Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
According to Curtin University academic Dr Diana Bogueva, “it is not too late for Gen Z to make a difference fighting for a sustainable future.” – but they mostly aren’t engaging.
According to Curtin University academic Dr Diana Bogueva, “it is not too late for Gen Z to make a difference fighting for a sustainable future.” – but they mostly aren’t engaging.
Gen Z’s climate anxiety is real and needs action — for everyone’s wellbeing
05 MAR 2024 | Samuel Jeremic
…
Published in Sustainable Earth Reviews, the study surveyed Australian university students belonging to Generation Z (people born between 1995 and 2010) and found climate change was their number one environmental concern.
More than 80 per cent reported being ‘concerned’ or ‘very concerned’ about climate change, with many revealing they felt anxious over the issue.
…
Dr Bogueva stressed it wasn’t solely Gen Z’s responsibility to solve climate change — a problem they didn’t create — but taking meaningful action can help alleviate an individual’s feelings of anxiety and powerlessness.
“This can include finding out how they can be part of the solution in their personal lives, whether it’s choosing a career which has an impact or adjusting the products or food they consume,” she said.
“While the challenges of climate change can be scary it is not too late for Gen Z to make a difference fighting for a sustainable future.”
Despite scientific evidence about the imminent threat of climate change, people and governments around the world are slow in taking sufficient action. Against these bleak outlooks, Generation Z (Gen Z) born 1995–2010 will inherit the consequences of prolonged inaction. This research delves into the climate change concerns of Australia’s university Gen Z. A representative survey of 446 Australian university students conducted between September 2021 and April 2022 revealed that climate change is the top environmental concern for Gen Z with 81% of these young people being significantly concerned and many experiencing serious climate anxiety. Despite this pervasive concern, 65% of Australia’s university Gen Z is not engaged in traditional climate activism; however, these young people are using technology to voice their concerns. As the future decision-makers of the world, it is crucial for Gen Z to accelerate climate action in all of its forms, including engaging with scientific knowledge and other generations to shape policies and safeguard a liveable planet for all.Read more: https://sustainableearthreviews.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42055-024-00075-w
The survey authors explain respondents are self selecting, and may not be a representative sample.
Even so, my first impression was that “climate indoctrination has clearly malfunctioned”.
For decades far too many schools have pumped kids full of climate propaganda and end of world messages, only to see their army of climate activists melt away like ice cubes in a glass of Tequila on a hot summer day.
The study authors seem concerned about the lack of engagement, though their focus appears to be the mental health of the climate worriers – “… Moreover, there is a pressing need to develop effective strategies aimed at assisting individuals, especially the youth, in channelling their climate-related fears in a positive direction, including through their employment and career choices. …”
Are GenZ climate worriers just expressing climate concern to fit in, but don’t actually care? Has despair overwhelmed their will to act?
Does sharing tweets or snap chatting their climate concern, and “lifestyle changes” like using the recycling bin count as climate action in their minds?
Are all but the most committed GenZ climate worriers just lazy?
Future generations will wonder at the failure of education which led to this mass hysteria, yet rendered hysterics mostly unable or unwilling to actually do anything to address their fear.
Wyoming has vast resources of coal, oil and natural gas. With 40% of the nation’s coal resources, the state has been the United States’ top producer since 1986, primarily from the Powder River Basin located in the northeastern part of the state. It is also a national leader in the production of oil and natural gas, ranking in the top 10 in production of both products.
Wyoming has vast resources of coal, oil and natural gas. With 40% of the nation’s coal resources, the state has been the United States’ top producer since 1986, primarily from the Powder River Basin located in the northeastern part of the state. It is also a national leader in the production of oil and natural gas, ranking in the top 10 in production of both products.
Yet, even though the Wyoming economy is heavily dependent on the mining and extraction of fossil fuels, its governor, Mark Gordon, has adopted a strong “decarbonization” policy. The science tells us that this is not a winning strategy for the people of Wyoming.
We also sent a team of climate experts from the CO2 Coalition, including Dr. William Happer, Dr. Byron Soepyan and Gregory Wrightstone to Wyoming to provide the facts concerning the huge benefits of carbon dioxide. This team presented the science at a hearing of the Wyoming Senate Agriculture Committee (pictured above.)
The team also presented accurate science regarding Wyoming’s climate to students at Gillette College, Laramie County Community College, and at the University of Wyoming.
Temperature Data Shows Good News for Wyoming
Data for Wyoming contradict the 4th National Climate Assessment (NCA4) assertion that “the frequency and intensity of extreme high temperature events are virtually certain to increase.”
Our data analysis shows that high daily temperatures peaked during the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s and have been in a 90-year decline. This is confirmed by reviewing the percentage of days that were reported to be hotter than 100°F (37.8°C) by Wyoming temperature stations. There is no discernible increase, and the largest numbers occurred in the first half of the 20th century when CO2 levels were 70% of recent measurements.
There has been, however, a beneficial increase in the minimum nighttime temperatures, which has led to a lengthening of the Wyoming growing season. Since the late 1800s, these nighttime temperatures have increased about 2°F (1.1°C).
The slight increase of about 1.2°F (0.7°C) in the average temperature in the last 120 years is being driven by reductions in extreme cold rather than increases in extreme heat.
The recent proposal by Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon to use “carbon capture” to achieve what he terms “negative net zero” (Gordon 2021) is based on a flawed theory that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is leading to harmful effects on Wyoming’s environment and its people. Within this report, we have documented that modest warming and increasing carbon dioxide are clearly beneficial for the Cowboy State’s ecosystems and citizenry.
The data tell us the following:
• Current levels of carbon dioxide are at near historically low concentrations. • Adjustments to historic temperature records have artificially amplified modern warming. • Wyoming temperatures have increased a modest 1.2°F (0.7°C) since 1895. • Heat waves peaked in the 1930s and have been in slight decline since that period. • Nightime low temperatures have increased, lengthening growing seasons. • Precipitation data, while varying greatly from year-to-year, show no increasing or decreasing trend. • Droughts are not increasing in Wyoming. • Severe weather and natural disasters are declining. • Agricultural production, globally and in Wyoming, is thriving due to modest warming and more CO2. • Vegetation in Wyoming and around the world is increasing. • Greenhouse-induced warming that would be averted (< 0.003°F) by eliminating Wyoming’s CO2 emissions would be too small to measure and achieved, if at all, at enormous cost. • Models used to project future temperatures significantly overpredict the amount of warming in coming decades.
