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.
“It continues to be regrettable that global crises are being squandered when they could be the occasions to bring about beneficial changes.” – but ceding national sovereignty might help.
APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION
LAUDATE DEUM
OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS
TO ALL PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS
…
2. Eight years have passed since I published the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, when I wanted to share with all of you, my brothers and sisters of our suffering planet, my heartfelt concerns about the care of our common home. Yet, with the passage of time, I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point. In addition to this possibility, it is indubitable that the impact of climate change will increasingly prejudice the lives and families of many persons. We will feel its effects in the areas of healthcare, sources of employment, access to resources, housing, forced migrations, etc.
…
6. In recent years, some have chosen to deride these facts. They bring up allegedly solid scientific data, like the fact that the planet has always had, and will have, periods of cooling and warming. They forget to mention another relevant datum: that what we are presently experiencing is an unusual acceleration of warming, at such a speed that it will take only one generation – not centuries or millennia – in order to verify it. The rise in the sea level and the melting of glaciers can be easily perceived by an individual in his or her lifetime, and probably in a few years many populations will have to move their homes because of these facts.
7. In order to ridicule those who speak of global warming, it is pointed out that intermittent periods of extreme cold regularly occur. One fails to mention that this and other extraordinary symptoms are nothing but diverse alternative expressions of the same cause: the global imbalance that is provoking the warming of the planet. Droughts and floods, the dried-up lakes, communities swept away by seaquakes and flooding ultimately have the same origin. At the same time, if we speak of a global phenomenon, we cannot confuse this with sporadic events explained in good part by local factors.
…
11. It is no longer possible to doubt the human – “anthropic” – origin of climate change. Let us see why. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which causes global warming, was stable until the nineteenth century, below 300 parts per million in volume. But in the middle of that century, in conjunction with industrial development, emissions began to increase. In the past fifty years, this increase has accelerated significantly, as the Mauna Loa observatory, which has taken daily measurements of carbon dioxide since 1958, has confirmed. While I was writing Laudato Si’, they hit a historic high – 400 parts per million – until arriving at 423 parts per million in June 2023. [7] More than 42% of total net emissions since the year 1850 were produced after 1990. [8]
…
19. Finally, we can add that the Covid-19 pandemic brought out the close relation of human life with that of other living beings and with the natural environment. But in a special way, it confirmed that what happens in one part of the world has repercussions on the entire planet. This allows me to reiterate two convictions that I repeat over and over again: “Everything is connected” and “No one is saved alone”.
…
36. It continues to be regrettable that global crises are being squandered when they could be the occasions to bring about beneficial changes.[28] This is what happened in the 2007-2008 financial crisis and again in the Covid-19 crisis. For “the actual strategies developed worldwide in the wake of [those crises] fostered greater individualism, less integration and increased freedom for the truly powerful, who always find a way to escape unscathed”. [29]
…
43. All this presupposes the development of a new procedure for decision-making and legitimizing those decisions, since the one put in place several decades ago is not sufficient nor does it appear effective. In this framework, there would necessarily be required spaces for conversation, consultation, arbitration, conflict resolution and supervision, and, in the end, a sort of increased “democratization” in the global context, so that the various situations can be expressed and included. It is no longer helpful for us to support institutions in order to preserve the rights of the more powerful without caring for those of all.
A sort of increased democratization implies ceding national sovereignty to international institutions – which the Pope proposes should be advanced on the back of “occasions” presented by global crisis.
Remind me, weren’t there a few problems, last time the Catholic Church told us which scientific theories to believe in?
Future generations will look back on this embarrassing Papal attempt to propagate scientific ignorance, much as we look back on the embarrassing efforts of the Catholic Church to suppress the theories of Galileo.
Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions. – Terry Pratchett.
On last night’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra was joined by Climate Depot’s Marc Morano to discuss Canada sending $20 million to the World Economic Forum.
“You know, there’s certain things out there that if you agree with them, they’re not a conspiracy theory, but if you disagree with them, they say you’re talking about a conspiracy theory,” Ezra began.
He explored how the World Economic Forum under Klaus Schwab has made it a priority to influence the cabinets of governments around the world, including Canada.
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is in fact a member of the Forum’s board of trustees.
The Heartland Institute’s Donald Kendal, Jim Lakely, Chris Talgo are joined by Linnea Lueken for episode 418 of the In The Tank Podcast.
It seems like every day there is a new story that blows a whole in the climate narrative – a new study showing the impracticality of a 100% renewable grid, or an electric vehicle battery plant that requires coal power to function.
We are told constantly by the media, politicians, and now even the Pope that we must change our lifestyle in an effort to combat climate change.
Yet, most people don’t care. These facts leave the ITT crew wondering: What would it take to finally destroy the climate narrative?
While reading the article “A Semi-Competent Report On Energy Storage From Britain’s Royal Society” by the Manhattan Contrarian a few days ago, I was reminded by Figure 1 of the variations in flow of the Nile River which was the inspiration for Mandelbrot’s development of fractals.[1] This naturally brought to mind Hurst’s algorithm for determining the required storage of a reservoir.[2]
Hurst’s explanation of the algorithm is very simple.
“For example, if a long-time record of annual total discharges from the stream is available, the storage required to yield the average flow, each year, is obtained by computing the cumulative sums of the departures of the annual totals from the mean annual total discharge. The range from the maximum to the minimum of these cumulative totals is taken as the required stornge(sic).”
If we think of energy conversion as equivalent to river inflow, electrical demand as equivalent to reservoir discharge and water storage behind a dam as the equivalent of chemical energy storage in a battery, then we can make use of this simple algorithm to explore the storage needed to get us through any hypothetical period with only intermittent wind or solar or some combination available to us. Hurst didn’t consider evaporation – we won’t consider inefficiency of charge/discharge.
