Day: February 11, 2024

Weaponizing ‘The Science’

If a thing, an idea, an opinion, or a consensus is contemporary is just means it “exists now”.  The fact that it could or does “exist now” means that it could have been different in the past and might be different in the future. 

From Watts Up With That?

Guest Opinion by Kip Hansen

Two of my favorite substackers, William “Matt” Briggs and Roger Pielke Jr., have articles up that touch on the subject of what is disparagingly known as “The Science”. 

The initial caps version – The Science – invariably means the opinions about some scientific subject held by those telling you to Follow The Science.  It very often means a strong consensus position being promoted or enforced by a group advocating some particular belief about a scientific topic or policy position prescribed by those holding that belief.  And there are too many of these today to list – one The Science for almost each and every topic you might choose to mention.

Now, there is nothing wrong with any group, even a professional association, like the American Heart Association,  the American Lung Association (ALA) or the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), having a group consensus position on a topic that falls under their purview.   The AAP even has whole section of their website dedicated to advocacy, which includes such things as advocating to keeping guns out of the reach and hands of kids and making sure kids get their childhood illnesses vaccinations.

The problem comes when we see things like this, as related by Pielke Jr.:

“In September, 2022 California Governor Gavin Newsome signed into law a bill that prohibited medical professionals from sharing “misinformation” with patients. Specifically, the law stated that it would be:

[U]nprofessional conduct for a physician and surgeon to disseminate misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19.

The law defined “misinformation”:

“Misinformation” means false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.”

And there you have it….California passed a law that threatens the professional license of any medical professional who shares their professional opinion or any information that contradicts a  “contemporary scientific consensus”.  It is considered “false” because it contradicts the current consensus.  And in this case about a topic that has a lot of controversy and a broad range of opinion.

The “contemporary scientific consensus”  thus becomes legally enforceable under State law. 

Let’s parse that: 

Contemporary:  If a thing, an idea, an opinion, or a consensus is contemporary is just means it “exists now”.  The fact that it could or does “exist now” means that it could have been different in the past and might be different in the future. 

Scientific:  Simply means “Scientific is used to describe things that relate to science or to a particular science”.  When “scientific” is used as an adjective in today’s language, it is often used as code word for “true or truth”. 

Consensus:  Even the meaning of the word “consensus” is a bit controversial.  Its core meaning is that of “a generally accepted opinion; wide agreement”.  Some dictionaries use “unanimity” as a synonym but unanimity means “agreement by all people involved”, which is close but gets no prize. There will be varying opinions, but for this essay today, I will differentiate between consensus – something which is generally accepted or has wide agreement – as different from unanimity which carries the concept that everyone agrees.  This is a bit tricky because a consensus reached by a democratic group would be a statement with which all, or almost all,  can agree.

Pielke Jr. argues like this: “The notion of consensus-as-truth has been operationalized in various forms: journalistic “fact checkers,” academic “misinformation” researchers, and content moderation on social media platforms. The practical effect is the creation of self-appointed arbiters of truth — journalists, academics, social media platforms, and even governments — who render judgments on acceptable and unacceptable speech according to conformance with an acceptable view.”

And goes on to say:

“The notion of consensus-as-truth can create obstacles to improving understandings. In re-reading Oreskes 2004 on climate consensus for the first time in a while I was struck by this comment:

This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. [Oreskes 2004]

This is completely backwards — scientific assessments are an interpretive snapshot of what a scientific literature says about specific scientific claims. When done properly, they are a useful characterization of what is often a large amount of published research. But make no mistake — the scientific literature does not “agree” with assessments, the literature informs the assessments.”  [ emphasis mine – kh ]

The assessments Pielke Jr. refers to are the “consensus statements” arrived at by the IPCC committees in the science chapters, by far more often, the consensus statements agreed upon by the politicians writing the Summaries for Policy Makers, which then get represented in the media as talking points as the “contemporary scientific consensus” on climate change – by which the media and politicians really mean “the truth about climate change”.

Peilke Jr. uses this illustration from  Clark et al. 2023 to make a point about the “consequence[s] of scientific censorship” noting that “Assume that each piece of evidence is equally weighty. Censorship that obstructs evidence against X will produce a peer-reviewed literature that concludes that X is true when most likely it is not.“  There are 11 papers which conclude “X is not true” and only 6 which conclude “X is true”,  but 5 “X is true” were published, and only 1 “X is not true” got past the academic censorship and made it into press.

