02/26/2024 – Climate- Science.press

The Great European Farmer Revolt: Jilted, Turning On The Greens

From The Forbes

German peasants war, 1514-1526, german peasants’ war, great peasants’ revolt, farmer war, farmer … [+]
UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Coming to a crescendo over the past few months, widespread farmers’ protests in Europe have escalated – across the width and breadth of the continent, from Sweden to Spain, Poland to Portugal — since they first started in the Netherlands Holland in October 2019. As tractors take over the streets and highways in wave after wave of protests, the farmers have paralyzed major transport arteries and besieged Berlin, Paris and Brussels.

More lastingly, they have changed the political landscape in key EU countries such as Netherlands. With the shock win in March by the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), putting it ahead of the governing party in the Senate, the farmers became an important part of the equation in the country’s political future. Major gains are expected for what the legacy media calls the “far right” and “anti-Europe” parties in the upcoming European parliament elections. The farming interest has suddenly climbed to the top of the political agenda in state capitals as well as Brussels.

What happened?

Why have European farmers – until recently, the most coddled and protected part of the continent’s body politic as it emerged from the ashes of World War II — turned against their own governments and Brussels-based benefactors? Is it no more than a “tantrum of the ridiculously privileged?”, asks The Economist.

Europe’s Farmers Betrayed

The picture of the proud French farmer – half of whose income came from EU subsidies and direct payments — as the repository of a bucolic wine-and-cheese rural culture has long been a treasured part of Europe’s identity since it adopted the Common Agricultural Policy in 1962. Agriculture (including forestry and fishing) accounts for just 1.6% of GDP. Yet it absorbs a third of the EU’s total budget and costs an estimated €65 billion annually for direct payments, “agricultural market measures” and “rural development”.

Like most government policies, CAP was implemented with the best of intentions: improving productivity, ensuring a “fair standard of living” for farmers, “stabilizing” markets, establishing a secure supply chain with “reasonable” prices, “harmonizing competition rules across all countries”.

But, as usual with all big government programs, the unintended consequences of an extensive system of price and market controls put in place to guarantee farmers their accustomed standard of living effectively made them wards of state, “as grand an experiment in socialist management as anything Lenin was ever able to accomplish.”

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has been hell-bent in pursuing its virtue-signaling decades-long experiment with global climate leadership. With the best of intentions – what could better be intended than “saving the planet” from a climate crisis? — the EU adopted its Farm to Fork strategy as part of the Green Deal to make agriculture consistent with being “carbon-neutral” by 2050. EU bureaucrats assured us that European agriculture – a significant source of greenhouse gases –would be rendered more “sustainable”, “environmentally-friendly” and “biodiverse.”

Europe’s ‘wards of state’ farmers have turned out in fury as another favored constituency – the European Greens — has gained ascendancy and increasingly squeezed farmers’ standards of living. Amid fierce resistance from farmers, Brussel’s bureaucrats have been forced into their first significant policy climbdown from ever-escalating climate regulations.

In early February, the EC was forced to scale back on an array of proposed mandates, taxes, subsidies and disinvestments for promoting “sustainable” farming in an imagined post-fossil fuel “green” future. It dropped the 30% reduction target on greenhouse gas emissions from farming by 2040 compared to 2015; it reversed its quota to halve pesticide use by 2030; and it will allow more land for agricultural use instead of forcing 4 percent of the land to lie fallow “to boost biodiversity and soil quality.” Despite investing in lab-grown meat initiatives, it also agreed to stop advising EU citizens to eat less meat. In both Germany and France, governments delayed cuts to subsidies or planned increases in taxes on diesel for agricultural use.

Have The Farmers Turned “Far Right”?

Europe’s mainly left-of-center governments have long been under the thrall of green parties and their young, urban constituents. In Europe’s epicenter Germany, Joschka Fischer, a leading figure in the German Greens party since the 1970s, was sworn in as minister of energy and environment in Germany’s state of Hesse in December 1985. He served as the foreign minister and as the vice-chancellor of Germany in the cabinet of Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005. The Green party attained its high point as part of the current Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition. Economy Minister and Green party leader Robert Habeck nursed ambitions to lead his Green party to victory in the 2025 general election.

But much had changed by mid-2023. The DeutschlandTrend monthly survey conducted in June, measured voter support for Alternative für Deutschland at 18%, putting it on a par with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats. A YouGov poll published one week later (June 9^th) found that 20% of German voters would give their vote to the AfD, making it the second-strongest party behind the centre-right CDU (28%) and ahead of Scholz’s SPD (19%). The resurgence of AfD, inevitably dubbed “far right” by the mainstream media, has been primarily at the expense of the Greens which have been sent into free fall.

The rightward shift in politics is not restricted to Germany. According to a report based on polling data published in January by the European Council on Foreign Relations, the 2024 European Parliament elections (in June) will see “a major shift to the right in many countries, with populist radical right parties gaining votes and seats across the EU, and centre-left and green parties losing votes and seats.” It warns that “anti-European populists” will likely top the polls in nine member states (Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Slovakia) and come second or third in a further nine countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Sweden).

Europe’s Great Farmer Revolt may prove as consequential to the regional political order as the anti-nuclear and anti-Vietnam war movements of the 1970s. Farmers have emerged as the single greatest challenge to the green agenda in Europe as their livelihoods face ever tighter climate regulations, higher costs and competition from cheap imports from Ukraine and non-EU countries. The next European parliament could block laws on Europe’s green deal and take a harder line on immigration and support for Ukraine. Populist leaders such as France’s Marine Le Pen (National Rally), Germany’s Alice Weidel (AfD) and the Netherland’s Geert Wilders (Party for Freedom) all express support for the cause of European farmers. The left-of-center mainstream media sees the farmers’ protests “playing into the hands” of such politicians “who thrive on grassroots grumbling against the metropolitan elites” (here and here).

Europe’s Peasants and History

The “crisis of the Late Middle Ages“, known as Peasant Revolts, were often bloody uprisings and rebellions by peasants in the European countryside against the church, nobles and kings between 1300 and 1500. These rebellions were caused by some combination of declining incomes, rising inflation, taxation, famine, plague, war, and religious differences.

Five centuries later, the European peasantry has once again been goaded to fury. Images of sprayed manure in the entrances of government buildings and select politicians’ houses and a Paris under siege with its supermarket shelves empty of fresh produce have gone viral on Twitter/X and other alternative media. The mainstream media, concerned as it is by “the inexorable rise of far-right nationalists”, has largely muted such inconvenient images.

Can European farmers reverse their ruling elites’ mantra of “net zero by 2050” and devotion to global climate leadership? Or will this just be merely a temporary stalling of the green agenda, a tactical concession by liberal politicians and Brussels-based bureaucrats to farmers’ demands for relief from ever-tightening EU environmental restrictions? Only time will tell but hope remains that the Great Farmer Revolt will bring some semblance of rationality to Europe’s climate policies.

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Tilak Doshi

I have worked in the oil and gas sector as an economist in both private industry and in think tanks, in Asia, the Middle East and the US over the past 25 years. I focus on global energy developments from the perspective of Asian countries that remain large markets for oil, gas and coal. I have written extensively on the areas of economic development, environment and energy economics. My publications include “Singapore in a Post-Kyoto World: Energy, Environment and the Economy” published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (2015). I won the 1984 Robert S. McNamara Research Fellow award of the World Bank and received my Ph.D. in Economics in 1992.

