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.
Politicised science led by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) holds that the only change in climate for the last 100 years has been caused by humans releasing carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuel. The proposition is nonsense of course but it is designed to enforce a collectivist Net Zero project. It is easily debunked by the mass of scientific knowledge suggesting natural causes play the dominant climate role. Now comes further news that rises in atmospheric CO2 occur after temperatures rise.
A new paper from an international group of scientists has discovered that half of the current retreat in Antarctica sea ice occurred many thousands of years before CO2 levels started to rise.
According to ice core samples, considerable melting seems to have occurred in Antarctica from 21,000 to 19,500 years ago. This appears to be about 2,000 years before the local Antarctica climate started warming by up to 8°C, which led to a naturally occurring rise of CO2 of 80 parts per million (ppm). At the time, the Earth was in a period of severe and potentially dangerous CO2 denudation. Much below 150 ppm and plants start to die away. Modern levels at around 400 ppm are more beneficial, although recent research has indicated that plants are genetically disposed to thrive best at levels around 1,000 ppm. This harks back to many periods in the past when CO2 levels were much higher than they are today.
The early warming is attributed to an increase in energy from the Sun over the wider Antarctica area. The paper notes that the break-up of the ice, and the invigoration of currents in the southern ocean, may have led to substantial outgassing of deeply sequestered oceanic CO2. There is of course no reason why similar processes are not at work today, with a small 1°C increase in temperature since the start of the industrial revolution leading to oceanic outgassing. Many scientific papers have shown that temperatures rise ahead of CO2 levels in the historic and prehistoric record.
Commenting on the paper, the science web site No Tricks Zone said that the Antarctica time-lag not only suggested that CO2 was not a contributing factor in local sea ice retreat, but that the sea ice retreat may have been the factor sequentially instigating Antarctica warming and CO2 rise.
Modern climate apocalypse reporting requires every melting ice cube at the Poles to be portrayed as a sign of imminent Armageddon. Ahead of the forthcoming COP28, the BBC is in full campaigning mode, noting that Arctic sea ice has long been in decline and Antarctica sea ice has been “far lower than usual” in 2023. In fact, the natural cyclical decline of Arctic sea ice seems to have more or less stopped since 2012, and there has been a small recovery. In Antarctica, the ‘far lower’ observation only holds if you ignore similar levels identified by early weather satellites in 1966. Previous highs in sea ice around Antarctica, a continent that has seen little overall warming for at least 70 years, are said by the BBC to have “largely defied predictions and remained relatively stable”.
The BBC concludes that the “devastating climate impacts currently being experienced” highlight the challenges the world is already facing. These “devastating impacts” are of course little more than a dot-joining exercise with a number of recent climate anomalies. Needless to say, most of these involve heat, so there is little room for all the cold records that have occurred in 2023. In the interests of balance, it might be briefly noted that Argentina has just recorded its lowest November temperatures since records began, including 0.2°C at Cordoba Airport. Huge amounts of snow in parts of Europe have led to early starts in the skiing season in the French Alps. Further details of these records, and many others, ignored by mainstream media, can be seen here.
None of this is of much relevance in trying to understanding the changing, chaotic climate, whatever the role ascribed to human-caused CO2. It is just playing politics. A recent paper from two American glaciologists found that over half of the Arctic’s glaciers and ice caps (GIC) that exist today did not exist or were smaller 10,000 to 3,400 years ago. The period between 7,900 to 4,500 years ago was noted to be the peak of the interglacial Arctic warming, when temperatures were many degrees warmer than today.
The Arctic’s current ice extent is “among the largest of the last 10,000 years”, the glaciologists reported. The largest glacier and ice cap extent of the current Holocene epoch has been seen in the last millennium. This is said to suggest that any reduction in glaciers and ice caps in the last few centuries “is but a partial return to a former period of much greater warmth”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
Professor David Dilley is a Meteorologist-Climatologist-Paleoclimatologist and a former NOAA National Weather Service Meteorologist.