Have we seen this recently?  Of course, in the Covid Origin Wars and consistently for many years in the Climate Wars. 

When Clark or Pielke Jr. use the word “censorship” they don’t just mean that a specific person or viewpoint is forbidden to be spoken or printed.  Academic Censorship is when academic journals consciously, out of fear of pushback or out of blatant bias either refuse publish, refuse to consider or refuse even to send for review papers that on their face are contradictory to consensus positions.   In the image with stars we see only one dissenting paper made it into press. 

We saw this regarding a paper from Alimonti et al. just last year in which a team of Climate Crisis scientists raised havoc in the mass media (really, Climate Crisis News Cabal outlets) and bullied the editors of a high ranking scientific publisher to retract an already peer-reviewed, approved, and published paper. [ here, here, here ]. The authors tell the story from their viewpoint here: .pdf.

And what about the censorship-by-bias in the Main Stream Media?  You only see or hear news when some news outlet makes the decision to have a journalist cover a story and then decides to publish it.  Even if actually published, a story may be “buried on page 29”.  In our electronic world, only front-page stories or pages elected for broad exposure as “click bait” or “push news” arrive at the majority of readers/viewers.  Which stories those are results from decisions of editors who are constrained  by their Editorial Boards and Editorial Narratives.

William “Matt” Briggs takes a slightly different approach – he is, after all, a statistician.  He talks about the probability of some proposition, written in statistician-ese as Pr(Y).  Pr mean ‘the probability of” and of Y, being the proposition, such as Covid originated in a Lab in China,  based on the Evidence provided to be considered E,  which in the end becomes Pr(Y|E) – read as “the probability of Y given evidence E”. 

That, he says, “is, or should be, all of science.“

Every science finding, every point of scientific “truth” is based on a Pr(Y|E), the probability of the proposition “Y” [ say, rising  CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere cause dangerous global warming ] being true —- wait for it, here is the pivot point —- given this particular set of evidence “E”.

If one changes the set of evidence, adds something or subtracts something, as we do everyday in the journals of science, then the Pr(Y|E)  changes because the “E” has changed – and you can not and do not ever ever ever (like really, never) have simply a probability of Y – it must be, is always always always Pr(Y|E).  The probability, you can just consider this as meaning “the probability that this statement / view / proposition / etc.  is true, depends entirely on the whole set of evidence as presented —  change the evidence = change the probability of truth. 

“Scientists should announce their Y and E, and then state Pr(Y|E)—and then stop. Since the E picked by scientists (with some exceptions for mathematicians and the like) won’t be necessarily true, and only contingent, all need to consider what different evidence would do to Y.

In any case, it is always scientism to say “Pr(Y|E) means we should all do the following”, and this is so even if there are no problems whatsoever with Pr(Y|E). From this it follows that nearly all research that involves statistics is deeply saturated in scientism.“

And when someone  says “we should all do the following” – that we should Follow The Science —  then we have left the field of Science and entering into the hazy domain of Scientism.

And even if we all believed with all our hearts on that Pr(Y|E) – the probability that proposition Y given evidence E being true is nearly 100% – that doesn’t mean that we would all make the same decisions about what to do about it.  We wouldn’t necessarily follow, nor should we. 

Why?  It’s the Evidence, stupid! 

Science didn’t stop being done last year, or even yesterday – so the cumulative evidence supporting last year’s “contemporary scientific consensus” has changed already and will change more in the future. 

Going back to Pielke Jr., he wraps up with these two statements:

“The notion that scientists should agree with a consensus is contrary to how science advances — scientists challenge each other, ask difficult questions and explore paths untaken. Expectations of conformance to a consensus undercuts scientific inquiry. It also lends itself to the weaponization of consensus to delegitimize or deplatform inconvenient views, particularly in highly politicized settings.”

Followed by:

“A recent study of scientific censorship by scientists by Clark et al. 2023 finds that pressures by scientists on their peers to conform to a consensus are fairly common within the scientific community:

Confirmation bias and other forms of motivated cognition can fuel a self-reinforcing dynamic in which censorship and self-censorship discourage empirical challenges to prevailing conclusions, encouraging a false consensus that further discourages dissent.“

Bottom Lines:

1.  “There is no such thing, therefore, [as] Following The Science.” – William Briggs

2.  Science changes moment to moment – as new evidence is produced and found for and against various hypotheses. 

3.  Generally accepted understandings of scientific topics – commonly referred to as “consensuses” –  are themselves momentary and must be allowed to change as evidence changes.