That’s probably because the experts now have to admit that polar bear numbers have not declined since 2004 and bears have been in good body condition since at least 2016. Southern Hudson Bay bears have apparently increased in number since 2016.
Over the last 10 years, Hudson Bay polar bears have morphed from being the “most at risk” across the Arctic to the “least at risk.” Who would have thought?
That’s probably because the experts now have to admit that polar bear numbers have not declined since 2004 and bears have been in good body condition since at least 2016. Southern Hudson Bay bears have apparently increased in number since 2016. How ironic is it that the photo above, taken in Hudson Bay — the only Arctic region where trees grow — was used to illustrate a recent Mother Jonesarticle promoting a new prediction of future Arctic summer sea ice loss that’s said to pose a threat to polar bear survival.
Here is a brief retrospective of predictions for survival of Western Hudson Bay polar bears (based on predictions of future sea ice loss), my emphasis throughout:
2013
In 2013, Andrew Derocher told The Guardian (27 November):
“All indications are that this population could collapse in the space of a year or two if conditions got bad enough,” said Andrew Derocher, a polar bear scientist at the University of Alberta.
“In 2020, I think it is still an open bet that we are going to have polar bears in western Hudson Bay.”
Contrary to this prediction, sea ice conditions over Western Hudson Bay haven’t changed since about 1998: most years, the ice-free season has been about 3 weeks longer than it was in the 1980s. Summer sea ice conditions are not getting worse.
2016
In 2016, seal biologist Steve Ferguson told the Winnipeg Free Press (6 December):
Hudson Bay could experience its first ice-free winter within five to 10 years, Ferguson said.
“I don’t think polar bears and seals will be able to adapt. I think they’ll just die out in places like Hudson Bay. There’s little to stop the trend in loss of sea ice, even if we stop producing greenhouse gasses,” he said.
Contrary to this dire prediction, Hudson Bay has been no where near to ice-free in winter, see the sea ice development chart below showing ice thickness for the week of 4 March 2024:
2024
Steven Amstrup told the Winnipeg Free Press in 2024 (28 February) the following about Western Hudson Bay polar bears, seemingly in direct contradiction to a paper he co-authored last year:
Even so, the population seems to be faring better than the rest of the world, Amstrup said during his presentation.
“If there’s a likelihood of being able to save bears anywhere, it’s probably in (the) Hudson Bay,” he said.
The rate of decline in sea ice is lower in the western and southern portions of the Hudson Bay than anywhere else globally, Amstrup relayed.
This prediction seems like a clear admission that previous predictions were wrong. This means that any of the models that formerly used WH bears as a proxy to predict the survival of all other subpopulations, including the one published last year, are not worth the paper they were printed on. What a surprise!
The head of the Government’s climate watchdog told officials to “kill” a negative news story with “technical language”, The Telegraph can disclose.
Chris Stark accused of obfuscation after being asked for clarity over claims of a mistake made by the Climate Change Committee.
The head of the Government’s climate watchdog told officials to “kill” a negative news story with “technical language”, The Telegraph can disclose.
Chris Stark, chief executive of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), drafted the response when asked for clarity over claims of a “mistake” made by the body. The Telegraph has the story.
“How’s this – kill it with some technical language,” he told his team.
It raises questions about the transparency of the committee, which has been pushing the Government to impose more radical net zero targets.
Mr Stark, a senior public servant whose pay package amounts to more than £170,000 per year, is bound by the Nolan Principles of Public Life, which require “openness” and “accountability”.
David Jones, a Tory member of the Commons public administration committee and former Cabinet minister, said: “Chris Stark steps down as chief executive of the CCC next month. Before he goes, he has some serious questions to answer.
“On the face of it, urging colleagues to ‘kill’ a reasonable request for information with technical language looks very much like an attempt at obfuscation.
“Mr Stark will undoubtedly understand the crucial importance of academic integrity when addressing such an important issue as climate change. A full and immediate explanation is called for.”
On-the-record denials removed
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business and energy secretary, said: “This seems outrageous – a public servant seeking directly to obfuscate. At least Sir Humphrey did it subtly.”
Mr Stark’s comments were made in private emails exchanged within the CCC after The Telegraph contacted the body for a response to a planned article in January.
The article reported a claim by Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, who led a recent Royal Society study on future energy supply, that the CCC had privately admitted that it made a “mistake” when it only “looked at a single year” of data showing the number of windy days in a year when it made pronouncements on the extent to which the UK could rely on wind and solar farms to meet net zero targets.
Referring to The Telegraph’s initial query about Sir Chris’s comments on Thursday, Jan 18, Mr Stark told staff: “I’m happy with a short response. If you need more, here’s what I suggest. But it may just feed the beast – so less may be more here.”
He added that the Royal Society would be “very embarrassed about this”, and one of his officials contacted the body to alert them.
An unnamed individual – apparently a representative of the Royal Society – stated that Sir Chris “says the comments about privately conceding a mistake were made to him by Chris Stark”.
In the internal emails, Mr Stark insisted to staff that “we absolutely have not conceded that there’s a ‘mistake’ in our work”.
But, despite repeated questions from The Telegraph about whether he did make the comments described by Sir Chris, Mr Stark removed suggested on-the-record denials from the body’s response, telling staff: “No need to fuel a fight.”
‘We stand by the analysis’
In emails to The Telegraph, the CCC said Sir Chris’s comments, in a presentation given in a personal capacity in October, following the publication of his review, related solely to a particular report it published last year on how to deliver “a reliable decarbonised power system”.
But The Telegraph pointed out that its original recommendations in 2019 about the feasibility of meeting the 2050 net zero target were also based on just one year’s worth of weather data. The recommendations were heavily relied on by ministers when Theresa May enshrined the 2050 target into law.
The Telegraph put several questions to the CCC, including asking to what extent the 2019 recommendations – and the predicted cost of the 2050 target – would have been different had they relied on a greater amount of weather data.