“The climate crisis is not gender neutral”, says WMO’s Celeste Saulo

The old joke continues: World To End Tomorrow: Women, Minorities Hardest Hit

From Watts Up With That?

The old joke continues: World To End Tomorrow: Women, Minorities Hardest Hit

As my tipster writes:

To think the WMO used to be a respected scientific organization….MM

https://www.meteorologicaltechnologyinternational.com/news/world-meteorological-organization/the-climate-crisis-is-not-gender-neutral.html

In a keynote address at the launch of the International Gender Champions Climate Impact Group, Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the WMO, stated that women and men are affected differently by weather and climate, and therefore need gender-sensitive information and services.

Since taking office at the start of 2024, Saulo has stated that one of her priorities is to foster greater diversity within the WMO, ensuring equitable representation across gender, regional and cultural lines. She is committed to implementing the WMO Gender Equality Policy which was updated in 2023.

https://www.meteorologicaltechnologyinternational.com/news/world-meteorological-organization/the-climate-crisis-is-not-gender-neutral.html

…

Many of WMO’s programs to strengthen climate adaptation seek to address the barriers faced by women and marginalized communities in accessing resources and decision making tools. For instance, the Fiji Meteorological Service – in line with government policy – is working to mainstream gender in the provision of early warning systems thanks to the support of partners like Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems (CREWS).

Saulo continued, “I am determined to use my voice as an international gender champion to ensure that gender considerations are mainstreamed in climate policies. We have no time to lose. We stand at the intersection of inequality and climate change, and our strategies must reflect the urgency of the times

.https://www.meteorologicaltechnologyinternational.com/news/world-meteorological-organization/the-climate-crisis-is-not-gender-neutral.html

There’s not much to say about this, except to repeat the tipster’s quote

To think the WMO used to be a respected scientific organization….

https://www.meteorologicaltechnologyinternational.com/news/world-meteorological-organization/the-climate-crisis-is-not-gender-neutral.htmlMM

HT/MM

…

Biden’s green energy plans will funnel taxpayer billions to Chinese firms

Plans designed to protect US industry will bankroll China’s expansion.

From The Telegraph

By DAVID BLACKMON

It has been obvious for several years now that this government-subsidized energy transition away from fossil fuels and towards wind, solar, and electric vehicles will necessarily leave the western world highly dependent on China. This is an unavoidable truth given China’s overwhelming control of supplies and supply chains for minerals, processing, and components integral to the three rent-seeking industries presented as climate solutions by globalist elites.

In America, Joe Biden and congressional Democrats presented their Orwellian-titled Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as a plan that would help the US to build independence from China in this realm by subsidizing projects that would create competitive domestic sectors. But recent developments make it apparent that exactly the opposite is happening.

A report by the Wall Street Journal details the fact that domestic content requirements for some domestic electric vehicles aren’t comprehensive enough to prevent Chinese encroachment into the US market. Chinese EV maker BYD is exploring opportunities to invest in plants in Mexico that would enable it to enter the US market by exploiting provisions in the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that would allow it to avoid heavy US tariffs on imports of Chinese-made cars.

The Journal reports that “at least a dozen” Chinese makers of EV components have already established factories in Mexico to exploit provisions in the USMCA that encourage US automakers to use parts made there. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares likens expansion plans by Chinese automakers into Mexico to the arrival of Japanese car companies into the US during the 1970s. Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk echoes Tavares’s concerns, saying, “If there are not trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world.”

Another story at the Daily Mail details concerns from various industry experts about growing efforts by Chinese companies to tap directly into the US by exploiting the various subsidies and tax breaks contained in the IRA. Access to the array of IRA goodies was left open to all comers without consideration of their country of origin, providing Chinese makers of solar cells, EV batteries and other relevant components – who already dominate global markets – the opportunity to seize a major share of the US market as well.

Jeff Ferry, chief economist at the non-profit Coalition for a Prosperous America, called the IRA structure “naïve,” adding that “The bottom line is that if you take markets like electric vehicle (EV) batteries, or solar cells, where China already has a dominant global position, and you allow its firms to own facilities in the US and access the US taxpayer, you’re allowing them to extend their global monopoly.”

The non-partisan business NGO E2 says Chinese companies are already tied to at least a dozen US-based projects with capital investments of over $10 billion that will be able to exploit IRA provisions. Biden’s own Treasury Department admits that Chinese firms already represent about 15 per cent of new solar-related investment in the US market since the IRA was passed into law in September 2022.

In one of his earliest actions upon assuming office, President Biden issued an executive order directing his administration to mount a “whole of government” approach to establish supply chains independent of China related to minerals and components integral to the expansion of the three chosen rent-seeking industries: wind, solar and EVs. Last November, the White House finally got around to convening a new Council on Supply Chain Resilience that will consider acting on a list of about 30 separate actions to advance that lofty goal.

It’s a classic slow-moving bureaucratic process that likely amounts to too little, too late, as Chinese interests are already exploiting ill-considered provisions in the IRA and USMCA to gain footholds into American markets. Any thoughts that an asleep-at-the-wheel White House and paralyzed congress will be willing or able to move quickly and effectively to address the matter are absurd. That’s just not how Washington, DC works.

David Blackmon had a 40 year career in the US energy industry, the last 23 years of which were spent in the public policy arena, managing regulatory and legislative issues for various companies. He continues to write and podcast on energy matters

Judith Curry: There’s A Climate Change Industry Set Up To Reward Alarmism

Curry agrees that climate change is a problem, but she says it’s not a crisis.

Judith Curry: How Climate “Science” Got Hijacked by Alarmists.

From the RealClearPolitics

By Tim Hains

Scientist @curryja published research that fueled climate change alarmism.

“I was…treated like a rock star."

Then she realized some of her research was wrong.

When she admitted it, the corrupt climate change industry attacked her.

Here she exposes how alarmism is REWARDED: pic.twitter.com/YoBBdflPPz
— John Stossel (@JohnStossel) February 22, 2024

John Stossel interviews “Climate Forecast Applications Network” president Judith Curry about why she changed her mind about climate change:

JOHN STOSSEL: Climate change is a crisis we’re told. Anyone who’s skeptical or raises any questions about the alarm is dismissed.

The consensus is so strong, there shouldn’t even be a debate.

Climate alarmists claim there’s an overwhelming scientific consensus but researcher Judith Curry says climate scientists have an incentive to exaggerate risk.

JOHN STOSSEL: Why, what’s in it for them?

JUDITH CURRY: Fame and fortune.

She knows about that because she once spread alarm about climate change. The media loved her when she published this study saying there was an increase in hurricane intensity.

JUDITH CURRY: We found that the percent of category four and five hurricanes had doubled, so this was picked up by the media. Alarmists said, “Oh, here’s the way to do it.” Tie extreme weather events to global warming.

JOHN STOSSEL: So this hysteria is your fault?

JUDITH CURRY: Well, sort of, not really, they would have picked up on it anyway.

But Curry’s more intense hurricanes gave them fuel.

