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.
Watch as Mark skillfully dismantles the myths surrounding the climate change discourse and traces the evolving narrative back to the 1970s.
Watch as Mark skillfully dismantles the myths surrounding the climate change discourse and traces the evolving narrative back to the 1970s.
Currently large parts of Germany are experiencing mild temperatures and heavy rains, which have led to plenty of flooding.
From NoTricksZone
By P Gosselin on 24. December 2023
Flood damage
Currently large parts of Germany are experiencing mild temperatures and heavy rains, which have led to plenty of flooding.
Today while making photos of the flooding situation here for a blog post, I adventurously attempted to cross a flooded area by going tree-to-tree. Somewhere along the way the phone slipped out of my pocket. Ultimately the search and rescue operation failed and I ended up coming home up soaked to my waste, minus my mobile phone. What a way to start the Christmas!
Heavy rains, flooding in Germany
Not long ago, climate experts were blaming Germany’s 2019-2022 drought on climate change. But now all the headlines are on flooding as heavy rains have soaked much of Europe over the past weeks.
I’ve been recording the amount of rainfall at my home since July 2020:
So far this December we’ve recorded 151 mm, the most since I started recording, and much rain is in the forecast over the coming days. This year, 2023, we’ve seen 1088 mm so far.
The summer of 2022 was particularly dry, which led media to holler drought was “the new normal”. Now we have the next “new normal”: flooding.
Wishing everyone a relaxing Christmas!
PS: Donations to replace the phone would of course be very welcome. God bless, everybody!
In the first of a new series based on The Heartland Institute’s Climate at a Glance for Teachers and Students, research fellow Linnea Lueken presents the facts about cold spells, the polar vortex, and their connection (or lack thereof) to global warming.
In the first of a new series based on The Heartland Institute’s Climate at a Glance for Teachers and Students, research fellow Linnea Lueken presents the facts about cold spells, the polar vortex, and their connection (or lack thereof) to global warming.
Presenters, in order: Arthur Viterito, James Kamis, Wyss Yim, Brian Catt
Presenters, in order: Arthur Viterito, James Kamis, Wyss Yim, Brian Catt
0:00 Introduction
01:46 Art Viterito: Mid-Ocean Geothermal Flux
23:53 James Kamis: The Plate Climatology Theory
42:34 Wyss Yim: Geothermal impacts of volcanoes
01:09:03 Brian Catt: Do Submarine Volcanoes Change Climate?
01:41:51 Q and A
Slides for this podcast: https://tomn.substack.com/p/impacts-of-geothermal-energy-on-climate
The German government’s CO2 price increase beginning from January 2024 will make petrol, heating and electricity more expensive.
From NoTricksZone
By P Gosselin on 23. December 2023
The German government’s CO2 price increase beginning from January 2024 will make petrol, heating and electricity more expensive.
Already Germany’s industry is shrinking rapidly and farmers are now protesting nationally due to high fuels costs:
These protests are rapidly expanding and a national day of protest in planned for January 8, 2024. Many of the working class are expected to join in.
Yet, Germany’s Socialist-Green government, led by Olaf Scholz, continues to stick to its plans to drastically increase the carbon price, beginning in January, and thus make life for millions even more painful.
Currently the price is 30 euros per ton and it will rise to 45 euros per ton beginning in 2024.
“As a result, the cost of refueling, heating and electricity will continue to rise.” reports Blackout News here.
Not only will this fuel inflation, but will also only further exacerbate a discontent that it is approaching the boiling over point. Social unrest threatens.
“Heating costs in Germany will continue to rise in the coming year. According to the comparison portal “Verivox”, the price of gas will rise by 0.39 cents per kilowatt hour, while heating oil will become 4.8 cents more expensive per liter. For an average family with a heating requirement of 20,000 kilowatt hours, this means additional annual costs of 78 euros for gas and 96 euros for heating oil. These increases come on top of already high energy prices and place a further burden on households,” according to Blackout News.
The CO2 tax increase will also impact the prices at the gas pump and be felt by both both consumers and businesses.
There’s also no end in the rise in electricity price for consumers, as power grid charges go into effect and there alone consumers will be burdened another 100 euros annually.
The government is also introducing a jet fuel tax for domestic flights in a bid to herd more citizens into trains and buses.
Even the press in Germany – largely center-left – have criticized “the back door” tax hikes.
Truly our freedom of movement is in peril.
From Science Matters
By Ron Clutz
Levi Russell writes at Heartland The Rush to Force Everyone into Electric Vehicles is Imploding. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
A recently published article in the peer-reviewed academic journal Transportation Research tells us that cars, even the supposedly anointed battery electric variety, are far too convenient and that the state must be empowered to “restrict car use.” The authors tell us that converting car lanes to bus lanes have reduced car use in Oslo. No surprise there. The fact that academia is floating this sort of policy should concern anyone who has any inkling of mistrust of the federal government.