It is uncontroversial that temperature gradients, at least in part, power our weather. Heat wants to flow from warmer areas to colder areas as it seeks an equilibrium temperature. On a larger scale, meridional transport is also, in part, a function of the temperature difference between the tropics and the poles.
By Andy May
In part 4 the impact of convection and atmospheric circulation on climate was discussed. When circulation patterns change, they change the speed and efficiency of the transport of excess heat from the tropics to the poles. When this heat transport is faster, the world becomes cooler since the poles have a weak greenhouse effect and are more efficient at radiating heat to space. The tropics are humid and have a very strong greenhouse effect because water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas.[1] Thus, the thermal energy (heat) transported to the low humidity poles is more easily sent to space than it would be in the tropics.
The temperature gradient formed between the tropics and the poles helps drive this heat transfer, but it is modulated by atmospheric and oceanic circulation and convection patterns. A very steep gradient, such as we have today, increases storminess.
The temperature gradient powers meridional transport and weather
It is uncontroversial that temperature gradients, at least in part, power our weather. Heat wants to flow from warmer areas to colder areas as it seeks an equilibrium temperature. On a larger scale, meridional transport is also, in part, a function of the temperature difference between the tropics and the poles. Leon Barry and colleagues write:
“The atmospheric heat transport on Earth from the Equator to the poles is largely carried out by mid-latitude storms.”[2]Leon Barry, et al., Nature, 2002
Strong mid-latitude storms, cyclones, and other storms carry most excess tropical heat poleward, and the more they carry the colder Earth becomes. The temperature gradient is not the only factor controlling meridional transport, there are many other modulators,[3] but it is an important factor, perhaps the most important one.
The atmosphere is a huge heat engine[4] powered from the surface (except some limited areas in the polar regions) that expels unused heat to outer space.[5] Just like in a train engine, as the heat moves through the atmosphere, it can produce work, the work is our weather, mainly storms. As discussed in part 4, tropical temperatures do not vary much, so the critical factor is the temperature at the poles. The necessary corollary to this concept is that weather is more extreme when the planet is colder, meridional transport is strong, and the temperature gradient is steep. It is less extreme when the planet is warmer, meridional transport is weak, and the temperature gradient is smaller. This is the opposite of the conclusions reached by the IPCC, who believe warmer weather brings more storms based on the CMIP models (AR6 WGI, page 1526-1527). But that is not what is observed. Each hemisphere has more severe weather during its winter months than during its summer months.[6]
Zhongwei Yan and colleagues, which include Philip Jones and Anders Moberg, found that extreme weather has decreased, especially in the winter months since the 19th century, as the world has warmed.[7] They note that the relationship between warmth and weaker weather is most pronounced in Europe and China in the critical winter months. In contrast to Yan, et al., AR6 reports:
“… both thermodynamic and dynamic processes are involved in the changes of extremes in response to warming. Anthropogenic forcing (e.g., increases in greenhouse gas concentrations) directly affects thermodynamic variables, including overall increases in high temperatures and atmospheric evaporative demand, and regional changes in atmospheric moisture, which intensify heatwaves, droughts and heavy precipitation events when they occur (high confidence). Dynamic processes are often indirect responses to thermodynamic changes, are strongly affected by internal climate variability, and are also less well understood. As such, there is low confidence in how dynamic changes affect the location and magnitude of extreme events in a warming climate.”AR6 WGI, page 1527
Thus, in spite of the evidence reported by Yan, et al. and many others (see Chapter 11 in The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC), AR6 has concluded that anthropogenic global warming is causing and has caused increases in extreme weather. This is another example of bias.
On longer time scales storminess also increases during historically cold periods. It reached a peak in Europe during the very cold Little Ice Age period, labeled “LIA” in figure 1.
Figure 1. Periods of storminess over the past 6,500 years in Europe. After (Vinós, 2022).
Figure 1 shows periods of storminess identified from sedimentological features in Europe from 18 studies. The most concentrated periods of extreme storminess occurred during the cold Little Ice Age,[8] which the IPCC calls the “pre-industrial” period.[9] It is logical that extreme weather and storminess increases in cold times, and that is what is observed. Tropical temperatures do not change much, global temperature change happens mostly in the higher latitudes. As higher latitude temperatures grow colder, the temperature gradient steepens, powering stronger winds, and strong winds are the hallmark of extreme weather.
IPCC AR6 WG1 Model Bias, Summary
The weakest IPCC assumption is that the Sun has remained constant in its effect on climate since 1750. As we showed in part 3, there is a lot of evidence that the Sun has varied in that timeframe and contributed to global warming.[10] The IPCC’s implicit assumption, as shown in figure 2 in part 3, that a change in solar forcing is equivalent to the same change (in W/m2) in greenhouse forcing is simply not true, basic physics tells us that. Solar forcing has a longer residence time, at least in the oceans, and causes more warming Watt-for-Watt due to the higher frequencies in sunlight. The higher frequencies penetrate the ocean surface and the lower frequency greenhouse gas emissions do not.
The CMIP6 models do try and account for ocean heat content, ocean heat buffering, and inertia, but as far as I can see they do not account for the difference in the climatic effects of sunlight and greenhouse gas emissions. If they do, it is buried deeply in AR6 WG1.[11] While they admit there is a difference in ocean uptake in the model documentation,[12] they seem to just ignore the fact. They treat them the same or nearly the same and they are not.
This is important because, according to AR6, increasing ocean heat content is 91% of the total global energy inventory change from 1971-2006 to 2006-2018, two periods of fast warming.[13] Coincidentally or not, this is also the last half of the Modern Solar Maximum,[14] when the oceans would be expected to be expelling the excess heat they accumulated during the first half of the maximum. Oceans expel heat primarily with El Ninos, tropical cyclones (hurricanes), monsoons, and mid-latitude storms. How long it takes for the world’s atmosphere to begin cooling after a solar maximum is unknown, maybe we will find out soon.
While we have many measurements of heat content to 2000 meters ocean depth now, prior to 2004 these measurements are quite rare, thus the specific model used to compute heat content in the ocean, prior to 2000, is very important. It is unfortunate that our measurements of deep ocean heat content improved so dramatically just as the Modern Solar Maximum was ending, we need this data as the heat content was accumulating as well. Satellite measurements of outgoing radiation from Earth’s surface are very sensitive to surface temperature, but not necessarily to below the ocean surface.