JUDITH CURRY: I was adopted by the environmental advocacy groups and the alarmists, and I was treated like a rock star.

JOHN STOSSEL: What does that mean, treated like a rock star?

JUDITH CURRY: Oh my God, I was flown all over the place to meet with politicians and to give these talks and lots of media attention.

But then some researchers pointed out gaps in her research, years with low levels of hurricanes.

JUDITH CURRY: So like a good scientist, I went in and investigated all that stuff.

She realized her critics were right.

JUDITH CURRY: Part of it was bad data, part of it is natural climate variability.

JOHN STOSSEL: So you’re the unusual researcher who looks at criticism of your paper and actually concluded they had a point.

JUDITH CURRY: They had a point for sure.

Then the Climategate scandal taught Curry that many researchers aren’t so open-minded. Leaked emails showed university climate scientists conspiring to hide data.

JUDITH CURRY: It showed a lot of really ugly things — avoiding Freedom of Information Act requests, trying to get journal editors fired from their jobs.

One email read, “Do you think this Yale professor is in the skeptics camp? Get him ousted.” Seeing emails like that made Curry realize that climate change fanatics had corrupted the science because there’s a climate change industry set up to reward alarmism.

JUDITH CURRY: The origins go back to the 1980 and the UN environmental program.

Some UN officials had a specific agenda.

JUDITH CURRY: Anti-capitalism, they hated the oil companies and they seized on the climate change issue as one to move their policies along.

The UN created what’s called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

JUDITH CURRY: The IPCC wasn’t supposed to focus on any benefits of warming. The IPCC’s mandate was to look for dangerous human-caused climate change.

Obviously, if you’re only looking for risk, that’s what you’ll find.

JUDITH CURRY: Then the national funding agencies directed all the funding in the field.

JOHN STOSSEL: If you say we’re all going to die and we’ve got to spend a ton of money on this, you get funding. If you say we don’t know, you don’t get funding.

JUDITH CURRY: No, it’s more subtle than that. The announcements of opportunity for funding are really tied to assuming that there are dangerous impacts.

JOHN STOSSEL: So the researchers aren’t stupid. They know what they need to say to get funding.

JUDITH CURRY: Exactly.

This is how manufactured consensus happens. Then even if a skeptic does get funding, it’s harder to publish because journal editors are alarmists.

JUDITH CURRY: About 10 years ago, the editor of the journal Science, she wrote this political rant about we need to stop emissions now, that was published in Science. So what kind of message does that give, promote the alarming papers and don’t even send the other ones out for review.

Getting published is crucial to researchers because that’s how they advance in academia.

JUDITH CURRY: If you wanted to advance in your career, like be at a prestigious university, get a big salary, have big laboratory space, get lots of grant funding, be director of an institute. Well, there was clearly one path to go.

So alarmist researchers control the discussion. They publish lots of scary papers and alarmist media jump on those Time Magazine says climate is everything.

JUDITH CURRY: Transportation congestion, the size of frogs, you know everything.

JOHN STOSSEL: Airplane turbulence, childhood obesity. Activists hear the media and freak out.

…

Why don’t other scientists who recognize the nonsense push back?

JUDITH CURRY: If they work in a university, it’s going to be very uncomfortable for them.

JOHN STOSSEL: Universities have become idiots, and they punish people who tell the truth?

JUDITH CURRY: I mean, I felt the hostility.

Curry was a department chair at Georgia Tech until she concluded that fossil fuels aren’t so terrible.

JUDITH CURRY: They want fossil fuels to go away.

When they made life uncomfortable for her.

She looked for other university jobs but was told…

JUDITH CURRY: Nobody will hire you because if you Google “Judith Curry,” you know everything that shows up with Judith Curry Denier, Judith Curry Serial Climate Dis-informer. At that point, I started making my plans to transition 100% to the private sector.

She started this weather forecasting company. Now, climate alarmists smear her as a climate denier “doing it for the money.”

But she made more money at Georgia Tech.

JUDITH CURRY: If I was doing this for the money, I would have stayed at Georgia Tech and sucked up my big salary. But that’s not who I am.

My personal and professional integrity would not allow me to play that game.

It’s unfortunate that many university departments now shut down debate and reward alarmism.

Curry agrees that climate change is a problem, but she says it’s not a crisis.

In a few weeks, I’ll post our full interview with a more complete discussion about climate and what scientists really agree about.

Small manufacturers forced to answer 300 questions on net zero

Small manufacturers are being forced to fill out 300-question spreadsheets on their eco-credentials as part of a net zero drive by big business.

Firms must prove their eco-credentials as part of green drive by big business.

Small manufacturers are being forced to fill out 300-question spreadsheets on their eco-credentials as part of a net zero drive by big business.

Some companies have had to take on new staff to complete paperwork being sent to them because of this new burden, while others are being asked to sign up to strict audits that ensure they follow green guidelines.

The demands are being driven by regulatory changes expected to come in next year which require large businesses to measure and disclose their “scope 3” carbon emissions, a definition that includes indirect as well as direct pollution caused by an organisation. The Telegraph has the story.

In many cases, sustainability advisors are being hired by multinationals to collect information from suppliers and are sending each one a long questionnaire to fill out.

It comes on top of already-onerous paperwork related to western sanctions on Russia and post-Brexit checks.

Cambridge-based Goodfellow, which employs around 100 people, said it now had six full-time staff to handle compliance issues such as green regulations, sanctions and Brexit issues.

Simon Kenney, chief executive of the advanced materials producer, said the lack of a widely-adopted standard on net zero rules for supply chains had created a void that a rash of environmental, social and governance (ESG) consultants were seeking to fill.

He added: “We heard the other day from an accreditation company that effectively registers companies as being ESG-compliant, which was working with one of our customers.

“As a result, we got a spreadsheet to fill in with 342 lines of things that they wanted to know. Considering we have 6,000 customers, if every customer sends us that it will be unworkable.

“It is just crazy. And of course, particularly for small businesses, it is going to impact productivity.”

Read the full story here.

Just How Bad are EVs?

A recent headline on The Drive website read: “Ford Slashes 2023 Mustang Mach-E Price by up to $8,100 With 0% APR.” More interesting was the tagline under the headline. “Now’s a really great time to nab a solid, yet slow-selling EV.”

From Master Resource

By Allen Brooks

“This isn’t the Field of Dreams: ‘If you build it, he will come.’ … Automakers are wrestling with the reality of the EV market as politicians continue to believe in fairy tales about them.”

A recent headline on The Drive website read: “Ford Slashes 2023 Mustang Mach-E Price by up to $8,100 With 0% APR.” More interesting was the tagline under the headline. “Now’s a really great time to nab a solid, yet slow-selling EV.”

Even the advertising department at Ford Motor Company cannot hide the company’s problem with EVs – “slow-selling!” Customers do not want them to the degree politicians believe and have incentivized and mandated. As a report on EV battery costs stated, technology should lead policy rather than the other way around. We are hard-pressed to cite any example of a policy leading the technology.

After 120 years of history, batteries and EVs remain heavy, expensive; destructive of the environment during the mining of the minerals needed; limited in charging range; and poor performers in extreme cold and hot climate conditions. Despite the rhetoric from EV believers, none of these problems have been solved. So, the solution is to give buyers subsidies and provide huge credits to automakers to build them.