Truly our freedom of movement is in peril.
Electric vehicles are not nearly as popular as their advocates would have had us believe, as sales are now slumping in the face of rising interest rates and a lack of so-called fast chargers. As we begin to bump up against mined mineral constraints and international relations complications, there’s no doubt the cost of making these glorified toys will continue to rise. A recent Consumer Reports publication shows that, over the last 3 model years, electric vehicles are less reliable than normal gasoline and diesel vehicles. So, several states want to ban the sale of reliable, inexpensive gas and diesel cars and force us to buy less reliable electric cars. Note well that the superior reliability of hybrids is likely down to the fact that car makers who are better known for their reliability make more hybrids. There’s nothing inherent to a hybrid that would make it more reliable than a gasoline engine vehicle.
[And in addition: No one wants to buy used EVs and they’re piling up in weed-infested graveyards Fortune magazine. No One Wants Used EVs, Making New Ones a Tougher Sell Too Bloomberg ]
Even our ability to travel using air travel is under the gun. A CNN op-ed recently floated the idea of limiting air travel through the use of carbon (read: sin) passports. We will be limited to traveling based on the amount of carbon dioxide emitted during the flight. The author wants this applied to cruise ships as well. It’s not hard to see this applied to your car as well.
Of course, such rules will not apply to the super-wealthy climate grifters.
They’ll be jetting all over the globe for their very important climate conferences.
And it’s not just transportation. In September, Reuters “fact checked” a claim that US cities had agreed to limit meat consumption, finding the claim false. And yet, we are told on a nearly daily basis that eliminating beef consumption is necessary to save the planet. The sin of using coal (but not apparently to create steel) has become the sin of eating a steak. What’s next? Rice? Pork?
Beginning in 2024, the German government will empower local electricity providers to limit the flow of electricity to heat pumps and electric cars. Such limits were the stuff of alleged conspiracy theories mere months ago. Now they’re a reality. Germany’s suicidal attempt to power their grid with nothing but wind and solar, killing off their own nuclear power generation over the last 20 years, has led to energy rationing. It’s not as if this is unpredictable. The unreliability of so-called renewables is common knowledge among energy experts.
It’s sensible for those who are concerned about their ability to choose where and when they travel, what they eat, and when they turn on their heaters and air conditioners to be skeptical of every single attempt to accrue more power by state and federal governments. That skepticism should turn into activism against these power grabs. Anyone who tells you these power grabs aren’t coming is telling you not to believe your own eyes.
Canada poised to pass rules that all new vehicles must be zero-emissions by 2035 Source Financial Post
The act to be announced in coming days aims
to phase out the sale of new combustion vehicles
The new rules will require zero-emissions vehicles — which include battery electric, hydrogen and plug-in electric vehicles — to make up 20 per cent of all new car sales in 2026, 60 per cent in 2030 and 100 per cent in 2035, the reports said.
I know, it’s endemic already…
I know, it’s endemic already…
From Climate Scepticism
BY JIT
I have a theory – which I may have mentioned before in these pages – that a sizeable chunk of the threat that climate change poses to the natural world could be demonstrated to be an illusion by pure logic, if anyone had the time, or as importantly the inclination, to collect the data.
There is a well-known principle in human life that looks matter. You can call this “beauty bias” if you like, or “ugly people are unfairly deemed malevolent at a glance.” Something similar occurs in the human perception of animals. Cute things are vulnerable, and horrible things are dangerous. It’s an instinct we have. See here for a discussion. There are odd-balls like me who like spiders. But that just means that the horror most people have of arachnids then rubs off on the arachnologist.
I allege that because scientists are humans and not disinterested automatons, they are more likely to look for threats against cute animals, and to look for reasons why horrible animals will spread. So goes my theory. And it would be easy to test, simply by canvassing the literature.
The climate “crisis” being the alpha and omega of threats to the natural world now, horrible creatures will swarm in the warm future, while cute things will inevitably dwindle in overbearing heat.
An example of a creature that unequivocally falls into the “horrible” caste is the mosquito, which, given the above, will therefore become more abundant and invade areas it is presently absent from, bringing with it nasty viruses or protozoans.
You can describe the available places that a particular species might live using the concept called the “niche.” There are two main kinds.
The first is the fundamental niche, which can be thought of as an n-dimensional space with each dimension defined by some environmental parameter or another. The most obvious would be the maximum and minimum temperatures that a particular species can tolerate. There are also things like salinity and humidity and rather more intangible meteorological phenomena like rainfall. This envelope encloses the range of environments that our species could potentially inhabit.