There are three processes that work together to keep Earth’s climate stable, the greenhouse effect, clouds, and meridional heat transport. These factors also help determine the residence time of energy received from the Sun. The IPCC has focused exclusively only on the first by developing their CO2“control knob” climate hypothesis.[15]
The effect of clouds and their variability on climate change is still largely unknown and remains the largest source of uncertainty in calculating the effect of greenhouse gases on our climate.[16] The IPCC cannot tell if the net effect of increasing cloud cover warms or cools the Earth. Because cloud formation and destruction cannot be modeled,[17] their effect is ignored or simply “parameterized”[18] by the IPCC.
With respect to meridional heat transport, energy is only exchanged between the climate system and outer space through the top of the atmosphere, this results in global meridional heat transport necessarily having a net zero value when integrated instantaneously over the entire global climate system. Moving energy from one region to another does not alter the total amount of energy within the system, although it can, and does change the energy residence time. By ignoring the impact of changing convection patterns on energy residence time, the IPCC has concluded that meridional heat transport cannot constitute a significant cause for climate change, their most fundamental mistake.[19]
From both a thermodynamic and dynamic point of view, the defining feature of Earth’s climate system is the transport of energy. Energy transport is the cause of all weather, especially all extreme weather. Most of the solar energy that is not reflected by the planet is stored in the oceans, where 99.9%[20] of the climate system “heat” or thermal energy resides. However, the oceans do not transport energy very well. Differences in water temperature tend to cause vertical movements through altered buoyancy, not lateral movements, so the oceans are temperature stratified. Most of the energy in the climate system is transported by the atmosphere, and what energy is transported laterally by surface ocean currents is driven by winds.[21] The flow of non-solar energy at the atmospheric-ocean boundary (including across sea-ice) is almost always, almost everywhere, from the ocean to the atmosphere.[22]
These first five parts point out the most serious systematic biases in the IPCC AR1 report, Climate Change 2021, The Physical Science Basis. The bias is introduced by ignoring the valid peer-reviewed articles cited in this series of posts and numerous other similar articles, thus it is mostly “reporting” or “confirmation” bias. The evidence that solar variability affects Earth’s climate is huge and well established in the literature as reviewed by Douglas Hoyt and Kenneth Schatten in their excellent book The Role of the Sun in Climate Change,[23] and by Joanna Haigh in her report, Solar Influences on Climate.[24]
Yet, these monumental works, as well as the many papers in the bibliography, are ignored by the IPCC, or brushed off as unimportant. In addition, many of the hundreds of papers cited in Connolly, et al.,[25] and in Nicola Scafetta and Fritz Vahrenholt’s[26] chapter in The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC are ignored in AR6.
It is well documented that the IPCC/CMIP6 climate models run much too hot relative to observations.[27] They overestimate tropical mid-tropospheric temperature,[28] sea surface temperature,[29] and global warming in general.[30] This bias is acknowledged in AR6 itself, where they write:
“Hence, we assess with medium confidence that CMIP5 and CMIP6 models continue to overestimate observed warming in the upper tropical troposphere over the 1979–2014 period by at least 0.1°C per decade, in part because of an overestimate of the tropical SST trend pattern over this period.“[31]AR6 WGI, page 444
The IPCC/CMIP6 climate models not only predict more warming than we observe, they also “drift” in their calculations with time. In most models the drift is toward more warming, adding to the natural tendency of models to run hot. In addition, the energy and mass budgets do not close properly in individual model runs, violating the physical laws of conservation of mass and energy.[32] In some respects the CMIP6 models do better than CMIP5, but in others they do worse, suggesting that the models are not getting any better with time and may have reached the end of their useful lives.
Model unforced drift contaminates the forced (that is changing CO2 or volcanism) trends. In some models, the drift is a significant proportion of the warming computed. It results from the parameterization of quantities that cannot be modeled, like cloud cover, and from an imbalance between the prescribed initial model state from observations and the physics programmed into the model.
Another culprit can be the “coupling shock” when the various model components, like the ocean and atmospheric components are merged, sometimes called “boundary shock.” Suffice it to say, the fact that mass and energy are not conserved in these models, and they drift, is a real and significant problem. The model drift is simply the model trying to reach a stable state after the start up (or spin-up) shocks occur. Equilibrium, after spin-up, is not reached for over a thousand years, so letting the model run that long just to get rid of the drift is not practical. Usually when the models are corrected for drift, their mass/energy conservation problems are reduced.[33] However, the mismatch between the model physics and the initial model state, which is from observations, is worrying all by itself.