Rather than base my analysis on seasonal weather from Monte Carlo modeling, I thought to take some of my own advice. I had made a suggestion in a public service commission hearing last January that a regional utility could do no better than to take the most inclement weather period of the last sixty or seventy years, real data in other words, and show us how their hypothetical energy system would fare. Thus, I decided to marry Hurst’s algorithm with data from this past summer gathered from the EIA hourly grid monitor for the Northwest region which is where I live.
I decided on the time period stretching from June 24, 2023 through September 30, 2023. This period includes the season of heavy demand for air conditioning and irrigation and probably the poorest wind resources overall.
Conditions of Analysis
Here are my assumptions for this first cut analysis:
Wind energy only
I assume wind can be scaled up to meet season demand without degrading capacity factor
Storage level ends the season at the same level it began (one of Hurst’s conditions)
Storage level is adjusted upward to avoid negative storage
I include no losses from internal battery leakage, inefficiency of charge/recharge, no provision for line losses
No provision for equipment outages or reserves
No inter-balancing area transfers
Pattern of Demand
Figure 1 shows the pattern of demand in the Northwest. The EIA uses units of MWhr of demand during each previous hour. One might think of this more simply as the hourly average power in MW required from all sources to meet demand. There is a single daily peak that may rise above 60,000 MWhr each hour of the day when there is great demand for air conditioning and irrigation (these two sources of demand are highly correlated). The full daily swing in demand is typically around 20,000 MWhr per hour. On any given day this swing might have to be met with a combination of coal, natural gas, hydro, and solar – natural gas generally balances the swing in solar that occurs early and late in the day and has a rapid slew rate. Only gas turbines can follow it easily and it would wear a typical thermal plant to tatters to try to follow solar and wind each day. A combination of hydro, coal, and natural gas is needed to balance the fluctuation in wind generation. The seasonal average demand is 42,661 MWhr each hour.
Figure 1.
Wind Generation
Our analysis assumes wind generation alone. Figure 2 shows actual wind generation during our test period. The generation is highly variable. It rises above 12,000 MW on some days but drops well below 1,000MW on others.The swing in output can take place in a matter of hours. Extended wind droughts lasted as long as 36 hours during the season.
The seasonal average wind generation is about 5,140 MW. Thus, in order to provide all demand in the Northwest, and not leave storage in any worse condition when the season is over, wind has to supply at a minimum the seasonal average demand (the actual figure turns out to be 42,735). Thus, current wind energy capacity has to be scaled up by a factor of about 8.32 to accomplish this. It is not very likely that this can be done without having to place wind farms in less than optimal locations. The best locations for wind production are very likely taken, or at least planned to be taken, already. So, this is a minimum figure.
An interesting calculation at this point is to estimate how much land area is required for this much wind generation and what the first cost, the cost of capital expenditure, is likely to be. Assuming an annual average capacity factor of one-third means we will have to install three times our 42,735 MW of actual capacity to reach a minimum needed nameplate rating. This is 128,205 MW of nameplate wind. A couple of the most recent applications for wind plants in Wyoming propose to use 125 acres per MW of nameplate rating. Thus the required wind would need something like a minimum of 16 million plus acres. For comparison this is a bit greater than one-fourth the State of Wyoming itself. The cost of constructing and equipping a wind farm I would have estimated at $1,200 per kW, but after the inflation reduction act (IRA) has raised costs this might be as high as $1,500 per kW. Total is then maybe between $150-192 billion dollars.
Figure 2.
The Resulting Required Storage
With a few iterations of guess, assess and modify, I arrived at the following solution to the problem posed here. Average wind energy generation is 42,735 MW. By starting the season (on 6-24-2023) with 4,600 GWhr in storage, we will end the season at midnight on 9-30-2023 with 4,600 GWhr of storage. The maximum energy in storage over the season is 5,221 GWhr. This is 122 hours of average demand. The minimum is only 71,000 MWhr, which considering this has occurred during a lull in the wind and in mid-summer with air conditioning and irrigation demands is little more than an hour of reserve. During 172 hours of the season there is less than 24 hours of reserve. In other words, this is not a robust solution by any means. There is a lot more work to do. Figure 3 shows what goes on in this particular season. Storage rises a bit at first only to be whittled away as the wind dies and the season becomes hot and dry. As summer recedes, storage rises again to finish the period with the same storage it began.
Figure 3. The storage level time-series.
What about cost? The last time I checked on lithium battery storage in the form of a Telsa Megapack it was $600 per kilowatt hour. This would put the cost of the maximum storage energy of 5,221 GWhr at around $3.13 Trillion (yes capital ‘T’ dollars).
Before any battery storage proponent tries to tell me that I am over-estimating because such batteries are only $200 per kWhr, let me state something about estimating industrial facilities. One does not just purchase batteries and wire them together. One needs a facility with all sorts of services in order to house said batteries – land, grading and foundations, roads and parking, a building, environmental control, safety systems, switching, transformers, AC/DC conversion, lines, labor and so on. The same is true of chemical plants or power plants or any major facility. Take the functional part of a facility and multiply its cost by around 1.5 for all this ancillary stuff. Take a GE quotation for a 300MW ultrasupercritical boiler and turbine of $240M (probably a bit too low after all the inflation reduction of the IRA); multiply by 1.5 and the rest of the power plant is probably $360M – $600M in total. Under-estimating costs is common – let’s not do it.