4.  Enforcing a consensus view, in any manner,  is anti-science and calls to “Follow the Science” are always made to enforce some consensus and thus also anti-science.

And, a final word:    The California law, mentioned at the beginning of the essay, has been repealed, after being shot down by the courts.   

# # # # #

Author’s Comment:

Read the two substack pieces from Pielke Jr. and Briggs (here and here).   Worth the effort.

My ongoing series on Monarch Butterflies is an example of the changing of a consensus by new evidence – albeit by just a little.  Once Chip Taylor weighed in, the pre-existing consensus began to crack.  In a couple more years, the consensus will have shifted considerably.

Even the Skeptical Climate View shifts and changes as time goes on and more and broader evidence is presented for and against the prevailing consensus view.  

Enforced consensus is tyranny and is destructive of the scientific enterprise.   

Learn to spot when consensus enforcing is taking place – and don’t fall for it.  Brute force methods, think Michael Mann et al, are obvious – biased journal editing is much more subtle.

Thanks for reading.

Barclays reins in oil and gas funding in victory for net zero activists

Lender also strikes deal to buy Tesco Bank for £600m.

Lender also strikes deal to buy Tesco Bank for £600m.

Barclays is to stop directly financing new oil and gas projects after bowing to pressure from net zero activists.

The lender – which also separately announced a £600m takeover of rival Tesco Bank – has pledged to crack down on clients who pursue any new oil and gas-only strategies without also developing green alternatives. It will stop offering project finance or other direct finance to oil and gas expansion.

The move forms a key plank of the bank’s revised climate change strategy, in which Barclays will set climate tests for its energy clients such as committing to 2030 methane reduction targets. The Telegraph has the story.

Barclays, which has been repeatedly targeted by protesters claiming it is failing to tackle climate change, is seeking to supply $1 trillion (£793bn) of green financing to projects by 2030.

The bank will also pile greater scrutiny on companies solely focused on oil and gas. Diversified companies investing in low-carbon schemes will be supported more by the bank.

Barclays head of sustainable finance Daniel Hanna said: “Capital is critical to the energy transition, to decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors for the world to reach net zero emissions and create a resilient economy.”

Head of sustainability Laura Barlow added that addressing climate change was a “critical and complex challenge”.

“We continue to work with our energy clients as they decarbonise and support their efforts to transition in a manner that is just, orderly and addresses energy security,” she added.

Barclays is a relatively small global player on energy project finance and sits outside the world’s top 15 lenders, meaning it is unlikely to have a major impact on new oil and gas projects.

Responsible investment charity ShareAction welcomed the move but said the bank could have gone further.

Campaign manager Kelly Shields said the bank should demand clients stop oil and gas exploration, which she said adds to climate change.

“Barclays is wrong not to have ruled out financing companies that focus exclusively on fossil fuel extraction. This should include fracking, which is causing so much environmental and social harm and is an activity the bank is heavily exposed to,” she said.

Read the full story here.

“Green” Activists Menace Humanity

A swirl of tomato soup engulfs Van Gogh’s vibrant “Sunflowers.” Mashed potatoes mar Monet’s serene “Water Lilies.” Across the globe, priceless artworks endure desecration in the name of climate activism.

From Watts Up With That?

By Vijay Jayaraj

A swirl of tomato soup engulfs Van Gogh’s vibrant “Sunflowers.” Mashed potatoes mar Monet’s serene “Water Lilies.” Across the globe, priceless artworks endure desecration in the name of climate activism. On a recent weekend, so-called eco-activists threw yellow soup on the “Mona Lisa” at Paris’s Louvre Museum. These acts are a vile destruction of beauty in the name of a dangerous world view.

Peaceful protest of injustice is an important aspect of our civilization. Be it the civil rights movement of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the U.S. or the freedom movement of India’s Mahatma Gandhi, non-violent demonstrations can communicate important messages. Ongoing farmer protests in Europe are good examples of objections to concerning and overreaching tyrannical policies.

However, radical elements weaponized by green funding are engaged in anti-humanistic activities that does no good for society. Chosen targets – irreplaceable cultural treasures – often bear no relationship to the purportedly environmental cause. Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa, for instance, is a symbol of human ingenuity and artistic expression, not fossil fuel emissions. Vandalizing such works is more akin to cultural terrorism than constructive activism.

Eco-Activists Are a Menace, Even Life-Threatening!