Professor Dilley is the founder and CEO of Global Weather Oscillations (GWO), a company heavily involved in research and development of technology for prediction of natural climate and weather cycles.
Professor Dilley has 54 years of experience ranging from the Air Force to NOAA National Weather Service and GWO.
As the senior research scientist and forecaster for GWO, Mr. Dilley developed ClimatePulse Technology based on Geomagnetic Cycles of the earth-moon-and sun, and how these cycles align with historical, present day and future cycles of climate and weather.
ABC News ran an Associated Press (AP) story titled, “Climate change is hurting coral worldwide. But these reefs are thriving.” The article is misleading in at least three ways: first coral reefs are not in decline all over the globe as the AP writers assert; Second, temperature changes are only one kind of stressor for corals, the story downplays other factors that evidence suggests play as big or even a bigger role when coral reefs have declined; Third, it provides no evidence that climate change is behind recent ocean warming, rather it assumes this, ignoring natural factors like shifts in oceanic oscillations which have historically caused temperature changes. Indeed, recent research shows that large parts of the oceans inhabited by coral, have actually seen a decline in temperatures over the past two decades.
Waters that get too warm cause corals to expel their colorful algae and turn white. They can survive if temperatures fall but they are left more vulnerable to disease and may eventually die.
…
Derek Manzello, coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch, said that so far this year, at least 35 countries and territories across five oceans and seas have experienced mass coral bleaching.
…
Manzello said climate models suggest that all of the world’s coral will be suffering severe bleaching every year beginning around 2040.
Warmer waters are not necessarily bad for coral reefs. Indeed, as detailed in Climate at a Glance: Coral Reefs, coral has existed continuously for the past 60 million years, surviving temperatures and carbon dioxide levels significantly higher and lower than what is occurring today. Indeed, coral thrive in warm water, not cold water and recent warming has allowed coral to expand their range poleward, while still thriving near the equator. So it is simply false to make the universal claim, as Kelly Drinnen, education and outreach specialist for the Flower Garden Banks, did in the AP story that “coral reefs are declining all over the globe.”
Indeed, as discussed across several Climate Realism posts, here and here, for example, despite repeated bleaching events in recent years, the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef system, recently experienced its two highest years of coral extent. This is just one instance demonstrating the resilience and adaptability of corals to temperature changes. Coral bleaching is not the same as coral death, and most corals that have bleached have recovered.
Also, in recent years, scientists discovered that Earth was inhabited by far more coral in far more places than previously believed.
Although it is certainly true that waters that warm too much, too fast can cause coral bleaching, ocean warming is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to cause such bleaching at all coral reefs under every set of conditions. Indeed, temperature changes are not the only cause of bleaching, or even the primary one in many instances. As discussed at Climate Realism, here and here, for example, inappropriate commercial fishing, terrestrial run-off and pollution from farms and urban development along the coasts, sedimentation, chemicals in some sun screens, and periods of rapidly cooling waters have all been linked to bleaching events and declines in local coral populations.
The concerns expressed about future bleaching and the mass decline of corals contained in the story are not borne out by actual trend analyses, in fact, but rather are generated by computer model projections. Yet time and again, Climate Realism has shown computer models do a poor job of reflecting reality.
In the end, neither ABC nor the AP provided any evidence that climate change is harming coral reefs—asserting a connection between climate change and coral decline and backing it up with verifiable proof are two different things, and the latter is lacking in the ABC/AP story. Despite some coral reefs declining in recent years, overall coral are doing well, with little evidence coral is declining globally. The one thing contained in the ABC/AP story that I believe is likely true is that Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary is a natural wonder, filled with a variety of life and beautiful to behold. Unless increased tourism and pollution screws it up, it is likely to remain that way, because there is little evidence the recent modest warming poses a threat.
Analysis of CO2 residence times suggest 65% to 96.5% of the CO2 concentration increase since 1958 is natural.