This estimate for an all-wind/storage system is not likely to be an order of magnitude in error. You see, 3.3 or so trillion dollars is probably an under-estimate considering my liberal assumptions. Storage needs equal to 122 hours of average network demand, or more, is something one should expect. It’s like 5 years worth of national savings just to supply energy for the Northwest with its roughly twenty million people (7% of the U.S.). In order to make a fantasy modern energy system work, a person needs a fantasy modern energy storage system too; and to pay for that a person needs modern monetary theory.
Making Better Estimates
Keep in mind that what I have done here is a first cut. I’d have to begin adding the complications that I assumed away early-on to do better. Maybe I could get a lower cost by adding solar energy and reducing wind. Maybe not. But keep in mind the big plan is to rely on wind/solar and storage only in the future. No coal. No gas. Even hydro is a target. Nuclear? What a horror. No way!
Also, this is just one realization of something that is a stochastic process. I’d get a bit more robust estimate by not only adding the losses of a real system, but by looking similarly at multiple seasons back in time. It takes about 25 years to gain another standard deviation of uncertainty. Thus, those 60 years worth of seasons I suggested to the PSC would reach around 2.5 standard deviations which translates to 99% certainty. Except, weather and climate don’t follow a gaussian distribution, but rather something like that of a fractal – a hyperbolic or power-law distribution. There have been weather events in the past which in their extremes of magnitude and persistence we have never observed before.
Beware. Expect surprises. Expensive ones.
References:
Benoit Mandelbrot, The fractal geometry of nature. 1982, ISBN: 0-7167-1186-9
You may recall that last month climate scientist Professor Patrick T. Brown of the Breakthrough Institute caused a bit of a furore by pointing out how extreme weather event attribution studies invariably restrict their quantification to climatic causation only, thereby excluding quantification of the non-climatic. It was suggested that this may serve those involved in such studies, since they are much more likely to get their papers accepted in prestigious journals that are attracted towards the resulting simplified narrative. Professor Brown admitted that he was one of that self-serving community and questioned whether a change of attitude might better serve the science.
The response from those who adhere to the simplified narrative was predictable, and I reported on their howls of outrage here and here. I have to say, however, it all seems to have gone quiet now. Presumably the likes of Carbon Brief and Ken Rice of ATTP fame feel there is nothing more to be said following their debunking efforts. It’s a job well done, as far as they are concerned. I too should know better and let sleeping dogs lie, but that’s not my style. So I will endeavour here to keep the issue alive by looking at another supposed debunking of Professor Brown, mainly because I want to show just how atrociously inept that effort was, but also because of the relevance of the organisation attempting the rebuttal.
A group on a mission
The supposed debunking I wish to focus upon today comes from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment (yes, the institute that employs Professor Friederike Otto, extreme event attributor extraordinaire). To be precise, the individual responsible is none other than the institute’s Policy and Communications Director, Bob Ward, who’s hit piece is titled ‘Newspapers are using climate researcher’s false claims about journal bias to mislead readers’.
Ward comes with a suitably impressive curriculum vitae that includes membership of the board of the Association of British Science Writers; a membership that makes the nature of his error-strewn, hopelessly confused and egregiously misleading attack on Patrick Brown all the more unforgivable. The bad faith starts early on when Ward first refers to Professor Brown’s article written for The Free Press:
“However, the lead author on the paper, Dr Patrick Brown, caused controversy by writing another article in which he appeared to admit that he had been forced to alter his research to publish it in the top scientific journal”.
Well Brown either did or did not admit. To say he ‘appeared to admit’ already smacks of spin. As for being ‘forced’, these are Ward’s words, not Brown’s. In fact, at no stage did Brown talk of being forced to do anything. Nor did he use any synonym of that word. Nor did he ever admit to altering his work to get it published. Once again, this is pure spin from Ward. The real issue was the desire to restrict scope so as not to overcomplicate and dilute the narrative, thereby increasing the likelihood of being accepted for publication.
This is not a good start by Ward. But it gets much worse. Ward goes on to quote Brown as saying:
I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.
To which Ward responds:
This is an incendiary claim. It is also untrue.
To back up his own incendiary claim that Brown is not speaking the truth, Ward refers to comments made by the Nature referees who had peer-reviewed Brown’s paper. Unfortunately, and quite surprisingly in view of Ward’s membership of the board of the Association of British Science Writers, he blatantly misrepresents the review dialogue. According to Ward:
These comments showed that one of the referees recommended that the paper needed significant revision, and challenged Dr Brown and his co-authors about the focus on temperature as a driver of wildfires, while excluding other factors such as humidity.
Here Ward is alluding to the comments of referee number three. This is what that referee actually wrote:
The climate change scenario only includes temperature as input for the modified climate. However, changes in atmospheric humidity would also be highly relevant for predicting changes in VPD or fuel moisture.
So whilst Ward wrote ‘factors such as humidity’, the referee actually wrote ‘humidity’.
This matters because atmospheric humidity is just another climatic factor, and yet the issue is supposed to be about the quantification of the non-climatic. Ward implies that Brown was asked to extend the scope of his quantified attribution to include the non-climatic and yet clearly referee three never made such a request. Ward’s innocent-looking ‘factors such as’ was a gross error at best, and a lie at worst.
In a generous mood, I could argue that Ward was not being deliberately misleading here but had simply conflated the comments of referee three with referee one, who had indeed mentioned non-climatic factors. Nevertheless, in the case of referee one, the concern had been that Brown’s chosen metric (wildfire growth) could be potentially misleading due to confounding, non-climatic factors. Referee one was merely suggesting that these factors should be controlled for. So even this could not be used as evidence that Brown had been asked to extend the scope of his study in order to quantify non-climatic causations. Besides which, Ward specifically refers to ‘one of the referees’ and so conflation of referee one and referee three’s comments would be a significant obfuscation on his part.
