances which are not being realized today.” [4]
The illusion of electric vehicles as economically viable and ecologically blessed is part of the “magical thinking” and shared narrative of our day. Progressive environmentalists themselves are driving EVs in bad conscience. Thankfully, many members of one major political party here in the U.S. are on the side of the economy and the environment when it comes to transportation. May other members of other political parties join in–and in other countries.
The latest on EV politics comes from a Press Release from May 22, 2023, and it reads:
151 House Republicans, led by Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), today sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan urging him to rescind the agency’s proposed emissions standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles and heavy-duty trucks. The EPA’s ill-conceived effort is just their latest attempt to carry out President Biden’s radical rush-to-green agenda, which will take away Americans’ choice when it comes to the kind of vehicle they drive—and arm-twist people into buying vehicles they can’t afford.
————–
The full letter to Michael S. Regan, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, follows:
Dear Administrator Regan,
We write to express deep concerns with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) proposed standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles and heavy-duty trucks.1 The proposals are the latest effort by the Biden administration to commandeer America’s transportation sector and force its complete vehicle electrification under the guise of mitigating climate change.
The light- and medium-duty vehicle proposed standards are unworkable and impractical. EPA estimates that the proposed standards would lead to electric vehicles (EVs) accounting for 67 percent of new light-duty vehicle sales and 46 percent of new medium-duty vehicle sales in the United States by model year 2032. The projected statistics are a far cry from the current EV market share of 4.5 percent,2 making these standards a deliberate market manipulation to prop up EVs. Furthermore, a rapid shift towards EVs would benefit only the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as China has a stranglehold on the critical minerals supply chain and manufacturing of EV batteries. For example, China currently controls 50 to 70 percent of global lithium and cobalt refining that are necessary for EV batteries.3
Additionally, EVs are not necessarily better for the environment in terms of emissions reductions. Specifically, over its lifetime, an EV only has lower emissions than an internal combustion engine vehicle if it travels between 28,069 and 68,160 miles and remains in service for more than 10 years – circumstances which are not being realized today.4
Worst of all, the proposed standards would make life harder and even more unaffordable for Americans and their families. According to Kelley Blue Book, the average price of an EV is $65,291, which is $17,197 more than the average price of an internal combustion engine vehicle.5 Insurance for electric cars costs $206 per month on average, which is $44 more per month than insuring a gas-powered car.6 Pricing is especially important, because access to a car is tied to improved economic outcomes for low-income households.7 Americans should not be forced into paying an excessive amount for a car they do not want and cannot afford. Also, the lack of driving range continues to be a problem with EVs. Forcing rural America into a largely EV future is condemning these communities into isolation.
Given that the recent EPA announcement was only a proposal, we strongly urge you to rescind this ill-considered effort. Americans want the ability to choose the vehicle that best meets their needs, that is reliable, and that they can afford — not be forced into buying an EV.
4 See Written Testimony of Ashley Nunes, Director, Federal Policy, Climate and Energy, The Breakthrough Institute, before the Committee on Energy and Commerce, April 26, 2023.
The obvious retaliation is to wreck all their solar panels and wind turbines.
Not the way they do it – not by physical vandalism. WUWT does not advocate breaking the law. Direct action over an issue as ridiculous as the fake climate crisis is for losers.
The wrecking ball we’re looking for is the election of fiscally conservative federal politicians who shut down all the green subsidies and market distorting renewable quotas, and punish states which defy the subsidy shutdown by penalising their federal grants.
Without subsidies and market distortions, the renewable energy industry will die.
I’m looking forward to the day when the only visible renewable installations when driving through the countryside are the rotting corpses of broken turbines and abandoned solar farms.
Farmers and ranchers who assume that their main job is to produce food to feed hungry people stand corrected. John Kerry, the Biden administration’s special envoy on climate, wants to enlist them in the global struggle to combat the “climate crisis.”
Combine harvester at work harvesting field of crop. Harvest season themes and other agriculture
Farmers and ranchers who assume that their main job is to produce food to feed hungry people stand corrected. John Kerry, the Biden administration’s special envoy on climate, wants to enlist them in the global struggle to combat the “climate crisis.”
“A lot of people have no clue that agriculture contributes about 33% of all the emission in the world,” Kerry said during his May 17 keynote address at the Department of Agriculture’s AIM Climate Summit. “We can’t get to net-zero, we can’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution. So all of us here understand the depths of this mission.”