From this modeler’s point of view, the conceptual model or hypothesis that the CMIP6, and its predecessors, were designed to investigate has been shown to be incorrect. Only by introducing increasing amounts of bias can this observation be covered up. But the more bias introduced into the models and in the interpretation of the output, the more obvious it becomes. It is time to quit and develop a new hypothesis and conceptual model to investigate, the “CO2 control knob” idea is dead.[34]
For a discussion of how meridional transport is modulated see: (Vinós, Climate of the Past, Present and Future, A Scientific Debate, 2nd Edition, 2022, pp. 157-174) ↑
(Barry, Craig, & Thuburn, 2002) and (Huang, 2004) ↑
(Costas, Naughton, Goble, & Renssen, 2016) and (Sorrel, et al., 2012) ↑
The IPCC does not use the “Little Ice Age” label, they consider it to be poorly defined (IPCC, 2021, p. 295). They define pre-industrial as either before 1850 or before 1750 depending upon context. When referring to the temperature record, 1850-1900 is the reference temperature period for the “pre-industrial.” When referring to human emissions of greenhouse gases, the boundary is 1750. See footnote 13, page 43 of WGI or page 2244 in the AR6 glossary. ↑
(Crok & May, 2023, Ch 6, by Scafetta and Vahrenholt) and (Vinós & May, 2022b) ↑
(Griffies, Harrison, Pacanowski, & Rosati, 2004). The radiation-ocean surface model is parameterized but seems to be limited to the top 10-30 meters of the ocean. The model documentation is unclear. Important point: the average thickness of the ocean mixed layer is more than 50 meters, see here, figure 5 for details. ↑
(Griffies, Harrison, Pacanowski, & Rosati, 2004, p. 137) ↑
(Nakamura, 2018), or see (Taveira, 2019) and (IPCC, 2021, pp. 978-979) ↑
Parametrization in climate modeling is replacing a process in a model with a simplified set of model parameters. See: (Lu, Liu, Niu, Krueger, & Wagner, 2013) ↑
(May, Meridional Transport, the most fundamental climate variable, 2022g), (Vinós & May, The Sun-Climate Effect: The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (III). Meridional transport, the most fundamental climate variable, 2022c), and (Vinós, Climate of the Past, Present and Future, A Scientific Debate, 2nd Edition, 2022, p. 157) ↑
(Yu & Weller, 2007), (Schmitt, 2018)), and (Vinós & May, The Sun-Climate Effect: The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (VI). Meridional transport is the main climate change driver, 2022e) ↑
(McKitrick & Christy, 2020), (McKitrick R. , Biases in climate fingerprinting methods, 2022), (McKitrick & Christy, A Test of the Tropical 200- to 300-hPa Warming Rate in Climate Models, Earth and Space Science, 2018), (McKitrick R. , Checking for model consistency in optimal ingerprinting: a comment, 2021), (Scafetta N. , CMIP6 GCM ensemble members versus global surface temperatures, 2022b), (IPCC, 2021, pp. 443-444), (Scafetta N. , Impacts and risks of “realistic” global warming projections for the 21st century, 2024), (Mauritsen & Stevens, 2015), and (Spencer, 2024). ↑
(McKitrick & Christy, A Test of the Tropical 200- to 300-hPa Warming Rate in Climate Models, Earth and Space Science, 2018), (IPCC, 2021, p. 444) ↑
While sunspot activity has been going down, net incoming radiation has not. Is temperature responding to it?
BY JOE BASTARDI:
While sunspot activity has been going down, net incoming radiation has not. Is temperature responding to it?
You can’t run from that.
This would imply more evaporation off the ocean, more Water Vapor WV) in the air. Since WV is correlated with temperature, and CO2 is not, what would that imply?
Now, also moving up is my pet: Geothermal ( for the man-made warming people, CO2 is yours).
For CO2 people:
There has been a rise since 1950. Yet, we see ups and downs in temps.
In addition, the bands that CO2 uses for its back radiative property (absorbs Outgoing Long Wave Radiation {OLR} from the earth, then that in turn acts upon the air around it) have been saturated since 1950. Yet, from 1950-1990 the change in ocean temperatures was very small, and without that big a change, global temp rise was limited I have shown this many times in other posts.
Well with the upward overall trend in incoming radiation and the sun with 99.86% of the solar system’s mass, there are liable to be gravitational changes. Combine that with some of the other gravitational influences (Jupiter, for instance) it may be impacting the pressure on the crust of the ocean floor allowing 10 million geothermal vents to be more active. Again, how the heck can I know this? But then again, how the heck can you know it’s not?
So, here is the bottom line. If you dismiss the 2 big natural forcings, one with 99.86% of the mass of the solar system, the other which can be heated from the sun and below with 99% of the energy of the earth/atmosphere system, then, yes, all you are left with is man’s input.
If you lean on what appears to be a huge amount of source regions of energy, the sun and geothermal, then man’s influence is not a factor, as we have seen all through time until now according to man-made climate change people.
If you say, okay let us give all 3 equal weight, knowing the CO2 radiative bands have been saturated since 1950 and it is those bands that are responsible for the radiative effects that cause the warming, it seems there is more going on here.
It comes down to water vapor and what is warming the ocean since that releases so much of the water vapor.
I will go no further except to hope you have an open mind and open heart to at least listen.
I am partial to geothermal — that is obvious — because I am tired of seeing these hot spots explode and then I get hit in the head with a hammer.
In any case, the weather aspect is this: With fewer clouds over the tropics (there is a theory that is a function of the cosmic rays of the sun), or as I believe, it is due to distorted warming spreading out the Vertical Velocity (VV) fields, distorting the global wind oscillation and temperature patterns). It leaves the tropical Atlantic as the place for the tropics to go wild. We caught that last year using the hypothesis I have put forward: with the La Nina and the Indo-Pacific cooling, the imbalance of the warmer Atlantic and cooler Pacific has to focus the greatest tropical activity in our basin. So, you see there is a practical aspect to looking at all this, no matter what the driver, though I suspect it is strongly natural as it always has been before.
Wicked problems need wicked science to, minimally, frame what is puzzling. Wickedness is not a moral judgment. Instead, it is tied to the limits of knowing—when rationality is encumbered by ambiguity and uncertainty and when control over the variables is limited or currently impossible. Predictions that emerge from modeling, especially those that reach decades into the future, cannot be adequately evaluated in the present, thus affecting whether such predictions have low, middling, or high confidence. The policymaker is left to choose between effective or ineffective programs based on blind faith, ideology, and hope. This is the arena where Judith Curry offers enlightenment about the stumbling blocks to robust climate science. As a seasoned climate scientist, she asks us to dwell on the uncertainty and risk in predicting climate change and, equally important, to understand the different policy principles used to enable programs to affect climate and its effects.
When I first studied climate in the 1980s, it was limited to air pollution policy in the San Diego-Tijuana air basin. The focus was on measurable pollutants, air transport, and stationary versus mobile sources. It was also about what a developed nation—United States—could address versus a developing nation—Mexico. The physical context aided policymakers in their transborder efforts at cooperation.
Over the decades, environmental policy concerns have shifted focus in a major way to climate change. Multiple disciplines are required—from ocean dynamics, volcanic activity, atmospheric processes, radiative activity from the sun to human activity along with geological, historical, and contemporary data sources to predict climate and its distributive manifestations next year, ten years, fifty years, and more into the future without, unfortunately, being able to include significant technological fixes. Indeed, a very different order of measurement and global understanding from my early experiences of a local, transborder location.
I am often surprised how California state and local entities craft policies they believe would put us on the path to addressing the complex dynamics of what we label climate change. Whether these efforts—a bullet train to and from small cities, banning the sale of gasoline cars by 2035, limiting the use of gas appliances, and similar aggressive policies—make real-world sense or whether they are a virtue-signaling crystal ball without a feasible way of measuring those efforts remains to be seen.