This isn’t the Field of Dreams: “If you build it, he will come.” I don’t remember the government demanding that people wire their homes for electricity or purchase telephones, now cell phones. The latter demonstrates the technology over policy dictum. How many people remember the shoebox-sized cell phones with limited battery life we started with, let alone how few people purchased them? Technology solved the size and battery-life issues and the market took off.

Ford’s eMustang; Star to Loser

EVs have been a disaster for domestic auto manufacturers with Ford being the poster child. Last year Ford lost $4.7 billion on EV revenues of $5.9 billion. The company estimates it will lose $5-5.5 billion on EVs this year. The company’s goal of reaching an 8% operating margin by 2026 was dismissed by Ford’s CFO John Lawler during his presentation to investment analysts earlier this year. “I don’t think anybody believes we can bridge from here to 8% by 2026,” he said. The EV division “needs to be profitable and provide a return.” Shareholders, not only taxpayers and automobilists, are losers.

Ford’s publicists crystallized their problem. “Many North American customers interested in buying EVs are unwilling to pay premiums for them over gas or hybrid vehicles, sharply compressing EV prices and profitability,” they wrote. Like any good marketer, slashing prices on leftover merchandise is required. The chart below from The Drive shows the cuts for left-over 2023 EVs Ford has announced. They are hoping this step will spur buyers and help clean out dealer lots.

EV Price Cuts may Attract Buyers but Add to Ford’s Loss per Vehicle

EV companies Rivian and Lucid posted larger EV losses than forecast and reduced their 2024 production outlooks. Rivian is cutting 10% of its salaried staff. The company delivered 50,122 EVs last year but produced 57,232. They are projecting producing 57,000 EVs this year, although Wall Street analysts expected 66,000. The company’s operating margin was a negative $2,030 million in 2023, or a loss of $40,500 per vehicle sold.

Rumors are that Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency will delay its revised tailpipe emissions rules for model years 2026–2032. Those were the rules that backed up their estimate that two-thirds of vehicles sold in 2032 would need to be EVs to meet the new standards. If the delay rumor is true, it justifies the delay in EV investments automakers have announced. It is another black eye for Biden’s green agenda.

It will do little to change consumer minds about the problems with EVs. It will go a long way to confirming that EVs are a niche auto market rather than a universal solution for America’s travel. We expect the EPA’s delay will be pitched as an appeasement for voters upset with Joe Biden’s economic policies, but we wonder how great the outrage will be from the environmentalists.

Hybrid Fall-back?

One can already see the pushback to market realities from these environmentalists. Aaron Regunberg, senior policy counsel at consumer group Public Citizen and a former member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, commented, “Putting more gasoline-powered cars on roads and saying that’s good for the climate is just misleading.”

This is an opening shot in the Public Citizen’s attack on hybrids and Toyota Motor Corporation, the world’s largest auto manufacturer and the number one provider of hybrid vehicles, in particular. Public Citizen has urged attorneys general in states including Oregon, New York, Rhode Island, and Illinois to look into Toyota’s marketing of hybrids as being misleading. No surprise about this collection of states.

Toyota has long questioned the market for EVs and has aggressively pushed its hybrid technology starting with its Prius model in 1997. Last year in the U.S., 1.4 million hybrids were sold compared to 1.1 million EVs. And that comes with hybrids scoring only a $2,500 per vehicle subsidy versus the $7,500 awarded EVs.

What environmentalists continue to ignore is that EVs are mineral-intensive, which in most cases come from overseas and often are mined with terrible environmental devastation and human suffering. Toyota has shown it can produce 90 hybrids with the minerals used in one EV battery. Hybrids deliver better mileage than gas-powered vehicles. Because of the emissions legacy of EVs during their assembly, as demonstrated by Volvo in studies of its comparable gas and EV models manufactured in South Carolina, it takes years of driving with zero emissions from the vehicle to reach parity with gasoline vehicles. The time needed to offset the legacy emissions is also influenced by the emissions of the electricity provider used to charge the EV. It can take 6-7 years optimistically or 8-10 years of driving to offset the legacy emissions. [1]

Still, hybrids will reduce emissions considerably, Net Zero aspirations aside. It could be viewed as a better alternative to EVs while better vehicle technologies are developed. But do taxpayers need to be involved?

Ford’s publicists have nailed the reality of the EV market – slow-selling. There are many issues that customers face when purchasing vehicles, especially EVs. Contrary to the optimists, vehicles are not bought the same way cell phones are – they cost much more and are purchased less frequently. Automakers are wrestling with the reality of the EV market as politicians continue to believe in fairy tales about them.

———————-

[1] Volvo’s mid-2021 study calculated the kilometers based on electricity generation mixes – global, EU28, and wind. The numbers are: Global 146,000 km (90,709 miles); EU28: 84,000 km (52,189 miles); and wind 47,000 km (29,201) miles. A key conclusion was was that an EV generates 70% more carbon emissions when built than an ICE vehicle.

—————

For more of G. Allen Brooks, see Energy Musings: Insights into the Energy Industry, where this post first appeared. It has been slightly revised for publication here.

Shoppers face £1bn ‘toaster tax’ under plans for new set of net zero rules

Shoppers face a £1 billion “toaster tax” under plans for a new set of net zero rules, retailers and Conservative MPs have warned.

Defra unveils plans to require larger shops to ‘take back’ used electrical items such as toasters for recycling even if bought elsewhere.

Shoppers face a £1 billion “toaster tax” under plans for a new set of net zero rules, retailers and Conservative MPs have warned.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has unveiled plans to require larger shops to “take back” used electrical items such as toasters for recycling, even if the items were bought elsewhere.

The plans would also see online and high street retailers required to provide a “free of charge collection on delivery service” under which they would have to take away a customer’s old appliance, such as a washing machine, television or fridge, if they were delivering a new one. The Telegraph has the story.

Helen Dickinson, the chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, told The Telegraph that the new requirements could cost firms “£1 billion or more” per year – a figure that would be passed on to consumers via higher prices.

The Government insists the measures are needed to avoid millions of household electrical items ending up in landfill each year.

Plans are ‘awful’

The plans threaten to reignite Tory rows over burdensome net zero regulations, which the Prime Minister promised to eschew in favour of a “pragmatic and proportionate” approach to decarbonising that would avoid undue pressures on households and businesses.

David Jones, the Conservative MP and former Brexit minister, described the plans as “awful” and akin to a stealth “toaster tax”.

An official analysis accompanying the Government’s consultation document admits that the cost of the scheme, while paid upfront by retailers, “could then be passed back to consumers through higher prices” – despite Downing Street insisting that its current focus is easing the “pressures” of the high cost of living.

“It will become an invisible charge that everybody pays,” Ms Dickinson said, adding that, contrary to Mr Sunak’s pledge to take a “pragmatic and proportionate” approach to net zero, “It doesn’t feel pragmatic.”

The Government’s consultation document setting out the planned changes – which would be rolled out from 2026 – states they are part of a series of measures that will “influence the transition of the whole economy towards net zero”.

Ms Dickinson said: “We think [the bill would be] in the hundreds of millions of pounds plus, and could be £1 billion or more.” The cost would be borne by retailers rather than funded by revenue already raised via business rates and council tax.

