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.
An article in another of America’s once-great-newspapers, The Washington Post, titled “These yard signs offer an inconvenient truth about sea level rise”, published on 13 December 2023 in the “Climate Solutions” section, is a narrative journalism piece about the efforts of a local artist and Miami-Dade County’s artist-in-residence Xavier Cortada to raise awareness of Miami residents about the elevation of their residential properties relative to local sea level.
Guest Essay by Kip Hansen — 19 December 2023 — 1300 words/10 minutes
An article in another of America’s once-great-newspapers, The Washington Post, titled “These yard signs offer an inconvenient truth about sea level rise”, published on 13 December 2023 in the “Climate Solutions” section, is a narrative journalism piece about the efforts of a local artist and Miami-Dade County’s artist-in-residence Xavier Cortada to raise awareness of Miami residents about the elevation of their residential properties relative to local sea level.
Why? Miami has thousands of homes perilously close to local Mean Sea Level. That link goes to my 7-year old piece that concluded, in part: “Miami Beach is at such grave risk of sea water flooding today that it should preemptively be declared a disaster zone – not because of global-warming-driven sea level rise but due to a seeming total lack of sensible civil engineering standards and sensible building codes.”
That statement holds true for the thousands of homes built along sea water canals, just one or two feet above the local high tide line. If building those homes sounds crazy to you, then you are thinking correctly.
It sounds crazy to Miami-Dade’s artist-in-residence Xavier Cortada too. But, you see, Cortada has been an environmental and climate change activist his entire career. And he is absolutely right to be worried about those homes and businesses built so very close to Mean Sea Level, some of them at or below the:
The NOAA Tide Gauge for Miami is NOAA ID 8723214, Virginia Key, Biscayne Bay FL:
It is obvious from the Tide Gauge data that unless there are substantial changes in natural Earth-processes, SLR in Miami will rise another 8-10 inches by 2100. Much of that amount of that Local Relative Mean SLR will be due to local land subsidence, Vertical Land Movement (VLM). Shimon Wdowinski, at Florida International University, found that VLM in the Miami Beach area runs 1-2 mm/yr and upwards to 2-3 mm/yr in localized pockets. Along waterways, neighborhoods and islands built on the fill from canal digging and channel dredging have greater subsidence.
Shimon Wdowinski provides a pretty good illustration of the constituents of Local Relative Sea Level Rise:
Subsidence is downward Vertical Land Movement (VLM) and in Miami is a major component of Local Relative SLR (as reported by tide gauges). Tide gauges are scarce in southern Florida – which is an oddity for a place so intimate with the sea – but there are six of them that report Sea Level Trends:
In the upper left corner above is the previously shown Virginia Key Tide Gauge record which is the tide gauge closest to Miami. The Lake Fort Worth Tide Gauge record (West Palm Beach, lower right) is useless, but agrees with the other five that SLR in Southern Florida is linear – not accelerating – not increasing, but just going up at the same rate across the entire length of each record. The Linear Relative Sea Level Trends at each are different, due to differences in local Vertical Land Movement, which adds to Relative SLR if the land is moving downward – subsiding — (and subtracts if the land is itself rising) — but all are linear – they are all linear trends
If this is the case, and it is, then what has gotten into our campaigning artist, Xavier Cortada?
He seems to believe that “By 2100,[according to the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Compact project] … local sea levels will rise somewhere between two and eight feet.” So, he has gone a bit overboard and established the Underwater Homeowners Association in expectation of that event. His project is to have neighbors place signs in their yards showing how many feet above sea level the property is. The home shown with an 8 on the sign is his home in Pinecrest, Florida. (I have doubts, the yard seems to slope several feet up to the house, but at least he is playing his own game.)
And what is the possibility of mean sea level rising by two to eight feet in the next 77 years?
Vanishing small – Miami has seen almost exactly 1 foot of SLR (including subsidence) in the last 100 years – a long a steady rise. And what that means is that, if the past is any indicator, and it is, that Relative SLR in Southern Florida, including the Miami area, is not going to be suddenly doubling or tripling – thus:
Miami will not be seeing 2 to 8 feet of Relative Sea Level Rise in the next 77 years – but rather 8 to 10 inches, maybe as much as 12 inches.
But wait!….does this mean Miami is off the hook? That it is not in danger from rising seas? Not in danger from hurricane storm surge?
Absolutely not – Miami is a disaster zone pre-made and just waiting to happen. Billions of dollars of built infrastructure sits on Miami Beach which is built on a sand-based/ancient-reef barrier island. Some of Miami Beach is built below Mean High High Water (highest high tides). Much of the infrastructure is underground out of necessity and below Mean Sea Level (MSL), requiring pumps to move water up and out – sewage too. And this means, when the storms come and knock out electrical power, the pumps stop working….
But not from the gently rising seas. The real problem is how close to Mean Sea Level the built environment is already. The tidal range in Biscayne Bay and Miami is only about 2 feet, low to high. The highest tide ever at Virginia Key was just over 3 feet. With many homes built on canals with only a foot or two of freeboard above high tides:
The high tide mark is easily seen on the sea walls as the dark water mark shifts to grey concrete. That’s not much freeboard: a foot, maybe 18 inches. If you somehow think that just a few Southern Florida homes are built on canals like this one, use Google Earth and get a good close look.
If Miami was to experience a Major Hurricane [a hurricane that is classified as Category 3 or higher] arriving from just the right (or wrong) direction at the same time as high tide – with the wind relentlessly pushing water up into Biscayne Bay – those lovely homes in the photo above are going to be flooded and all those boats in the canals will end up on people’s lawns or inside their houses. The effects of a Cat 5 hurricane on the City of Miami Beach would be horrific.
Bottom Line:
Cortada is right to be worried, but as with the majority of climate activists, he has been misinformed and blindly accepted exaggerated claims of disaster created out of over-heated climate models.