Another possible excuse for Ward’s ‘confusion’ is that Brown himself brings up non-climatic factors in one of his replies. But Brown was just pointing out what everyone, including the referees, knew to be the case – that quantification of non-climatic factors is very difficult and complicates the narrative. These difficulties could not be taken as his reason for declining a request to quantify the non-climatic, simply because it is obvious from the review dialogue that the referees had not at any stage made such a request. Instead, they seemed perfectly happy with an attribution that controlled for the non-climatic in order to keep things simple. That said, it is true that Brown himself argues that a simplified narrative has certain merits and he volunteers that he was aiming for simplicity. It also has to be said that it wasn’t until after the paper was published that he disclosed his full reasons for adhering to the simple narrative.
Whichever way you look at it, Ward’s emphatic rebuttal of Brown’s allegations is emphatically unsupported by the referee comments, and he could only find support in them through misrepresentation or obfuscation; hardly the performance you would want to see from the Policy and Communications Director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. Worst still, Ward would surely have been aware that Professor Brown, by excluding non-climatic factors in his quantification, wasn’t doing anything that the institute’s very own Friederike Otto also does on a routine basis. Everyone, including those within the Grantham Institute, is focusing upon quantifying climatic causation of events, and no one is comparing the impacts of the climatic against the non-climatic. That is Brown’s point.
As a further irony, the Grantham Institute’s Professor Otto actually agrees with Patrick Brown that much more needs to be done to focus upon the non-climatic factors in natural disasters. In this paper she argues:
These hazards are, in many cases, not purely natural anymore, as a result of anthropogenic climate change. Nevertheless, also unnatural hazards only become disasters when they interact with exposure and vulnerability….A fact that is often missing from the public discussions and even the summary for policy makers of the synthesis report of the IPCC 6th assessment report mention vulnerability only once (paragraph A2.2) in the context of current impacts but not at all with respect to adaptation…A focus solely on climate and hazard in the context of disasters creates a discourse that deflects responsibility from the human actions that produce vulnerability and often also exposure.
But the ultimate irony is that, because this paper got published, it was cited by climate scientist Richard Black as proof that Brown is wrong about the bias! In fact, one idiot who reported upon this had this to say about Professor Otto:
“[Her] work has practically won her household-name status as a climate Cassandra, a high-profile career she apparently doesn’t mind risking by countering Brown’s alleged narrative.
Surely he meant ‘risking by agreeing’.
Finally, Ward further demonstrates his parlous disregard for important detail when he says:
Dr Brown’s allegations are further undermined by the fact that Nature has published articles that consider other factors that drive wildfires.
For his counter-example he then cites a published paper that does indeed ‘consider’ other factors. But this was never about mere consideration; this is a matter of the quantification of causality, which Ward’s chosen example singularly fails to do with regard to non-climatic causes. Once again, I am left puzzled as to how someone in Ward’s position could be so careless with the issues. He talks of Brown’s allegations being ‘demonstrably false’, but the only thing I think is demonstrated by Ward’s article is his own incompetence.
Mission unaccomplished
It is not surprising that the folk at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment should be in the forefront of those seeking to discredit Professor Brown, since it is they, more than any other group, who have helped to promote the simplified narrative that Brown now challenges. What is surprising, however, is the shoddy and inept effort they have made of it. A good debunking would have to start with a careful reading of the referees’ comments and a clear and unambiguous account of them. It also requires a proper grasp of the issues and an understanding that ‘consider’ and ‘quantify’ are quite different verbs. Regrettably, none of these imperatives seemed to have been within Ward’s capacity to uphold, leading him to falsify and mislead. So it is somewhat ironic that he should then refer to Brown’s ‘false claims’ and bemoan that newspapers are misleading readers. Obviously, that is the message he would like everyone to take away from the saga, since the alternative would be to start questioning the credibility of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. If Ward thinks that his article has put the record straight, then I would have to say that he has grossly underestimated the scale of the task and the standard of critical thinking required.
When disaster threatens the rational retreat, but the clown soldiers on and even doubles down, accelerating the race to oblivion.
Facts are treated with contempt; reality with derision. So it is with the grand wind and solar transition. It’s a disease of the mind that allows for the belief that a first world economy can run entirely on sunshine and breezes.
Which brings us to the clowns that are in charge of Australia’s self-inflicted renewable energy debacle.
As Sky News’ Chris Kenny outlines below, rather than reflecting and recalibrating, the idiots that pass as our political betters have decided to accelerate their mission to drive Australia into the ground, for good.
‘Green energy guinea pigs’: Albanese government ‘doubling down’ on renewables Sky News Chris Kenny 25 September 2023
Sky News host Chris Kenny says the Albanese Labor government is “doubling down” on renewables amid concerns about their impact on the Australian energy grid.
Mr Kenny’s comments come after the Albanese government announced another $70 million for a “so-called green hydrogen project” in Whyalla on Monday.
“The Bureau of Meteorology Chief Andrew Johnson says the El Nino summer poses a threat to our energy grid because it’ll be our first hot summer with so much renewable energy in the system,” Mr Kenny said.
“In other words, it’s the first hot summer since a bunch of other baseload generation has been shut down.
“The problem is the electricity grid, what we’ve done to it, and how we now don’t have enough reliable, dispatchable electricity.
“South Australia sure is at the vanguard – that’s why it has the most expensive electricity in the nation and the least reliable, no baseload generation, totally reliant on renewables, backup generators and interstate supplies – little wonder it’s the only state to have a statewide blackout.
“We are the green energy guinea pigs for the rest of the world.”