According to a new study, the claim that increases in atmospheric CO2 are driven exclusively by humans relies on a made-up, disparate accounting model, with the residence time for natural emissions 3 to 4 years (which is consistent with actual observations), but CO2 from human sources is claimed to have a residence time of 50 to over 100 years.
The 15 to 30 times longer residence time for human emissions is an imaginary conceptualization that is wholly inconsistent with (1) bomb tests (1963) and (2) seasonal CO2 variations found in real-world observations.
Human emissions account for under 5% of the total from all sources, natural and anthropogenic. Nature’s sinks do not decide which CO2 to absorb, depending on the source. Absorption is instead proportional to the source.
Consequently, Dr. Harde insists that a “comprehensive analysis and reproduction of the atmospheric CO2 evolution requires to…treat all emissions in a consistent manner.”
When the imaginary-world 50-100+ years residence time for anthropogenic CO2 accounting method is not used, and instead natural emissions and human emissions are treated as equal (both with a residence time under 10 years), the attribution for the CO2 increase falls to as little as 3.5%, with the upper limit 35%.
Ferdinand Engelbeen, a long-time proponent of the position that humans are 100% responsible for CO2 concentration changes, published a Comment in the same journal, replying to the above study. Engelbeen claims natural emissions are always 100% balanced by natural sinks, and “there is zero contribution from natural sources and sinks to the increase in the atmosphere.”
Dr. Harde then published a Reply to Engelbeen, explaining that his position employs “circular reasoning,” and that the assumption that nature contributes zero to CO2 concentration change is “nonsense and misses any scientific basis.”
Harde further explains that treating the residence of CO2 as equal for anthropogenic and natural emissions allows for the conclusion that natural emissions add 31.2 ppm/year to the increase, whereas humans add 5.5 ppm/year. The natural contribution to the CO2 increase since 1958 is thus nearly 6 times greater than that from humans.
A key top-line statistic featured in the Biden administration’s latest report on the state of climate change in the U.S. is misleading in several ways.
The Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA 5) features numerous analyses and graphics that purport to highlight extreme weather events that result in at least $1 billion of damage, as well as using monetary losses from events like hurricanes and floods as a de facto proxy for climate change intensity. Critics of the metric assert that its use obscures key context, namely the growth of population, asset density and asset values in coastal regions that inflate the prevalence of billion-dollar damage events.
“There is no peer reviewed science that attributes any part of increasing disaster losses to changes in climate,” Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado who has extensively studied and written about the politicization of science, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “To see evidence of changes in climate, look at climate data, not economic data.”
Pielke, Jr. has harshly criticized the billion-dollar damages metric in the recent past, writing in January that its use by supposedly authoritative scientific bodies amounts to a “national embarrassment,” pointing out that “an identical hurricane making landfall in Florida in 1980 versus 2023 would result in vastly different loss totals, because today there are simply more people in more homes with more stuff than 43 years ago.”
Criticisms of the metric did not stop the Biden administration from relying on it in the NCA 5, specifically with regard to some of its analysis of the American Southeast. The region’s coastal states are the nation’s most prone to hurricanes, the frequency and intensity of which are frequently highlighted by climate alarmists and activists as a concrete example of the threat that climate change poses to American society. (RELATED: BASTASCH: The UN’s Newest Climate Report Is A Woke Dumpster Fire Masquerading As Science)
A graphic from NCA 5 showing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) billion-dollar disasters by state from 1980–2022 in the Southeast. The map adds up billion-dollar events for each state affected (i.e., it does not mean that each state shown suffered at least $1 billion in losses for each event), according to its caption in the NCA 5 report. (Screenshot / Public via NCA 5 report)
The NCA 5 graphic would lead the unscrupulous viewer to believe upon first glance that there have been more than 900 billion-dollar loss events between 1980 and 2022.