Miami and its surrounds are at risk from the sea – because they have built too close to the sea and too close to the local Mean Sea Level, with intentionally dug canals letting the sea reach far into the interior. Storm surge is the enemy. Almost any unusually high tides flood roads and infrastructure – a major storm with surge combining with high tides would be a flooding disaster.
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Author’s Comment:
Cortada is clever and talented – but pushing misinformation to “inform the public” is not a good idea. The reality is worrisome enough – it needs no exaggeration.
Re-writing building codes in Miami-Dade County would go a long way to improving the situation (and create a building trades boom).
Not one more building should be allowed to be built with less than 8 feet of freeboard above existing Mean Higher High Water.
“The UN’s plans for your diet would be nothing short of a disaster for your health and food security worldwide,” said Rep. Flood. “Meat is one of the most efficient ways to deliver protein, and here in the Beef State, cattle are a critical part of the Golden Triangle that’s supplying clean ethanol fuel around the world.
“The UN’s plans for your diet would be nothing short of a disaster for your health and food security worldwide,” said Rep. Flood. “Meat is one of the most efficient ways to deliver protein, and here in the Beef State, cattle are a critical part of the Golden Triangle that’s supplying clean ethanol fuel around the world. The resolution I’m introducing today makes it clear that the United States opposes any attempt to reduce or eliminate meat production. Doing so would shatter the world’s food security and end an age-old way of life for millions of farm and ranch families across the globe.” — Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE)
In Episode 400 of District of Conservation, Gabriella recaps her experience at Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation’s annual NASC Conference in Dewey Beach, Delaware and Rep. Mike Flood’s resolution to defang the COP 28 U.N. Global Food Systems road map from being adopted by the U.S. Tune in to learn more!
In Episode 579 of District of Conservation, Gabriella discusses the permitting reform bill – aka BAAJA – that is gaining traction in Congress now. The Senate will hold a cloture vote starting at 3:30pm ET in a motion to proceed. Gabriella discusses the status quo without permitting reform, how BAAJA is good for the environment and affordability. Tune in!SHOW NOTESBipartisan Policy Center: BAAJA ExplainerEstimating the US Energy System Impacts of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act
In a news item that attracted almost no attention in the Canadian national media, the federal and Nova Scotia provincial governments recently drove a stake through the heart of the province’s offshore energy development opportunity. On December 4, 2023 Jonathon Wilkinson, Federal Minister of Natural Resources and Renewables and Tory Rushton, Nova Scotia Minister of natural Resources of Nova Scotia announced their “shared decision” to veto the decision of the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board to issue Exploration Licence 2437 to Inceptio Limited, which would have authorized exploration on a shallow parcel on the Sable Bank of the Scotian Shelf.
The news release announcing this decision stated that it was made on the basis of “broader policy considerations, including our shared commitments to advance clean energy and pursue opportunities in the clean energy sector” and that the decision would “enable us to research and understand the interactions between the two industries as we transition to a clean energy future”.
The explanation makes no sense whatsoever. Let’s consider why.
The “broader policy considerations” obviously refer to the policies related to climate change, which themselves depend for their credibility of acceptance of at least four highly doubtful theses – that human greenhouse gas emissions pose a catastrophic threat to the world; that the models used by international organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to project future climate effects can be relied upon, even though they have failed to account for actual temperature and weather events since they were designed in the 1990s; that the countries of the world are all committed to radically reduce emissions, even though emissions, driven by economic growth in the developing countries, are constantly rising; and that even if Canada, which produces 1.5% of global emissions, ceased to exist, it would make even a slight difference in global temperatures or climate. None of these theses is true.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, though, that all of them were slightly valid considerations.
GHG emissions represent 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere, of which 96 per cent derives from natural causes and 4 per cent are anthropogenic (i.e. produced by humans). Two thirds of the annual human-caused GHG emissions are from the use of coal, oil and gas. Of the portion that is produced by oil and natural gas, 80 per cent is produced by the final combustion of the fuels. In other words, the exploration, development, transportation, refining and marketing of oil and natural gas accounts for only 20 per cent of the emissions. Consumers, not producers, are the ones responsible for that.
If Canada ceases to produce oil and natural gas, will it change national emissions? Very little, so long as Canadians seek to use the affordable and secure energy sources to heat, cook and move themselves and their traded goods. In other words, if we stopped producing it, we would just import it from other countries that would be glad to have the economic investment and employment associated with hydrocarbons development.
Notation regarding wind, solar, biofuels, etc. added to Our World in Data graph.
Here are some facts. The world relies on fossil fuels for 82 per cent of its primary energy use. In spite of the wealthier countries spending over $10 trillion on what the International Energy Agency calls “renewables” and “clean energy” over the period from 2014 to 2023, these sources only account for 7 per cent of global energy use. In 2023, global consumption of oil, natural gas and coal all increased, driven by the desire of the poorer countries to use secure and affordable energy to support economic development and rising living standards for their rapidly growing populations. The US Energy Information Administration, probably the most authoritative source of analysis on world energy trends, projects demand for oil and natural gas to continue rising until at least 2040.
As for the claims that “clean energy” offers economic development opportunities, here is another fact. Statistics Canada has reported since 2007 on the share that “clean energy” represents of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product. In 2007, it was 3 per cent. In 2022, after billions of dollars in public subsidies had been poured into this sub-sector, the share was still 3 per cent. It is not growing.
The jobs are mostly going to China.
It is frankly shocking that a Progressive Conservative government in Nova Scotia would go along with the climate-related hysteria of the Trudeau government.
Maybe it is because Nova Scotia is already such an economic powerhouse that it can afford to pass up economic development opportunities. Maybe it can also afford to give up the equalization payments, too. Or not.
Climate Depot publisher Marc Morano is here to explain. Marc, welcome, and thanks for all the good work you did at the UN climate conference. But yes, one of the things you talked about coming out of that conference is how so many of these policies, including this one now to make trees equal to humans, is meant to stifle the poorest of the poor on our planet.