The question should be how a policy maker, and more importantly, the general public, can rationally judge whether the expenditure of large funds and regulating the daily lives of its citizenry are effective. This question requires metrics of whether CO2 is the primary cause of human-made climate change; whether the efforts in California and elsewhere make any measurable difference in a planet-wide climate; whether the costs in lifestyle and economic activity are equal to the benefits; whether policy efforts prove to be lawful within the legal framework of local, state, and national laws; whether innovative technology may prove to be a more straightforward and more cost-effective approach, and similar questions. Judging the “answers” to these questions requires an understanding of certainty and risk. Certainty, and the humbler approach of uncertainty, require metrics we can be confident about. And depending on those metrics, decisions require a gamble on what objectives are attainable and at what cost. Risk is a matter of perception—of individual residents, academics, policymakers, journalists, and pundits. Here, in the climate change arena, we need transparency about which metrics and risks deserve to be seen as scientific or simply guesses.
Judith Curry’s book, Climate Uncertainty and Risk, provides an important entry point into this discussion. She addresses a methodology for assessing risk, one that is generally avoided and misused. Instead, we often find policy and punditry based on slogans, memes and stereotypes. This latter approach makes it easier to argue for a policy X than for a policy Y. It also avoids understanding how “facts” emerge from a complex methodology.
It is worth taking Curry’s point of departure, acknowledging that climate and climate change require a sense of wickedness. Key to Curry’s approach is a dynamic adaptive decision-making approach than one based on static plans that are nearly impossible to implement.
Under conditions of deep uncertainty, static plans are likely to fail, become overly costly to protect against failure, or incapable of seizing opportunities. Alternatively, flexible plans can be designed that will adapt over time. In this way, a policy can be responsive to an evolving knowledge base and technologies.[1]
Curry provides the example of Germany and how its energy policies became counterproductive over time. The seemingly correct decision to phase out its nuclear plants by 2022 in the face of the Japanese Fukushima disaster in 2011 resulted in fairly rapid—given the crystal ball prediction of much greater timelines—negative consequences from having to restart coal fired plants to geopolitical instability with Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.
While that example is well-known, Curry folds it into what ought to be fundamental to the contours of climate change—a wicked problem given the multiple physical systems involved in its analysis—and the contours of policymaking—given the wickedness of uncertainty and risk entailed by factors inside and outside of policies that aim to fix questionable predictions about the current and future environment. Curry provides a careful history and understanding of risk analysis with attendant cautionary and precautionary principles and how these are weighted to problems with different degrees of confidence of what is actually and what is poorly known, and perhaps even guesses. The problem of policymaking becomes even more wicked once one moves from memes and slogans to scientific inquiry.
Curry does not leave us with a Hamlet-type problem of tragic delay of whether to act or not to act. She is not using the thoroughness of risk analysis as a partisan tactic in the face of uncertainties. Unfortunately, scientists who speak of wicked climate change problems are painted as denialists rather than what they are—climate pragmatists. Climate pragmatism offers adaptive solutions that can address local effects. Bjorn Lomborg, author of False Alarm, is well-known for this approach.
Curry provides a useful section illustrating climate pragmatism with several examples of adaptation and maladaptation. Bangladesh has a longstanding problem with flooding and rising sea levels—partly understandable as land subsidence from groundwater withdrawal, partly from land reclamation that creates a funneling effect—and the damage from storm surges during tropical cyclones. With technical assistance from CFAN, the company Curry is with after leaving the academy, a flood forecasting system was developed for the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers that was incorporated into a cell phone warning system. The result was evacuation and early harvesting efforts. Curry notes that Bangladesh has also chosen a fruitful development path against the advice of NGOs and global environmental groups by continuing to use its natural gas resources, thereby extending the time framework with which it can eventually implement an energy transition and not undermine the well-being of its citizens in the interim.
One would be naïve if this book was accepted as a rational and thoughtful approach to a useful policy and science interface. As anyone mildly familiar with climate change analysis and policy, there are barriers that Curry and similar climate pragmatists face—delusion, illusion, hysteria, manipulation, implausibility, and bad actors. Curry resists such characterizations. At most, Curry shows that a better-to-be-safe-than-sorry mindset can end up with one that makes us more sorry than safe. How does that common-sense wisdom get expressed in risk analysis? Compare two guiding principles: the proactionary principle and the precautionary principle. These are two mindsets at play in how we see climate change hazards and risks:
The proactionary principle is designed to bridge the gap between no caution and the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle [safety at all costs] enforces a static world view that attempts to eliminate risk, whereas the proactionary principle [openminded, innovative] promotes a dynamic worldview that [in turn] promotes human development and risk-taking that produces the leaps in knowledge that have improved our world. The proactionary principle allows for handling the mixed effects of any innovation through compensation and remediation instead of prohibition. [citation] Rather than attempting to avoid risk, the risk is embraced and managed. The proactionary principle [values a] calculated risk-taking as essential to human progress.[2]
Curry’s robust approach that underwrites her climate pragmatism makes sense to many, and yet, there is a mindset that acts as a psychological barrier—one that has underwritten international treaties and goal setting out of proportion to the risk analysis laid out by Curry. Curry draws on the work of Cass Sunstein, a behavioral economist and legal scholar, to identify “cognitive mechanisms” that channel thinking into a narrow instead of a broad perspective about risk. This narrow view plays out in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where precaution overwhelms a balanced judgment: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures . . . ensur[ing] global benefits at the lowest possible cost.”[3] (Emphasis added).
The psychological barrier to climate pragmatism has yet to overwhelm all nations—witness aggressive fossil fuel development in China and India—or popular sentiment that rejects climate extremism. This barrier deserves more extensive treatment since it forms a significant wedge against climate pragmatism.[4]
Reading Curry’s analysis could lower the anxiety of those who cling to untested, and possibly, illusory solutions. A close reading of Climate Uncertainty and Risk could temper the overreach of climate justice warriors, leaving room for needed appreciation for climate pragmatism.