Mr Jones added: “This is exactly the sort of burdensome regulation that we thought we were getting rid of when we left the EU.

“This is an extraordinary imposition on businesses and the Government should have nothing to do with it. I think it is completely unreasonable that they should expect retailers to do that.”

‘Stores may stop selling electrical goods’

The most contentious proposal is for “retailers with a turnover of over £100k of electrical sales each year to provide free takeback of unwanted electrical equipment in store without the need to purchase a new item”.

Ms Dickinson said some shops might simply stop selling electrical items in order to avoid being bound by the requirements.

If a large chemist sold electrical items such as hair tongs and hairdryers then they would be obliged to accept equivalent items bought at other shops.

Ms Dickinson said: “If retailers have to take in more than they sell, some who only sell small volumes may stop selling them at all and larger supermarkets may also reduce the ranges offered, both reducing choice for customers.”

Richer Sounds, the television and hi-fi retailer, warned that its 50 shops were already “packed to the rafters” with stock.

Julie Abraham, the firm’s chief executive, told The Telegraph that the chain did not have “huge empty rooms for storing every broken TV, radio, and speaker that might be left in our stores under the proposed changes to the electrical recycling rules”.

She added: “This means we would have to increase collections from our stores in order to take away these items, increasing our carbon footprint and creating new costs to our business, the environment and ultimately our customers.”

‘We can’t do it for free’

The plans are also opposed by Currys, with Alex Baldock, the chief executive, saying the firm’s existing recycling policy meant that it accounted “for nearly half of all retail technology recycling in the UK”.

Speaking earlier this month, Mr Baldock warned that retailers were already only making £3 on every £100, adding: “We can’t do it for free.”

Read the full story here.

Top Climate Model Improved to Show ENSO Skill

Previous posts (linked at end) discuss how the climate model from RAS (Russian Academy of Science) has evolved through several versions. The interest arose because of its greater ability to replicate the past temperature history.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Previous posts (linked at end) discuss how the climate model from RAS (Russian Academy of Science) has evolved through several versions. The interest arose because of its greater ability to replicate the past temperature history. The model is part of the CMIP program which is now going the next step to CMIP7, and is one of the first to test with a new climate simulation. Improvements to the latest model, INMCM60, show an enhanced ability to replicate ENSO oscillations in the Pacific ocean, which have significant climate impacts world wide.

This news comes by way of a new paper published in the Russian Journal of Numerical Analysis and Mathematical Modelling February 2024. The title is ENSO phase locking, asymmetry and predictability in the INMCM Earth system model, Seleznev et al. (2024) Excerpts in italics with my bolds and images from the article.

Abstract:

Advanced numerical climate models are known to exhibit biases in simulating some features of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) which is a key mode of inter-annual climate variability. In this study we analyze how two fundamental features of observed ENSO – asymmetry between hot and cold states and phase-locking to the annual cycle – are reﬂected in two diﬀerent versions of the INMCM Earth system model (state-of-the-art Earth system model participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project).

We identify the above ENSO features using the conventional empirical orthogonal functions (EOF) analysis which is applied to both observed and simulated upper ocean heat content (OHC) data in the tropical Paciﬁc. We obtain that the observed tropical Paciﬁc OHC variability is described well by two leading EOF-modes which roughly reﬂect the fundamental recharge-discharge mechanism of ENSO. These modes exhibit strong seasonal cycles associated with ENSO phase locking while the revealed nonlinear dependencies between amplitudes of these cycles reﬂect ENSO asymmetry.

We also assess and compare predictability of observed and simulated ENSO based on linear inverse modeling. We ﬁnd that the improved INMCM6 model has signiﬁcant beneﬁts in simulating described features of observed ENSO as compared with the previous INMCM5 model. The improvements of the INMCM6 model providing such beneﬁts arediscussed. We argue that proper cloud parametrization scheme is crucial for accurate simulation of ENSO dynamics with numerical climate models

Introduction

El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most prominent mode of inter-annual climate variability which originates in the tropical Paciﬁc, but has a global impact [41]. Accurately simulating ENSO is still a challenging task for global climate modelers [3,5,15,25]. In the comprehensive study [35] large-ensemble climate model simulations provided by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phases 5 (CMIP5)and 6 (CMIP6) were analyzed. It was found that the CMIP6 models signiﬁcantly outperform those fromCMIP5 for 8 out of 24 ENSO-relevant metrics, especially regarding the simulation of ENSO spatial patterns, diversity and teleconnections. Nevertheless, some important aspects of the observed ENSO are still not satisfactorily simulated by the most of state-of-the-art models [7,38,49]. In this study we are aimed at examination of how two such aspects – ENSO asymmetry and ENSO phase-locking to the annual cycle –are reﬂected in the INMCM Earth system model [44, 45].

The asymmetry between hot (El Nino) and cold (La Nina) states is a fundamental feature in the observed ENSO occurrences [39]. El Niño events are often stronger than La Niña events, while the latter ones tend to be more persistent [10]. Such an asymmetry is generally attributed to nonlinear feedbacks between sea surface temperatures (SSTs), thermocline and winds in the tropical Paciﬁc [2,19,28]. The alternative conceptions highlight the role of tropical instability waves [1] and fast atmospheric processes associated with irregular zonal wind anomalies [24]. ENSO phase-locking is identiﬁed as the tendency of ENSO-events to peak in boreal winter.

Several studies [11,17,34] argue that the phase-locking is associated with seasonal changes in thermocline depth, ocean upwelling velocity, and cloud feedback processes. These processes collectively contribute to the coupling strength modulation between ocean and atmosphere, which, in the context of conceptual ENSO models [4,18], provides seasonal modulation of stability (in the sense of decay rate) of the “ENSO oscillator”. Another theory [20,42] supposes the phase-locking results from nonlinear interactions between the seasonal forcing and the inherent ENSO cycle. Both the asymmetry and phaselocking eﬀects are typically captured by low-dimensional data-driven ENSO models [14, 21, 26, 29, 37].

In this work we identify the ENSO features discussed above via the analysis of upper ocean heat content (OHC) variability in the the tropical Paciﬁc. The recent study [37] analyzed high-resolution reanalysis dataset of the tropical Paciﬁc (10N – 10S, 120E – 80W) OHC anomalies in the 0–300 m depth layer using the standard empirical orthogonal function (EOF) decomposition [16]. It was found that observed OHC variability is eﬀectively captured by two leading EOFs, which roughly describe the fundamental recharge-discharge mechanism of ENSO [18]. The time series of the corresponding principal components (PCs) demonstrate strong seasonal cycles, reﬂecting ENSO phase-locking, while the revealed inter-annual nonlinear dependencies between these cycles can be associated with ENSO asymmetry [37].

Here we apply similar analysis to the OHC data simulated by two diﬀerent versions of INMCM Earth system model. The ﬁrst is the INMCM5 model [45] from CMIP6, and the second is the perspective INMCM6 [44] model with improved parameterization of clouds, large-scale condensation and aerosols. Along with the traditional EOF decomposition we invoke the linear inverse modeling to assess and compare predictability of ENSO from observed and simulated data.