Fox and Friends – Fox News Channel – Broadcast December 14, 2023
Rough Transcript:
Rachel Campos-Duffy: Far-left climate laws giving human-style legal rights to nature. It’s becoming more popular across the globe. And here’s what the media is saying about it.
Rachel Campos-Duffy: The concept is that, like humans, all living things and ecosystems have the fundamental right to exist and thrive and that nature’s rights, like humans, can be defended in court. Ten states already have some form of legal protection in place for nature. A move critics argue stifles our ability to use natural resources productively. Our next guest warns it will only lead to more human suffering.
Climate Depot publisher Marc Morano is here to explain. Marc, welcome, and thanks for all the good work you did at the UN climate conference. But yes, one of the things you talked about coming out of that conference is how so many of these policies, including this one now to make trees equal to humans, is meant to stifle the poorest of the poor on our planet.
Marc Morano: It is, in fact, in the same vein. The Financial Times reported essentially about white-wealthy Western nations buying up land in Africa as ‘carbon offsets.’ So you have at least five African nations where 20% of their land is locked up. They can’t develop it based on some sort of sense of preserving nature rights.
Morano: We all want a clean, healthy environment. But what they’ve done here is now giving voice to rivers, trees, and land, and obviously, they can’t speak for themselves. So, where is their voice coming from? It’s coming from self-important, self-appointed bureaucrats and activists who will speak on behalf of these inanimate objects.
There was a Kenyan biologist, Rachel, who talked about the poaching laws in Africa, where you are shot dead on the spot for engaging in it. There were, I think it was six gorillas who died, but at the same time, literally hundreds of women and children who were raped and killed were ignored.
See: Kenyan Biologist: Nature Conservation Is ‘New Colonialism’ — Africa ‘A Place For White Elitists To Enjoy’ – “Nature conservation is the new colonialism,” Kenyan ecologist Mordecai Ogada told German magazine GEO. A Kenyan biologist thinks white Europeans and Americans are using “nature conservation” for “self promotion” and have created nothing but failure in Africa. … “In Kenya, we arrest robbers, kidnappers, murderers and bring them to justice. But we shoot poachers. Sometimes it happens to someone who is just walking through a protected area,” he told GEO. Six gorillas more important than hundreds of Africans: Ogada also illustrates how western values are gravely out of whack, using the example of six poached gorillas at Virunga that made western headlines but not widescale killing and raping of women and children: “But the worst thing about it was that at the same time Virunga was considered one of the world’s worst rape scenes. Hundreds of women were raped every day, children were killed. And none of it made the news. Just the six dead gorillas. And that is so fundamentally wrong.”
Morano: There’s a perversion of a worldview here that humans will now be essentially reduced to the level of a rock, a river, or a plant.
Rachel Campos-Duffy: It really speaks to how anti-human this movement is; how about before we give rights to trees, who they claim are voiceless? How about we give rights to the unborn? But extend those rights to them and welcome them into the human family. Before we welcome in trees. I mean, this is just absolutely insane. And you’re right; the people that get hurt are the poorest of the poor.
Rachel Campos-Duffy: One of the things that happened also at the Climate Conference, you were at Dubai, was that they announced somehow these elites announced that they’re going to get rid of fossil fuels. Nobody voted on it, but they’re going to do it. They’re going to do it through hook or crook through all this to the administrative state and through all these UN treaties, and one of the ways they’re going to do that they want to get rid of in the state of Washington, they’ve already voted to get rid of leaf blowers that are gas, gas-powered, use fossil fuels.
Marc Morano: This is where it’s insane. And they’re threatening jail time for using leaf blowers; for using lawn mowers, for a whole host of landscape equipment. What this does — first of all — it does nothing for U.S. emissions. It does nothing for global emissions — which is even if you believe carbon dioxide is the devil’s breath destroying the Earth. It’s total virtue signaling on the climate. See: Washington state Democrat bill would jail people for violating ban on gas leaf blowers
But this crushes small business startups. If you are trying to start a landscaping company or a tree-cutting service, you can’t afford it, the alternative to what they’re trying to impose all electric equipment. (See: California quickly moving to wipe out the lawn care industry – Newsom will ban the sale of small engines that burn gasoline) And again, most of these gas-powered bans in the case of California, are happening without any democracy. And they’re crushing people, and they’re now threatening them with jail for using gas-powered equipment.
Rachel Campos-Duffy: There’s absolutely no question in my mind, Marc, that this is exactly where they’re heading. And by the way, the state of Washington, Seattle, has a lot of bigger problems than leaf blowers. It’s just such a missed prioritization of what people really care about. And as you said, No one voted for any of this.
Thank you so much, Marc Morano, for joining us, and thanks again for the great work that you did — shining light on what these elitist weirdos are doing in Dubai at the Climate Conference. Really appreciate it.
Morano: Well, thank you, Rachel. Appreciate it. Thanks.
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Climate Depot Note: Nature Rights is also a form of Earth worship paganism that displaces belief in God. Climate & earth religion replaces traditional religions.
Kenyan Biologist: Nature Conservation Is ‘New Colonialism’ — Africa ‘A Place For White Elitists To Enjoy’ – “Nature conservation is the new colonialism,” Kenyan ecologist Mordecai Ogada told German magazine GEO. A Kenyan biologist thinks white Europeans and Americans are using “nature conservation” for “self promotion” and have created nothing but failure in Africa. … He also refers to nature conservation scientists as “prostitutes” and NGOs as “pirates”. “Environmental protection in Africa is above all a mendacious instrument of power for him,” commented GEO.