Transcript
Chris Kenny: Let me give you another insight into our ongoing national energy self-harm. National disaster management experts have gathered for a summit in Canberra, and look at this contribution from the weather bureau. The BOM chief, Andrew Johnson, says the El Nino summer poses a threat to our energy grid, because it’ll be our first hot summer with so much renewable energy in the system. In other words, it’s the first hot summer since a bunch of other base load generation has been shut down. Well done governments.
But the problem here is not the weather. We can always expect hot summers. We always have and we always will have hot summers. Just because we had a couple of mild summers doesn’t mean we didn’t all know we’d have plenty of scorches to come. The problem is not the weather. It is the electricity grid. What we’ve done to it. And how we now don’t have enough reliable, dispatchable electricity. Pretty straightforward.
We’ll always have those summers and we’ll always have air conditioners, but we can no longer rely on the energy to power them. But the Albanese Labour Government of course is doubling down on all this stuff, announcing just another $70 million today for a so-called green hydrogen project in Whyalla.
Anthony Albanese: There is an opportunity that Australia has to be a renewable energy superpower, and South Australia has been at the forefront of the transition to renewables for a long period of time. It can certainly be at the forefront of this transition to be a renewable energy superpower.
Chris Kenny: Really? “A renewable energy superpower?” You would think that a renewable energy superpower would have lots of power, energy, and South Australia sure is at the vanguard. That’s why it has the most expensive electricity in the nation and the least reliable. No base load generation in South Australia, totally reliant on renewables, backup generators, and interstate supplies. Little wonder it’s the only state to have a statewide blackout. It cost that state hundreds of millions of dollars, remember? That was back in 2016, and it plunged the state back into 1816, which just shows us what we’ve done to ourselves on energy.
Here’s what that visiting energy expert tells us about our move to a renewables plus storage model. A model I keep saying has simply not been attempted, let alone achieved, in any comparable country around the world.
Mark Nelson: If any country can do it, maybe it’s Australia. And I guess I really appreciate your sacrifice in this fairly dangerous experiment that you’re undertaking, because I don’t have to suffer the consequences.
Chris Kenny: Yeah, that’s it. We are suffering the consequences. That’s exactly it. It’s a grand experiment. Wonderful, isn’t it? We are the green energy guinea pigs for the rest of the world. Sky News
An October 3, 2023 opinion piece by Barbara Moran at the WBUR (Boston) website has the headline “Many scientists don’t want to tell the truth about climate change. Here’s why.” Since human-caused climate change has become a topic of debate, climate scientists have routinely misstated facts and suppressed the truth.
The WBUR article centers, in particular, around the purported 1.5°C “warming limit” climate alarmists within the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and in the mainstream media and climate activist community have claimed since 2010 posed an amount of warming that would bring catastrophic, irreversible consequences. The first U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change document to mention a limit to global warming of 1.5°C was the Cancun Agreement, adopted at the sixteenth COP (COP16) in 2010.
Now, in 2023, there’s a new worry. According to the WBUR article, “[i]n March, the United Nations released a massive climate change report. The biggest takeaway: Global warming will soon pass the oft-mentioned target of 1.5 degrees Celsius.”
Previously the big worry was that at 1.5 degrees, “tipping points” in the climate will occur. As Climate at a Glance: Tipping Points, shows there is no evidence that any such tipping points exist. Now the worry is that scientists might publicly admit the 1.5 degree Celsius rise is locked in, resulting people to giving up hope and ceasing to fight for scientists’ favored restrictions on fossil fuels.
The article says:
After this report came out, something weird happened. Unlike the blunt Dr. Thorne, most climate scientists (and journalists) didn’t change how they publicly spoke about 1.5 C. Admitting defeat could risk “demotivation” said Pascal Lamy, the commissioner of the Climate Overshoot Commission. Scientists kept saying things like: “We need to act now to stay below 1.5” or “it’s getting harder, but still technically possible.”
Climate scientists, in an effort to stave off despair, aren’t telling the truth about our warming planet. In reality, we’re incredibly close to the point of no return: when rising seas drown island nations and almost all coral reefs die. I’m here to tell climate scientists — and my fellow climate journalists — to knock it off.
Climate scientists lying about 1.5°C so we won’t lose hope? It seems that way. Yet there is no evidence thus far that passing 1.5°C means disaster. We’ve previously taken this topic to task on Climate Realism, here and here, and demonstrated, as seen in Figure 1. below, that in Europe, home of the longest surface temperature record, warming has already met and exceeded 1.5°C. In fact, a 2.0°C rise has been recorded.
Despite a 2.0°C rise in temperature, Europe is still there. No disaster has occurred. No “tipping points” have happened. Yet climate scientists seem totally unaware of this fact, or simply choose to ignore it and not report it. Also, as showed repeatedly on Climate Realism, there is no evidence climate change is causing an increase in the negative impacts on coral reefs or small island nations that Moran is nattering on about.
Although the article didn’t consider this possibility, perhaps, the new worry is that when 1.5 degrees is surpassed and catastrophe does not occur, people will have even less faith in scientists’ alarming climate claims than polls show they already do.
If they lie about this 1.5°C limit being breached, what else are they hiding or lying about? If history is any indication, it seems almost everything.
As far back as 1989, climate scientists were already acknowledging they might have to suppress the truth and exaggerate the dangers of climate change to push climate action. In October 1989, the late Stephen Scheider, Ph.D., admitted to Discover Magazine:
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. To avert the risk [of potentially disastrous climate change] t we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.
During the ClimateGate scandal Dr Phil Jones wrote an email to Mann, which said:
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth, a colleague] and I will keep them out somehow—even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
In fact, there is an entire set of claims and predictions about climate from climate scientists that have never come true. As proof of this one can view a searchable plethora Failed Climate Predictions, here.