However, data published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that the actual number for that time period is 373. The reason for the discrepancy between NOAA’s data and the NCA 5 graphic is that billion-dollar damage events typically impact more than just one state; accordingly, the NCA 5 graphic adds to the count for each state affected by the same billion-dollar damage event, regardless of whether or not each state impacted suffered a billion dollars of losses on its own in such a scenario, according to the graphic’s caption.
“The increase in population and material wealth over the last several decades are an important cause for the rising costs,” according to NOAA’s website. “These trends are further complicated by the fact that much of the growth has taken place in vulnerable areas like coasts, the wildland-urban interface and river floodplains.”
Additionally, weather events that did not meet the billion-dollar threshold when they occurred in the past are retroactively classified as such once their costs are adjusted for inflation, meaning that a $900 million dollar event in 1985 would be classified as a billion-dollar event when adjusted for today’s inflation, according to NOAA.
Pielke, Jr. ran his own analysis in his January piece, putting North American catastrophe losses in terms of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). He found that “North American catastrophe losses as a proportion of U.S. GDP clearly show no upwards trend.”
This crucial context complicating the statistic’s validity as a de facto proxy for the intensity of climate change has not stopped the White House from using it as such anyways.
“Climate change is a major driver for the increased frequency, duration, and severity of extreme weather and climate-related disasters,” according to a 2021 fact sheet published by the White House. “Millions of Americans feel the effects of these extreme events when their roads and schools flood, and hospitals lose power. Over the past few years, the frequency of extreme weather and climate-related disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion has skyrocketed.”
In addition to the content focusing on billion-dollar damage events, the report also touts its use of “indigenous knowledge” to arrive at its findings. The report also includes a section linking climate change to pandemics and an entire section on the intersections of climate change and social justice.
“The NCA should never have been placed under the White House. It is too tempting for both Republicans and Democrats to use it for politics,” Pielke, Jr. told the DCNF.
Neither NOAA nor the White House responded immediately to requests for comment.
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The Netherlands has in recent years emerged as one of the most ambitious EU countries on climate change. That’s likely to change under a coalition government involving the PVV.
With the campaign dominated by immigration issues, voters might not have backed the PVV because of its anti-green stance | Carl Court/Getty Images
Climate mythology on the back foot. Some people at least are not keen on being frogmarched into costly and disruptive ‘net zero’ energy policies for more pain than gain, while having their reliability of supply reduced and farmers demonised. – – – The far-right party that surged to victory in Wednesday’s Dutch election wants to ditch all efforts to stop climate change, says Politico.
About a quarter of Dutch voters backed Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV), whose platform includes exiting the Paris climate accord, dismantling domestic green legislation, and scrapping measures to reduce planet-warming emissions.
While right-wing politicians from Scandinavia to Italy have won big over the past year, this is the first time a party openly calling for an end to the green transition has won a national election in the European Union.
To govern, Wilders needs to convince several other parties to join the PVV in a coalition, and even if he succeeds, he may still not end up as prime minister.
But whether in government or as the loudest opposition block, Wilders and the PVV will have significant influence on setting climate policy in the Netherlands — a country that has prided itself on being among Europe’s most ambitious in tackling global warming. [Talkshop comment – ‘ambitious’ as in ‘big spending’?].
Coming just ahead of the EU elections next summer, the PVV’s victory also reflects a wider shift that may spell trouble for Europe’s climate efforts in the coming years.
Is there any critical industrial material as bizarre as natural gas?
The stuff holds almost zero interest for the general public, for the same reason no one is interested in the sound of a washing machine. Both boring. Both ubiquitous. Natural gas isn’t even sold on Amazon. But forty-six percent of American homes use natural gas for heat, and surely more in Canada.
But consider the storm below the surface. Traders love it, because it is one of the most volatile commodities in existence, and volatility means trading profits. The volatility, at the slightest provocation, is almost unbelievable at times. The weather pattern shifts for three weeks out over a portion of the US and boom – the entire forward 18 months of prices can collapse or soar.