In his book, Ogada, who has worked as a biologist for NGOs for more than 18 years, compared nature conservation in Africa to apartheid because “projects are run by whites” who make all the decisions and use black researchers as window dressing, adding: “you suddenly realize that decisions are forced on you by people who are less qualified and often white.” …
“In Kenya, we arrest robbers, kidnappers, murderers and bring them to justice. But we shoot poachers. Sometimes it happens to someone who is just walking through a protected area,” he told GEO. Six gorillas more important than hundreds of Africans: Ogada also illustrates how western values are gravely out of whack, using the example of six poached gorillas at Virunga that made western headlines but not widescale killing and raping of women and children: “But the worst thing about it was that at the same time Virunga was considered one of the world’s worst rape scenes. Hundreds of women were raped every day, children were killed. And none of it made the news. Just the six dead gorillas. And that is so fundamentally wrong.” …
Dr. Ogada claims big nature conservation organisations create crisis to justify their work. “Nature conservation is the only area where we reward failure. They have done nothing or the wrong thing for 40 years.” He tells GEO: “Nature conservation is a business. And environmentalists are no angels.”
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Climate Depot Notes:
The nature rights movement is just another grift for the UN and environmental activists.
It is a movement couched in lofty-sounding concern for the rivers, trees, and animals, but in the end it is simply about making money and increasing power to those who want to impose an agenda.
When a lake sues to stop boating in its waters or a tree files a court case against having itself cut down, who will be ‘speaking’ for the tree or lake?
UN and other Environmental grifters are the answer – How will those who ‘feel’ or somehow ‘know’ what the land, or trees or rivers or nature actually want? How will they interpret nature’s ‘voice’?
What pronouns will we use to refer to the tree or river? Will Facebook have to add dozens more gender pronouns to fit the demands of ‘nature rights’?
Elevating land, trees, animals, bodies of water, and even air to human rights equivalents will mean only one thing: Humans will suffer!
Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker wrote: “For most of history, people saw themselves as dependent on their surroundings, and “rivers, trees, and land” enjoyed the last word.”
Development, fossil fuels, and human ingenuity changed all that! We were able to master the climate so that we could thrive and live longer, not this movement wants to return us to the dark ages.
This is a bureaucratic capture of EVERy level of human endeavor and development. Will people be able to cut their grass or trim a tree without legal advocates for Nature interfering?
Will a swimming pool be labeled ‘nature’, thus making people need permission to fill it with water or chlorinate it?!
A Kenyan Biologist has explained how nature rights strip away rights from humans and strip them from the poorest people.
In his book, Ogada, who has worked as a biologist for NGOs for more than 18 years, compared nature conservation in Africa to apartheid because “projects are run by whites” who make all the decisions and use black researchers as window dressing, adding: “you suddenly realize that decisions are forced on you by people who are less qualified and often white.” Dr. Ogada told GEO: “Nature conservation in Africa still follows the rules of colonial times: keep black people away from nature so that white people can enjoy it.”
Six gorillas more important than hundreds of Africans: Ogada also illustrates how western values are gravely out of whack, using the example of six poached gorillas at Virunga that made western headlines but not widescale killing and raping of women and children:
Climate Colonialism: ‘The looming land grab in Africa for carbon credits’ – Western carbon offset companies look to lock up ‘a tenth of Liberia’s land mass, a fifth of Zimbabwe’s, & swaths of Kenya, Zambia & Tanzania’
Morano: “We all want a clean, healthy environment. But what they’ve done here is now giving voice to rivers, trees, and land, and obviously, they can’t speak for themselves. So, where is their voice coming from? It’s coming from self-important, self-appointed bureaucrats and activists who will speak on behalf of these inanimate objects.”
The grifters running click-bait media and faux-scientific outlets have mounted a bogus campaign to instill irrational fears by suggesting global warming is increasing human deaths as in this sample of media headlines.
The grifters running click-bait media and faux-scientific outlets have mounted a bogus campaign to instill irrational fears by suggesting global warming is increasing human deaths as in this sample of media headlines.
In contrast, the science, as the graphic data unequivocally shows 1) climate deaths have declined as CO2 has increased because people burned more fossil fuels to stay warm ……and 2) as Lancet research shows, deaths from moderate cold weather far, far, far exceed deaths from extreme heat.
Will the grifters ignorantly outlaw fossil fuel heaters?
The escalating violence in the Middle East caused a disturbance in the global energy market Monday morning after a major oil company announced it is pausing shipments through a crucial shipping lane.
SANA’A, YEMEN – FEBRUARY 28: Houthi fighters ride vehicles that carry coffins of Houthi fighters who were killed in the recent confrontations against forces of the government in Yemen’s gas-rich province of Marib, during a funeral procession on February 28, 2021 in Sana’a, Yemen. Fighting has intensified between the Houthi group and forces of the government over the capturing of Yemen’s gas-rich province of Marib, leaving more than 50 fighters killed, including a senior commander of the government. (Photo by Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images)
The escalating violence in the Middle East caused a disturbance in the global energy market Monday morning after a major oil company announced it is pausing shipments through a crucial shipping lane.
British Petroleum (BP) said that it is halting oil shipments through the Red Sea because of the uptick in attacks launched by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, a militant Islamist group that the Biden administration removed from the “Foreign Terrorist Organization” list in 2021. BP is the latest major company to pause its operations amid the escalating violence in and around the Red Sea, and the announcement prompted a spike in oil prices worldwide, according to CNN.
“In light of the deteriorating security situation for shipping in the Red Sea, BP has decided to temporarily pause all transits through the Red Sea,” a spokesperson for the company told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We will keep this precautionary pause under ongoing review, subject to circumstances as they evolve in the region.” (RELATED: ‘Enabled By Iran’: Pentagon Sheds Light On Drone Attacks Against Ships In Red Sea)
This is an escalation. Saturday morning, a U.S. warship downed a wave of 14 suicide drones launched at once from Houthi-controlled Yemen. @DailyCallerhttps://t.co/3nAekAGEVm
Along with a key Egyptian pipeline, two major straits that bookend the Red Sea handled about 12% of globally traded seaborne oil and 8% of global liquefied natural gas shipments through the first six months of this year, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The news sent oil prices up across the world on Monday, with Brent crude jumping by 2.7% to nearly $79 per barrel and American oil rising by 2.7% up to $73.44 per barrel, according to CNN. In European markets, natural gas contract futures spiked by about 8%.