More recently climate scientist Patrick T. Brown, admitted to not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the causes of catastrophic wildfires in California. Brown reported in an article he wrote for the Free Press that a scientific paper he was the lead author of left out non-climate related factors which were significant factors driving the rapid growth in California wildfires in recent years. Brown wrote:
I just got published in Nature because I stuck to a narrative I knew the editors would like. That’s not the way science should work.
The paper I just published—“Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California”—focuses exclusively on how climate change has affected extreme wildfire behavior. I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.
This matters because it is critically important for scientists to be published in high-profile journals; in many ways, they are the gatekeepers for career success in academia. And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society.
To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change.
With these sorts of scientific shenanigans going on, lies of omission, and not owning up to failed predictions, is it any wonder that most citizens put climate change worry dead last on the list of concerns?
Science is supposed to be about finding and publishing the truth. Instead, it seems that climate science publishes what it believes is good for the so-called “sake of the planet” rather than scientific truth. For science to be useful, it must be held to a standard of truth, otherwise it becomes unbelievable and undermines the expansion of knowledge and progress. We all deserve better.
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.
Fox News posted an article that analyzes a recent Energy Information Administration (EIA) report which shows that renewable energy subsidies dominate federal energy handouts. This is contrary to claims commonly made by activists and mainstream media sources that green energy is cheaper than traditional sources, and that fossil fuels receive massive federal subsidies.
From 2016 to 2022, the federal government awarded $183.3 billion in direct and indirect subsidies. More than half was spent in the last three years.
Although renewables like wind and solar account for only 21% of domestic electricity production, they received the largest share of subsidies at $83.8 billion, approximately 46 percent of all subsidies.
Fox reports the next largest category are “[e]nergy end use subsidies, like energy efficiency- and conservation-related tax provisions,” receiving $64.8 billion, meaning consumers, homeowners, and commercial and retail businesses get approximately 35 percent of the subsidies, in the form of write downs on their tax bills.
Fossil fuel sources, which make up more than 60% of electricity production and most transportation energy, got only $24.5 billion, approximately 13 percent of the subsidies, all most all in the form of tax credits for routine business expenses, the kind of credits every other business and industry in America receives.
Nuclear power, alone producing 18% of our electricity, only got $2.9 billion.
Fox writer Thomas Catenacci also discussed what these values mean in terms of how much taxpayer money is being spent per unit of energy produced by renewables versus traditional energy sources, and predictably found that “green” sources are far more costly.
Catenacci writes:
For example, natural gas power generated 44.9 quadrillion British thermal units in 2022, 45% of total energy generated economywide, but received $2.3 billion in taxpayer subsidies that year. That means for every million British thermal units (MMBtu) produced by natural gas, the industry received about $0.05.
By comparison, in 2022, the solar industry generated about 0.6 quadrillion British thermal units, less than 1% of total energy produced economywide in the U.S., but received $7.5 billion in subsidies. That means the solar power industry received $11.9 per MMBtu generated last year.
To those who follow energy issues closely, this should be no surprise.
While the Biden administration and likeminded mainstream media outlets and activists champion ideas like eliminating tax advantages for traditional sources, especially fossil fuels, the reality has always been that these sources already receive very little government help compared to wind and solar, in particular. The reality also is that these supposed “tax advantages” are tax credits common to every industry and business for capital expenditures, equipment, employee benefits, etc. They are not unique, “give aways,” to the fossil fuel industry.
It should be noted that the EIA report emphasizes the fact that its scope is “limited to direct federal financial interventions and subsidies,” This is notable, because individual state renewable portfolio standards and interstate programs like the northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative also add to these subsidies, in part by mandating the increased use of “green” energy. One study found that the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative cost electricity ratepayers $3.8 billion extra between 2008 to 2020, and more than half of those funds went to energy efficiency programs. In addition, it does not include tax abatements and support given directly to green energy developments by state and local governments.
Solar receives by far the largest share of the federal subsidies in the form of tax expenditures, according to the EIA report and the chart they generated. (See figure below)
Solar alone receives more subsidies in the form of tax expenditures than all energy specific subsidies and support for any given traditional energy source. The EIA report explains this by saying that the industry has grown rapidly, and because the investment tax credit is claimed in full the year an asset enters commercial operation.
Solar power is proving itself to be much less reliable than proponents claim, as discussed in a Climate Realism post, “Two New Reports Detail the Unreliability of Solar Power.” One report found that solar assets were degrading at roughly double the rate the industry claims. The same is true for other renewables, even in states that supply large amounts of support for their development.
Despite the subsidies, states with renewable portfolio standards have seen increases in retail electricity prices.
As amusing as it is that renewables receive so much more “subsidies” in the form of tax expenditures, tax breaks are probably not what most Americans think of when they imagine companies receiving subsidies. That simply means that money is nottakenaway from the companies by government. But the EIA report also discusses direct expenditures – or money from taxpayers given to companies directly in the form of grants and programs. Examining this data shows that renewables receive the bulk of this funding as well. (See figure below)
Direct expenditures make up only 10 percent of all the subsidies and support natural gas and petroleum liquids receive, and come out negative for coal due to “de-obligation of funds” related to carbon capture and storage and the Clean Coal Power Initiative (two green projects).
The EIA report says the two billion-dollar years for renewables’ direct expenditures came primarily from two sources; Congress created direct-payment programs at the Treasury that renewables companies could opt for instead of tax credits from the Production Tax Credit for renewable electricity generation, as well as the Clean Renewable Energy Bonds and Qualified Energy Conservation Bond programs.