In the bigger picture though, natural gas today in North America trades at close to the same price it did a quarter century ago – not inflation adjusted, just the same old nominal dollar value, which is astonishing since global gas demand has increased by 60 percent in that time.
Natural gas is a critical fuel for much of the world, and usage is growing, particularly the relatively new field of LNG. According to the Global Gas Infrastructure Tracker website, which doesn’t even like the stuff, there are a total of 2,449 significant pipeline projects underway in the world for a total of 1.2 million kilometers (and that’s the big pipe, not the little straws that go to your house). There are 238 LNG import terminals and 189 export trains in development globally. One hundred and thirty countries either have natural gas systems or are constructing them.
Traders, consumers and businesses love the stuff even if they don’t say it often enough, while others loathe it because it is a ‘fossil fuel’. Natural gas is caught in an existential war whereby said opponents will do everything in their power to just make it go away (they really think they can). The Toronto Globe and Mail, “Canada’s news paper” (note to self: develop ethnocentric balloon head emoji, make millions), recently ran a pricelessly ludicrous opinion piece entitled ‘Natural gas is a dying commodity, and Canada needs to stop supporting it’. The article was written by one of those think tanks (International Institute for Sustainable Development) that produces nothing but ideological amplification, safely distanced from people that actually do stuff, and a mountain of impressive T4 income tax slips (latest fiscal year personnel/consultant expense: $33 million). There is no surprise that their team of political scientists would attack natural gas; their latest financials show that the Government of Canada granted them $40 million, a third of which is from climate activist/federal minister Guilbeault’s office. There’ll be no biting that little hand.
Many climate leadership icons of the world, the US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan… pretty much anyone that can, is building natural gas (LNG or non) infrastructure as fast as they can. Germany, home to the world’s most advanced green energy demolition derby, built an LNG import terminal in an astounding 5 months. Many that want to import LNG but weren’t able to last year because Europe hoovered up every molecule on the market are simply doing what it takes to attain energy security, and that can mean, lord tunderin’, coal. Pakistan is the most notable example – the country plans to quadruple coal fired power output and move away from gas only because it could not obtain it: “A shortage of natural gas, which accounts for over a third of the country’s power output, plunged large areas into hours of darkness last year.” The country’s energy minister went on, “We have some of the world’s most efficient regasified LNG-based power plants. But we don’t have the gas to run them.”
For those fortunate enough to line up LNG supplies, the ante is normally a 15-20 year contract.
To say that “natural gas is a dying commodity” takes either some world-class mental dishonesty, disturbingly blind faith in policy over reality, or some kind of “clouds hate me” philosophical stance on life.
Beyond the silly messaging looking to undermine natural gas though are some very powerful undercurrents that are shaping the world in ways most don’t consider, but they should.
Thanks to the shale revolution in the US and Canada, native natural gas production exploded onto a scene that couldn’t handle the excess, leading to persistently low prices. North America is turning into an LNG export powerhouse, but until that export capacity outpaces productive capability, natural gas prices in North America look set to remain far below global prices.
It is worth remembering how significant this scenario is for North America. Cheap natural gas is an industrial godsend, enabling many strata of industries and enterprises that simply would not exist without. In May of 2022, the head of the Western Equipment Dealers Association, said that the previous winter’s high natural gas prices were unsustainable for businesses that had to heat 30-40,000 square-foot shops. The 2021-22 winter of which he was discontented saw Henry Hub prices average $4.56/mmbtu – about a third of global prices, and a fraction of what the world was to face later that year.
The same article pointed out how the Industrial Energy Consumers of America, a trade group whose members include smelters, plastics and paper-goods makers, wanted the US to stop permitting new LNG export terminals because “The manufacturing sector cannot invest and create jobs without assurances that our natural gas and electricity prices will not be imperiled by excessive LNG exports.”29dk2902lhttps://boereport.com/29dk2902l.html
Those guys aren’t crazy. The US gas market is balanced on a knife edge. A change in next month’s forecast can create havoc in forward prices even up to several years out.