Environmental protests are not new. Many decades back, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, along with key founding members of the organization, went on small boats to protest hunting of whales that threatened the species’ existence.

But gone are the days of meaningful environmental demonstrations. Today, eco-fascists protest consumption of animal meat and even the right to be born. For these self-anointed enforcers of irrationality, off limits – at least to others – is the use of cars, aircraft and ethically sourced natural resources. The list goes on.

The worst part: Many seem to care not even if people die from their actions. In 2021, in response to allegations that climate activists were blocking important British highways, Xtinction Rebellion’s founder Roger Hallam unashamedly said, “I would block an ambulance with a dying patient onboard.”

Last week, jet-setting Greta Thunberg joined climate activists from the same Xtinction Rebellion to block access to Farnborough Airport in the U.K. Their demand: Stop expansion of the airport and end private jet operations.

Throughout the world, environmental non-profits and eco-funded activists seek to stop projects essential in improving the socio-economic conditions of billions of people. In many instances, these disruptions share ideological objectives with green policies perpetrated by international political institutions like the United Nations and World Economic Forum.

In Africa, climate activists wanted to cancel a 895-mile-long pipeline from Uganda’s Lake Alberta region, which has a potential to carry 216,000 barrels per day and provide indirect employment for more than 105,000 people.

In India, activists want to end dozens of hydrocarbon projects across the country – initiatives that would directly contribute to the energy independency of a country that relies heavily on imported hydrocarbons.

Poverty undeniably remains a crippling reality for vast swaths of Africa and Asia. Billions still grapple with securing access to clean water, sanitation, non-polluting cooking fuels and reliable electricity. Infrastructure development holds the promise of changing this narrative, injecting much-needed capital, creating jobs and laying the groundwork for future prosperity.

By disrupting fossil fuel projects, activists contradict their claim of caring for people’s economic future. A thoroughly anti-human philosophy that envisions Earth untouched by people has them blindly adhering to an unscientific theory of a climate emergency.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K.

Tesla temporarily slashes prices for some Model Y cars in the US

Tesla Inc has temporarily cut prices of some of its Model Y cars in the U.S. until Feb. 29, less than a month after the carmaker cut Model Y prices in Germany.

Tesla Inc has temporarily cut prices of some of its Model Y cars in the U.S. until Feb. 29, less than a month after the carmaker cut Model Y prices in Germany.

Tesla reduced prices for its Model Y rear-wheel drive and Model Y Long Range by $1,000 to $42,990 and $47,990 respectively, representing a discount of 2.3% and 2% from previous prices.

Reuters has the story.

Prices of the Model Y Performance variant and other models remained unchanged, according to the website.

New Model Y rear-wheel drive and Long Range model prices will be reduced for deliveries now through Feb. 29, Tesla said in a notice on its website, adding that that price would increase by $1,000 or more on March 1.

Tesla slashed prices of its Model Y cars in Germany last month, after most of its car production at its Berlin factory was suspended due to a lack of components after attacks in the Red Sea caused shipping disruptions.

In January, Tesla also warned of “notably lower” sales growth this year as it focuses on the production of its next-generation electric vehicle, code-named “Redwood.” The latest price cuts are expected to further weigh on Tesla’ margins, already hurt by a price war that started more than a year ago.

The latest price cuts come as Tesla is bracing for cooling demand and rising competition with a growing number of inexpensive EVs, such as those made by China’s BYD, which overtook Tesla as the world’s top EV maker in the final quarter of 2023.

Read the full story here.

Study: Psychological Interventions Do Not Work on Climate Skeptics

The study authors suggest “top down interventions” will be required.

Essay by Eric Worrall

The study authors suggest “top down interventions” will be required.

‘Doom and gloom’ don’t change stubborn climate change denial

By Dan Holmes
Friday February 9, 2024

Climate change denial remains difficult to challenge despite the scientific consensus and availability of information.

A new behavioural science study suggests this means governments need to put more attention to “top-down” approaches to addressing climate change.

…

While some did change behaviour, this varied based on country, initial climate beliefs, and which outcome was being measured. For instance, “doom and gloom” climate communications made people more likely to share climate information, but less likely to plant trees.

“Negative emotion induction intervention appeared to backfire on policy support among participants with low initial climate beliefs,” they said.

“These results suggest that climate scientists should carefully consider the differential effects of the prevalent fear-inducing writing styles on different pro-climate outcomes.”

…

“Top-down change might need to be prioritised to achieve the emissions reduction necessary to stay within safe planetary limits for human civilisation.