It is also important to note that the direct expenditures for “natural gas and petroleum liquids” does not merely include funding for oilfield operations. The vast majority of the direct expenditures go to U.S. Department of Transportation related projects, like pipeline safety programs, mandated by the government, and U.S. EPA programs like the clean diesel emissions reduction program, and state clean diesel grant program. Because those programs have little to do with the kind of “big oil payouts” the media claims exist, we did not include them in our numbers. What little direct upstream payments do exist are dominated by the Department of the Interior’s “Oil and Gas Royalty Management State and Tribal Coordination” – which covers the federal disbursements given to tribes every year for energy production on their land.
The EIA also separately breaks down where Research and Development (R&D) grants go. Renewables have received a total of $2.364 billion in R&D since 2016, coal got $2.383 billion (the vast majority going towards carbon capture and storage and other “net zero” projects), gas and petroleum liquids saw just $739 million, and nuclear got $1.684 billion.
In fact, among the direct payments, whether by direct expenditure or R&D grants, most money for any given energy source is going towards some form of “green” or net-zero application of the energy source.
The jury is still out on whether or not the mainstream media and Biden administration will stop falsely claiming that fossil fuels receive “significant tax preferences and subsidies,” as stated in the tax plan released in 2021. The EIA report was released in August, and since then, there has not been a peep from the administration.
Fox News did a great job publicizing the facts contained in this EIA report, about the relative amounts of subsidies going to different energy sources compared relative to the amount of power they provide to the American economy and people. It’s a shame other mainstream media outlets ignored the EIA’s findings. Had they discussed it, average Americans would have been more energy literate and able to make better informed choices at the ballot box. The media often claims that part of its job is to produce a well-informed citizenry, not one making personal and political decisions based on misinformation. On energy, it is failing grossly in that job.
“Preference for warmer regions has been a key determinant of internal population shifts in the United States and other industrialized countries in the post-World War II era. Internal migrations toward the Sunbelt have been eased by science and technology developments that, for example, cooled torrid summer air and controlled malaria in the South, and along the Gulf coast.” (National Academy of Sciences, below)
The mainstream media war against the green greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), cannot negate the most settled part of the climate change debate. Into the 1990s, it was accepted practice to present the scientific consensus of the beneficial qualities of CO2 on the planet. Given its relevance for today’s debate, it is worth revisiting the National Academy of Sciences, et al., Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1992).
Some quotations follow:
“Enriching the atmosphere to 600 ppm CO2 should increase all yields, especially plants with a photosynthesis like wheat that responds sharply to more CO2. It should close the gap between wheat and corn. It should especially favor the many plants in the natural landscape that have a responsive photosynthesis like wheat.” (p. 552)
Where ones with responsive photosynthesis compete with ones with unresponsive photosynthesis, the enrichment with CO2 should make the former more competitive. It should slow evaporation and save water. By speeding photosynthesis and slowing evaporation, CO2 should increase the efficiency of the use of water, the tons of yield per 1000 m3 of evaporation.” (p. 552)
“Preference for warmer regions has been a key determinant of internal population shifts in the United States and other industrialized countries in the post-World War II era. Internal migrations toward the Sunbelt have been eased by science and technology developments that, for example, cooled torrid summer air and controlled malaria in the South, and along the Gulf coast. (pp. 622-23)
“Human adaptability is shown by people working in both Riyadh and Barrow and seeking out both Minneapolis and Galveston. Recent American migration has on average been toward warmth.” (p. 502)
“In societies like the United States, most adaptation to changing climate takes place through decentralized individual reactions to social, economic, and political signals.” (pp. 511-12)
The same remains true today. Geoscience consultant Randal Utech has posted the following:
Some interesting facts on CO2. The trace gas of life is very beneficial. CO2 is greening the earth and feeding the hungry. CO2 has not been proven to ‘drive’ climate change except as conveyed by the models which remain erroneous and incomplete. We are near the lowest level of CO2 over earth history. The secondary feedback heating effect of CO2 is limited by the IR logarithmic forcing law and is nearly saturated at current levels. The earth never had runaway heating even at 10x-20x current levels of CO2. Interesting that most plants evolved at levels averaging near 1200 ppm or roughly 3x current levels.
“Atmospheric carbon dioxide: you can’t see, hear, smell or taste it. But it’s there—all around us—and it’s crucial for life…. Ironically, far too many demonize and falsely label this important atmospheric trace gas a pollutant. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead of being shunned like the plague, the ongoing rise in CO2 should be welcomed with open arms.”
“Based on the numerous experiments listed there, I can tell you that, typically, a 300-ppm increase in the air’s CO2 content … will raise the productivity of most herbaceous plants by about one-third, which stimulation is generally manifested by an increase in the number of branches and tillers, more and thicker leaves, more extensive root systems, and more flowers and fruit.”
“In basic terms, plant water-use efficiency is the amount of biomass produced by a plant per unit of water lost via transpiration…. Most plants experience water-use efficiency gains on the order of 70 to 100%–or more—for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 (see and read reviews of multiple peer-reviewed studies under subheadings of Water-Use Efficiency here on my CO2 Science website).
“… elevated CO2 significantly increased the production of carbohydrates, proteins, fats and crude fibers in caraway, as well as organic and amino acids, regardless of growth stage (sprout or mature plants). Higher CO2 also enhanced plant mineral content, vitamins and phenolics, as well as antioxidant and antibacterial activities.”
“Tropospheric ozone (O3) is a gaseous air pollutant that results from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels. It negatively affects plant growth…. However, the situation may not be as bad as it seems, especially when the positive effects of atmospheric CO2 enrichment on plant growth and yield are factored in, which typically reduce or fully negate plant cell damage from ozone.”