The rise of LNG is making things even more unstable. The Freeport LNG terminal had an 8 month outage due to an accident, removing 2 bcf/d of demand from the market (in a 100 bcf/d market); this single event caused a storage surplus in the US that has depressed natural gas prices ever since. All else being equal, the US natural gas storage scene would be in a deficit to the five year average as opposed to today’s surplus if Freeport hand not gone down, and both spot and futures prices would most likely be significantly higher. The Freeport outage probably knocked US natural gas prices down by at least $1/mmbtu for a period of 8 months, and actually probably much more. But even at that level, in a 100 bcf/d market, where 1 bcf is equal to 1 million mmbtus, the cost savings to US consumers totaled $100 million per day. (Of course, had the price stayed higher, we might have seen far more drilling, which may have caused a collapse as well, just a bit further down the road.)
That $100 million per day cost saving came out of the hide of North American natural gas producers selling into that market, and you’d think they wouldn’t like that one little bit. And they don’t. But gas producers have their own realities and game plans which don’t generally involve sacrificing any of their sales for the good of all other producers, as economically sensible as that strategy may be.
US producers find themselves in an odd situation. Every one of the large producers knows that they could cut production by 5 percent and double their profits; the market is that tightly balanced. Doing so would single handedly drive up NG prices substantially – just observe how the gas market goes ape over a change in weather forecast.
But driving up prices, even if it is in their own self interest, will mean a spike in production, because at sustained $4 US gas, the market becomes flooded. EQT president Toby Rice, the largest US gas producer (EQT, not Toby), says at a sustained $4/mmbtu natural gas price, the US could export 60 bcf/d of natural gas. Keep in mind that $4 gas is a fraction, anywhere from a third to ten percent of global LNG prices.
Mr. Rice may very well be correct, but glosses over the reality of natural gas prices: we will never see a sensible sustained price like $4, even though we may average it – we will see 2 and 8 and 3 and 9 and so on and so on.
On top of this, solution gas from oil plays like Permian us providing massive amounts of gas in itself. The Permian, primarily an oil field, produces more solution gas than the entire country of Canada. Permian solution gas, if a stand alone country, would be one of the world’s top five largest producers.
So who cares? Well, you all do. We all do. The goofballs that wrote the Globe & Mail article do, though they either won’t admit it or simply refuse to understand.
Natural gas is the bedrock of most economies, and cheap natural gas is a special elixir to North America. It is absolutely crucial to the level of industrial activity we enjoy. There is no substitute for the clean burning capability of the stuff. Wander into a typical big box store or more crucially try to wander into an industrial building that you won’t be allowed to because it is unsafe… drive around an industrial park and look at all the magnificent industrial activity that gives us the life we live. Now imagine those being heated by wood stoves. Or solar panels in dead of winter. Geothermal? Sure, if you plan on drilling into the earth’s mantle. And if you live on an appropriate acreage. And have enough money. I guess there’s always coal.
And that sums up a lot of the world’s population’s situation: If countries aren’t building LNG, it’s likely because they are building coal, as in the countries that Europe outbid for LNG last winter in a shocking me-first display of hydrocarbon-swilling (accompanied by fossil-fuel-subsidizing self-loathing?) hypocrisy.
There are storm clouds on the horizon. The drilling efficiency that these companies boast about relentlessly in IR presentations and every 90 days in conference calls consists to a large degree on drilling longer horizontal wells. Do the math on that one. Reservoirs are finite in size. If you increase the length of wells by another mile or two, you’re just draining the reservoir faster. One day we will see true sweet spot exhaustion, which is not a laughing matter when one considers that three fields – Appalachia, Haynesville and Permian – account for more than 70 percent of US gas production, and about a fifth of global production.