…Read more: https://www.themandarin.com.au/239189-doom-and-gloom-dont-change-stubborn-climate-change-denial/

The abstract of the study;

Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries

MADALINA VLASCEANU , KIMBERLY C. DOELL , JOSEPH B. BAK-COLEMAN , BORYANA TODOROVA, MICHAEL M. BERKEBILE-WEINBERG, SAMANTHA J. GRAYSON, YASH PATEL, DANIELLE GOLDWERT, YIFEI PEI, […], AND JAY J. VAN BAVEL  +248 authors Authors Info & Affiliations

SCIENCE ADVANCES

7 Feb 2024
Vol 10, Issue 6

Abstract

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.Read more: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adj5778

I’m surprised it took a study to verify the premise that stepping up the doom and gloom will not persuade people who think the climate crisis is nonsense.

If you don’t believe in the tooth fairy, would stepping up the doomsday rhetoric persuade you to put your teeth under the pillow?

The alternative, “top down interventions”, in my opinion is rather threatening, the velvet being stripped from the steel fist. We’re going to make you put your teeth under the pillow, and if you refuse, you’ll have lots of spare teeth?

Green Jobs Bonanza?

According to the ONS, the number of green jobs in the UK rose from 507,000 in 2015 to 526,000 in 2020.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/bulletins/experimentalestimatesofgreenjobsuk/2023

According to the ONS, the number of green jobs in the UK rose from 507,000 in 2015 to 526,000 in 2020.

Most of these are jobs that have traditionally existed, such as waste collection, forestry management, water and wider environmental activities. There are also 53500 non-jobs such as consultancy, charities and management.

When we strip these out, the jobs total rises from 168,000 to 179,000. Hardly earth shattering!

Low Carbon Transport is a bit of a cheat anyway, as jobs created in building EVs, for instance, have merely switched from building ICEs.

Two thirds of the jobs are involved in “Energy Efficient Products”, whatever that may mean. I suspect that these are just normal manufacturing jobs which have been relabelled as green.

Either way the number of manufacturing jobs already lost added to the ones which will be in future thanks to Net Zero will dwarf this handful of new green jobs.

Bureau of Land Management (BLM) takes comments on world’s biggest solar boondoggle

Meet the new federal Western Solar Plan. Much of the land in the Western US is federal and managed by the appropriately named Bureau of Land Management or BLM. In some Western States, over 50% of the land is federal.

A rendering of solar panels installed across canals in California’s Central Valley, an idea that is being brought to life in Project Nexus.

From CFACT

By David Wojick

Meet the new federal Western Solar Plan. Much of the land in the Western US is federal and managed by the appropriately named Bureau of Land Management or BLM. In some Western States, over 50% of the land is federal.

Using that land control, BLM has just proposed a monstrous (in size and scope) plan for solar power development called the Western Solar Plan. The Plan covers the eleven westernmost states, from border to border. From Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico to Utah, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington state, and Wyoming.

They also have a draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for the Plan, which they are taking comments on through April 28, 2024.

The PEIS and other Plan information is available here: https://blmsolar.anl.gov/

Comments should be sent to solar@blm.gov

The really important number is simple and round. It is also breathtaking. They want 100,000 MW of solar capacity developed, more than doubling US capacity. A better choice would be zero, which is also round, but I digress. This incredible number is not based on a needs analysis, as there is no need. It is just a number somebody pulled out of somewhere.

There are lots of environmental concerns with this huge number. Given that a solar facility can take 15 acres per MW, we are talking about something like 1.5 million acres of industrial plant. Plus thousands of miles of access roads, no doubt. These are mostly remote areas, and you do not deliver a thousand acres of solar panels on pickup trucks, so a lot of heavy-duty roads will be built.

These concerns are, of course, shrugged off by the PEIS in the usual industrial green way. There are lots of vague promises that care will be taken when the actual facilities come to be planned, approved, and built, which they will be no matter the environmental destruction.

But the biggest concern by far is not addressed, namely, what this monstrosity is going to cost the poor people who have to pay for it. These are the people and outfits that use electricity, many of which are already struggling to pay ever-increasing prices. What will the bill be?

One might think that perhaps cost is just not part of environmental impact assessment. Not at all, as there is an entire section of the PEIS titled “Socioeconomics”. It includes a lot of money, stuff like tax revenue, local construction revenue, jobs, etc. There are even dollar estimates for some revenue items. So, people paying for all this stuff is certainly a central socioeconomic consideration.