I recently observed a climate justice warrior propounding an end-of-the-world eschatology. The facts—actually a proposed hypotheses—were sufficient to move several teenagers in attendance to express their anxiety about what would happen in the near future. The climate justice advocate dwelled on the “tipping points” we apparently faced. It was a beguiling end-of-the-world prediction. The actual scientific assessment of this scenario was not disclosed nor open to discussion.
The IPCC AR5 considered a number of potential tipping points, including ice sheet collapse, collapse of the Atlantic overturning circulation, and carbon release from permafrost thawing. Every single catastrophic considered by the IPCC AR5 has a rating of very unlikely or exceptionally unlikely and/or has low confidence.[5] (Emphasis in the original).
Curry’s approach stands in stark contrast to the overreach and catastrophizing by climate justice warriors. Those warriors and their acolytes are unlikely to be persuaded by Curry’s pragmatic, but seemingly slower, approach to a changing climate.
There is no magic wand, no scientific alchemy, that can easily upend cognitive catastrophizing about weather events.
The disconnect between historical data for the past 100 years and climate model-based projections of worsening extreme weather events presents a real conundrum regarding the basis on which to assess risk and make policies when theory and historical data are in such disagreement.[6]
Curry’s book could offer an antidote to the extremes in public thought, to the pundits who misinform them and to those policymakers who fail to address climate change issues in a robust and informed way. Despite this pessimistic outlook, Curry has planted the flag on the ground of what climate science ought to be.
While electrical data centers and clean technology facilities have increased rapidly within the United States, it appears the country is still running short on time to find a solution to its decreasing power grid, according to a new report.
Bright full moon over darkened New York City skyline during massive East Coast blackout affecting 80,000 square miles.
While electrical data centers and clean technology facilities have increased rapidly within the United States, it appears the country is still running short on time to find a solution to its decreasing power grid, according to a new report.
Multiple states across the U.S. have now set off alarms due to concerns as their industrial power struggles to keep up with demands, according to The Washington Post. In Georgia, the anticipated electricity usage over the next decade is expected to surge to 17 times its recent levels, reaching an all-time high demand. The largest utility in Arizona has also projected that by the end of the decade, its transmission capacity will be exceeded if major upgrades are not performed, the outlet reported.
“When you look at the numbers, it is staggering,” chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission Jason Shaw told the outlet. “It makes you scratch your head and wonder how we ended up in this situation. How were the projections that far off? This has created a challenge like we have never seen before.”
While clean energy appears to be at odds with the power grid, the Biden Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has implemented strict regulations that have significantly shaped the country’s power grid. The EPA previously attempted to propose a requirement that would have required existing coal-fired power plants to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2024. Additionally, new and existing natural gas power plants would be required to make cuts to their greenhouse gas emissions depending on their size and usage.
However, the EPA recently adjusted their proposal in order to decrease their scope, as several officials previously warned President Joe Biden that the aggressive regulations had serious practical and legal flaws. Concerns regarding the suggested plans questioned the regulations to natural gas power plants that would mandate expensive technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and blended hydrogen.
Many have issued warnings to the Biden Administration regarding its intense push to transition the electrical grid to complete clean energy. Last June, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Mark Christie spoke to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce about the consequences America’s power grid could face if the U.S. continued to phase out fossil fuel infrastructure
“I think we’re heading for potentially very dire consequences, potentially catastrophic consequences in the United States in terms of the reliability of our grid, and I think that the basic reason is that we’re facing a shortfall of power supply,” Christie stated.
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Irina Slav on energy Substack is described as “All things energy. Challenging the dominant narrative because facts matter”. Her latest article “Burn, Hollywood, burn” calls out the blatant indoctrination and propaganda associated with Hollywood today. As always when you dig deeper it is all about money for the shills.
Irina Slav on energy Substack is described as “All things energy. Challenging the dominant narrative because facts matter”. Her latest article “Burn, Hollywood, burn” calls out the blatant indoctrination and propaganda associated with Hollywood today. As always when you dig deeper it is all about money for the shills.
In her introduction, Slav expressed a concern that is common to many of us here:
A couple of days ago, in a conversation with David Blackmon on X, I unthinkingly commented that we’ve reached peak idiocy in the transition narrative. David wisely reminded me that we keep getting proven wrong in this by the narrative constantly discovering new peaks to strive for and conquer. Alas, I couldn’t disagree.
In my work here I’ve mostly focused on calling out the climate indoctrinators in the media, in politics, and, occasionally, in schools. But there is an indoctrination channel I have so far steered clear of, for reasons of mental self-preservation. I get angry about things, you see, and I don’t really like being angry. When I saw this article on Rolling Stone a while ago, however, I got too angry to bother about disliking being angry.
The article is a symphony of climate propaganda done absolutely openly and eagerly, with an unshakeable conviction that amplifying climate catastrophism is the right thing to do. Through all means necessary.
She explains how this article is evidence of the incessant indoctrination of the masses regarding climate change. Earlier the emphasis was on social justice but now there is a shift:
That was the social justice stage of the indoctrination drive. Now, we seem to have reached the next stage, which is all about climate change, a distillate of social justice issues, if you will, since every single problem we have today can be traced back to climate change by the eager narrative pushers. Why so eager, you might ask? Well, because there’s money and fame in it.
The most revealing part of her article for me was her description of the organization called Good Energy. She describes it thusly:
Said organisation exists with the sole purpose of making climate change a central topic in movies and TV shows. Because it’s important, of course. The most important topic ever. And these gracious people are there to guide film folk on the journey to internalising this so they can make more climate change-centric movies and TV shows.
Here’s an excerpt: “We aim to make it as easy as possible to weave climate into any aspect of a story. Applying the Climate Lens™ to your narrative can reveal complexities in character and setting, add conflict, and unlock touching, funny, and surprising storylines — all of them backed by climate science, psychology, and lived experiences.”
Incidentally, while helping writers, directors and producers “weave climate into any aspect of a story” and why not every single aspect of a story, they’d make some money from this because these consulting services are not free. Indoctrination is a mission but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a business at the same time, and how cool is that!