But for now, North America reigns supreme with respect to the world’s most coveted heating and industrial fuel. The US, Canada and Mexico remain more or less isolated from global natural gas prices for now, which brings incalculable benefits to North American businesses and citizens, a benefit that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Energy conversations should be positive and, most of all, grounded in reality. Life depends on it. Find out more in “The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity” at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com. Thanks!
Read more insightful analysis from Terry Etam here, or email Terry here.
NCA Hype: NCA constantly claimed that “hurricanes are both expected to increase in the region due to human-induced climate change, which will affect public health unless adaptation measures are taken (high confidence).”
The NCA focused on human and ecosystem hardships in Puerto Rico caused by Hurricane Maria as an example of growing threats from climate change.
Honest data: hurricanes making landfall in the USA have decreased.
•The decades with most hurricane landfalls were 1880s (25), 1940s (23), 1890s (22) and 1910s (21)
•The 2000s (19) are tied with the 1870s (19)
•The 2010s (13) had fewer hurricanes than any other decade. Only 1970s (12) had less.
•For Puerto Rico Hurricane Maria (cat 4) 2017 was not unusual or due to global warming. San Ciriaco (cat 4) 1899; San Felipe II (cat 5) 1928; San Ciprian (cat4 ) 1932;
Here’s and example of the hype from the 5th National Climate Assessment
“KEY MESSAGES: Climate-Driven Extreme Events Exacerbate Inequities and Impact Human Health and Well-Being Traditionally underserved and disadvantaged communities suffer disproportionate impacts from climate change because they have been systematically excluded from social services, secure livelihoods, quality education, and other social benefits that help sustain health and well-being (high confidence). Hurricanes and other climate-related extreme events have been associated with higher rates of disease, mental illness, and overall mortality, as well as loss of cultural heritage that is central to community identity (high confidence)… The frequency of heat episodes and the severity of hurricanes are both expected to increase in the region due to human-induced climate change, which will affect public health unless adaptation measures are taken (high confidence).”
Multi-institutional research team finds declining nitrogen availability in a nitrogen-rich world.
Since the mid-20th century, research and discussion have focused on the negative effects of excess nitrogen on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. However, new evidence indicates that the world is now experiencing a dual trajectory in nitrogen availability. Following years of attention to surplus nitrogen in the environment, our evolving understanding has led to new concerns about nitrogen insufficiency in areas of the world that do not receive significant inputs of nitrogen from human activities. In a new review paper, “Evidence, Causes, and Consequences of Declining Nitrogen Availability in Terrestrial Ecosystems,” in the journal Science, a multi-institutional team of researchers describes the causes of declining nitrogen availability and how it affects ecosystem function.
Over the last century, humans have more than doubled the global supply of reactive nitrogen through industrial and agricultural activities. This nitrogen becomes concentrated in streams, inland lakes, and coastal bodies of water, sometimes resulting in eutrophication, low-oxygen dead zones, and harmful algal blooms. These negative impacts of excess nitrogen have led scientists to study nitrogen as a pollutant.However, rising carbon dioxide and other global changes have increased demand for nitrogen by plants and microbes, and the research team’s newly published paper demonstrates that nitrogen availability is declining in many regions of the world, with important consequences for plant growth.
[Note the Nitrogen Deposition graph in the top diagram. It peaked in the 1980s, yet in 2023 it is being used to force farmers off their land in the Netherlands,Canada, Ireland and other nations to come]
Nitrogen is an essential element for plants and the animals that eat them. Gardens, forests, and fisheries are all more productive when they are fertilized with nitrogen. If plant nitrogen becomes less available, trees grow more slowly and their leaves are less nutritious to insects, potentially reducing growth and reproduction, not only of insects, but also the birds and bats that feed on them.
“When nitrogen is less available, every living thing holds on to the element for longer, slowing the flow of nitrogen from one organism to another through the food chain. This is why we can say that the nitrogen cycle is seizing up,” said Andrew Elmore, senior author on the paper, and a professor of landscape ecology at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center.