By coincidence, the standard estimate for conventional utility-scale solar is also nice and round at $1,000,000 a MW. So the Plan costs one hundred billion dollars ($100,000,000,00) to build, plus all those access roads.

But that is just the construction cost. Projects like utility-solar are financed over the long term, so there are big interest charges. These, plus the profits for the facility owners often can double the cost. This two hundred billion dollars is what is called the revenue requirement for the Plan, which is what the poor electricity users must ultimately pay.

Two hundred billion dollars for something they do not need. Pure Bidenomics!

In reality, the cost is higher, maybe much higher. This is because the intermittency of solar greatly reduces the efficiency of the reliable generators in the system, in effect raising the cost of their output.

The reason is simple — steam. Most of our electricity comes from what are called thermal generators. These are coal and gas-fired plus nuclear. They use heat to produce steam in giant boilers, which steam then runs a turbine generator.

The problem is that this is extremely high-temperature steam, so you cannot just stop making it when the solar generation is producing energy, which is just 8 hours a day at most. You have to keep the boilers going even when solar has replaced the output.

Thus, you are consuming fuel with no output. This adds to the cost of the output the thermal plants do produce. In this way, solar and wind both increase the cost of thermal power, making wind and solar look cheaper than they really are.

Let us call this cost of keeping the thermal generator steam hot while the sun shines the backup cost of the Solar Plan. It, too, should be estimated as part of the socioeconomic impact.

In short, the PEIS is omitting a lot of socioeconomic consumer costs. Missing costs include facility and access road construction, operation, maintenance, and repair. Also, there is decommissioning and a great deal of hazardous waste disposal. Plus financing and profit. And then the backup cost. Three hundred billion might cover it, but BLM should provide the estimates.

I urge people to comment on this incredible hidden cost aspect of the Western Solar Plan PEIS. If you do comment, feel free to post that comment here as well so we can all see and learn from it.

Sorry, the Little Ice Age Does Exist

“… we find that the coldest epoch of the last millennium—the putative Little Ice Age—is most likely to have experienced the coldest temperatures during the fifteenth century in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, during the seventeenth century in northwestern Europe and southeastern North America, and during the mid-nineteenth century over most of the remaining regions.”

From Watts Up With That?

By Andy May

Renee Hannon (@hannon_renee) pointed out that Raphael Neukom, et al. (2019) compares the modern instrumental temperature record to the Pages2K proxy temperature record and declares that:

“… we find that the coldest epoch of the last millennium—the putative Little Ice Age—is most likely to have experienced the coldest temperatures during the fifteenth century in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, during the seventeenth century in northwestern Europe and southeastern North America, and during the mid-nineteenth century over most of the remaining regions.”Neukom, et al., 2019

Then, they compare this to the instrumental record since about 1900AD.

“By contrast, we find that the warmest period of the past two millennia occurred during the twentieth century for more than 98 per cent of the globe. This provides strong evidence that anthropogenic global warming is not only unparalleled in terms of absolute temperatures, but also unprecedented in spatial consistency within the context of the past 2,000 years.”Neukom, et al., 2019

They are comparing sparse, poorly calibrated, disparate, poorly dated proxies with annual to centennial resolution to a global modern network of daily calibrated thermometer readings and their point relies on timing and accuracy. Global warming in the twentieth century was hardly uniform in any case, nearly all of it took place from 1920-1940 and 1980-2000, and temperatures in Antarctica and much of the Southern Ocean hardly changed at all, probably only 0.2°C since the late 19th century.

The location and type of Pages2K proxies used in the study are shown in their figure 1a, also our figure 1.

Figure 1. Figure 1a from Neukom, et al. It shows the location of their proxies and the type.

Figure 1 identifies some of the various types of proxies used and their locations, but it does not address the temporal resolution of the proxies or how many of them provide temperatures each year between 0AD and 2000AD. These quantities are important if we are to compare the 1,000-year-old Medieval Warming Period or the 400-year-old Little Ice Age to the thousands of daily calibrated thermometer readings we have today and make a judgement about warming or cooling spatial consistency. Figure 2 is figure 1a from Pages 2K, 2019. It provides more detail about the proxies.

Figure 2. Figure 1 from Pages 2K, 2019. It shows the location and type of the proxies in the 2019 version of Pages 2K.