The paper is organized as follows. Sect. 2 describes the datasets we analyze: OHC reanalysis dataset and OHC data obtained from the ensemble simulations of global climate with two versions of INMCM model. Data preparation, including separation of the forced and internal variability, is also discussed. The ensemble EOF analysis is represented, which is used for identifying the meaningful processes contributing to observed and simulated ENSO dynamics. Sect. 3 presents the results we obtain in analyzing both observed and simulated OHC data. In Sect. 4 we summarize and discuss the obtained results, particularly regarding the signiﬁcant beneﬁts of new version of INMCM model (INMCM6) in simulating key features of observed ENSO.

*Fig. 1: Two leading EOFs of the observed tropical Paciﬁc upper ocean heat content (OHC) variability*

*Fig. 2: Two leading EOFs of the INMCM5 ensemble of tropical Paciﬁc upper ocean heat content simulations*

*Fig. 3: The same as in Fig. 2 but for INMCM6 model simulations*

The corresponding spatial patterns in Fig. 1 have clear interpretation. The ﬁrst contributes to the central and eastern tropical Paciﬁc, where most signiﬁcant variations of sea surface temperature (SST) during El Niño/La Nina events occur [9]. The second predominates mainly in the western tropical Paciﬁc and can be associated with the OHC accumulation and discharge before and during the El Niño events [48].

What we can see from Fig. 2 is that the two leading EOFs of OHC variability simulated by the INMCM5 model do not correspond to the observed ones. The corresponding time series and spatial patterns exhibit smaller-scale features, as compared to those we obtain from the reanalysys data, indicating their noisier spatio-temporal nature.

The two leading EOFs of the improved INMCM6 model (Fig. 3), by contrast, capture well both the spatial and temporal features of observed EOFs. In the next section we focus on furtheranalysis of these EOFs assuming that they contain the most meaningful information about ENSO dynamics.

Discussion

In this study we have analyzed how two diﬀerent versions of the INMCM model [44,45] (state-of-the-art Earth system model participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, CMIP) simulate some features of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) which is a key mode of the global climate. We identiﬁed the ENSO features via the EOF analysis applied to both observed and simulated upper ocean heat content(OHC) variability in the the tropical Paciﬁc. It was found that the observed tropical Paciﬁc OHC variability is captured well by two leading modes (EOFs) which reﬂect the fundamental recharge-discharge mechanism of ENSO involving a recharge and discharge of OHC along the equator caused by a disequilibrium between zonal winds and zonal mean thermocline depth. These modes are phase-shifted and exhibit the strong seasonal cycles associated with ENSO phase locking. The inter-annual dependencies between amplitudes of the revealed ESNO seasonal cycles are strongly nonlinear which reﬂects the asymmetry between hot (ElNino) and cold (La Nina) states of observed ENSO. We found that the INMCM5 model (the previous version of the INMCM model from CMIP6) poorly reproduces the leading modes of observed ENSO and reﬂect neither the observed ENSO phase locking nor asymmetry. At the same time, the perspective INMCM6 model demonstrates signiﬁcant improvement in simulating these key features of observed ENSO. The analysis of ENSO predictability based on linear inverse modeling indicates that the improved INMCM6 model reﬂects well the ENSO spring predictability barrier and therefore could potentially have an advantage in long range weather prediction as compared with the INMCM5.

Such beneﬁts of the new version of the INMCM model (INMCM6) in simulating observed ENSO dynamics can be provided by using more relevant parametrization of sub-grid scale processes. Particularly, the diﬀerence in the amplitude of OHC anomaly associated with ENSO between INMCM5 and INMCM6 shown in Fig.2-3 can be explained mainly by the diﬀerence in cloud parameterization in these models. In short, in INMCM5 El-Nino event leads to increase of middle and low clouds over central and eastern Paciﬁc that leads to cooling because of decrease in surface incoming shortwave radiation.

While decrease in low clouds and increase in high clouds in INMCM6 over El-Nino region during positive phase of ENSO lead to further upper ocean warming [43]. This is consistent with the recent study [36] which argued that erroneous cloud feedback arising from a dominant contribution of low-level clouds may lead to heat ﬂux feedback bias in the tropical Paciﬁc, which play a key role in ENSO dynamics. Fast decrease in OHC in central Paciﬁc after El-Nino maximum in INMCM6 can probably occur because of too shallow mixed layer in equatorial Paciﬁc in the model, that leads to fast surface cooling after renewal of upwelling and further increase of tradewinds. Summarizing the above we can conclude that proper cloud parameterization scheme is crucial for accurate simulation of observed ENSO with numerical climate models.

Background on INMCM6

New 2023 INMCM RAS Climate Model First Results

The INMCM60 model, like the previous INMCM48 [1], consists of three major components: atmospheric dynamics, aerosol evolution, and ocean dynamics. The atmospheric component incorporates a land model including surface, vegetation, and soil. The oceanic component also encompasses a sea-ice evolution model. Both versions in the atmosphere have a spatial 2° × 1° longitude-by-latitude resolution and 21 vertical levels up to 10 hPa. In the ocean, the resolution is 1° × 0.5° and 40 levels.

The following changes have been introduced into the model compared to INMCM48.

Parameterization of clouds and large-scale condensation is identical to that described in [4], except that tuning parameters of this parameterization differ from any of the versions outlined in [3], being, however, closest to version 4. The main difference from it is that the cloud water flux rating boundary-layer clouds is estimated not only for reasons of boundary-layer turbulence development, but also from the condition of moist instability, which, under deep convection, results in fewer clouds in the boundary layer and more in the upper troposphere. The equilibrium sensitivity of such a version to a doubling of atmospheric СО2 is about 3.3 K.

The aerosol scheme has also been updated by including a change in the calculation of natural emissions of sulfate aerosol [5] and wet scavenging, as well as the influence of aerosol concentration on the cloud droplet radius, i.e., the first indirect effect [6]. Numerical values of the constants, however, were taken to be a little different from those used in [5]. Additionally, the improved scheme of snow evolution taking into account refreezing and the calculation of the snow albedo [7] were introduced to the model. The calculation of universal functions in the atmospheric boundary layer in stable stratification has also been changed: in the latest model version, such functions assume turbulence at even large gradient Richardson numbers [8].

Animal Sanctuary Woes Not Caused by Climate Change

Seldom does the NY Times cover any story that I can physically fact-check. In this case today, the object of the story is “close enough” for me to visit and take photos.

From Watts Up With That?

New Brief by Kip Hansen — 24 February 2024

Seldom does the NY Times cover any story that I can physically fact-check. In this case today, the object of the story is “close enough” for me to visit and take photos.

The sad tale is recounted in this piece in the NY Times:

“Sanctuaries Can Protect Animals From Abuse, but Not From Climate Change — A growing number of animal refuges are being forced to move in the face of extreme rainfall, droughts and hurricanes caused by the planet’s warming.”

It deals with an animal refuge of the type known (officially) as a Farmed Animal Sanctuary [FAS]: “Farmed animal sanctuaries (FAS) provide care, shelter and advocacy of farmed animal species such as chickens, cows, goats, fish, horses, pig, turkeys, and sheep.” The specific FAS is called the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, though it is not in the Catskill Mountains but rather down in the valley closer to the Hudson River.