“So when the next summer heat wave arrives along with all the negative spin stories demonizing CO2 as its cause, I hope you will remember this post and the numerous scientific studies proving rising CO2 levels helps plants better withstand and recover from temperature-induced stresses. And when you do remember this, please share it with others!”
“Ocean acidification and warming concerns, however, are vastly overstated and generally far out of touch with reality. In almost every instance, the predicted degree of harm is exaggerated due to improper scenario inputs that utilize the most extreme scenarios of future temperature and seawater pH. Furthermore, their projections fail to take into account the ability of species to acclimate and adapt, both within and across generations.”
“Atmospheric CO2 is not causing, nor will it ever cause, a direct threat to your health or cognitive performance. CO2 levels would need to increase some 36 times above the present concentration before they would even begin to pose a mild health concern.”
“CO2 literally is the ‘food’ that sustains essentially all plants (and animals who consume plants, including humans) on the face of the Earth. And when that food supply is diminished, nature begins to diminish.”
Arctic sea ice is lowest during the month of September, and its average extent during this month is a useful metric for measuring Arctic sea ice decline during the current period of global warming. During the 1980s and 1990s, September Arctic sea-ice extent (SIE) showed a moderate decline (Figure 1). After the 1997 climate shift, which involved a rather abrupt global atmospheric reorganization, the Arctic entered a period of rapid change that I call the Arctic Shift.[1] During this period, Arctic SIE declined more rapidly. Scientists noticed this change in trend about a decade later and became increasingly concerned about the prospect of an ice-free Arctic.[2]
Figure 1. September Arctic sea-ice extent since 1979. The blue area indicates the period of rapid change named the Arctic Shift.
The concern about the rapid decline of Arctic SIE in the early years of this century was due to the possibility of a runaway ice-albedo feedback. Loss of sea ice would reduce albedo, and additional solar energy would cause further sea ice loss. Models that reproduced the rapid loss predicted a tipping point that would lead to an ice-free Arctic by 2040, sparking public fears.[3] However, recent work suggests that up to 60% of the decline in September SIE since 1979 may be due to changes in atmospheric circulation.[4] In addition, the persistence of Arctic summer cloud cover significantly reduces the ice-albedo feedback.[5] The realization that internal variability is a more important factor than expected explains why the rate of decline of Arctic summer SIE has slowed so much since 2007, contrary to all expectations.
The Arctic Shift, a period of adjustment of Arctic climate variables to the new atmospheric regime induced by the 1997 climate shift, ended for Arctic SIE in 2007. Since then, the September Arctic SIE shows no significant trend. However, climate researchers are still unaware of the effects of climate shifts and regimes on climate change, and they were surprised by the recovery of sea ice in 2013 when it became clear that there had been no net loss since 2007. Using models, they calculated a 34% chance of a 7-year pause (Figure 2).[6]
However, the hiatus has now extended to 17 years and the probability has dropped to 10%. In other words, there is a 90% chance that climate scientists’ predictions about Arctic sea ice were wrong. If the hiatus continues until 2027, it will become statistically significant (p<0.05, or less than 5%) and no longer explainable by chance. For an explanation of the observed Arctic changes, see chapters 34 and 42 of my forthcoming book “Solving the Climate Puzzle. The Sun’s Surprising Role”.
Figure 2. Probability of a pause in September Arctic sea-ice extent as a function of pause length in the Historical-RCP4.5 experiment. It corresponds to the black curve in Figure 3c of Swart et al. 2015.
The current state of affairs has led society to be alarmed by model predictions that have been proven wrong by the time they are published, but this often goes unnoticed. A recent example of this phenomenon is shown in Figure 3. In June 2023, news headlines around the world highlighted a scientific study that warned of the possibility of ice-free summers in the Arctic by the 2030s, regardless of our efforts to reduce emissions.
Figure 3. Arctic sea ice projections and their implications. a) Results of a modeling study. The black line before 2020 is the observed change in September sea ice area, and after 2020 is the sea ice area projected in the study under the SSP2-4.5 scenario. They correspond to the orange curves in Figure 4b of Kim et al. 2023. The dashed red line is the mean Arctic sea ice area from the 6th Coupled-Model Intercomparison Project. The dotted blue line is the September sea ice extent (SIE), a related measure of sea ice, and the horizontal blue line shows the lack of trend over the past 16 years. b) Examples of media headlines following the June 6, 2023 press release.
The article presents projections based on observations of an ice-free Arctic even under a low emissions scenario.[7] However, it should be noted that the data in the article only cover observations through 2019, although data for 2020-22 were available at the time of publication. In addition, the model projections in the study begin in 2021. Figure 3 shows the results of the study under an intermediate emissions scenario similar to the current situation. However, a significant problem arises when considering the acceptance and publication of the paper, as the model projections for 2021 and 2022 differ greatly from the observed data, with a staggering difference of 1.3 million km2 (0.5 million square miles) or 33% lower. This obvious problem, which undermines the entire study, raises questions about how the paper was accepted for publication.
How could such a blatantly flawed, and provably incorrect, article successfully pass the peer-review process? Moreover, who determines its suitability for widespread dissemination in a global media landscape that seems incapable of questioning or scrutinizing these predictions? The data refuting the article are readily available to anyone with an Internet connection and can easily be located with a simple search engine query. The current method of communicating predictions from highly uncertain climate models to the public is undeniably inadequate, and it is truly surprising that no authoritative scientific voice has addressed this issue and voiced disapproval.
Note: Part of the text and some of the figures in this article are taken from several chapters of my forthcoming book, “Solving the Climate Puzzle. The Sun’s Surprising Role,” to be published in November 2023.
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