Figure 3 shows the temporal resolution of the proxies in the Pages 2K 2017 version, there is no equivalent figure in the Pages 2K 2019 version. For most proxies it varies from annual (beige) to multidecadal (blues). Some of the tropical proxies have sub-annual resolution, they are coded in red in figure 3.

Figure 3. A Pages 2K map showing the temporal resolution of the proxies over the past 2,000 years. (Pages 2K, 2017).

In figure 3, because of the colors, the high-resolution proxies shown in red look impressive, relative to the softer colors used for the lower resolution proxies. Figure 4 shows the availability of each type of proxy, it gives us a clearer picture of the temporal resolution of the Pages 2K proxy temperature reconstruction. We should remember that among the many criticisms of Marcott’s global reconstruction was that as proxies dropped out or entered it as it moved toward the modern period, their entry and exit changed the trends, also see here.

Figure 4. The availability of proxy types by year for the past 2,000 years. Pages 2K 2019 version (Neukom, Steiger, & Gómez-Navarro, 2019).

By comparing figures 2 and 3 we can see that, at least in the opinion of Pages 2K, the higher-temporal-resolution proxies are the coral proxies in orange. The coding suggests that these proxies have sub-annual resolution, as discussed in these USGS notes and these NCAR notes. But figure 4 shows that very few of these records extend back to the pre-industrial period, aka The Little Ice Age. By eyeballing figure 4 we see that we lose nearly half of the total proxy records by the middle of the Little Ice Age (~1500 to ~1600) and we lose nearly 80% by the Medieval Warm Period (~1000AD).

In the Methods section of Pages 2K (2019), they say that the sub-annual proxies were reduced to annual values by using the April-March averages in the reconstructions, which reduces the detail. They also admit that none of the reconstruction methods they tried “explicitly consider age uncertainties,” which is a fundamental problem when comparing ancient proxies to modern records.

There are other proxy problems besides their sparseness and poor temporal resolution. They are calibrated to instrumental records from the modern era. Most are organic proxies, tree rings, corals, sponges, etc. which are affected by human CO2 emissions as well as modern warming. The remaining proxies, such as lake sediments, marine sediments, borehole readings, and ice cores, often lose accuracy and/or resolution with time due to geological (that is preservation) deterioration. In addition, estimating the correct date for a sample becomes less accurate the older the sample, a problem ignored in Pages 2K. In fact, the uncertainties for all reconstruction methods and all measurements increases backward in time (Pages2K, 2019). See figure 3 in the Pages 2k 2019 supplementary materials for a visual feel of the increase in error backward in time.

Discussion

By comparing minimum and maximum proxy temperatures over the Little Ice Age (~1300 to ~1850) and comparing them to minimum and maximum modern daily instrumental measurements since 1900, Neukom, et al. would have us believe that the modern warm period is unique. We have thousands of weather stations, ocean buoys, and ARGO floats around the world today. It is well known that daily temperature extremes often exceed 30°C, which is more than 70 times the differences being estimated by Neukom, et al. as shown in figure 5, which is from their paper. These daily extremes are captured in instrumental data, but only seen occasionally, by pure chance, inaccurately, and in a very naturally smoothed way in the proxies. The proxies undersample both the high and low temperatures. Further, accuracy decreases backward in time.

The Pages 2K 2019 paper emphasizes that tree ring records are detrended which causes a loss of “multicentennial-scale temperature variability.” Variability is exactly what Neukom, et al. are trying to measure! Then Pages 2K conclude that low-resolution marine records seem to overestimate the true variance—now just how do they know the true variance? They should just say they don’t know, which is the truth of the matter.

Claims that modern warming is unusual cannot be supported with the Pages 2K dataset. This is best seen in Neukom, et al.’s figure 2 that Renee Hannon found. It is shown in figure 5.

Except for the portion of figure 5 that is after 1900AD, the globe is very sparsely sampled, but at least temperature is measured with instruments in the 20th century. Before 1700AD, the record is not only poorly sampled, but is comprised of only the low temporal resolution, poorly dated, inaccurate proxy data described above.

Figure 5. From figure 2 in Neukom, et al., 2019. The figure shows the estimate percentages of the global area with warm (red area) and cold (blue area) temperature anomalies with respect to the 1-2000AD reference period. A 51-year low-pass filter has been applied. Shading intensity indicates the magnitude of the warming or cooling.

How do we know that the global warming observed since 1950 or so is unusual in any respect? As seen in figure 6, modern warming has not happened uniformly around the planet and some areas have cooled according to AR6 and HadCRUT5.