The claim is: “Climate Change is Driving Animal Sanctuaries to Relocate” – according to the official title of this article which is found in the meta-data for the webpage as “<title data-rh=”true”>Climate Change Is Driving Animal Sanctuaries To Relocate – The New York Times</title>” This claim is false in general and false in the specific instance of the Catskill Animal Sanctuary.Let’s see how the author of this NY Times piece makes this yet another “every story is a climate change story.” First, this article is “narrative journalism”. Narrative journalism:

It looks at intriguing people, human emotions, and real situations. It provides the private story behind the public story.
It reaches past the ordinary by blending the reportage of facts with the writing style of fiction.

But, in addition, it is meant to “contain accurate, well-researched information”.

Our NY Times journalist, Hilary Howard, seems to have understood the first two, but fails on the last requirements of “accurate” and “well-researched”.

Why do I say this? Let’s see what Howard had to say about the reason this animal sanctuary has to move:

CLAIM: “Increased rainfall …. has finally forced the sanctuary to search for a new home”

The Times says “Climate change has resulted in warmer and wetter weather across New York, where annual precipitation jumped 10 to 20 percent over the past century, according to a state report. The study projects that the largest precipitation increases in coming years will be in New York City, the Catskill Mountains region and the Lower Hudson Valley.” Similar to the error of applying Global Warming to every locality, the Times author apparently thinks that a state-wide statistic applies everywhere in the state and/or that future predicted weather can cause current-day problems.

This sanctuary property is located in the Glenerie area of Ulster County, NY, and was purchased in August of 2002. “We only had a small number of animals, it was August, the grass was lush, I didn’t ask about soil composition.” The Times quotes Kathy Stevens, the 150-acre sanctuary’s founder and executive director, as saying. Why does she say that last part? Keep reading, I’ll get to it.

Has Ulster County, NY, thus this sanctuary, see “increased rainfall”?

Here’s the graph:

The little box in the lower right points to 2002. The property was inspected and purchased in the drought year of 2002, after which local rainfall returned to a more normal range. There were two very wet years a decade ago, 2011 and 2012. Otherwise, rainfall amount are variable, but generally constrained to the range of 40 to 60 inches per year. Now, that a pretty wide range – 20 inches. At the top end we have a wet year and at the bottom end, a dry year.

So, let’s look at Monthly Rainfall. Has Ulster County seen very wet months?

I don’t really like illustrations of “difference from normal” but this shows “drier” and “wetter” month by month since 2002, the lifetime of this sanctuary.

There are not many “wettest” months (darkest green) and visible but not obvious is that 2021 had a wet summer (four greens stacked up).

And though 2017-2018 appear in the Total Precipitation graph as a wet year, we don’t see many very wet months that year.

There is one more way to look at this data provided by USAFacts, which attempts to make government produced data available and visible to the general public.

The graphs I have used here are available in interactive form on the USAFacts “Climate in Ulster County, New York” page.

I don’t like using a graph of standard deviations, but that is what is available – they use this “We defined all monthly temperature and precipitation values to be average in comparison to the 20th century average if they fell within two standard deviations of the 20th century average. All values that fell below or above two standard deviations are defined as climatic anomalies”.

So, over the lifetime of this sanctuary, in the latest decade we see four or five anomalously wet months – but not as anomalous as those in the first decade of the sanctuary’s life. Further, the latest decade has been less variable than the first decade.

VERDICT: There has not been increased rainfall in Ulster County, NY where this sanctuary is located over the last two decades.

So, you may ask, if there has not been increased rainfall, why are their pastures and fields soggy?

“At the Catskill sanctuary, flooding and constant dampness have resulted in soil erosion and a loss of trees. Animals’ hoofs often sink into saturated ground while members of the sanctuary’s staff undertake flood mitigation efforts, installing culvert pipes and curtain drains, among other tactics, to no avail.” [ NY Times article ]

“Basically that property is in a bowl,” said Jake Wedemeyer, the executive director of the Ulster County Soil and Water Conservation District, a government agency that advises farmers on agricultural practices.

Another problem, Mr. Wedemeyer said, is that the valley’s clay soil retains water and drains poorly.” [ NY Times article ]

We see in this topographical map from USGS that the Catskill Animal Sanctuary is located between two ridges (of solid rock, by the way) with the only outlet for water being the tiny stream at the south end of the bowl, but the creek is not reliably downhill from the fields and pastures, it has negligible slope and is seasonal. (I confirmed by physical inspection).

The whole area between the foothills of the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson River in this part of the Hudson Valley has so much clay that it is famous for the number of historic brick kilns which used the abundant clay to manufacture bricks which were loaded on barges and floated down the Hudson to build NY City.

When purchasing the property “Ms. Stevens remembers when she first bought the Catskill property in 2002. “We only had a small number of animals, it was August, the grass was lush,” she said. “I didn’t ask about soil composition.”” [NY Times article]

In the drought year of 2002, the property looked oh-so-nice with lush grass and dry fields, not boggy-wet fields. It hadn’t been used to pasture many animals.

VERDICT: Agricultural land purchased without any regards for soil type, soil composition, and without seeking any expert opinion on what purposes for which the property was suited and without considering the well-known effects of variable rainfall.

Viewed in the moment, the property looked great – but there was a failure to take into account long-term weather patterns and physical geography. Previous owners or neighbors could have told them the property was boggy in wet years, as is much of the agricultural land in the valley portion of Ulster County.

CLAIM: “A growing number of animal refuges are being forced to move in the face of extreme rainfall, droughts and hurricanes caused by the planet’s warming.”

Despite the use of the words “growing number”, the article only cites two instances of animal refuges moving at all, and BOTH moved to New York State’s Finger Lakes region.

Quoting the Times:

“Sweet Farm, an animal sanctuary that also grows produce and supports climate-related technology, moved 140 animals from Silicon Valley in California to New York’s Finger Lakes region in 2022 after a close call with a wildfire.” [I need not point out that wildfires are not climate change, especially in California, which wishes it was back to drier conditions after two very wet years.]

Note that Sweet Farms’ website makes no mention of being forced to relocate due to climate change, wildfire or anything other than simple personal choice of the owners.

and

“Happy Compromise Farm + Sanctuary, which moved from Oregon in 2021. …. Trading drought concerns in the Northwest for New York’s extreme rainfall presents its own set of challenges, the owners said. But it was a trade they were willing to make.”

“We do have to deal with an overabundance of water here in New York,” said Eryn Leavens, a founder of Happy Compromise. “But climate change affects every corner of the planet, and you really have to pick and choose your battles.”

The owner’s quote of “extreme rainfall” can not be verified – they are in Tioga County, which has been drier than normal since 2021.

Note that Happy Compromises’s website makes no mention of being forced to relocate due to climate change, drought, or anything not simply personal choice of the two co-owners.

“The exact number of relocations is hard to pinpoint. The Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, an accrediting agency, does not track the reasons for such moves. But the nonprofit group did report an increase in sanctuaries strengthening their disaster preparedness plans from 2022 to 2023, said Valerie Taylor, the executive director.

“Sanctuaries which did not previously have to worry about wildfires, severe flooding or extreme heat and cold are now faced with these new challenges,” Ms. Taylor said. Last year, about a third of all sanctuaries seeking accreditation reinforced their disaster plans, a 4 percent increase from the previous year, according to the federation. (Some 186 animal refuges in the United States are accredited by the group.)”