On top of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, rising global temperatures also affect plant and microbial processes associated with nitrogen supply and demand. Warming often improves conditions for growth, which can result in longer growing seasons, leading plant nitrogen demand to exceed the supply available in soils. Disturbances, including wildfires, can also remove nitrogen from systems and reduce availability over time.
Intercalibration of isotopic records from leaves, tree rings, and lake sediments suggests that N availability in many terrestrial ecosystems has steadily declined since the beginning of the industrial era. Reductions in N availability may affect many aspects of ecosystem functioning, including carbon sequestration and herbivore nutrition. Shaded areas indicate 80% prediction intervals; marker size is proportional to the number of measurements in each annual mean.Isotope data: (tree ring) K. K. McLauchlan et al., Sci. Rep.7, 7856 (2017); (lake sediment) G. W. Holtgrieve et al., Science334, 1545–1548 (2011); (foliar) J. M. Craine et al., Nat. Ecol. Evol.2, 1735–1744 (2018)
Our evolving understanding of the Earth system has led to new concerns about N insufficiency after years of attention to surplus N in the environment. An integrated suite of responses will be needed to simultaneously manage both of these problems. Given the potential implications of declining N availability for food webs, carbon sequestration, and other ecosystem functions and services, it is important that research, management, and policy actions be taken before the consequences of declining N availability become more severe. It can be difficult to create a shared understanding of the N cycle and the many effects of N on ecosystem health and human well-being. The combination of excess N and declining N availability, in which outcomes vary widely across landscapes, adds to this challenge. Developing dialogues among diverse stakeholders—scientists, ecosystem managers, and others—will be necessary for alleviating and adapting to declining N availability in an N-rich world.
The Heide oil refinery has decided to use green hydrogen. However, the “West Coast 100” electrolysis plant project was prematurely terminated three years after the project began. Raffinerie Heide, Ørsted Germany and Hynamics Germany have announced that they will not build an electrolyser. More than three years ago, they joined forces as “H2 Westküste GmbH” to produce green hydrogen on the premises of the industrial plant in Hemmingstedt. The main reason for the decision against the 30-megawatt plant is the high construction costs, the companies said in a press release (NDR: 17.11.23).
Green hydrogen plant in Heide stopped prematurely – economic profitability not given despite millions in funding
Since 2020, the project has been funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy with 36 million euros as part of the “Living Labs of the Energy Transition” program. About one million euros of this was spent, according to a spokeswoman for H2 Westküste GmbH. The state government supported the project as part of its hydrogen strategy. Despite the subsidies, the economic viability of the plant for green hydrogen production on an industrial scale is not given, according to the investor consortium.
Green hydrogen plant in Heide stopped prematurely – economic profitability not given despite millions in funding
Environment Minister Tobias Goldschmidt (Greens) emphasized that the “large electrolyser project” called “Hyscale 100” is still running and is supported by the state government. Hyscale 100 is more than three times larger than West Coast 100 and is still in the planning stages.
The managing director of the Heide refinery, Roland Kühl, would like to use the knowledge gained from the research project. The goal is to decarbonize the refinery and promote the green hydrogen economy on the West Coast.
Green hydrogen: Project in Heide failed
Ørsted, an offshore wind company from Denmark, also planned to take a stake in the plant in Heide. However, Jörg Kubitza, Managing Director of Germany, emphasized that such projects depend on their economic viability, which is not the case in this case. The costs must be right and a market must be created, which is not the case in this case. Hynamics Germany, a subsidiary of Electricite De France, was the third partner in the consortium.
Stadtwerke Heide planned to participate in Westküste 100 as a regional energy supplier. Their focus was on the “Green Heating” sub-project, in which green hydrogen was to be mixed with natural gas. This project has now also been discontinued due to the demolition of the electrolysis plant.
Andreas Hein, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Stadtwerke Heide, was disappointed and criticized the lack of a legal framework for such projects and the fact that little progress had been made on the topic of green hydrogen than three years ago.
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