Before BP decided to halt its Red Sea shipping operations, A.P. Moller-Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd— two major freight shipping firms— announced that they are temporarily preventing their ships from utilizing the southern entrance to the Red Sea, according to the WSJ.
The Houthis have significantly ramped up attacks against commercial interests and U.S. forces in the wake of Hamas’ attack against Israel on Oct. 7. Houthi forces have repeatedly launched missiles and drones at commercial vessels, and the Biden administration has done little in the way of retaliatory or preemptive action against the group.
The Biden administration opted to release 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, when high energy costs were causing political problems for President Joe Biden and fellow Democrats. The vast majority of those releases have not yet been offset, and the SPR, intended to serve as an emergency supply of oil for the U.S. in the event of war or an emergency situation, is at its lowest levels in decades.
Following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, energy experts told the DCNF that the administration’s SPR releases leave the U.S. in a more vulnerable geopolitical and economic position, particularly if the conflict spills over into other parts of the Middle East.
“This is exactly why we have an SPR. But now, we only have half an SPR since Biden sold off half to buy some votes,” Dan Kish, a distinguished senior fellow for the Institute for Energy Research (IER), told the DCNF regarding BP’s announcement.
The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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In Archimedes’ Fulcrum, Professor Gwythian Prins argues that, in the aftermath of the almost complete failure of the 28th COP climate conference, time is up for Net Zero. Instead, he says we need climate policy “as if the environment really mattered” and shows how small legislative changes could have a major impact on the UK’s prospects.
In Archimedes’ Fulcrum, Professor Gwythian Prins argues that, in the aftermath of the almost complete failure of the 28th COP climate conference, time is up for Net Zero. Instead, he says we need climate policy “as if the environment really mattered” and shows how small legislative changes could have a major impact on the UK’s prospects.
Professor Prins, a security and energy expert with decades of experience, says that in our increasingly unstable world ‘luxury beliefs’, chief among them Net Zero, must be jettisoned as a matter of urgency. “Its time is over” he says, as COP28 has made clear.
The paper strips everything back to first principles. It reviews the axiomatic flaws in the science of global warming, and explains how the climate change ‘disease’ has been misdiagnosed. It then goes on to consider the decarbonisation ‘medicine’ that has been prescribed and finds that a green energy transition is impossible, transgressing the laws of physics and engineering.
As a result, the medicine is going to be worse than the disease; policies advanced in good faith in a bid to protect Nature will have the opposite effect. As Professor Prins explains:
The harder Net Zero is pushed, the more it fails. The more it fails, the more it damages the environment, social trust and harmony. It’s high time to supplant eco-religion with reason and evidence. What is to be done? At this geopolitically tense moment, fortune favours the bold. The simplest way is the safest way because it is the most decisive way. That is Archimedes’ Fulcrum – a way to deliver a thermodynamically competent energy transition as if the environment really mattered. Be prepared for some surprises.
Climatologists use a statistical technique called Total Least Squares (TLS), also called orthogonal regression, in their fingerprinting models to fix a problem in ordinary regression methods that can lead to the influence of external forcings being understated. My new paper argues that in typical fingerprinting settings TLS overcorrects and imparts large upward biases, thus overstating the impact of GHG forcing.
I have a new paper in the peer-reviewed journal Environmetrics discussing biases in the “optimal fingerprinting” method which climate scientists use to attribute climatic changes to greenhouse gas emissions. This is the third in my series of papers on flaws in standard fingerprinting methods: blog posts on the first two are here and here.
Climatologists use a statistical technique called Total Least Squares (TLS), also called orthogonal regression, in their fingerprinting models to fix a problem in ordinary regression methods that can lead to the influence of external forcings being understated. My new paper argues that in typical fingerprinting settings TLS overcorrects and imparts large upward biases, thus overstating the impact of GHG forcing.
While the topic touches on climatology, for the most part the details involve regression methods which is what empirical economists like me are trained to do. I teach regression in my econometrics courses and I have studied and used it all my career. I mention this because if anyone objects that I’m not a “climate scientist” my response is: you’re right, I’m an economist which is why I’m qualified to talk about this.
I have previously shown that when the optimal fingerprinting regression is misspecified by leaving out explanatory variables that should be in it, TLS is biased upwards (other authors have also proven this theoretically). In that study I noted that when anthropogenic and natural forcings (ANTH and NAT) are negatively correlated the positive TLS bias increases. My new paper focuses just on this issue since, in practice, climate model-generated ANTH and NAT forcing series are negatively correlated. I show that in this case, even if no explanatory variables have been omitted from the regression, TLS estimates of forcing coefficients are usually too large. Among other things, since TLS-estimated coefficients are plugged into carbon budget models, this will result in a carbon budget being biased too small.
Background
In 1999 climatologists Myles Allen and Simon Tett published a paper in Climate Dynamics in which they proposed a Generalized Least Squares or GLS regression model for detecting the effects of forcings on climate. The IPCC immediately embraced the Allen&Tett method and in the 2001 3rd Assessment Report hailed it as the way to show a causal link between greenhouse forcing and observed climate change. It’s been relied upon ever since by the “fingerprinting” community and the IPCC. In 2021 I published a Comment in Climate Dynamics showing that the Allen & Tett method has theoretical flaws and that the arguments supporting its claim to be a valid method were false. I provided a non-technical explainer through the Global Warming Policy Foundation website. Myles Allen made a brief reply, to which I responded and then economist Richard Tol provided further comments. The exchange is at the GWPF website. My comment was published by Climate Dynamics in summer 2021, has been accessed over 21,000 times and its Altmetric score remains in the top 1% of all scientific articles published since that date. Two and a half years later Allen and Tett have yet to submit a reply.
Note: I just saw that a paper by Chinese statisticians Hanyue Chen et al. partially responding to my critique was published by Climate Dynamics. This is weird. In fall 2021 Chen et al submitted the paper to Climate Dynamics and I was asked to provide one of the referee reports, which I did. The paper was rejected. Now it’s been published even though the handling editor confirmed it was rejected. I’ve queried Climate Dynamics to find out what’s going on and they are investigating.