Figure 6. Figure 2.11b from AR6. Temperature changes from 1981-2020 according to HadCRUT5. (IPCC, 2021, p. 316).

In warming and cooling trends, changes do not occur at the same time all over the world. Convection and atmospheric circulation assure us of that. The precision and global coverage of our measurements determines how well we see the evolution of warming or cooling. What Neukom and Pages 2K observe may simply be due to the change in accuracy, coverage, and resolution of their proxy measurements of the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period, relative to today. I would be willing to bet that the extremes seen in figure 5 are a better representation of reality than their reconstruction, and I seriously doubt they can refute that statement.

Comparisons of measurements in the modern instrumental period to ancient proxies were invalid in Mann’s notorious hockey stick, and they are still invalid. Besides, whether a change in climate is global or regional is not evidence that it is due to changing CO2 concentrations or natural. It is hard to show that global average temperature is even a valid climate metric. Air circulation patterns change all the time, especially in winter.

It is well known that the coldest period of the Little Ice Age occurred at different times in different places. It was around 1810 in the Makassar Strait in Indonesia and around 1650AD in Greenland, as shown here in figures 1 and 2.

However, the general temperature trends at both locations, over 10,000 miles apart, are similar. The effects of climate forcing, whether from the Sun or greenhouse gases, are not instantaneous everywhere at the same time. Solar energy penetrates deeply into the ocean which causes a significant delay in its climate effects, it also increases the power of solar radiation changes because solar changes accumulate in the oceans, which act as a battery. Greenhouse gas radiation does not penetrate the ocean surface, this both reduces its impact on climate relative to the Sun and reduces the delay in its effect, providing some support for Neukom’s hypothesis that more global synchronicity of climate change points toward greenhouse gas warming.

But solar-driven changes in air circulation patterns caused by ENSO, the PDO, NAO, AMO, etc. (see here) still cause regional and, sometimes global, delays in the relatively modest climatic impact of greenhouse gases.

Creating global reconstructions from proxies is foolish due to the sparseness of the proxies, their inaccuracy, and their different temporal resolutions. You can reduce resolution, but you cannot increase it. It is more meaningful to compare modern temperatures at a specific proxy location to that proxy, than to try and combine proxies into a global temperature, as discussed here.

Download the bibliography here.

Renee Hannon kindly reviewed this post.

The BBC’s latest climate coverage makes XR look moderate

There can little doubting the Today programme’s view on Labour’s decision to finally slay their proposed £28 billion green elephant.

There can little doubting the Today programme’s view on Labour’s decision to finally slay their proposed £28 billion green elephant.

Keir Starmer’s abandonment of the pledge to spend £28 billion a year on green projects is a terrible idea which will deprive Britain of the massive wealth which Joe Biden has created with his Inflation Reduction Act. It will fry us and drown us.

I know it must be true because I heard it this morning on the Today programme. There were no fewer than five separate items on it, by my count.

First we had Justin Rowlatt telling us we are all going to go to hell in a handcart because global temperature last year averaged 1.5 Celsius above 19th century levels. The Telegraph has the story.

Then we had Prof Sir Bob Watson, former chair of the IPCC, telling us that the Earth’s weather “far exceeds anything that is unacceptable” – as if it were somehow something that is decided by world leaders.

That comment says much about the mentality of people who populate these international global non-government organisations: they really do see themselves as gods. Watson went on to claim that climate change is damaging agricultural productivity when data from the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation shows the direct opposite – that yields for most of the world’s most important crops are increasing.

Then there was Barry Gardiner, Labour’s former climate change spokesman, hauled on the show and invited by Nick Robinson to say that Starmer had got it utterly wrong, and allowed to spew out spurious guesstimates on how much climate change is costing the UK.

“Storms are getting bigger,” he said, again directly contradicting the evidence – the State of the Climate report published annually by the Royal Meteorological Society shows a distinct downwards trend in average and extreme wind speeds in the UK in the past 30 years.

It has come to something when Dale Vince comes across as the – relative – voice of reason, suggesting that it might actually be bad thing for the Labour Party first to review public finances before it piles another £28 billion a year on the massive debts that face future generations. 

In vain did I wait for someone on the Today programme to make the point that previous attempts by UK governments to subsidise green industries – like the infamous Britishvolt factory in Northumberland – haven’t exactly created wealth or jobs. 

I waited, too, for someone to argue that actually Biden’s green bungs aren’t the only story behind the US having faster economic growth than Britain.

Read the full story here.