The second kind is the realised niche. This is the subset of the fundamental niche that is actually occupied by the relevant species. As an example, there are some kinds of plant that are restricted to saltmarsh. But most of these could happily grow inland given the chance. Inland, they are easily crowded out by more vigorous species; but on the saltmarsh, their higher environmental tolerance gives them a place they can grow where the more vigorous species cannot.
Using climate models, if you believe that sort of thing, you can map the present and future fundamental niche of a particular species, given information about its environmental tolerances. You can also map its realised niche from existing occurrence data, and give an impression of what its realised niche might be given a particular climate change scenario.
This is not as easy as it sounds. To take another saltmarsh example: if we think sea level is going to rise, that might mean that the realised niche of sea aster will move up the marsh. Will it though? The places into which we think sea aster is going to spread are already occupied by coarse grasses. Perhaps these will be less vigorous with an inundation or two a year – but perhaps not. Whether the community will change is not an easy matter to decide.
With that as a preamble, you’re probably beginning to wonder What The Hell Jit is on about this time. Well, I’m on about this:
A couple of weeks ago the UK Health Security Agency put out a giant report about the effects of climate change on health in, er, the UK. It can be had here. There was lots in it. But most of the papers picked up on the killer mosquito angle.
The story goes like this. There is a mosquito called Aedes albopictus, (the Asian tiger! It’s stripy, and comes from Asia, and it bites humans, get it? However, there are other stripy kinds, which could cause confusion to the non-specialist punter) which is known to transmit dengue, which will become established in the UK because Teh Climate Crisis will make the UK climate suitable for it, which will therefore lead to it transmitting dengue to hapless UK citizens minding their own business.
As it happens, the report itself is not as hysterical as the headlines. But it does itself no favours.
Here is the chain of reasoning:
A. albopictus is not in the UK.
The UK is currently not within the fundamental niche of A. albopictus, which is why it is not here.
A. albopictus has arrived in the UK and will arrive here again and again but has not established itself because it is too cold here, and would not, except…
With climate change, the UK will become suitable for A. albopictus, so that one of these colonisation events will result in the mosquito finally establishing itself.
Because A. albopictus is known to transmit dengue, it will transmit dengue when it becomes established here.
Dengue will become established in the UK, and people will die needlessly.
We have to reduce “carbon” emissions.
There are a number of problems here. According to the estimate of Proestus et al 2015, the UK is already almost entirely suitable habitat for the UK. Under those estimates, climate change makes no difference to the probability of establishment of the mosquito, even using the deprecated RCP8.5 Armageddon scenario (spot the difference in the two maps below). And if it is true that the UK is not currently suitable, it perhaps would have been better if the UKHSA had not also used RCP8.5 scenario to predict future temperatures.
The next point is that even though a habitat is physically suitable (remembering the fundamental niche concept) it does not follow necessarily that a species will become established, because ecological interactions come into play (the realised niche). There are already plenty of mosquitoes in the genus Aedes in the UK, and it is at least plausible that the newcomer will fail to establish because of competition with the incumbents, particularly through the production of low-fitness hybrids (so-called “satyrisation” – discussed in relation to this species and A. aegypti by Lounibos & Juliano 2018). If the mosquitoes do become established, there is no reason to suppose that dengue will become established. One particular problem is that to transmit dengue, a mosquito has to bite an infected human, and then bite a non-infected human. As the only source of dengue is imported humans, this process is inevitably a rare and therefore unlikely occurrence. Humans in the UK just do not get bitten as much as people in some parts of the world, because we have better-quality housing (pro tem) than many parts of the world. There may be little flare-ups of dengue based around one individual, but it seems unlikely that this will persist. This is particularly the case because we have this thing called winter, which would enable infected individuals to clear the virus before mosquitoes become active in the following summer. That is the case come hell, high water, or RCP8.5.
In my estimation, there is not a cat’s chance in hell that dengue will become established in the UK. I would not, however, be surprised if A. albopictus becomes established here. But there is no need to panic. Introduced species are by and large not as terrifying as they are predicted to be. What proportion of introduced species live up to the hype around their arrival is another interesting topic.
As for satyrisation reducing the fitness of invasive mosquitoes: do satyrs have low fitness? Remember folks, it has nothing to do with their looks. It’s all about how well they play the flute.
Featured image
A snip from “Mosquito Extermination in New York City” by George A. Soper
This document just released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency takes the cake.
From Watts Up With That?
From Government Oversight & Accounability
By GAO Webadmin,
This document just released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency takes the cake.
Particularly on the heels of this email from a well-placed (and he wants you to know it!) Washington lawyer to his alma mater, UCLA Law School.
Lookie here:
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