One of the arguments against my critique was that the Allen and Tett paper had been superseded by Allen and Stott 2001. While that paper incorporated the same incorrect theory from Allen and Tett 1999, its refinement was to replace the GLS regression step with TLS as a solution to the problem that the climate model-generated ANTH and NAT “signals” are noisy estimates of the unobservable true signals. In a regression model if your explanatory variables have random errors in them, GLS yields coefficient estimates that tend to be biased low.
This problem is well-known in econometrics. Long before Allen and Stott 2001, econometricians had shown that a method called Instrumental Variables (IV) could remedy it and yield unbiased and consistent coefficient estimates. Allen and Stott didn’t mention IV; instead they proposed TLS and the entire climatology field simply followed their lead. But does TLS solve the problem?
No one has been able to prove that it does except under very restrictive assumptions and you can’t be sure if they hold or not. If they don’t hold, then TLS generates unreliable results, which is why researchers in other fields don’t like it. The problem is that TLS requires more information than the data set contains. This requires the researcher to make arbitrary assumptions to reduce the number of parameters needing to be estimated. The most common assumption is that the error variances are the same on the dependent and explanatory variables alike.
The typical application involves regressing a dependent “Y” variable on a bunch of explanatory “X” variables, and in the errors-in-variables case we assume the latter are unavailable. Instead we observe “W’s” which are noisy approximations to the X’s. Suppose we assume the variances of the errors on the X’s are all the same and equal S times the variance of the errors on the Y variable. If this turns out to be true, so S=1, and we happen to assume S=1, TLS can in some circumstances yield unbiased coefficients. But in general we don’t know if S=1, and if it doesn’t, TLS can go completely astray.
In the limited literature discussing properties of TLS estimators it is usually assumed that the explanatory variables are uncorrelated. As part of my work on the fingerprinting method I obtained a set of model-generated climate signals from CMIP5 models and I noticed that the ANTH and NAT signals are always negatively correlated (the average correlation coefficient is -0.6). I also noticed that the signals don’t have the same variances (which is a separate issue from the error terms not having the same variances).
The experiment
In my new paper I set up an artificial fingerprinting experiment in which I know the correct answer in advance and I can vary several parameters which affect the outcome: the error variance ratio S; the correlation between the W’s; and the relative variances of the X’s. I ran repeated experiments based in turn on the assumption that the true value of beta (the coefficient connecting GHG’s to observed climate change) is 0 or 1. Then I measured the biases that arise when using TLS and GLS (GLS in this case is equivalent to OLS, or ordinary least squares).
These graphs show the coefficient biases using OLS when the experiment is run on simulated X’s with average relative variances (see the paper for versions where the relative variances are lower or higher).
The left panel is the case when the true value of beta = 0 (which implies no influence of GHGs on climate) and the right is the case when true beta=1 (which implies the GHG influence is “detected” and the climate models are consistent with observations). The lines aren’t the same length because not all parameter combinations are theoretically possible. The horizontal axis measures the correlation between the observed signals, which in the data I’ve seen is always less than -0.2. The vertical axis measures the bias in the fingerprinting coefficient estimate. The colour coding refers to the assumed value of S. Blue is S=0, which is the situation in which the X’s are measured without error so OLS is unbiased, which is why the blue line tracks the horizontal (zero bias) axis. From black to grey corresponds to S rising from 0 to just under 1, and red corresponds to S=1. Yellow and green correspond to S >1.
As you can see, if true beta=0, OLS is unbiased; but if beta = 1 or any other positive value, OLS is biased downward as expected. However the bias goes to zero as S goes to 0. In practice, you can shrink S by using averages of multiple ensemble runs.
Here are the biases for TLS in the same experiments:
There are some notable differences. First, the biases are usually large and positive, and they don’t necessarily go away even if S=0 (or S=1). If the true value of beta =1, then there are cases in which the TLS coefficient is unbiased. But how would you know if you are in that situation? You’d need to know what S is, and what the true value of beta is. But of course you don’t (if you did, you wouldn’t need to run the regression!)
What this means is that if an optimal fingerprinting regression yields a large positive coefficient on the ANTH signal this might mean GHG’s affect the climate, or it might mean that they don’t (the true value of beta=0) and TLS is simply biased. The researcher cannot tell which is the case just by looking at the regression results. In the paper I explain some diagnostics that help indicate if TLS can be used, but ultimately relying on TLS requires assuming you are in a situation in which TLS is reliable.
The results are particularly interesting when the true value of beta=0. A fingerprinting, or “signal detection” test starts by assuming beta=0 then constructing a t-statistic using the estimated coefficients. OLS and GLS are fine for this since if beta=0 the coefficient estimates are unbiased. But if beta=0 a t-statistic constructed using the TLS coefficient can be severely biased. The only cases in which TLS is reliably unbiased occur when beta is not zero. But you can’t run a test of beta=0 that depends on the assumption that beta is not zero. Any such test is spurious and meaningless.
Which means that the past 20 years worth of “signal detection” claims are likely meaningless unless steps were taken in the original articles to prove the suitability of TLS or verify its results with another nonbiased estimator.
I was unsuccessful in getting this paper published in the two climate science journals to which I submitted it. In both cases the point on which the paper was rejected was a (climatologist) referee insisting S is known in fingerprinting applications and always equals 1/root(n) where n is the number of runs in an ensemble mean. But S only takes that value if, for each ensemble member, S is assumed to equal 1. One reviewer conceded the possibility that S might be unknown but pointed out that it’s long been known TLS is unreliable in that case and I haven’t provided a solution to the problem.