“Food systems themselves contribute a significant amount of emissions just in the way we do the things we’ve been doing,” he continued. “With a growing population on the planet – we’ve just crossed the threshold of 8 billion fellow citizens around the world – emissions from the food system alone are expected to cause another half a degree of warming by mid-century.”
“Needs Innovation More Than Ever”
“This sector need innovation now more than ever,” Kerry went on. “We’re facing record malnutrition at a time when agriculture, more than any other sector, is suffering more than ever from the impacts of the climate crisis. And I refuse to call it climate change anymore. It’s not change. It’s a crisis.”
“We need economic, social, and policy innovation in order to scale adaptation of these technical solutions and get them into the hands of the folks in the fields of small farmers on a global basis. This is the promise of AIM for Climate Summit.”
Farmers won’t have to wait long for the “innovations” Kerry mentioned to come their way. The Biden administration has already pledged to take an “all of government” approach to addressing the “climate crisis,” and they mean business. Every agency of the federal government – from the Pentagon and HUD to the energy and agriculture departments – are pouring taxpayer-supplied resources into ever-expanding climate programs. The Department of Agriculture is already exhorting farmers to adopt “climate smart” policies when it comes to producing food. It is even dangling “climate-smart” grants before agricultural groups to get them to change their ways and grow food they way John Kerry and his ilk want them to do.
Though the Department of Agriculture has yet to elaborate on what it means by “climate smart,” it most certainly entails the agricultural sector severing ties to fossil fuels, either “voluntarily” or through coercion in the form of regulations. But because of natural gas’s role in making fertilizer, the government-forced transition will be a messy one. Farmers in places as far apart as Sri Lanka and the Netherlands were ordered by their respective governments to shrink their carbon footprint by reducing their nitrogen emissions. Protests in the Netherlands have been widespread, and in Sri Lanka, the government was overthrown, with the president forced to flee the country.
Lessons Not Learned
The climate misadventures in the Netherlands and Sri Lanka show what happens when people who know nothing about agriculture — and even less about the climate — impose policies on farmers that are divorced from the realities involved in producing food. When climate zealots mess with the food supply, they’re asking for trouble. Farmers in the U.S. are about to be told by urban elites how to run their farms. It won’t end well.
Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments.
Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Busines Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country.
He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada.
He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh.
He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.
Fester’s knowledge, and that of her party colleagues, is probably a good indicator of Germany’s educational system collapse, where schools are more focused on brainwashing the country’s youth and leading them to believe they are the “last generation”.
Energy policymaking in the hands of high grade political imbeciles?
The German Greens like to present themselves as the only ones having all the sophisticated technical and political solutions and competence for solving the world’s complex problems. However, it’s quickly dawning on most Germans, that the SPD coalition partners, The Greens, are in fact run by people who are woefully incompetent and ignorant when it cones to economics, biology and energy.
Federal Parliamentarian didn’t even know first chancellor
If that weren’t bad enough, it’s now been revealed that some of the Green Party politicians are embarrassingly ignorant when it comes to history – particularly that of their own modern country.
When a reporter of German ZDF public television asked Green Party parliamentarian Emilia Fester, 25, who became the first chancellor of the German Empire in 1871 (Otto von Bismarck), she was completely gobsmacked:
Disgrace in the Bundestag check: Emilia Fester doesn’t know who Bismarck was – and unfortunately that’s not the only thing.
She had no idea! Almost all Germans know Bismarck is the father and shaper of the modern German state.
And didn’t know when the Federal Republic was founded
The giggly Fester then revealed she didn’t even know the year that today’s Federal Republic of Germany had been founded (no, it wasn’t 1945).
To give the readers here some idea of what stage of ignorance we are talking about here, this would be like an American not knowing who the first president of the United States was, or the day July 4th is celebrated! Surely some don’t know, but they would never end up in public office, let alone the U.S. Senate or the House.
These Greta Thunberg generation youths are the very people who want to tell the rest of the world how to produce energy and take control of the climate’s behavior. Recently the Green Party’s Annalena Baerbock once said that electric vehicle batteries needed “Kobold”, and Green Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir claimed electric power was measured in “gigabytes”.
Collapsing educational system
Fester’s knowledge, and that of her party colleagues, is probably a good indicator of Germany’s educational system collapse, where schools are more focused on brainwashing the country’s youth and leading them to believe they are the “last generation”.
<sarc>Ironically, if these clueless brats did get their way, they would definitely end up being the planet’s last generation – thanks to Darwinism. </sarc>.
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