Let’s be clear, there are two animal sanctuaries that are known to have moved, both moved to New York State, neither mentioning climate change as the reason for their moves, not even the one that labels itself as a “Climate Sanctuary”. According to Ms. Taylor, of The Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, wildfires, floods, heat and cold are uniquely new weather phenomena.

VERDICT: The claim that “A growing number of animal refuges are being forced to move in the face of extreme rainfall, droughts and hurricanes caused by the planet’s warming.” is not supported by facts presented by the NY Times.

Bottom Lines:

1. The featured Catskill Animal Sanctuary has found that it made a poor choice in its property purchase in 2002 – failing to inquire about how long-term weather conditions might affect the land. If the owners had asked the local experts, advice is provided free by various levels of government, they would have known that land would be boggy in wet years.

2. The reason they have to move is not down to Climate Change – the local climate has not changed. They must move because of Geography and Geology – both of which they should have studied in school.

3. It is false that “increasing numbers of animal sanctuaries” have been forced to move because of climate change. That idea seems to have been entirely invented by the NY Times journalist.

4. This essay illustrates the ongoing trend, pushed by Climate Crisis News Cabals, to “make every story a climate change story” – even if they have to make things up.

# # # # #

Author’s Comment:

A silly little story, blown out of proportion to sell the specious climate crisis.

I write about it to show something about journalism, the misapplication of, leads readers astray giving them seeming true stories that are not factual.

It is a fact that if the Catskill Animal Sanctuary wants to have many hooved animals, it will have to move. The property is not suited for that use and never was.

Why? Geography and Geology. I am sympathetic that these well-meaning people who have worked so hard for 20 years are now realizing that their poor property choice is not “fixable”. I once put just five years into an ambitious project that I finally came to realize was not going to get done, a least by me. Luckily, I realized it before we sunk our life savings into it — and was able to unload at a handy profit.

I admit that I do not understand the whole “animal sanctuary movement” — at all.

Using large area statistical weather trends to explain local phenomena is a bad idea. National, state and county lines don’t apply to the natural processes that produce weather.

Thanks for reading.

After All the Media Hype, Wildfires Across Southern Europe Were Completely Normal in 2023

Hardly a retraction since it still claims rainfall intensity, storm surges and wave heights are increasing with climate change. None of this can be proved – climate models are opinions, not evidence – while the IPCC also rules out human involvement in severe wind storms.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

Writing in the Daily Telegraph last July, Suzanne Moore reported that the “world is on fire – and we can’t ignore it any longer”. She was noting the usual outbreaks of summer wildfires in southern Europe and suggested a retreat by cautious holiday makers in Rhodes away from one conflagration was “what climate refugees look like”. The Guardian was in similar hysterical mode observing that the lesson from Greece was “the climate crisis is coming for us all”. Such was the level of Thermogeddon interest last summer it is curious that final figures for areas burnt during the year are missing from mainstream media. In the five largest southern European countries for which the EU provides separate data – Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece – 2023 was only the 20th highest in the modern satellite burnt acreage record going back to 1980.

This is perhaps not surprising. Fire ‘weather’ is a potent tool in stoking up general climate anxiety and helps promote the need for a collectivist Net Zero political solution. The Guardian used video footage of tourists moving away from one wildfire last year to claim “survival mode” could easily pass for a “TV climate crisis awareness raising campaign”. An Agence France-Presse report in the Guardian quoted EU spokesman Balazs Ujvari as stating that fires are getting more severe. “If you look at the figures every year in the past years, we are seeing trends which are not necessarily favourable.”

Let us look at some of the figures, starting first with the graph below compiled by the investigative climate writer Paul Homewood.

As noted, the five major countries of southern Europe show many years since 1980 when wildfires consumed more hectares of land. Last year was an average period, easily beaten by 2017 and dwarfed by 1985. In fact the graph above from EU data shows that wildfire acreage over these countries has actually declined over the last 43 years.

Economic damage can be considerable, although the trend on this front shows little overall change over the last two decades across the EU.

Like many natural events, wildfires cause lives to be lost. Using this tragic loss of life to whip up climate fear is deplorable, not least since many wildfires are deliberately or accidentally started by humans. Greece had a bad wildfire season last year with the BBC reporting that 79 arrests had been made for arson. The BBC accepts that wildfires are common in Greece but “scientists say” there is a link between extreme weather events and climate change. Stefan Doerr of the Centre for Wildlife Research at Swansea University notes that arson “can more easily turn into fast-moving wildfires”. Arsonists, it seems, just love climate change.

Last year, the climate scientist Patrick Brown admitted that he had written a paper published in Nature that focused exclusively on how climate change had affected extreme wildfire behaviour and ignored other key factors. In particular he downplayed the information that 80% of wildfires are lit by humans. He laid out his whistle-blowing claims in an article titled: ‘I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published’. He knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change because it would dilute the message journals like Nature want to tell, he observed, adding: “To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change.”

Wildfires are an easy propaganda win for climate alarmists. People die, property is destroyed and the published images are spectacular. But fires are a vital part of nature, always have been. They help clear away the debris that accumulates naturally in forests and scrub land and provide a path for regenerative growth. There is little evidence that natural trends are on the increase around the world, and none to suggest that humans play a part in natural ignition by burning hydrocarbons and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In its sixth assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) specifically ruled out human involvement in ‘fire weather’, both in the past and going forward to the turn of this century.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Stop Press: Met Office update: As regular readers will recall, the Met Office recently came a cropper with a senior meteorologist stating last month on the BBC that storms in the U.K. were becoming more intense due to climate change. In reply to a subsequent freedom of information request from Paul Homewood, the Met Office admitted it had no evidence to back up the claim, but failed to correct the original statement. In a further letter to Homewood, it now accepts that there is no evidence ‘yet’ for an increase in wind gust speeds, although these are “projected to increase with future climate change”. Hardly a retraction since it still claims rainfall intensity, storm surges and wave heights are increasing with climate change. None of this can be proved – climate models are opinions, not evidence – while the IPCC also rules out human involvement in severe wind storms. It also rules out changes in river floods and heavy rain, along with coastal flooding and erosion.

Day: February 26, 2024

The Great European Farmer Revolt: Jilted, Turning On The Greens

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“The climate crisis is not gender neutral”, says WMO’s Celeste Saulo

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Biden’s green energy plans will funnel taxpayer billions to Chinese firms

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Judith Curry: There’s A Climate Change Industry Set Up To Reward Alarmism

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Small manufacturers forced to answer 300 questions on net zero

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Just How Bad are EVs?

Ford’s eMustang; Star to Loser

EV Price Cuts may Attract Buyers but Add to Ford’s Loss per Vehicle

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Shoppers face £1bn ‘toaster tax’ under plans for new set of net zero rules

Plans are ‘awful’

‘Stores may stop selling electrical goods’

‘We can’t do it for free’

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Top Climate Model Improved to Show ENSO Skill

Abstract:

Introduction

Discussion

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Animal Sanctuary Woes Not Caused by Climate Change

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After All the Media Hype, Wildfires Across Southern Europe Were Completely Normal in 2023

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