In my submission to Environmetrics I provided the referee comments that had led to its rejection in climate journals and explained how I expanded the text to state why it is not appropriate to assume S=1. I also asked that at least one reviewer be a statistician, and as it turned out both were. One of them, after noting that statisticians and econometricians don’t like TLS, added:
“it seems to me that the target audience of the paper are practitioners using TLS quite acritically for climatological applications. How large is this community and how influential are conclusions drawn on the basis of TLS, say in the scientific debate concerning attribution?”
In my reply I did my best to explain its influence on the climatology field. I didn’t add, but could have, that 20 years’ worth of applications of TLS are ultimately what brought 100,000 bigwigs to Dubai for COP28 to demand the phaseout of the world’s best energy sources based on estimates of the role of anthropogenic forcings on the climate that are likely heavily overstated. Based on the political impact and economic consequences of its application, TLS is one of the most influential statistical methodologies in the world, despite experts viewing it as highly unreliable compared to readily available alternatives like IV.
Another reviewer said:
“TLS seems to generate always poor performances compared to the OLS. Nonetheless, TLS seems to be the ‘standard’ in fingerprint applications… why is the TLS so popular in physics-related applications?”
Good question! My guess is because it keeps generating answers that climatologists like and they have no incentive to come to terms with its weaknesses. But you don’t have to step far outside climatology to find genuine bewilderment that people use it instead of IV.
Conclusion
For more than 20 years climate scientists—virtually alone among scientific disciplines—have used TLS to estimate anthropogenic GHG signal coefficients despite its tendency to be unreliable unless some strong assumptions hold that in practice are unlikely to be true. Under conditions which easily arise in optimal fingerprinting, TLS yields estimates with large positive biases. Thus any study that has used TLS for optimal fingerprinting without verifying that it is appropriate in the specific data context has likely overstated the result.
In my paper I discuss how a researcher might go about trying to figure out whether TLS is justified in a specific application, but it’s not always possible. In many cases it would be better to use OLS even though it’s known to be biased downward. The problem is that TLS typically has even bigger biases in the opposite direction and there is no sure way of knowing how bad they are. These biases carry over to the topic of “carbon budgets” which are now being cited by courts in climate litigation including here in Canada. TLS-derived signal coefficients yield systematically underestimated carbon budgets.
The IV estimation method has been known at least since the 1960s to be asymptotically unbiased in the errors-in-variables case, yet climatologists don’t use it. So the predictable next question is why haven’t I done a fingerprinting regression using IV methods? I have, but it will be a while before I get the results written up and in the meantime the technique is widely known so anyone who wants to can try it and see what happens.
Republican Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti filed a consumer protection lawsuit Monday against BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager and a leading proponent of Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) investing.
Republican Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti
Republican Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti filed a consumer protection lawsuit Monday against BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager and a leading proponent of Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) investing.
The consumer protection suit alleges that BlackRock has misled Tennessean consumers about the scale and impacts of its ESG initiatives for several years. The suit further alleges that BlackRock’s own policies and corporate voting records demonstrate that its ESG push bleeds into financial products that are marketed as non-ESG funds, despite the company’s statements that it allocates capital where its clients request as a fiduciary.
“We allege that BlackRock’s inconsistent statements about its investment strategies deprived consumers of the ability to make an informed choice,” Skrmetti said in a statement. “Some public statements show a company that focuses exclusively on return on investment, others show a company that gives special consideration to environmental factors. Ultimately, I want to make certain that corporations, no matter their size, treat Tennessee consumers fairly and honestly.” (RELATED: Jim Jordan Hits Major Financial Institutions With Subpoenas)
Nikki Haley Meets With BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Other Wall Street Eliteshttps://t.co/2CHInqgu4g
BlackRock has more than $8 trillion in assets under management, according to the lawsuit. Because of its size and diverse holdings, the company has considerable influence over many American firms because of its large shareholder voting blocs, which Skrmetti alleges the company uses to push its own policies and preferences, including ESG policies that advance the decarbonization and climate agendas.
“We reject the Attorney General’s claims and will vigorously contest any accusations that BlackRock violated Tennessee’s consumer protection laws. Contrary to the Attorney General’s claims, BlackRock fully and accurately discloses our investment practices and our approach to proxy voting,” a BlackRock spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “On behalf of our clients, BlackRock has invested approximately $40 billion in Tennessee, and we are helping more than 600,000 hard working Tennesseans retire with dignity. We are proud of our contribution and committed to the future in Tennessee.”
Many of BlackRock’s clients are institutional investors, including pension funds, endowments and foundations, official institutions, and financial institutions, according to the lawsuit.
“BlackRock has agreed to use all of the assets in their portfolio to push the net-zero agenda,” Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, told the DCNF. “If you have a dollar invested in BlackRock, you’re invested in an ESG fund.”
Conservative officials have sharply criticized ESG investing in the past for injecting politicized considerations into the traditional model of investing, in which maximizing returns is the top priority.
BlackRock’s ESG investing has drawn the scrutiny of Republican state officials in the past as well. Several red states, such as Louisiana and Missouri, have divested tens of millions of dollars of state assets from the firm and some of its competitors that similarly promote ESG investment. More recently, BlackRock and several of its prominent competitors have been involved in a House Judiciary Committee investigation into potential collusive agreements to push ESG.
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I mentioned the Clean Heat Market Mechanism last week. This is the new government scheme which will fine UK gas and oil boiler manufacturers if they don’t hit targets for heat pump installations.
I mentioned the Clean Heat Market Mechanism last week. This is the new government scheme which will fine UK gas and oil boiler manufacturers if they don’t hit targets for heat pump installations.
Worcester Bosch have produced this factsheet:
On 30th November 2023, the Government published their long-awaited response to the Clean Heat Market Mechanism (CHMM)which as of the 1st January 2024 will become effective with some minor amendments.
The CHMM is intended to increase the slow uptake progress of Heat Pumps by placing an obligation on boiler manufacturers to increase the consumer demand for heat pumps or hybrid systems.
Why has the Clean Heat Market Mechanism been introduced?
The CHMM was introduced to aid the UK in its commitment to achieving Net Zero CO2 emissions by 2050 and to reach this goal, the Government is targeting 600k heat pumps to be installed annually by 2028.