The Good Energy “Library of Experts” is interesting for a couple of reasons: the wide range of expertise disciplines that claim a link to their work and climate change and the number of individuals who loyal readers here might recognize like Dr. Peter Kalmus. Slav goes on to expose a potential driver for their concern about climate change:
Speaking of money, the Daily Sceptic has done a great job in exposing the financial backing of Good Energy and similar organisations or shall I say formations because it certainly sounds more appropriate. You won’t be surprised to learn that this backing comes from climate obsessed billionaires. Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Sierra Club pop out among the list of backers, along with the Walton Family Foundation and One Earth.
She takes an optimistic view of this:
Sad as all this may be there is a silver lining and that silver lining lies in the fact that propaganda has never, ever produced quality art of any form or quality entertainment. Good art and good entertainment tell stories, invoke various emotions, and, if done really well, result in some form of catharsis.
Climate propaganda does not tell stories. It only aims to invoke one emotion and that’s fear. It hammers in a message disguised as a story that is so solid and unwieldy it defies interpretation. You can only swallow it whole. Or ridicule it, of course, because it is ridiculous.
Since climate propaganda in film – and in literature, too – is so rigid, it’s doomed to failure, just like the identity politics trend in literature. The reason for this is that while there may be many people with a mental age of four when it comes to discriminating between art and propaganda, there are many more who instinctively sense the difference and sooner or later shun the latter.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. More details on the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act are available here and an inventory of over 370 articles about the Climate Act is also available. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
In the last few weeks a number of serious errors have come to light in the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) plan for Net Zero. The CCC plan was published mid-2019 in a document titled ‘Net Zero Technical Report’.
In summary, the CCCs plan for Net Zero is to shift transport and heating from using petrol, diesel and gas to using electricity and then to decarbonise the electricity grid.
To decarbonise the grid, it is assumed that electricity will be generated using nuclear and renewables. During periods when nuclear, wind and solar cannot meet demand, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) will be deployed to remove CO2 emissions as the electricity must be generated using gas.
Carbon Capture and Storage is a new and untested technology that has never been deployed at scale anywhere on earth. However, it is clear from the CCC’s report that CCS plays a major roll in achieving Net Zero. As I reported in a previous article, regardless of this being an untested technology, the U.K. only plans to build a quarter of the required capacity to hit Net Zero by 2050 (the plan requires the U.K. to capture and store 176Mt of CO2 annually).
Nevertheless, our Government envisages significant CCS capacity at 50Mt annually. Carbon Capture and Storage involves filtering CO2 from the exhaust produced from gas turbines used to generate electricity, then piping the captured CO2 to plants that compress the gas into a liquid before it is then injected into underground storage areas around the U.K.
Compressed CO2 is currently being commercialised as a way to store energy for use in periods when nuclear and renewables are unavailable. The company Energy Dome has developed a working 4MWh system in Sardinia, Italy. The company says its technology has an energy storage density 10-20 times higher than other compressed air energy storage (CAES) solutions and two-thirds that of liquid air energy storage (LAES).
The CCC’s plan requires vast quantities of CO2 to be compressed and stored under the U.K. Given this potential energy could be released at any time should something go wrong, it seems sensible to consider the safety implications of Carbon Capture and Storage.
Energy Dome has recently raised $11m and is building a larger 100MWh system. Its 100MWh store requires about 2,000 tonnes of CO2. This means the company is expecting to store 0.05MWh of energy per tonne of compressed CO2. Using this energy density, the CCC’s plan to store 176Mt per year will mean 8.8TWh of potential energy is being trapped beneath the U.K. annually. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima exploded with an energy of about 15 kilotons of TNT or 0.0174TWh. Therefore the energy we will be storing under our feet is equivalent to 505 Hiroshima bombs every year or the energy released by 16 magnitude seven earthquakes per year.
Fracking is currently banned in the U.K. due to the risk of causing earth tremors. The planned Carbon Capture and Storage facilities are of an altogether different magnitude. Fracking can be stopped in an instant if a problem is detected. Obviously, if there is an issue with 505 Hiroshima bombs worth of energy under our feet, we cannot just release this vast amount of trapped energy.
No one knows what the effects may be of creating a whole series of high pressure areas in the earth beneath our feet, it has never been done at this scale.
There are other issues. CO2 is a colourless and odourless gas that is about 1.5 times heavier than air.
In addition to the asphyxiation hazard of CO2 displacing oxygen in the air, the inhalation of elevated concentrations of CO2 can increase the acidity of the blood, triggering adverse effects on the respiratory, cardiovascular and central nervous systems. A CO2 concentration of around 5% by volume in air may cause headaches, dizziness, increased blood pressure and difficulty breathing within a few minutes. If concentrations above 17% by volume in air are inhaled, this could cause loss of purposeful activity, unconsciousness, convulsions, coma and death within one minute.
The Lake Nyos disaster saw massive release of carbon dioxide from Lake Nyos in Cameroon on August 21st 1986.
The 1.6 million tonne cloud of magmatic gas was deadly, and a count of the fatalities indicated that 1,746 people, most from villages by the lake, had been asphyxiated by it, along with some 3,000 cattle and innumerable birds, insects and other animals. The bodies of the dead showed no signs of trauma or struggle; these people had simply died where they were.
The CCS plan means vast quantities of CO2 are going to be piped around the U.K. and ultimately injected into the ground. By 2050 we will be dealing with over 110 times the amount of CO2 released in the volcanic event that took place at Lake Nyos, every single year.
Of course to actually achieve Net Zero the CCC state we will need to store 176Mt of CO2 by 2050. That’s 3.5 times more than we have just been discussing.
As the years go by, the risks increase. The Carbon Capture and Storage plan means that every five years we will be pumping just shy of one billion tonnes of CO2 into the earth beneath our feet.
Does that sound like a smart move to you? What will your children and grandchildren think? They’re going to be stuck with this issue for ever.
As any commercial glass house grower will tell you, the plants on earth are currently pretty much starving. During daylight hours glass houses maintain CO2 levels that are double to three times more than our current historically low levels of atmospheric CO2. Plants have evolved for hundreds of millions of years; the fact they are adapted to thrive in an atmosphere with three times our current CO2 levels is a pretty good indicator that CO2 ain’t the problem.
CO2 is fundamental to all life on earth, but as we have seen with the Lake Nyos disaster, it is also capable of taking life if there is enough of it available in one place. Perhaps storing billions of tonnes of the stuff under our feet is just plain stupid, regardless of the reason?
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