The CHMM has been developed to speed up the adoption of heat pumps in UK homes as the present installation rate for heat pumps is around 60,000 annually, whilst the installation rate for boilers is upwards of 1.5m.
To achieve the target of Net Zero it is necessary to use alternative technologies to heat our homes. Whilst there are several technologies being trialled and developed the most immediately available is electrically powered heat pumps or hybrid systems.
One of the highest contributors to CO2 is from home heating and hot water production which is estimated to account for 16% of the national total. Currently, natural gas-fired heating and hot water systems are presently installed in around 23m UK homes with a further 1.5m homes that are off the gas grid using Oil or LPG.
How this effects Worcester Bosch?
In year one of the scheme, manufacturers of boilers and heat pumps will have to match or substitute 4% of their boiler sales with heat pumps. This rises to 6% in year two and gradually increases year on year until around 25% of their boiler sales are matched or substituted with heat pumps or hybrid systems.
Manufacturers must submit their ‘factory gate’ boiler sales to the scheme managers so their target quota of heat pumps can be set. The quota can only be met by;
An installed and registered heat pump via MCS, (Micro Certification Scheme).
An installed and registered heat pump with MCS will qualify for one credit towards their target, a hybrid system qualifies for 0.5 credits.
Heat pump sales into retrofit situations, (Heat pump installations into new build use cases are excluded).
For every heat pump or hybrid that the manufacturer is short of their target they will be fined £3,000 or alternatively they may have the opportunity to purchase a credit from a non-obligated heat pump manufacturer (that is a heat pump manufacturer who doesn’t sell boilers).
According to industry forecasts, the market for heat pumps for 2023 is likely to be around 65,000 units and central forecasts show the market increasing to around 80,000 appliances in 2024, with around half of these being installed into new build applications (and therefore not being counted towards a target quota within the CHMM).
This will result in a 2024 retrofit market of around 40,000 heat pumps for all manufacturers to compete for. Based on a boiler market of over 1,500,000, the CHMM is setting targets of around 60,000 into retrofit installations in year one (currently 50% above the forecast market size for this type of installation) and increasing to 90,000 in year two before rising to 450,000 in year four. In short, the heat pump market will not support the volume the CHMM requires, and penalties are therefore inevitable.
Achieving the Clean Heat Market Mechanism quota
We have been consulting with the Government over the past year on how the CHMM can be delivered.
The impact assessment for the CHMM was published in April 2023 and this has now changed given recent developments, namely the Prime Ministers statement in September 2023 which included the following changes:
The deferment of the ban on Oil and LPG boilers from 2026 to 2035, (effectively reducing the market potential for heat pumps until that date by upwards of 60,000 heat pumps or hybrids annually).
The announcement that around 20% of homes will be exempted from having a heat pump.
The scrapping of a requirement for Landlords to raise the EPC rating of their properties to a Band Level C by 2028.
Clean Heat Market Mechanism implications to Worcester Bosch
The final CHMM scheme announced on 30th November 2023 does not exist at sufficient scale in the UK domestic market for manufacturers to satisfy the proposed CHMM quotas and will result in significant penalties for the gas boiler industry.
Whilst the government is stating that the scheme has been designed to not penalise manufacturers with fines, the targets that have been set are clearly unachievable within the timescales allowed. Therefore, it is inevitable that manufacturers will be fined heavily which puts many of them into either a non-profit situation or even loss making from as soon as years one or two of the scheme.
Consequently, to continue as a business we are regrettably forced to pass these fines on to the market in the form of a CHMM levy on every one of our gas & oil boilers. The increase is £120 per boiler in year one of the scheme, exactly equivalent to the CHMM requirement. Worcester Bosch will not benefit in anyway and interestingly, neither will market growth for heat pumps as the revenue raised from the fines will go to the Treasury and not be used to grow demand for heat pumps. This does, however, support the governments’ overall goal of closing the price gap between a gas boiler and heat pump installation.
We will continue to monitor and observe the scheme and will remove or reduce this “CHMM levy” in line with policy changes or exponential growth in heat pump demand though both currently seem unlikely to materialise in the near future.
As they note, next year they must hold credits representing qualifying heat pump installations equivalent to 4% of their sales of gas and oil boilers. This equates to a target of 60,000 heat pumps next year.
To complicate matters, there is a minimum threshold as the DESNZ explain:
If a manufacturer does not sell enough heat pumps, it must buy credits on the market, or pay the fine. According to Worcester Bosch, the UK market for heat pumps next year is likely to fall about 20,000 short of the 60,000 target, though individual manufacturers will be worse affected in relative terms if they don’t sell heat pumps. (Heat pump installations in new homes are excluded from the scheme).
But next year is just the tip of the iceberg, as the heat pump target is dramatically increased in the next few years. In 2025, the target will rise to 6%, but the Government plans to increase to raise it to 400,000 units by 2028, effectively around a quarter of all boiler sales:
This simply is not going to happen. If customers don’t want to buy them now, even with big government subsidies, they won’t want them in four years time either. The Government certainly won’t be able to afford to hand out subsidies at that level anyway.
If heat pump sales remain around 40,000 a year, that would leave a shortfall of 360,000. And at £3000 a time, that adds up to an industry fine of £1.08 billion in 2028, or about £600 per boiler.
In short, if you dare to defy the government and have a gas boiler fitted in five years time, you must pay a £600 fine.
FOOTNOTE
The Government’s Consultation Document considered the question of non-UK manufacturers:
In other words, they want to extend the Scheme to non-UK manufacturers. I suspect the chances of that happening are net zero!
Will a manufacturer in, say, Germany willingly pay millions in fines? Silly question really.
And there is nothing legally that the Government can do to enforce it. If it tries to punish that business in some other way, the EU would quickly react.
With UK manufacturers facing fines that could literally put them out of business, we will quickly see imports replacing UK manufacture and loss of jobs.
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